Greg:
Endurance/all-road grocery-getter
Tubing: Columbus Spirit
Cockpit: Flat bar w/ Wald basket and Paul Components Shimano Thumbies, and a bell
Front dynamo hub powered front and rear lights
35mm tires
Greg and I go way back. I rescued Greg’s tubes from a scrap pile at an old job. The tubes weren’t rotten or anything, they’d just been accidentally cut at the wrong length, or mitered incorrectly. They’d been tossed into the recycling without consideration for any use further than the size for which they’d been mistakenly cut.
Many of the braze-ons were also cut or pulled from scrap frames and refurbished for a second go-around on Greg as either a rear brake cable hanger, rack mounts or water bottle bosses. I mitered Greg’s tubes at the shop, in the early or late off-hours, before or after work—those were the days before fatherhood, when there was more time for hobbies.
Soon as I had everything mitered and ready to build, I hit a substantial roadblock: I didn’t know how to weld.
I brought Greg and all his bits home and put him in a bucket where he languished for months. I was determined to teach myself to tig weld, but made no moves to purchase a tig welder since I didn’t have anywhere to plug in the 220 volt device. Installing a 220 volt outlet meant wiring a subpanel in my garage, which meant digging up the conduit I’d laid years earlier (a job that was such a marvelous pain in the ass that, once the conduit was buried, neither love nor good money could convince me to reopen the wound).
It took me longer than I care to admit that, even pre-fatherhood, I simply did not have the time to teach myself to weld. Shortly after coming to this conclusion, I handed Greg over to the capable hands of Chris Igleheart, who did a fabulous job welding Greg together. I repaid Chris for his good work by making a terrific mess of his and Joseph Ahearne’s shop at Page St. Cycles, brazing the fork and other accoutrements to the frame until Greg was finally finished.
I say ‘finished,’ but Greg was not actually finished. Greg had a number of imperfections: the cantilever bosses on the seat stays were too close together. I’d mounted them offset (to the inside of the stays) and too close together when they should have been centered, and further apart on the stays. Proper distance between canti bosses is universally 80mm, and Greg’s canti posts were in the neighborhood of 65mm apart, meaning every time I needed to remove my rear wheel, the tire had to be deflated and pinch-squeezed between the brake pads.
There was also the electricity generating dynamo front hub which included wiring that ran from the hub, up the right fork blade, to the headlight, then to the rear light.
I have always appreciated intentional design—design that considers the entire organism and makes adjustments to accommodate the whole organisms features in the overall build. That is why I like front derailleur hangers. If a bike is going to have a front derailleur, it makes sense that front derailleur should have a mount. It cleans up the seat tube considerably. (I should mention, not everybody is on board with my love affair of front derailleur hangers. So it goes.)
The intentional design of a frame to accommodate a generator hub and lights can be overkill. While I was not going to go down the rabbit hole designing Greg’s wire management, I should have at least included internal cable routing for the wires up the fork, and a mount for the rear light, which I had not done. Just assembling the fork and frame in a catch-as-catch-can spree, in spare off hours (like you do when using someone else’s shop) was enough to bring me to the edge.
There is a time in every project when a line must be drawn. One must either move on or admit defeat and shit-can the whole deal. It is a threshold populated by valuable epiphanies that can highlight how time consuming and distracting (and probably slapstick) a darling project is becoming. I was being called back to higher priorities (you know, like helping to raise my newborn daughter). The uncompromising demands I’d built into the Greg project would eventually be filed under “meh.”
Anyway, there is no such thing as a perfect bicycle.
Since Greg's shortcomings were not dealbreakers, I lovingly oiled him with framesaver and built him up raw, to ride him unpainted for a year. It was a good run for me and naked Greg—just enough time to get to know him, and grow properly dissatisfied with his shortcomings.
It was during this time I paid a visit to Chris Igleheart at his shop. We talked about the bike, and laughed about how I melted his and Joseph’s bike stand (and replaced) brazing Greg’s fork together. Chris noted Greg’s lack of proper clothing, pointing out how, the longer a frame is ridden unpainted (especially in wet Oregon) the greater the chances the frame will become irredeemably pitted-out and reduced to scrap by pervasive rust.
Greg and I had one last hurrah at the 2016 SSCXWCXPDX. I borrowed a pair of knobby tires from my dear friend Linda Watts, and removed his shifters and derailleurs, turning him into a single speed for the races. Riding Greg at SSCXWCXPDX, I had just about the best time one could have coming in DFL.
After the races, Greg was rusty and caked in mud. I disassembled Greg, removed the rust, gave him a good oiling and shelved him and his parts in my shop for years. The idea was to get back to him when I had the time. To put on his finishing touches. But that meant getting oxygen and acetylene tanks, and setting up a costly brazing station in my shop—another time consuming darling project for which I could never seem to make the time.
Finally, our decision to move to Minneapolis and the prospect of riding through Midwest winters was enough to light a fire and bring me to reconcile with the fact that I was never going to find the time to finish Greg on my own.
I took Greg to Portland’s Norther Cycles to add his final touches. They did a knock-up job, adding internal cable routing to the front fork, a mount for the rear light and removing and adding rear canti bosses with the appropriate 80mm spacing to complete the build. I got him back just in time to wrap him in plastic and add him to our mass of packing before hauling our household to Minneapolis. It would still be some time before I handed him over to Erik Noren of Peacock Groove for powder coating.
Since Orange is my favorite color, and I’ve always wanted an Orange Bike, naturally, I chose Pink.
To build Greg, I commandeered the living room of our small apartment for weeks. It was an obnoxious process—rebuilding Greg from the parts I’d removed and haphazardly organized three years earlier, which I completed with several runs to nearby Cherry Cycles for bits and pieces, and to smoosh the headset into the head tube. After the finishing touches, I rode Greg to work yesterday, and ironed out his squeaks and tweaks, tightening his cables, and adjusting the knobs until everything was dialed.
Only one day out in the world, Greg already received his first commentary about being a Barbie bike which, whatever. We need periodical reminders of how masculinity is a tiresome and worthless construct.
I am lucky to have Greg in my life. He is a good bike and I plan on thoroughly beating the shit out of him (in between loving cleanings and maintenance, of course). I am lucky for all the talented craftspeople who helped bring Greg into this world. They were paid for their services, yes. But still, you can’t buy heart.
Even though working on bikes can be a nightmare, sometimes there comes, at the end of even terrible projects, a sense of accomplishment, or relief that the job is finally complete. Well, mostly complete anyway—I never did get Greg his front derailleur hanger…
