The dead art of craftsmanship in anything...

   There are alot of things in life that have lost the value in their craftsmanship. More things are mass produced, with a quality control guy or gal glancing at the finished product and every once in a while pulling a "bad" or "defective" widget off the conveyor belt and tossing it into a trash can, because making things by hand just isn't cost effective when you've gotta make hundreds or thousands of something. This is the world we live in. Throwing away defective widgets that machines and humans built with materials that have already been paid for, is the norm, because it's easier/cheaper/more "efficient" than slowing down production and making things the "old way".

   But there are still a few people out there who find a value in things made "the old way". People that don't mind things taking a little extra time and costing more if what they're getting in the end is a product that will last a really long time and do what it was designed to do well.
   I was having a conversation with some friends about bicycles the other day and they were both trying to make the point that bicycles produced with "modern" processes/modern configurations are better or not worse than lugged steel bicycles. I was arguing points about the steel frames being repairable (if your down tube or any tube fails/breaks, it can be replaced), that steel frames absorb more bumps/cracks/road imperfection jolts than other frame materials making the ride more comfy. And that a steel frame is recyclable if your bike does get completely destroyed. As Rivendell says, (about their Sam Hillborne) "if it dies, it is easily repaired. If it really dies, the steel is easily recyclable." But the thing I feel is more important than these is the craftsmanship that goes into a lugged steel bicycle. I constantly look at Rivendell's frames on their site to see what's new, what they've got on clearance and to generally keep hope alive. These guys are pretty much the last hope for non-custom bicycle frames made with lugged steel and threaded steerer tubes. It's a dead art. It just is. Like wood windows. A hundred years ago, windows were made of wood. Doors were too. They were made of wood for a long time. (Bicycles were also made out of steel and had forks with threaded steerer tubes) for A REALLY LONG TIME!!!) Houses had wood "siding" finishing the outside. Then one day... Aluminum (windows/patio doors/siding) showed up!!! (which is actually not a good window or patio door material for a lot of reasons, but this didn't stop the industry from making hundreds and thousands of Aluminum windows and patio doors) and then VINYL!!! THE END-ALL-BE-ALL BEST BUILDING MATERIAL!!! It never rots, never rusts, never needs to be painted, and is cheaper to make things out of than wood (not including, of course, the impact on our environment that pvc manufacturing has... i won't get started on that here). Let's face it, nobody enjoyed trying to find time to paint their doors and windows or patching little rotten spots in the wood here or there every 5-10 years(I'm also not going to even touch on termite damage, for a few reasons, but mostly because termite damage still happens). So the industry gave us a lower maintenance "solution". People's lives were getting busier (who has time to paint a door or window or fence) and then we get to the question: why shouldn't everybody just get vinyl windows/patio doors molded out of plastic that will never rot, never breakdown, and NEVER need to be painted?!?!?! Well, because there's no craftsmanship that goes into them. They're molded pieces of plastic. You can see the not so beautiful exposed "welds", where the vinyl gets melted together and then trimmed down on every corner where the vertical and horizontal materials meet. Same thing on vinyl patio doors. (On modern bicycle frames you can see the exposed welds where every tube touches another tube... do you see the connection? i mean figuratively?)

