what got in the way of your frame this week

I do like to stay diligent in the shop and get the work done on time but when the grapes are ripe everything stops for the harvest. Fortunate for me, I only have 16 vines so harvesting and the crush can be all done in a 24 hour period. The fruit was so sweet from the heat wave of the last week that it had to be harvested quickly before we wound up with a crop of raisins. These are Pinot Noir grapes and this is our second successful harvest after two years of mildew-infested unusable fruit we now have about 6 gallons of magnificent juice happily fermenting away in the cellar. If all goes well , March of 2010 will be the bottling date of the second vintage of Clos Trescony ( our street name) and perhaps 3 years of waiting will yield about 16 bottles of home made plonk.

18 1/2 lbs. and it's steel !

This bike may be light but it isn't flimsy and it wasn't $ 5,000 either. I got a chance to build up my first Shimano 6700 Ultegra group on this bike and I am impressed with the shifting and braking on the new set. The hidden cables are new for 2010, something people have been wanting Shimano to do for years . Even without feather-wieght wheels this bike is about 18 lbs. 9 oz. , very good for a steel bike under $ 4,000. This one is going to the Monterey peninsula to be ridden on some of the most dramatic coastal roads in the western world.

Paragon slider mtb frame

There's framebuilding hardware and then there is really good framebuilding hardware. Paragon Machine works is definitely the latter with quality that cannot be matched by imitators from the pacific rim. This frame will be going to a local bay area rider who is rebelling from the dual-suspension thing and going back to a singletrack-oriented bike for the narrow trails and tight switchback turns of the Santa Cruz mountains.

A peek inside U.B.I. class of 8-09

Week two at the tig welding framebuilding class is intense, inspite of the casual look in the photos. I tried to shoot them without disturbing the actual happenings in the classroom. These guys have just three days to finish these frames.....if it were me and it was my first frame, I would be pretty terrified but these guys are moving along on schedule , not easy in this accelerated class. With luck, Thursday afternoon they will have finished frames......if not, there's a little time Friday morning for final tweaks.

Home away from home

Here's the digs for my stint as a visiting instructor at U.B.I. for the second time. Here, also is one of the many avocado/cheese/lettuce/tomato sandwiches that I'll eat over the two week stay. Yeah, I'm cheap but I can't help it...I like avocado sandwiches just about any time except for breakfast. I'm teaching the tig-wleding framebuilding class again and it is really going well so far but this coming week will be tough....the rear stays are the most difficult part of the frame to weld so my students will have a real challenge for the next four days. I'm getting in plenty of riding, both dirt and road as the area is a great place to do both. Anyone reading this wanting to learn framebuilding should check out U.B.I. as it is arguably the best place anywhere to build your first frame .

they are here.....

Be the first one on your block, at least if you don't live on my block. I won't be in the shop to take orders for these for a couple of weeks so you'll just have to look at this photo until then. The socks are wool blend and they really do say " almost better than bacon " on the bottom. I know that is quite a lofty claim but I and the team are prepared to back it up. -Remember ........almost better.

Frame for Switzerland

That's right, this one is going on a long trip to find it's owner, a shop called Cycleworks. Seems to me they like the good old days of steel and rim brakes , my roots in a big way. I hope they like the result of my labors. I spent some time on this one as I figure that I had to nail it in a quasi-Swiss way. The Swiss are known for precision so this was a scary build but it went very well inspite of the pressure. Hey, this is what I get paid for....this and running around losing and finding stuff in my shop every minute of the day. It's a sickness.......