once piece at a time, or a bike essay

one of youze out there said some incredibly kind and validating things on a summers night a few weeks back. i won’t forget them for a long time. thus you can skip down for the disclaimers and notes. i pitched this and it went nowhere, but what’s the point in hoarding it?

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My bike, like all bikes, was born in Taiwan. All of it’s components were beget in Taiwan, or Vietnam, or China. The bespoke and bargain and in-between parts of bicycles are not very different, until they become branded and their MSRPs scatter higher and higher. I know the costs and components of the raw materials, the names of the brands that get them made then put their names on mostly the same bits and pieces.

I used to process manufacturing requisitions for a multinational bike manufacturing and distribution company. On frigid Minnesota mornings, I’d Teams chat my Taiwanese counterparts as they finished their shifts. In 2018 and 2019, I pushed around prices and country codes and tax percentages as the company tried to offshore, running defense in the first rounds of the trade wars, hourly, some days.

My bike was pretty much the same as all the other bikes: frame and fork, designed across the building. Designers added handlebars, brakes, hoods, cables, a saddle, a seatpost, a drivetrain and more. Rows of item numbers filled spreadsheets, and I sighed when errors stopped our process. It meant waiting or walking over to where the brand teams rolled out variations of the bikes that remain trendy, seven years later. It meant a bearded man who listened to too much metal yelled at you. We had to get each number right, each line accurate every time. Every tiny bit counts in the industry, because margin is it’s only law.

Back then I worked in purchasing after a more fun stint driving forklifts in the warehouse. We slid boxed bikes off trucks into the pick. Our devices scanned noxious towers of tires, bike tubes in boxes covered in human and cat piss. At night my ears rung with phantom RF scanner beeps. It was hard. My arms looked amazing. We were the night crew and only a family in that we called each other brother and uncle and dad. Our mom was a pretty, sour-faced, lithe blonde Cat 3 who did not talk to us. Your mom’s a real piece of work, Papa Ben shook his head as our devices scanned noxious piles of tires wrapped in saran, bulk bike tubes in boxes covered in human and cat piss.

There were millions of boxes on hundreds of feet of shelves of the parts that made up my bike. It would absolutely be possible to smuggle an entire build out of there, one spoke nipple and brake pad at a time.

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After my bike arrived in the states it cleared customs and shipped FTL to the warehouse, was unloaded, scanned in, fork-lifted onto a shelf, then hauled back down. It went back out in a truck, arrived at a shop, and was assembled for the floor. Months and months of my quest for a bike that I would love brought me back to the shop. * After my ­bike came from desk to desk in Bloomington, Minnesota, then the parts sent together, it got boxed and shipped over the Pacific. It cleared customs and was carried LTL to the dock, unloaded, scanned in, shoved on a pallet, lifted onto a shelf, then hauled back down. It did not have to go far at that point. It’s possible the shop even picked it up in it’s own van, then drove it to the sales floor. It was assembled, likely very quickly and there it went to sit on the shop floor.

When I bought my bike, I was not in any way excited about the 2017 650B Surly Straggler. For a few months my eyes roved over other higher-range brands. If perhaps not bespoke, then the local roasted and Carhartt draped bike and coffee shop carried these brands. I inspected them. I considered Niners over cardamom lattes. Expensive, but maybe worth it. An ex owned two. I stupidly wanted an even rarer setup, the Esker Lorax (since discontinued). If a mythical full build ever existed in my size, it was unavailable to me. It cost over $3000. The Niners were not much better and fit horribly. They felt rigid and twitchy and by the time I’d fled Chicago in the foolish hope to re-do my life, build something stable, work my way up in the industry, calm every shitty, broken part of me down with craft beer and mountain biking and flannel, I still had not found my bike.

All-City beckoned. I knew the brand was cool. I knew the Space Horse was cool. I returned again and again to the well-lit, high-end bike-coffee shop and ate donuts. I tested Cosmic Stallions and Space Horses Log Ladies. I tested the patience of the kind sales gal who took my wants seriously. I wanted all the bikes to work, because I wanted, then, to appear to be the person who could ride these bikes. Cool. Not quite approachable. If the magic was there, to be taller, somehow. Faster, leaner, whatever. Fast women took graceful corners on their sky blue frames at cyclocross races. If I would be better was debatable, but at least I might seem stronger, faster.

Alas, I was not, and remain, objectively not tall. The geometries did not like me, even as I tried to convince myself they did. It was not very different than any other mass-produced, higher-end bike. Bodies like mine, not even seven years ago, clearly did not spend enough money to warrant building more of them. Hence why I needed to transform into a tighter, taller white woman with a desk jockey husband, and a Subaru.

The bike I got was tucked into the shuffle. It fit and felt right. It came in a speckly, sparkly dark blue (“Blueberry Muffin Top”, as opposed to “Porta Potty Blue” or next year’s “Salmon Candy Red”). I’d not yet started working at the company who made the bike. I paid full price.

