I'm following a long tradition of the craft of bike making, using a variety of methods of design and construction, and adding to it my own personal understanding of what it means to make a great bike.
If you take a look around my site you'll see a lot of examples of the kind of work I do. I believe in the utility of bikes and the genius of their construction and functioning. In this, I see beauty. I'm following a long tradition of the craft of bike making, borrowing traditional methods of design and construction, and adding to it my own personal take on what it means to make a great bike.
Bicycles, to me, represent all that is good and fun and creative in humans. Bikes are healthy and meditative and useful, and they bring out the best of people's personalities. They help build community and promote environmental awareness, and they can help people explore the world around them in a way that is interactive and participatory. Bicycles make people smile.
I chose to be a bike builder for a lot of reasons, not least of which is my love of bikes. I like what they are, what they do, and what they represent. I also like making things. It's fulfilling to be able to conceptualize something, and to be able to use my hands to make that into a real, tangible, functional thing. It's a process of hypothesizing and problem solving, then actualizing and testing. If it sucks, learn from it and move on. When it's good, enjoy it, criticize it, refine it and build it again. Perfection is transitory, and yet we can always strive for it.
When I first began building bikes, the lessons I learned were big and clunky and obvious. As the years have gone by, my successes and mistakes have taught me so much about myself and about the work I do. I have honed my craft and refined my processes, and have further defined what I believe makes a great bicycle. I've never been satisfied following the norms. Experience has helped direct my evolving ideas, and it has given me the confidence to offer unique machines that do their job well, and look great in the process. There are so many ways to make a bike beautiful, but the first step, for me, is to make it so it will work beyond the expectations of the rider.