Wednesday, October 13, 2010

A gathering of frame builders

Since the construction or rather, destruction at my shop ( see overopinionatedframebuilder.blogspot.com)has proved to be noisy and dusty ( Friday morning they were using a chainsaw for the demo work..) enough to make it unfeasable for me to get much done, I took a Friday off to go up to Santa Rosa for Levi's Gran Fondo ride on Saturday. The night before the ride, a gathering was organized by Jeremy Sycip and others for any Nor-Cal or Oregon frame builders to attend. It wasn't a real "show", it was more of a street-corner party-but a street corner party with about 22 frame builders in attendance. We all showed up with our bikes that we would ride the next day with about 6,000 other folks. Local Santa Rosa folks came to the party riding some incredibly odd machinery. Most of the rigs were designed to run on railroad tracks as well as the street. The creativity in the construction of these rideable giants was remarkable.
Rick Hunter, fillet brazer extrodinaire takes a look at the assembled bikes. Most builders brought 'cross bikes or big-tire road bikes as the route involved about 1/2 hour of dirt road.
This behemoth spouted flames out of the three torches on top....no doubt, this machine was constructed for 'Burning Man'. As you can see, hundereds of folks were there to see the bikes, meet the builders and ride in a tiny portable velodrome, the 'whiskey cone'. I think that this was better than any bike show I've ever been to-but then, it wasn't a bike show....it was a party.

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