   Everyday at work, I show people sliding patio doors, we have Andersen doors that are made of wood with the exterior clad in vinyl and we have vinyl vinyl doors, that are molded solid vinyl. The Andersen doors start at around $900 with the screen/handle etc, the vinyl door is $350 with everything. People ask "but which one is better", and I usually explain that the all vinyl $350 door is a good door, but it lacks the craftsmanship that goes into the Andersen wood doors. And that "better" is relative to what you see value in. If you see more value in a door that you will never have to paint, that will never rot and will always be bright white vinyl, then the $350 door is probably going to be the better choice. Both will need new rollers for the sliding panel eventually, and/or a latch for the lock. But the biggest difference is how they're made, and what the finished product looks like. Weight also makes its way into the equation with doors, like with bicycles, but the opposite. A lot of people think if a door feels "heavy", it's better. Gotta be. Sliding doors, hinged doors, even storm doors. People open the storm door displays and say "that feels nice and heavy" or "sturdy", but the thing that makes a storm door feel "heavy" is the amount of (usually adjustable) tension on the hydraulic closer, it has almost nothing to do with the door itself. But it's about perception. Like a steel bicycle frame weighing 2 pounds (or 1 pound....)more than an aluminum frame making it not "better", when in the end it's going to weigh closer to 200 pounds when it gets all it's parts and wheels and RIDER on it! Again, it's about perception. Not reality. I'm losing focus here, sorry. On the rare occasion that I get to mention this to people, I like to talk about Jeldwen's wood window line. They are the only windows I can order at work that are wood on the inside AND outside. And I've told several people that my "dreamhome" would have wood Jeldwen windows. Most people just look at me like I'm dumb at this point because I've usually just talked to them for 30ish minutes and qualified them for an all vinyl window, because they hate painting, have painted white trim on the inside of their homes(wood interiors are stainable to match stained trim work) and they don't care or value the aesthetics or craftsmanship of a wood window. This is where I am not like most people. I very much value the craftsmanship that goes into the wood windows and doors and shutters. I like that they're fastened together with screws & nails, not melted together with crappy looking corners! and I would also like to take a can of paint outside every 4 or 5 years and do some touch up or repaint a door or some windows, or shutters. People did this for decades and decades before vinyl showed up as a building material and took this away from us. People used to appreciate the fancier lugs on steel bicycle frames in the 70's as well. I've mentioned this in a previous blog and I'm sure this won't be the last blog that goes on and on about lugged steel being the best bike frame material but I wish I could've been around when the mid-70's Raleigh International got to bike shops and cyclists were drooling over the beautiful lugwork on that one particular year's frame! To follow the industry and the art of frame building that was going on back then would've been amazing. Back before vinyl replacement windows!
   This concept really applies to alot of goods that people buy though. My Chrome messenger bag for example. Someone made this bag in the USA, by hand. The bag retails for $140 as of 5/18/12 on Chrome's website, I got mine for a really good deal at a trendy Richmond clothing store that was blowing them out at the time because they probably didn't move them enough to keep stocking them. Anywho, I could've bought a bag for less than half of what i paid for this bag, it might have lasted awhile before the stitching started to quit on me, and I may or may not have been satisfied with its lifespan and the amount I paid for it. But the Chrome bags seem to me to have a lot of value in the details, the tough materials they choose, the fact that someone in the USA made this, makes me happy, The bag wasn't shipped from china or taiwan after going down a conveyor belt with a guy glancing at it to make sure the shoulder strap was actually attached.
 
     I feel that value in craftsmanship was lost somewhere. Maybe somewhere between middle class American families having one parent working and the same families with the same lifestyle/income level/quality of life having both parents working to try to keep the bill collectors away. Maybe somewhere between a 15 year old having a pager and a part time job, being the coolest guy on the block and now a 10 year old isn't "happy" (whatever that could mean to a 10 year old these days) unless he/she has the new iphone? Maybe it got lost when families stopped going to hardware stores together? When husbands and wives don't go to the hardware store together because they don't have enough time when they're both off to even consult each other about their home improvement needs? When families stopped riding bikes together? When that field or wooded area you used to disappear into for hours as a kid and play "fort" in, got paved and turned into another gas station/cvs/711/starbucks/or condos? I find myself dumbfounded when people don't understand that most appliances (fridges, washing machines, etc)  aren't made in America anymore, I feel like people should assume that things aren't made here anymore, but then sometimes I take a step back and I realize they're like me! They are looking for the CRAFTSMANSHIP! They want to see it on the box, they want to see "MADE IN USA" on the box and when they don't, it's heart breaking. Their existing washing machine that lasted 30 years was probably made in the USA, their existing fridge that's lasted 35 years and is still kicking was probably made here, but they realize now, as they look at a bunch of overpriced options, that whatever they choose to spend their hard earned money on, will not last nearly as long and it wasn't meant to.

