This could be one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.



And not a single person wearing a helmet. Oh, how far we have fallen... (I'm not sure if there's a pun in there but I'm aware of the "falling" analogy somehow being relevant to the "no helmet" comment.)

I'll write more shortly on my feelings about helmets.

This isn't right.

I don't even know what to say about this one.

More here.



This is Kylie at the funeral of her parents who were riding a tandem and were run down by some guy. "Investigators say there are no charges on the driver. They believe this was an accident and that somehow the driver lost control of his truck.”

You know, even if it was an "accident" there needs to be some sort of repercussions. No charges? Not even a ticket? I mean, sure, I can believe the guy didn't intentionally run down this poor girl's parents but driving a vehicle is a privilege, not a right, and even if you didn't intend to kill someone if you're not in control of your vehicle enough to prevent running down law abiding cyclists and killing them then at the very least you should lose your license.

I don't know what else to say. I mean, maybe it's the fact that I have a daughter that I'm more sensitive to this image than I should be but I pride myself on being able to see the "big picture." Like I said, yes, it was an accident, but you take on a certain amount of responsibility every time you get behind the wheel. It's up to you to pay attention to the road when you're driving and if you fuck up this badly, if you kill people, there should be, there has to be, some repercussions.

Getting what you pay for

(Paying for what you get)




When I first lived in Toronto I lived with a man named Reg Hartt. Reg was one of those folkloric legends that was loved as much as he was loathed. What Reg did/does is show off center films such as Metropolis or Triumph of the Will out of his house though the films were simply the bread whereas the meat was the talks Reg would give before the films or during intermissions. Technically "uneducated" he was one of the smartest people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. There was no shortage of life lessons and learned experiences he would convey to eager audiences on any given night in the living room of his house on Bathurst Street but one of the ones that stood out and seems relevant today was one that he told about a night when he was "working the door" for a friend who was a musician and putting a show on at some venue or other. (I'm taking some liberty with the details, this story is part of a 15 year old memory) While Reg was working the door a guy came up and tried to push past without paying.

Reg said to him, "hey, there's a cover charge tonight."

The guy replied, "It's okay, I'm friends with the guy playing tonight."

Reg replied, "If you were really his friend you'd pay cover."

His point was, if it's worth having it's worth paying for. Reg is a very smart man.

Which brings me to this courier bag that I have. It's been in my possession for a long time, the better part of 13 years. I've tried other bags in between for short periods of time but have always come back to my Pac bag and the amount of abuse it's taken over the years isn't accurately depicted by it's current state. Don't get me wrong, it's worn, but it should be in tatters by now and I'm having a very difficult time coming to grips with the fact that I'm going to have to take it out behind the barn and shoot it.

I bought the Pac courier bag from Pat (the founder of Pac) at the Toronto Bike Show one year when I was a courier in Toronto. I was also going to school at the time so I didn't have a whole lot of money and the bag wasn't cheap but it looked good and Pat was really nice so I bucked up and invested. That bag got me through almost 4 years on the road as a messenger, daily commutes to school, and 9 years of commuting to work, grocery shopping, beer runs, you name it. I mean, this bag gets used for a lot and I can't make that statement sound exagerated enough to make it come close to how much I've used this bag over the years. In its life it made one trip back to the holy land (Pat's sewing workshop) for a new quick release strap and a new buckle but it hardly missed a beat and no other seams or materials needed to be dealt with.