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I worked in bikes for most of my adult life. I commuted to work and explored my city from Wolf Lake on the Indiana border, to Beach State Park at the Wisconsin State Line. I weaved through rowdy group rides, volunteered at co-ops, and got paid for advocacy. I received parts and bikes and clicky-clacky shoes and helmets at a LBS. When people with nicer bikes left parts rendered uninteresting by upgrades, the mechanics collected them. They tossed me bits to fix up my own bikes as we spent evenings deep in PBRs and gossip.

Lifers taught me it is a fool who loves bikes then decides they should spend their life around toys and tools. Yet I still attempted to make my way into the Industry.

Two things happened when I got there. The industry “discovered” “gravel”, and Trump previewed the tariff bullshit that’s exploded as toxic tire sealant all over the wheels of the industry, again.

Even as the industry pumped out vaguely different bikes to any hobbyist with a hitch rack they all increased in price. There was no world in which anything we sold was made in the USA. Leadership pushed to be aware of our “Turns”. Under order, oversell, hype it all up, and get it out the door. Fire sales were encouraged. Old, uncool stuff ended up in my hands. Stuff fell off of trucks or was priced so low, employees snagged anything and everything. The drivetrain on my bike comes from this. It was how I got bar tape and pedals and lights and cranks.

My bike didn’t need universal derailleur hangers or hydraulic brakes or WiFi shifting to ride around on rocks, go bike camping, or get to work. Most bikes don’t. Like most of my industry friends, I thought the bottom was always dropping out. I watched the 2020 boom warily. Five years later, shit is fucked, again, and I needed to save my bike.

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My bike is lucky number seven out of the bikes I’ve owned. Here’s a chronological list of my collection: Schwinn Varsity, Scott Contessa, Georgena Terry Gambit, Bianchi Eros, Surly Long Haul Trucker, Jamis Aurora, Surly Straggler, Surly Karate Monkey, WTP Nova, Trek 820, Gary Fisher Kaitai, and a borrowed Ominum Big Bad Jumbo). It is the only bike I bought brand new at full price.

The bike miraculously survived most things I put it through. I brought it through the Badlands and up and down Highway 1. I commuted to the warehouse. I did the 105 mile gravel race I trained in the snow on it for, and a couple more. I put it through singletrack paces in Oregon and Montana, and meandered up and down fire roads.

Once as I crossed North Dakota, the roof rack on my car I had begrudgingly begun to get used to all summer decided to suicide off the roof. My bikes joined the pact onto I-94. I watched them bounce and with some preternatural calm, pulled over. It was Labor Day Sunday, 2020. An emptier interstate. A blessing. Somehow the bikes remained intact. I locked them to a mile maker sign, retraced my steps to buy a flimsy trunk rack in Bismarck, prayed, and knew I would avoid any interstate at all costs. It was pretty scratched up by then, having crashed on Minneapolis black ice, and treacherous downhills. We were hit by a small bus on my way to work when the driver blew two stop signs. Two weeks later the bike made it with me to the West Coast for my vacation tour.

But in 2021, we hit the limit of our luck when I drove down the I-5 to Seattle and got rear-ended going 80 MPH, the two steel Surlys hanging off my trunk rack. I held onto the bike out of sheer exhaustion and sadness and some stubborn hope it would be okay. In the Olympics, I convinced myself the problem was just the smashed rear wheel. I just needed a new one. In Salinas I bought one from a kind gentleman in an empty shop I’d spot at Sea Otter in 9 months. Finally, in Oakland, I walked it, wobbling, into TipTop. When the kind person behind the counter shook his head, the bike well and truly on life support, I burst into tears. Outside on the sidewalk I sniffled. The last of my hope was gone. COVID protocols remained and a man awkwardly watched me as he waited to enter from the sidewalk. I’m sorry, he said. It looks like you really love your bike. A glittering blue, steel albatross, I dragged the bike back to Chicago. People suggested there could be someone to bring the frame back. I did not know if I believed this, but I couldn’t give it up. At the least there would be parts to save. But I wanted to save my bike. I brought the bent bird to Bridgeport. I crossed fingers and asked Owen at Blue City if the bike could be brought back from death’s door. I left the frame at the shop. For the first time in maybe 14 years, I had no bike.

Why didn’t I ask him to powdercoat it? I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t want to wait to have it back in my possession. Except when I picked it up, the left silver chainstay beautifully welded back, replaced, almost if by magic.

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Bikes made out of aluminum, or steel like my bike, last a long time. That’s why you can keep riding around on a Trek or Schwinn from the 70’s or 80’s without many problems. Bike technology has also remained fairly unchanged for a long time. I push down on a lever to move an axle and forward I go.

These parts that help move the pedals and wheels, including cassettes, chainrings, and drivetrains, are everywhere. They are on old abandoned bikes in garages and in bike co-ops and mechanic’s hidey holes. They are also, sadly, in the trash. I used to roll my eyes at the old Freds of the bike world collecting these parts and frames. I no longer feel this way.

