Archive for February, 2009

Hard to believe, perhaps, but yes, it’s our first 29er. Our friend Bridge has a habit of pushing us to try new things – years ago he commissioned our first monostay track bike, and now here he is pushing the large & fat tires on us. Check it out:

  

Apparently Bridge rides in muck a lot, so he likes to run his shifter cables in housing, instead of using cable stops. I like these stainless housing guides from Kirk Pacenti, and welded them together so they could look all neat on his top tube:

  

Here are some shots of the construction. It’s all True Temper tubing, and required an extra-long 35mm down tube to reach up to the top of the Rock Shox fork Bridge has planned. I didn’t have to use super long chainstays as the Paragon disc dropouts are nice and long and help me stretch out the rear end. Bridge wanted some “just in case” braze-ons as well, including water bottle bosses, rack & fender mounts, and screw-in canti posts.

  

And here it is all painted up nice with oak leaves galore:

  

  

  

I also painted a Nash, from a Baltimore builder, and a Kawasaki-green Geekhouse for our friend Marty; look for that one at NAHBS this weekend!

 

Next, and I mean it this time: belt drive!

We’re all over it. Find it at a newsstand near you or go directly to the COG website.

What’s most notable, apart from Brian’s gravity-defying hijinks, or my long-windedness, is that the gorgeous featured bike was not, in fact, built by Brian or myself. That particular knockout was designed, built and painted by Emily Klass, our erstwhile co-worker. Emily was my first long term apprentice, and worked at Circle A for about 4 years, after which she moved to New York to pursue arts of the finer variety. You can see what she’s up to here.

Photographer extrordinaire Brian Vernor stopped by the old shop in Carpenter Mills and tooks these hot pix of the whole family:

And here’s some more, including a shot of one of Emily’s other bikes:

For my personal favorite of Emily’s work, check this out. She took our paint to another level, bringing a nice dose of the Providence screenprinting sensibility.

We see Emily pretty regularly, though never often enough. You should email her and tell her to come back to Providence and make more bikes.