A few years ago Pat offered to send me a free bag as a sign of appreciation for the number of bags I'd sold for her over the years in my bike stores to which I responded, in the spirit of Reg, "I need to pay you, if it's worth having it's worth paying for." But Pat was too generous and said if I sent her a few bike parts she'd call it even. The bike parts' value totalled some insignificant portion of what the bag was worth and would be long worn out and discarded while the bag would undoubtedly still be doing its job but she insisted it was fair recompense and left me no room to argue. And I was grateful, for sure, and very happy to get this shiny new bag but I kept looking at my old one in the closet and thought about how many places we'd been together, how the cordura had first softened up and then stiffened up again into a shape such that, not unlike a Brooks saddle after years of riding takes the shape of your butt, my old bag fell across my back and shoulders like a preformed security blanket. When I saw the old bag I felt like I was cheating on it with some younger, prettier bag. I couldn't do that so I passed the new bag on to a good friend of mine in need for a fair price and went back to the old faithful model. That was a couple of years ago and now it's finally time to admit I need a new bag. I hate to do it and I'm really tempted to send this one back to Pac again to work her magic but, well, the patches would have to be bigger this time and the repairs shorter lived and at some point the bag will fail (or not, it's gone this long, it may indeed be woundable but unkillable...) Writing this is therapy for me, the first step in admitting I'm about to make that phone call or compose that email and send it off to Pat asking her to work her magic and conjur me up what is likely to be the last cycling bag I ever buy. I won't ever be a bike messenger again so it's likely the break in period and early years won't be nearly as rough on this bag as it was on the first one and I'm not carrying the same dumb things I did when I was younger. Actually, check that, I'm still likely to load this bag with lots of things it wasn't designed to handle though it will probably handle it just fine each time. I'm going to get it custom made in a couple of different colours than what they come standard in though it will be black and red like the first one and the Sinclair Handmade Bicycles logo will feature proudly on the flap. It'll cost a bit more to get it made that way but if it's worth having...

Another one out of the jig...

Still some distance to go on this one but that moment when the jig lets go of the frame is quite magical. It's even better when there's no fighting it, when the muscles of the jig are relaxed and the frame drops free without releasing any pent up energy, straight and true. They've all been good, each one getting markedly better, this one makes me the happiest yet.

The Business of Bicycles

I'm finding myself rediscovering bicycles. I've been involved in the world of bicycle retail for something like ten years and started two stores in that time and have only recently extracted myself from all that. It feels good. I've been riding my bikes more lately and I own fewer than I have in years. The collection has always swollen and receded in a regular cycle but over the last year or so I've managed to sell bikes without replacing them like I usually do. And I even have a couple more I'd like to sell without replacing them. For years every new innovation in the world of bicycles, every new material, configuration of tubes, it was all sold to us quite well and one wanted to try every new thing. Every year I'd be swayed by something as simple as an aesthetic and somehow justify that I owed it to my customer base to try the new stuff, to comment on it the only valid way one could, by riding it. Reality is often the new stuff was good but there was also nothing wrong with the old stuff. In fact, many times the innovations were purely cosmetic or, best case scenario, marginally lighter, not that there's anything wrong with that if performance and durability are maintained but unfortunately often they were not.

My last foray into the world of bicycle retail was short lived, only a year. In that year I really began to hate bicycles. I tried to like them but there was very little out there that made me happy. This wasn't good. It wasn't long before I realized I had made a mistake getting back into the industry and I had to get out.

What went wrong? So many things and a lot of them were beyond my control. The bicycle industry is a messed up affair most of the time. This wasn't new to me but for some reason I thought it would be different this time. It wasn't.

What's wrong with the industry? So many things. I've been accused of being somewhat cynical, or retro-grouchy, or unadventurous, or whatever, when it comes to innovation in the world of bicycles. That's not true, I like new and shiny stuff but I've also been bitten by a lot by mediocre parts in fancy packaging promising to bring nirvana to my bicycle riding experience.

It's a time like this, as I reduce and streamline, I wonder about what I specifically want out of a bicycle and what it is that bothers me about the majority of bicycles out there.

The industry has been running rampant with upgrades and innovations and promises of lighter, stronger, stiffer. Why am I not enthused about this? Why does this actually do more to piss me off than impress me? I like new stuff. I like good stuff. I like shiny stuff. And yet for all the new and shiny stuff the bicycle industry puts out they seem to forget to also make it good.

