Old as dirt

Time goes by at what seems to be a crazy rate. It doesn't seem that long ago when I was moving into my 'new' shop-that was over 20 years ago. I'm working all the time, buried in tasks that I try to execute as good as I can on that given day, all the while thinking of goals for the day-the week-the year.....some of them are reasonable goals but some of them are a bit unrealistic. When there's only one person in the shop to do all the various operations the amount of productivity is limited. These limits have seriously been pushed for the last decade or so. This has come at a cost: Work that had to be re-done , days where time was spent correcting mistakes, wear and tear to the body and mind....etc. All the while the clock does not stop-the years race on.
           So I am coming up to a fairly significant milestone, the 40th anniversary of the very first frame that I built back in June, 1978. I still have the frame and ride it on a rare occasion. Mostly , it just hangs from a very high hook in the shop-there to be pointed out to people visiting so they can see where I started. Just this week I put a photo up on a frame builder's facebook group of the first bike as other builders had been doing the same. While we all share the love of creating bicycle frames we have not shared the same path for the most part. Most people who have built a frame or two have not toiled masochistically at the craft for years attempting to earn a living so I find myself in a very small group of persistent , perhaps foolish folks making a life of this craft. Back in 1978 I could not have envisioned this vortex that I have created around my daily labors.
           So.......what am I to do with this 40th anniversary not much more than a year away ? In the past I built a really fancy fixed gear road bike to mark the 25th anniversary. For the 30th I think that I built a fillet brazed frame for a customer. For the 35th I built a lugged road frame and really went to town thinning the lugs in the late '70's American frame builder style. This was also done for a customer. But the 40th......this will be a milestone that I never imagined I would see. If I stay healthy and don't kill myself on a bike ride I will have a 40 year conundrum on my hands. There's no real pressure for me to do anything at all but I do feel that I should make something in the shop that speaks to what I have learned and what I care most about-even if nobody else does. I do believe I have a plan: I will make a frame, fork and stem that will be built for long-day comfort. This bike will be assembled and ridden from my home here in Santa Cruz down the length of California to where I grew up- West Los Angeles. Not the longest trip I have ridden but the longest in quite a long time.
            So , here is what I envision : Touring bike, sort of.....( I don't and never have owned one..) with some pretty big tires, maybe 650x38. Geometry template will likely be a Rene Herse that a good friend rode by the shop last year-I did a very complete analysis of the geometry and wrote all the pertinent numbers down. I might even braze this thing rather than weld it-hey.....I'm not getting paid for it so I might as well build something that really has to be 'crafted' in the old labor-intensive style of my beginnings. I might even make a rack......stranger things have been built in my shop.
             So-why am I wasting your time writing about this ? If you are totally bored, I do apologize and completely understand. This is something I have to care about and I don't expect anyone else to join my one-man parade. 40 years of doing this may not be that important in the big world of accomplishments but for me it is pretty much all I did-save for annoying people with my guitar for a few years. I have devoted an unreasonable amount of time to this craft but honestly, it was easier than I am making it sound. I didn't have to go to school to learn the craft-frame building is a school in itself. You either learn or build shit. I have built me some shit.....and I know it. Everyone starts somewhere and getting proficient is not a given in this craft. 40 years I have been hammering away at cutting and joining metal, hoping to get where I want to be as a craftsman-problem is, the better I get the more I realize that I still have far to go-maybe not as far as I did a decade ago but the goal posts seem to move further away every year. I can't ever hope to be perfect, I can't ever expect to be flawless. What I do hope for is to build bikes that not only make my customers smile, they might get a smile out of me-I could finish a weld and think : "Damn......didn't know that I would ever be able to make it look that good !".  Of course, months later I could look at the same weld and think : "Boy, glad I can do better than that now !". You see, dissatisfaction is one of the main forces behind constant and vigilant attempts to improve as a builder. In June of 2018 I will unveil the latest edition of the product of 40 years of dissatisfaction and ride it south to the city I left gladly when I had not yet built a frame. I hope I make it.