   So whether someone hears steel bicycle and cringes when I meet a new person who also rides or whether my bike friends try to tell me that my quill stems aren't as stiff as modern stems for threadless steerered forks, (Stiffness? why would I care if my stem is stiffer? OH! Stiff! Like when people are working their handlebars side to side as leverage to assist them while pedaling in a climb or when they're trying to get out in front of the other guy they're racing against on the sunday "Hammerfest"?) or when I mention pletscher kickstands and get blank looks from other bike people, I think about Rivendell frames and wood windows and  I appreciate the value in their craftsmanship....and I smile.

Remembering Kurt Miller. And riding on.

My friend Kurt is the reason I am "into" bicycles. (the ultimate understatement, any way you read it). We worked together at a camera store for a few years. He was 20ish years older than me, into jazz, photography, old Raleigh bicycles, geology, and a million other things. He had a million hobbies. He really liked to take things apart, had a moped in his storage place he'd torn down to rebuild and never got back to, as well as an old Volkswagon he'd done the same to. There were boxes of parts and pieces of that car everywhere when i visited his storage space. There were also lots of bicycle parts and a couple of old Raleigh 3-speeds. I'm steering away from where this story is meant to be going... Let me rewind.
 
   Within a couple days after I bought my Rampar R1027 from the thrift store (for $60!!!) I'd made plans to visit Kurt at his brother's place where he'd been staying and show him my new bike. He'd been diagnosed with lymphoma for a while already, was in and out of treatments and I'd been hanging out with him and a few other old camera store friends frequently in those days. Kurt had cancer, we all knew it, we just hung out and tried to stay positive and thoroughly enjoyed his company. He was sitting on one of those swinging metal framed porch bench/swing things when i got there. He was really excited about my bike. Told me some stuff about how they don't make bikes like this anymore, I didn't know anything about how bikes were made or what they made of at that point, so it was all a foreign language to me, but Kurt seemed to know about bikes and said this bike was good, so I was happy with it. It was certainly in good physical shape, being 25ish years old, made of steel and not rusty. Me and Kurt talked about him "getting better" and us riding together. He had a 3-speed Raleigh folder that he loved, it was his favorite bike at that point, and he couldn't ride it cause he was scared that he'd get dizzy or disoriented and wreck. We always talked about riding when he got "better", I don't think it really occurred to either of us at that point that he wouldn't "get better".


   Over the following few years Kurt was in and out of hospitals and rehabilitation facilities so often that it was hard to keep track of what hospital he was in. I think I visited him in every hospital in Virginia Beach at some point or another. On top of the lymphoma situation he'd also had a stroke and was in the rehabilitation places the most. These places were full of elderly people recovering from all sorts of things. Most barely hanging on to their sense of reality. It drove Kurt nuts. He was probably the smartest guy I'll ever know, definitely in the top 3 at least, and it was torture for him to be living in these mind numbing conditions. I'd go visit him and we'd talk for hours about life, about politics (he was always the liberal blacksheep in his family(so am I), so he couldn't talk to his brother or his brother's wife about politics at all), about our old friends, and we spent a lot of our time talking about bicycles. He'd tell me about bikes he'd owned or ones he'd always wanted and we'd discuss Sheldon Brown articles I'd read recently. Sheldon Brown was very passionate about old English Raleighs and his website contains a wealth of knowledge on all sorts of old bike/old Raleigh related things. The more I read about these 70's English Raleighs the more I could talk to Kurt about, we talked about the beautifully lugged Raleigh International from the early 70's, there was one year in particular that they used the most intricate lugs on any of their frames ever (73?). He told me a story of going to the local bike shop in the 70's (probably the mid to late 70's) to order the newest Schwinn whatever and the owner told him they were on back order but he had these Raleighs that were a little less popular but definitely just as good and he test rode the International and fell in love with it. This is what made him a "Raleigh guy". He definitely liked all kinds of bikes though. He was into roadbikes, the sleek sexy roadbikes of the 70's! and had the calves to show for it! He also had a modern Bianchi roadbike in his collection that he'd acquired a few years before. I think it even had brifters(or sti shifters, whatever those brake levers with built in shifters are called... i don't know). I wore his old Masi cycling cap for a while after he died, it's too big for my head, but i wore it anyway. At his funeral an old friend told a story about Kurt convincing him against his better judgement to allow him to draft behind the guy's car on a Schwinn that Kurt had converted to fixed gear with no brakes up to around 40 mph. He laughed as he told the story, which was the only point I broke down and cried during the ceremony. This man loved bikes. He motivated me to ride more, to always have fun on my bikes and to never forget that sometimes life doesn't steer the way you want it to and that you've got to appreciate the days you have and the people you spend your time with. He was an amazing man and a great guy to know. I can't express in words my gratitude for being able to know Kurt Miller and have the good times that I had with him.


