NAHBS 2010 Day 1 down!

After all the set up and prep, we had our first full day of the bike show. It's been interesting to think about how this weekend brings all of these incredible artisans together under one roof. "Oh look it's Tom Kellogg! Isn't that Dario Peroretti?" Crazy.
This year out booth location couldn't be better. We are on the corner of a big ol aisle and right next to the friendly giant Curtis Inglis. He and Mitsy are two of the best people in the biz. Every time we do a show together, I feel lucky to get to spend more time around them. Quality folks.
My perception is that the show wasn't very busy today. The Signal booth is in a good location, but the traffic has been coming a lot slower than I expected. There were no moments of booth overload. Maybe I should have taken the opportunity to walk around and look at other people's booths.
So far the booth building is on a whole new level. Rapha put together an entire convenience store complete with a refrigerator and snickers bars. The design and detail is pretty fantastic. Bilenky set up their entire workshop and it is AMAZING! I'll have to get over there to shoot it, it's pretty unbelievable. they brought a drill press, tons of raw frames, a torch, tools... they are operating on a whole other level. Of course the Vanilla booth is rad, and the bike are incredible as always. The trackvagon has some of the largest chainstays I've ever seen. the new seatpost masts are really pretty as well.
I have a few pictures up on our flickr page and I promise I'll add more. But for now, I'm going to go back to bed and rest my aching feet!
g'night!

Today was a good day

It was a good day of tying up the details on the last two bikes we have planned for the "big show." Brian Twilley's singlespeed 29er is pretty much done and it is going to be a hot bike! I was realizing that we have showed a mountain bike at each of the shows we've been at and they have all been singlespeed 29ers. There's something about that category of bike that I find really appealing. The simplicity of a singlespeed makes for a low maintenance, quiet way to experience trails, and the 29" wheels rolling abilities take just enough of the bite out of the bumps. It's a really fun, efficient bike.
The last bike that we are taking to the show is my personal city bike.I'm getting so excited about the thought of riding this bike. I thought about this bike a lot and decided to make a Signal version of the bike I've been riding for the past six years as my daily ride bike. That bike is a Miyata with a front rack that I built for it. I found a European spec Shimano front wheel that has a dynamo/ drum combination and I've been riding it for about three years and love it. The dynamo powers a front light so I never need batteries and the drum brake means that there is no wear on the rim from brake pads, so the wheel should last forever. This bike is all about being low maintenance and utilitarian. I had a weird idea for a chain guard and tried it on this bike (because I know the customer won't mind) and it came out really nice. I also built a big flat front rack that I'll use to carry my bag on when I'm riding across town. The coolest part of this bike will probably be the alloy shelled coaster brake hub. It will be a prototype for a hub that I've been wanting to make for years now. It's pretty top secret, but if you are at the show, be sure not to miss it!

Now I just have to figure out what color to paint it.

bunk

Went to Bunk for lunch today and it was raining pretty good so there wasn't even a line! It's the place with the best tuna melt around, but don't tell anyone, the lines are already long enough. They also serve coke in bottles from Mexico so they have sugar instead of corn syrup. Good stuff.
The NAHBS preparation is still taking most of our time. For some reason we decided that this would be a perfect time to rearrange the shop. Actually, the reason we got motivated is that we helped Ira Ryan move a lathe into his new shop and then went over to check out Tony Pereira's new shop... all that shop looking and tool fondling made us feel a little inadequate. So we are in the process of trying to squeeze all the space we can out of our tiny workshop. It started with a trip to the rebuilding center. And now there is a big mess in the middle of the floor. Ahhh... as the saying goes it's always darkest before the dawn. Speaking of darkness, on the bike ride home today in the rain at 5:30pm I noticed a little patch of blue up there among the rain clouds. Yep, there's light in the sky at 5:30! Pretty soon we'll all have sunburn and be complaining about how damn hot it is.
In other news, I just heard today that Woodman's bike is all ready to be picked up from the painters. Hopefully we'll pick it up tomorrow and take a few pictures to show it off. Stay tuned!