Where in my old store I would fight the urge to build up whatever frame was in the store that just happened to be my size (funny how that happens when placing orders for new stuff) in the new store not only was there very little on the showroom floor that really made me want to ride it, there was very little in the catalogue that stood out as a lustworthy object. Mediocrity had taken over. There were any number of reasons for that, most likely being that stuff had gotten pretty damn good so there wasn't much room for improvement. There were also a number of mainstream manufacturers who had so much wrapped up in what they made that the little guys who usually push the innovation couldn't compete, couldn't beat the big kids at their own game. But trusting the general impatience of human nature, simply making something new and calling it better and making it shiny was often enough to sway consumers. I've been there. If you're passionate about bicycles you've been there too. You've picked up a magazine and seen something very slick and well marketed and you've read the ad copy and then saved up a few bucks and gone to the store and bought "something" even if you didn't need it. The first time this happened to me I was distracted by Machine Tech brakes. I didn't buy them specifically, they came on a second hand bike that I bought, but they were a selling feature of the bike that I found really appealing because, well, everyone wanted Machine Tech brakes. Reality is, they sucked. They were very difficult to set up and despite ad copy touting how stiff they were they really did a very poor job of stopping a bicycle. There were lots of other bits that got me like Girvin flex stems (I still remember the debates about what was better, suspension in a stem or suspension in a fork, seems pretty obvious now), AMP forks (neat design but the bushings wore out in about five good hard rides), early Grip Shift which promised fewer parts meaning less maintenance and lighter weight, except they didn't work unless you installed a bassworm (it pulled the cable at the rear derailleur), a power spring (made the derailleur spring stronger), and Gore housing (less cable drag to allow the derailleur to shift smoother), and even then they didn't work all that well.

So yeah, I'd try new stuff all the time but newer wasn't always better. Of course sometimes it was. I like my Hope disc brakes, I like my external bearing bottom brackets. 10 gears on a road bike is nice. And suspension forks on mountain bikes work really well now. So while I'm a fan of reasonable innovation what we're subjected to today is quite unreasonable. Consider a ceramic bearing headset. Obviously there's no need for the reduced rolling resistance that a ceramic bearing would provide in a headset application so the only rationale that can be argued is durability. Sure, a ceramic bearing is harder and might last longer there are any number of bearings around that cost a 5th as much that will last at least half as long (do the math, that means it's a much better value and it won't slow your bike down any).

Where all this left me is standing in a bicycle store that I had just opened thinking about what it was that I wanted to sell and if it was even available anymore and a lot of the time it wasn't. The good solid components were being replaced by well marketed disposable components. Wheels, for instance, are one of the most important parts of a bike. I'm a huge fan of handbuilt wheels. I'm also a fan of Campagnolo components because they are quite durable and, more importantly, they are rebuildable. What shocked me this year is that Campagnolo will no longer offer hubs for their component sets except for Record which is quite expensive and excessive for most users. Instead you could pick from any of the prebuilt wheels in their catalogue at a number of reasonable price points. While this might seam a decent alternative my experience with Campagnolo wheels is that while they are quite durable the replacement parts are proprietary and expensive and you often realize it's cheaper to buy new wheels than fix your old ones. Wasn't cycling supposed to be environmentally friendly? If so, why do we so readily accept throwing out things that traditionally have been quite serviceable?

Campagnolo hubs were just one thing. There were so many others it's hard to get into here. And there were any number of companies that seemed more motivated to get stuff to market regardless of whether or not it worked. And other companies that were doing their best to sell sunglasses to the blind with their glossy ad copy touting the benefits of their mediocre products.

Leaving the bicycle retail industry a second time was essentially a vote of no confidence in the industry upon which I was to depend on for a living.

But wait, there's more. It's not that I've given up on bicycles, it's that I've decided there needs to be more people producing bicycles and bicycle components from the other side, people who really care about making good stuff without getting distracted by marketing or lightweight or any other gimmicks. Some of these items exist already. Phil Wood hubs, Chris King headsets, Paul Component cantilever brakes, all good and, not uncoincidentally, pretty much unchanged designs for years. They've all recognized what they make is a good thing and there's not much need to change from year to year for the sake of change. Me? Bicycle frames, or at least that's a start. There's no real shortage of bicycle frame builders in North America and it's fair to wonder if there's a need for them all but I suspect there is. Especially in Canada where there's only a handful of small builders. I suspect it won't end with frames. I have sketches and designs for clean, functional, rebuildable bits and pieces. Perhaps as time goes on I'll finalize a scheme or two and make a product or three available for sale. But for now I'll keep making frames and see where that takes me.