    I inherited 2 of Kurt's bicycles when he passed away. I had already took into my possession his 60's Raleigh 3-speed that he told me to get from his storage space when he was in the rehabilitation/assisted living place, and his brother brought me his prized Raleigh Folder after he died.

I'm just getting back to this several days after I started it. I just couldn't figure out how to end this blog. It was hard to write as it was, but trying to finish it was harder. Not a day goes by that I don't think about my old friend Kurt.  I rode my Raleigh Supercourse fixed gear bike to my Dad's place today, 17 and a halfish miles both ways and I mentioned to him that I wanted to get him a bike. He said his health isn't good enough for him to ride a bike. This was hard for me to hear. He doesn't give a shit about riding bikes, but it's hard for me to imagine getting to a point when one day I won't be able to ride a bicycle. I don't want to accept that my Dad isn't healthy enough to trust himself on a bicycle. It's something I don't want to try to wrap my brain around...at all. But with his growing list of health issues he's been dealing with lately, I understand. I guess at the end of the day I just want to feel like I'm enjoying this life while I'm here. Riding often and having fun.

(soon I plan on rebuilding Kurt's old three speed and making that my main commuting/go everywhere bike)

Riding off the longest work day...

I just checked the lotto numbers from the megamillions drawing last night and.......i didn't win. I've never won even a free ticket from the lottery, actually one time i won $10 from a $10 scratcher a friend bought me as a birthday present, that was pretty awesome. So i guess I still have to go to work today...

   On monday I woke up at 2:40am and dragged myself out of bed to start getting ready for my day, i was planning on riding in for my 5am to 2pm shift, which ended up being a 5am to 6pm shift, yep, super shitty day. I just recently got a promotion at work and am now a Department Supervisor, I'm running the Millwork Department at the Home Depot I work at(doors, windows, moulding, exterior shutters, porch posts, awnings, things like that), and I've been working some long days. Monday turned into the longest long day I've ever had at work. I didn't get much done that I'd planned which is turning into the norm, and it seemed that we just couldn't buy a break from the steady flow of customers. Lots of customers is a good thing, but so is ordering product, and checking my departments out-of-stocks, status of incoming po's and making sure we have what we need to ensure that our business is doing good. Well all that went out the window on monday, and we just helped customers and did orders all day. When i clocked out at 5 minutes til 6, I turned from the timeclock in the breakroom and saw my 1977 Raleigh Supercourse fixed gear in the corner of the breakroom where I'd left it at 5am and smiled. I knew I needed the ride home as much as I needed my next drink of water. I hit the road after changing and started riding off the long day I'd had, my mind wandered over what I didn't get done during my shift, what the rest of the week might be like and what me and the lady might be eating for dinner later. I didn't push myself hard on the ride. It just felt great to be anywhere but at work, and on a bicycle.

   When I fantasize about what I'd do if I win the lottery, I always think about buying a new bike, a Rivendell, and what kinda adventure I'd go on first with it. Would I try to do the epic ride through Back Bay Wildlife Sanctuary into False Cape State Park and through to Corolla North Carolina? Would I just ride around Norfolk all day one day? And then I check the numbers, realize that I am indeed going to work later, and keep dreaming.

Bicycle Adventure. Sandbridge Saturday.

