Last week I was asked to speak to an industrial design class at the art institute of Portland about framebuilding and bike design. The class is participating in the Oregon Manifest Builder’s Challenge, and I think they have one of the most exciting challenges of all. That is, they are starting as complete beginners to bike construction. And you can only be brand spankin’ new once.

I found myself wanting to impart equal parts pep talk, myth-busting, and practical advice.  Among these tidbits were:

• Keep your hands in check with your brain. Draw your construction drawings by hand, at scale. This keeps the thinking in check with the making, and helps you catch errors before they are rendered permanent in steel.
• Know where your bottom bracket is at all times.
• Bike building is a totally learnable craft – you don’t need a blessing or a blood transfusion of some ancient cranky framebuilder in order to get ‘er done.

Sometimes when you are talking about your work, a belief that you have held close but never articulated tumbles out of your mouth in word form for the first time. When the conversation turned to jigs and fixtures, I got up on a bit of a soapbox:

When your tools tell you that “it can’t be done” you need to dismantle them, use them in a new way, or throw them away and invent new ones.

Tools embody wisdom and working methods. They are useful guides for physical problem solving, but they can sometimes get downright didactic once you’ve got them in your head and in your hands. Whether it is the bike that is too small, too large, too awesome to fit in your standard frame jig or whether it is the tubing bender you need to hack in order to realize the beautiful curve in your mind, the better tool is the one you set aside when it gets in your way.

This class can learn the craft of frame building.
They can build a rad little bike in the five weeks they have left.

But their real challenge is to build something that has never been built before. From what I’ve seen they have all of the creativity and design thinking they need. But whether you are brand new or have been at it for years, one of the most important tools you can deploy is fearlessness.

This couplered touring bike was built for a textile artist who spends time in Nevada and in a Chilean coastal town. The color and textures of this bike reflect an artist’s sensibility, but if you met her, you’d know that it also reflected her warm and sunny personality. I like to imagine this bike weaving together two beautiful landscapes, from the colorful Chilean markets and cobblestone roads to the cold, clear hills of home.

• S and S couplers for travel
• 26” wheels for ease of international tube and tire buying
• Rack ready for picking up treasures wherever they are found
• Solar pearl paint, a special order inspired by Japanese design

When we introduced the LUST line of bikes almost a year ago, we set out to do a few important things. OK. One thing:

We wanted to make it easy as possible to get one of our bikes.

The way we smartly did this was that we distilled what we knew about bike design an boiled it into three sizes, three colors, and three parts options. We also bunched the orders in sets of 20 to make the process easier for us and our build partners.

It totally worked.

But it wasn’t exactly what you wanted.
And to be honest, it wasn’t what we wanted either.

What we found out over and over again was that while we had a lot of smart design thinking built into our sizes, a lot of you wanted the benefit of our custom design process. It was inescapable, you’d call up wanting a medium, but you had neck pain or knee pain that needed solving.

We heard you.

Today we are officially announcing that you can get any of our LUST line bikes, the Little Black Dress, the A-Line, and the BOOM BOOM in a completely custom design.

Plus:

• You can order it whenever you want.
• You can pick your color.
• You can get it in just 10 weeks.

All for just an extra $200. (Doesn’t include any fitting services.)

We have asked ourselves in the past about participating in the love economy, but now that we are here, I am not going to talk about roses, or chocolate, or bikes that love you back. I am going to talk about something that happened a little over three years ago that changed my life and brought me a profound joy. It is a joy that continues to this day. I am, of course, talking about our dog, Greta.

Greta is a lab aussie mix. Which is really to say that she’s a mutt. She enjoys naps on the couch, playtime in the park, and being around me and Nat. She makes noises when she yawns in the morning, and we have been known to have yawn-offs where we yawn at each other, her on the couch, me waiting for my morning coffee to kick in. We have an entire routine when I come home from work that involves racing around the yard, belly rubs, and something that I think is the dog version of tag. She is not so great around people, and will bark at you when you come by the house. But she is completely at home with her people, which is to say Natalie and me.

Greta is a rescue from the Heartland Humane Society in Corvallis, Oregon. Her first couple of months weren’t easy. In fact, we were worried for a while that she wouldn’t make it. But she pulled through. For a while she had better health insurance than we did.

Before we took that trip to Corvallis, Natalie and I talked a lot about whether we could incorporate a dog into our lives. We are really busy. Could we really give her the attention she would need? How would we train her? What stuff would we need to buy, and where exactly did we fall on the whole Cesar Milan thing? Looking back I can say that we didn’t need to know all the answers, that it was easier than I expected, and now we can’t imagine a life without her.

