UBI Class Nearly Finished

Today is the last day of class at UBI. The students have spent the last two weeks learning the process of brazing a bicycle together. I think everyone is pretty tired by this point, and the bikes are mostly finished. The only thing left for most of the students is the final reaming, facing and chasing of threads, and then whatever finish filing they want to do. 

They're tired, but I think most everyone is excited and relieved, feeling like they've accomplished something. Oh, and they have. They've earned it. It's kind of like having a baby. You spend a lot of time, sweat and energy making something that was once only an idea into reality. And there it is, right in front of you. You can sit back and look at it and you know every little detail very intimately; each brazing success and blemish and the places that everything worked out exactly like you wanted. You know all the things about it you like, and you probably have a list of things that, if you could do it all over again you would do differently. And all of this leads you directly into thinking about the next bike you want to build. 

Building bikes is fun. It's a lot of work, and there are a million little details that you have to remember, but it is very satisfying to use your hands to make something as cool as a bike, and to then be able to build it up and ride it, to test out your work. And for me, teaching this class reminds me that the fundamentals are essential, and it freshens the idea that bike building really is fun. Not that I've ever forgotten this, but when I'm buried in "the business" of bike building rather than actually filing and brazing, sometimes the fun of it is overshadowed by the stress of small business ownership. Teaching a class and watching people light up as they get to the end of constructing their own bike, when they stick the wheels in and stand back admiring what they've done, a small internal grin of complete and genuine satisfaction -- I see this, I feel it, I know it. It's an awesome thing. Where else in life are you going to find that? Very gratifying. 

These guys should definitely be proud. They've done good work. They stuck with it all through the difficult parts, and now they've got a new bicycle, built by their own hands, built specifically for them. 

Home From Thailand

I just got back from Thailand a couple of days ago. Wow, that's a long way to travel. Throw in a flight delay, a ten hour layover in Seoul, South Korea, and a train ride down from Seattle, and it all makes for a severe case of jet lag. 

And talk about jumping right back into things: Tomorrow, Monday, the 28th of March I begin teaching the next brazing class at UBI. This will keep me busy for the next couple of weeks. I'm back, so there's no reason I shouldn't get started. 

In Thailand I took lots of photos of bikes and food, markets and street scenes. The internet was spotty at best, and slow as molasses. I only tried uploading photos once -- it took hours to get about 18 photos onto Flickr. After that I decided to wait until I returned home to try again. I've been sorting through them, so you can expect to start seeing some of them soon. 

It was a great trip, and I'm glad to be home. 

Frame Building Class Video

Here it is -- the long awaited (or not really all that long awaited) video of the frame building class at UBI. The class was from 31 January to 11 February, and each student (8 of them) built their very own bicycle frame. This is a time lapse video that covers day 5 through day 10 of the class in about 8 minutes.

The camera shows seven of the eight work benches, and there are no breaks delineating the passage of days. It starts on day five and moves through the final day, and then myself and several students leave the school and ride our bikes down the road to my workshop for a brief tour (which is at the very end when the camera view goes dark). 

I think it's interesting seeing the progression of the bike frames as they come together. Everybody looks so busy! They did, in fact, work very hard, and each one of them has a bike frame to show for it. Enjoy the video!

Frame Building Class Feb. '11 from Joseph Ahearne on Vimeo.

This video shows day five through day ten of the UBI frame building class I taught from 31 Jan. to 11 Feb. There were eight students in the class, but the camera could only take in seven of the benches (sorry Daniel!).
There are no breaks in the video as one day moves into the next, so you just have to pay attention to what people are wearing -- if you see someone jump into a different outfit, then a new day has started.
I could have edited out more of the times where no one is working, but I feel like those give you a chance to take in the benches and the progress as the bicycle frames come together.
I've found it helpful to focus on one person's workbench for a few seconds at a time to watch their progress, because the whole view of everyone working can be very "busy."
I hope you enjoy it!
Music by Audion