This past saturday after not riding to work a single day all week (not too proud of this myself, trust me...), i decided I was going on a long bicycle adventure. I really needed to put in the miles and I planned a ride to the sandbridge area in Virginia Beach. More specifically, I was trying to ride to the edge of the wildlife sanctuary area where there's a hiking/biking path that one could take through to North Carolina's False Cape State park and come out somewhere in Corolla. I have been toying with the idea of riding a bike through this state park/wildlife sanctuary as a bicycle tour/camping trip for a couple years now and it was a good opportunity for me to go check out what the beginning of the path looked like and see if it's bike-able. I packed a couple clif bars, my u-lock and an apple into my messenger bag and hit the road. Almost 6 hours later I returned, cold, soaked from the rain I'd ridden the last 16 miles in and physically/emotionally defeated. I did 66 miles, my longest ride so far. I wasn't 100% prepared for how chilly it got closer to the oceanfront and certainly wasn't prepared for rain! When I got to Sandbridge, 30-31ish miles into the ride, I stopped at the Sandbridge Market and grabbed an orange and a 22oz bottle of New Belgium's Fat Tire Amber Ale, which seemed a fitting choice for this adventure. My intentions were to ride a couple more miles down the road to the beginning of the state park area where I planned to rest, relax, stretch out and enjoy my lunch (a peanut butter clif bar, an orange and the beer). I got less than a mile down the road and I felt the first couple little rain drops. I already knew my trip wasn't going to end good. I didn't have a jacket, there wasn't really a good place to take shelter and as far as you could see the sky was a slightly darker gray than when I'd started the ride. I started riding back the way I came, down Sandfiddler Rd towards Sandbridge Rd and eventually the rain sprinkles kinda died off. I kept looking for a little park area that I'd seen on my way in, didn't find it. I kinda had to pee, really needed to stop and stretch my legs and REALLY needed to take a break. I never got the break. When I was coming down London Bridge Rd 50 miles into the ride, the rain let loose. I took cover under some trees and watched the rain for a few thinking it couldn't rain for too long (the sky is gray/black everywhere at this point, common sense told me I was fucked but denial is a powerful drug...) I waited, waited, drank that 22 of Fat Tire that had been getting warm/slightly shaken in my bag for 20ish miles at this point and waited some more. I started thinking about what options I had at this point to get home... ride to somewhere i could get a bus home? ride to the lightrail station? Either option would've been miles away, I'd be soaked through and miserable by the time I got to either and then would more than likely have to wait when i got there for the next bus or train, so I started riding again. Legs more sore and tired than they've probably ever been, knees starting to not feel great, hands getting numb from the constant pressure of my bars on the same 2 1/2 positions i can hold them in for 5ish hours and feet already getting a little numb/sore as well. I was soaked through within a mile of riding away from those trees. I was cold, trying to keep my cadence up to keep my body moving faster to keep my blood pumping to keep me warm, but my legs and my body just couldn't do it. I was exhausted. I ate the apple between Kempsville Rd and Military Hwy while riding and getting rained on. Passing motorists looked out their windows at me like I had a 3rd arm growing out of my head, I must've looked completely insane to them. As I approached the 60 mile mark on my computer, I was starting to crunch the numbers to see how much further I was from home, I started obsessing over it, started looking at my embarrassing slow speed at this point and figuring out how much longer I'd be on the bike( i was down to 11-13ish mph at this point, really not feeling good...). I also started thinking about what I'd do when I got home...Take a shower?...NO!!! A BATH!!! A HOT FUCKING BATH!!! GOD DAMN IT'S GONNA BE GREAT!!! Should i try to eat something? or rest for a little while first? Am I going to be able to do ANYTHING LATER?!?! or am I going to be this tired all night... SHIT! I hope not! Before I knew it, I was coming up to the light at Redgate and Hampton Blvd and then I was home. I wish the ride had gone smoother. I learned some hard lessons about being prepared for unexpected conditions, particularly WEATHER CONDITIONS! I didn't even wipe down my Bridgestone RB-2 when i got home, i leaned it up against the commuter bike and turned on only the hot water in the bath tub...

     I can't wait to try this ride again. I think I'll go a different time of day next time. Not on a Saturday afternoon. Maybe super earlier morning on a weekday.