Hello again, blogoverse. I have been laid up the past couple of days with a particularly nasty strain of bronchitis, but prior to that I have had some good progress and exciting times. Emily's project is about 2 full days away from completion- some more emery-cloth work, and then powder coating and decal-ing. no real rush at them moment, as Emily doesn't have a complete parts kit for the bike yet. I may try to powder coat the raleigh restoration project at the same time and get that out the door. If anyone reading this has an interest in an enormous road frameset at a great price, or knows someone who might be, drop me a line at dylansworkaddress@gmail.com. If you get in early, you can choose the color too!
For the next project, I took in a rigid fork for my co-worker Sam. He is looking to set his Surly Instigator up as a winter commuter next year. It should be a fun project- lots of braze ons for racks, baskets, lights, and some sort of provision for internally routed dynamo wiring. I have some ideas on that front, so stay tuned! I also have a couple of projects in the sketches and dreams phase, which are coming together slowly in the usual way, where my lovely partner Emmeline gets very sick of hearing me say "bikes" when she asks what i am thinking about as i stare into the middle distance. sketches and more definite notions soon!
The other exciting thing of late was a great party that my friend and shop host Lance threw at the Squarebuilt space a couple of weeks ago. A bunch of exciting bicycle people came out, including my friend Chris Bishop from Baltimore. Chris was in town for a presentation over at Maglia Rosa and it was very cool to get to show him the space I was working out of. Chris was very friendly and welcoming when I lived in Baltimore, and we have talked quite a bit about our projects in the past. Chris' work has long been an inspiration to me, and it has always meant a lot to chat with him about various ideas and projects. Jamie Swan also came out with a very good looking bike that he had just wrapped up. I also was pretty stoked to chat with Johnny Coast, whose work i first encounter at the Bike Works frame building expo a couple of years ago when i first moved to NYC. Dave from Bike Works also came out, which was very exciting for me. I had long heard rumors about Dave, but we hadn't met in person yet. We had a very enjoyable industry nerd chat- you know you are in the right place when you can make casual jokes about positron that are well received.
The day after the party, Chris and I joined his friend Nick Murray, who had ridden with us both at last years D2R2, for the classic NYC road ride up River Rd and back. It was a straight up death march- 45 degrees and steady rain. But then, I had only slept a couple of hours and had a pretty noticeable hangover, so a death march was pretty much par for the course. The ride was awesome- we took a pitstop at the new Rapha shop on Prince St., had a coffee, and then headed out. River Rd is awesome- rolling, pretty, and pretty low traffic. As we cruised up the last climb, the sun came out and the clouds started to break up. We rolled back to town, bagging the one switchback climb that drops you off by the road back into Ft. Lee on the way back. As we came back into town, we did a lap of Central Park together before Chris and Nick headed back over to Brooklyn. The park was full of trees just starting to bloom and the air had the special clearness that comes after a hard rain, and I was full of gratitude to spend such good time with such good people.