Evolution

These seem like they should be such easy decisions but every one becomes monumental. The logo, for instance, has changed a little. You'll see it in the masthead of this blog. It went from a decomposing block letter to an overinked fountain pen derived script. It's not such a big deal really unless you're about to invest in 50 decal sets for your frames. I suppose in some ways that's interesting because, well, I guess I'm committing to 50 frames (assuming I can find 50 people to buy bikes...) But there's been a number of changes along the way and I'm sure there will be more. For instance, I have been a fan of the Salsa dropout on the frames I cut my teeth on but they no longer make a cromoly version opting for stainless steel instead which doesn't fit in with my inclination to build exclusively fillet brazed framesets. I did find a fairly nice stainless steel seat collar though and was quite excited to begin using these but when they arrived they were 0.6mm over their spec size and essentially became useless for what I wanted to use them for. So changes occur.

The nice thing about overordering "bits" whenever you make an order for fittings is you always have an option or two in the toolbox. So out went the new stainless collar and back came the externally attached binder. I've been using a lug that utilizes a Campagnolo type seat binder bolt, that two piece bolt where one half screws into the other half through a through hole in the seatpost collar. While that works they are prone to failure from time to time and that's not cool when you're in the middle of nowhere trying to find an increasingly rare piece. The other option was the common solution to this problem; a slip on collar. Cheap, common, but it seems a cheap way to finish a frame. The externally attached binder means a traditional M6 stainless bolt is used and the colar is a permanently attached feature of the frame. This makes sense in my mind and it worked well here.

Where I ended up makes me happy. I suspect it will change a bit between this frame and the next. For some reason while I was taking pictures along the way I didn't take a picture of how the seat cluster ended up finished. The frame is off at the painter's and when I get it back I'll get a photograph of it. For now there's these "in process" images. I don't know that any frame is ever truly finished. I'm very happy with how the last few frames have turned out. Happy enough that I've started building myself another one.

And so it goes...

I bought a Moleskine notebook last week. It's a precious little thing. There's some propaganda in it about how it was used by the likes of Van Gogh, Picasso, and Hemingway. Well, not mine specifically, but ones like mine. They aren't cheap, but again, like a lot of things that are finding themselves dear to my heart, it's a very good piece. They are handmade, bound with thread, open fully flat, and the covers are oiled to make them waterproof and durable. Of course the edges aren't waterproof but it makes a fine coaster for a sweaty drink in the summer. There's an expandable pocket in the back to keep scraps of this and that and a fabric integrated bookmark and an integrated elastic to keep my shit together. The part I find interesting about this notebook is how small I write and how precious each pen stroke becomes. There's a pressure to make each mark significant and to not waste a single piece of this book's potential. I find myself writing on both sides of the pages, starting closer to the top and filling pages closer to the bottom. When you're just carrying this thing you feel good, it has a weight to it that says "I'm good stuff, I'm a good thing."

There are ideas about Golden Sections and Le Modular amongst others that define beauty in proportion. The shape, size, thickness of the Moleskine is, well, it's perfect.

How does this tie into bicycles? Bicycles are quite efficient machines. They do what they do exceptionally well which is take a fairly small motor and use that energy so efficiently that huge distances can be traversed with relatively little fuel. Within the world of bicycles there are pure and honest designs and there are things that resemble bicycles but don't work as well or at the very least work as well but with a whole lot of hoopla associated with that function. What's beautiful about the Moleskine notebook is that it performs a task exceptionally well but works that function one step further with it's binding elastic and bookmark. Its binding method allows the pages to open dead flat. It's hard to describe how a notebook can be bad until you've used one that is so good. I am also enamored with it's purity in form. Simple binding, clean lines, rounded corners. It's no frills. And that's what I like about bikes, that's what I'm aiming for in my bikes. Pure, functional forms, straight lines, practical and considered cable routing, but a decided lack of ornament or frills. I respect the number of hours that must go into detailing some bikes and I sure do like looking at them but if the bike itself becomes too precious, too beautiful, its functionality is undermined. I don't want people to be afraid to ride the bikes I build. They are first and foremost tools. They should be ridden a lot, every day. Same for paint, if the paint is too beautiful, too glossy, it gets in the way of enjoying the bike as a tool.

I'm sure I have more to say about this.

I'm in the garage tomorrow cutting up tubes for four frames.

And so it goes...