Custom

Thus far, I've managed to live the life of a creative individual. In the most recent years of my ragtag and not necessarily illustrious (however, satisfying) career, I have found myself the most engaged in pursuits that are collaborative in nature.

Early in the decade, it came in the form of drawing and painting from various models, in a small group setting. For any art school veterans, it's mostly an experience like a studio class, only with beer drinking and pot smoking instead of coffee and cigarettes in the hall, next to the vending machines. Simultaneously, I began to play the drums on an almost weekly basis with my oldest friends. Of late that endeavor has evolved in constructive ways and is beginning to take on a new life of its own... more on that later.

What this post is about, is that I am also collaborating on my first and, likely, only custom frame build for the last touring bike that I imagine I will own and use. Over the past dozen plus years, I had been touring and riding a 650b Saluki that I started to build as my interest and love affair grew, with respect to the French cyclo-touring aesthetic and ethos. More on that, find a copy of Bicycle Quarterly and work your way back to when it was still "Vintage Bicycle Quarterly". I was an early subscriber and its fair to say that my position on the bicycle is heavily informed by Jan Heine and his cohort.

As I write this post, the framebuilder that I have chosen for my project, is in his shop working on the final fit to all the lugs. And as he assembles it into his jig it edges ever closer to becoming the critical component that makes the machine, born out of the Safety Bicycle over a century ago. (with little real improvement needed, I might add.) All the modes of transportation to follow are awesome in their own ways, but non are as pure in the relationship between human and machine as the bicycle.

I didn't set out to build a custom frame. In fact, it seemed like a bridge further than I needed to go at my age. Now, I'm not saying I'm old, but anybody's touring and riding habit is finite, and the body has kicked back more so, north of 50. I don't see, doing a PBP or even going coast to coast, but there are still plenty of adventures ahead. So I might as well do it in style.

What set the wheels in motion,(that's a horrible pun here), was an eBay listing for a frameset by a builder down in Miami. It was a fit that seemed close to perfect and it remained  at low bid. I kept checking in and each time I did, my interest deepened. I started to calculate how much I could get for sales on parts I had, including my Rivendell Saluki. Cutting to the chase, I did not win the bid on that frame, but I did at that point decide to build a custom. The builder of that frame was Michael Terraferma. And in 2011 one of his bikes was featured in an issue of Bicycle Quaterly and rather favorably reviewed as a bike that just wanted to get up and go...I'm paraphrasing. Others have commented on how he is a builder that has come into his own. I can say that over the course of the last several months as we have conversed back and forth on this build, I am confident that I will have a frame that is every bit a rival to the great mid-century french builders.

My first generation Saluki 2005-2018