No matter where you live, there are pets that need people. And when you bring them into your life, they change you for the better. If you can give an animal the care it needs, please consider giving yourself the give of love and visit your local Humane Society. It might not always be easy, but it will return all the love that you put into it.

Greta in the snow for the first time. from Sweetpea Bicycles on Vimeo.

This wasn’t a case of haphazard organizing. I thought of this crank arm as a love letter from my old flame, a ruggedly handsome red 1970’s LeJeune track bike.

I bought the LeJeune from the local velodrome’s old racing fleet in the spring of ’99. I couldn’t believe my luck. I handed over $200 and the bike was mine. I removed the wheels, and threw it over my shoulder and biked it home across town like a new bride.

Our honeymoon lasted all summer. We rode through the days that grew warmer and longer, going everywhere together. I felt giddy, light, and free. My work as a bike messenger seemed to be no more than an excuse to be together.

At some point, I discovered that the left crank arm had a small crack by the crank bolt and would need to be replaced. While I would have loved another Campy Pista crank to replace it, I ended up with a 165mm Stronglight crank in a complimentary style. I doubt that I can take credit for wearing out the old crank. Still, I was happy to leave my mark on the LeJeune. Call it the transformative nature of love.

Nothing lasts forever. Not cranks, not summer, not the object of your desires. At the end of summer, the LeJeune was stolen from me. It damn near broke my heart. I know. It is just a bike. But all the same, I don’t need to tell you that there is no such thing as “just a bike.” They get into your heart and they stay there, long after they are gone.

When I look at the old busted left crank arm, it still reflects my old love. Even in its most broken part, even in its absence.

Now go hug your bike. Give it a big kiss. Life is short and no one is watching.

The gang over at Momentum Magazine read Natalie’s accounts of racing pregnant, and asked her to share some of her thoughts on riding pregnant a little farther along. Here we are at 28 weeks. Here is what we’ve learned.

Earlier this week, Giro’s brand manager Eric Richter stopped by Sweetpea headquarters with a list of questions and an interest in some fresh perspectives. (First of all, how cool is that?) We spent a good time huddled around my shop heater talking about cycling culture, making stuff, and where motivations find inspiration. His questions led me to some favorite topics and new territories, from gravity boots to temper tantrums to machine tools.  But my favorite question went something like this: “If you were to design something that was “Giro,” what would it be and how would you approach it?”

Of course, this was totally unanswerable. I could not reach into my brain’s pantry of shelf-stable thoughts and unwrap a tidy morsel. This one needed to be butchered on the spot and served up raw.

After all, I think about design a lot, but engage with it in a fairly narrow context. I could spend the next 30 years thinking on the single design problem of relating women’s bodies and to bike frames. But this question demanded a broader design response, the kind that arises from gut level design principles, whether you’ve acknowledged them or not.

My initial answer to Eric was something of a cop-out about how this deserved some time to ruminate, but I quickly found myself talking about how Giro has a really privileged position.  A helmet is a material mediation between what is most personal and precious (the noggin) and what is most elemental and unpredictable (the world in which accidents happen). The design must regard the inside and the outside with a simultaneously light touch and unflinching robustness.

As we’ve observed before, whatever physical objects we spend the most time in close contact with us require the best that design can deliver. (This is the logic of pricey undies.)

As I reflected on the essence of Giro, I couldn’t help thinking about the essence of Sweetpea. The frames I design mediate bodies and motion, but don’t actually touch the body directly. Perhaps this is why I am always fussing over saddles and bar tape. What touches you matters. And I believe that what I design for matters, too. I design for what moves you.

In the next couple of weeks, I will be exploring some of the design principles at the heart of Sweetpea. It is a challenge for myself, and it should also make for some good conversation. So pull up a chair and let’s delight each other with some interesting and unanswerable questions.

There is something about winter that encourages looking into the future.

Perhaps it is that you can see farther through the trees all stripped of their leaves. Perhaps the winter demands that you focus on the essentials and carefully points toward what is possible. Perhaps thoughts travel faster and farther in the cold.

Natalie and I have been busy planning our year. There is no sparkling sunshine or cherry blossoms to distract us. The landscape is clear and we can survey our farthest horizons.

Despite the obvious, we have identified some spectacular landmarks and have mapped out a year of adventure and exciting new projects.

Stay tuned for reports from the field as we press on in 2011.