I spent my fair share of time around people (mostly men) who really enjoyed a new bike a year, a new set of components, a new kit for their racing team. Most of the time I just didn’t have the money to do this, and I enjoyed making fun of them. But it kept the industry going. At the same time, I’d spent so many years riding a bike I never bought anything new for. I trusted my mechanic friends to find me some parts or tell me what I actually needed. I held out on disc brakes until I bought my bike.

I do not want a bike that requires a USB charger to make a tiny part of it go. I do not want a bike I cannot be able to slightly fix myself. I do not want a new bike every year. I did not want to throw my bike away.

And so my bike has been in the careful hands of many. I believe people who run and wrench at shops, like any worker out there, deserves better wages and respect and health insurance. I believe the same is true for the warehouse workers packing and picking the triathalon bars and hucking shipments in an unairconditioned pick. I believe there is way too much wasteful bullshit in the bike industry, and I believe anyone who has worked five seconds in it knows the people who get rich off of it will have a carbon fiber parachute as it starts to collapse again in the wake of it’s absolutely predictable boom-bust cycle of the past five years.

And so I believe in some foolish and silly notion of trying to keep myself out of a voracious and currently out of control trend of planned obsolescence and more stuff nobody asked for. I believe in taking care of things and keeping them maintained and fixing them.

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My grandfather who worked his way through life and raised three children with a broken back and, eventually, a GED, loved cars. As I grew up, I also found some sweetness therein. Partial to a ‘69 Mustang, I clocked Bel Aire’s and Galaxie’s and just once, poking between the chain link of an alley, his holy martyr, the Corvair. I spent summers bolting in and out of his garage, the rotating cars he found in classifieds and through VoTech scuttlebutt. He worked on them or kept them up, and then off they’d go. He took us for rides in the drop top white Camaro, the purring Sting Ray C3 Corvette. I make wishes on cars he loved. I make wishes on cars I stop and admire, that for whatever reason turn my head.

I don’t know what he would make of my own collections. When I die, I don’t know where the sets of tools I pulled from his garage will go. I never seem to cull any of my parts, either

He bonded with my father, a Venezuelan and USAF vet. My dad thinks fixie culture and the pricing of dyanmo hubs that generate light are silly because this technology existed on his Schwinn in Caracas. We roll our eyes together. He asks me about my bike. He tells me there’s a lot of my grandad in me, how the horses trade (slowly) in and out of my house.

When my pa got his first Air Force pay check, he took the MG he’d miraculously found and got it painted Gun Metal Grey, pushing it to 100 MPH between bases. I wish I’d seen it.

Bob at the shop in South Chicago Heights asked me what I had in mind. On the counter between us the bike lay inert, mostly still blue, glitter stubbornly sparkling. I told Bob I’d thought about blue.

He pulled the swatches from the wall and they clicked down and spread across the counter. Matte, speckled, glossy, navy, teal, cornflower, light blue, cerulean, deep blue, blue, blue, blue.

What do you have in gray? I asked. He swiftly pulled them off the wall and I scanned until the gray, silver, and undertones of blue appeared. Gun metal.

That one.

It was January and barely a week later Bob called me and told me it was ready, having been stripped, clean, and loaded up with another group of bespoke bikes headed to be sold at a local coffee shop. I drove back down past the 200s and couldn’t find the words, struck with gratitude to the bewilderment of the young man normally tasked with rims, pistons and headers.

At Bike Lane where I wanted it rebuilt and rethought, but knew I’d get no bullshit, the mechanics gave me the nod. That’s a nice looking frame. What is it?

My bike is a 2017 Surly Straggler, drop bars, 650b wheel set. My instinct now is to say: my bike was. This has been the whole point: to maintain and care for something, to not simply throw it away and get something new, the only one that is around. The whole point has been to hold onto something.

Notes:

I worked on this on and off this spring, I guess (I got the bike back in March, so, that sounds right?) and pitched it around a little bit. I worked on this newsletter version based on the originals I wrote that I liked better - and that felt more like how I wanted to write it - merged into the full draft pitch I threw around. When I edit like that, I feel lucky some people took risks on me and gave me edits in the past, and I tried to do that, but I still… something about it. I would’ve traded that style of writing for some play, but oh well. Shit deserves to get published!

I think you can see that it still needs help. I can’t get some of the transitions right, there are segments I clearly want in there or stubbornly won’t dissolve, and someone should tell me to just do it! Help me find from A to B! Okay, should isn’t the word here, I am entitled to nothing, but I am aware of my limitations and what can you do.

But the point of having something that I WRITE on my own time is that I can still have things in the world, even if I know they’re not quite there. And I really wanted this one to work out. I’m still happy it’s stronger and better than older pieces, even though those meant a lot to me, and oh well. If you think you can publish this somewhere, I’m always here.

also, buy my book!

as to the bike, it rides like a fucking dream, although I’m still not sold on these bespoke-ass CAVA tires. the tan sidewall is beautiful, but yeesh, the amount of flats. i can’t believe i’m thinking about more shit to buy. pay your mechanics. stop buying new shit. if you have leads on a way to jump from the Hennepin trail to like, Galesburg, I’m all ears. if you want to share this, go nuts. stay safe out there. be as kind as you can. happy Virgo season.