Stories — Ahearne Cycles

Ahearne Cycles

Joseph Ahearne

Engraved Flasks for Christmas!

For Sale, MerchandiseJoseph AhearneComment

Last call for Custom Engraved Flasks for Christmas is November 25!

That's right! In order to guarantee delivery before Christmas, all orders need to be in by the 25th. That's just a few days from now. 

Check out a few of the awesome logos we've put onto flask.

Get your orders in soon!

Custom Engraved 6 oz. or 8 oz. Flasks

Custom Engraved 6 oz. or 8 oz. Flasks

The best method of ordering is Directly Through the Website. 

When ordering, you'll have your choice of either a 6 oz. flask, or the larger 8 oz. Either size will fit the Spaceman Bicycle Flask Holster and the Mud Flask Seat Mounted Flask Holder. You'll have the option of order a flask only, or you can order with the flask holder of your choice. 

Once you've placed your order for a Custom Engraved Flask you'll receive a follow up e-mail asking for your logo. Please respond to this e-mail and attach your .jpeg or .pdf file, or for text only logos, you can send a Word Document.

Please remember, we are not graphic designers, we're bike builders! So for best results send the logo exactly as you want it on the flask. Because of the curvature of the face of the flask, the logo will be sized appropriately, and may not look exactly like the logo you send. But it will be close. 

Prepare for Anything, Go Everywhere

Joseph Ahearne2 Comments

The Outback

A 650b Off Road Touring Bike

Outback 650b

This bike is an all-round work horse for touring where the roads are broken, or where there are no roads. It was tested on this years' Oregon Outback ride, 360 miles of fully self-supported touring through the back roads and rail beds of rural Oregon. The bike performed just like it ought to: Stable handling while loaded with gear, even on gravel roads at higher speeds. Comfortable riding position. Clearance for fat tires & fenders. A classic steel lugged bike that hearkens back to the early days of mountain biking. Compliant, stable, comfortable, sure handling, and most importantly, Fun. 

There are a couple of versions of this bike available, the most notable difference being in the brakes; either disc brakes or linear pull (or cantilevers) are possible. A generator hub powering front and rear lights is also recommended for those considering using this bike as a year round commuter and tourer. If a person could only have one bike -- or I should say, if I could only have one bike -- this would be it.  

Prepared & Going

Prepared & Going

I think I say this about just about every bike I build, but this time I really mean it: I'm very excited about this bike. I've been refining my ideas of what makes a great touring rig, and more often than not, when I'm out for longer multi-day rides I come across lesser traveled roads, and these are the roads that draw me out, that interest and excite me. When it comes to exploring new places, I don't want to be limited by what my bike can do. Let spontaneity be my guide. Rides like the Oregon Outback show that some of the most beautiful and untouched countryside is out where cars mostly won't go. It's amazing how much less stress there is when you're not constantly watching your back. The air is fresh, the scenery rolls on by, and when you stop there is silence, the sounds of birds, bugs, rustling leaves. There's nothing wrong with that.

Prepare for anything, go everywhere. 

Oregon Outback Bike Tour

Touring, Travel, ThoughtsJoseph Ahearne2 Comments

Oregon Outback GPS Map

The final tally for the ride was 450 miles, give or take. Klamath Falls (Oregon-California border) to the Deschutes Recreation Area (Oregon-Washington border), and then down the Historic Columbia River highway to return to Portland.

There were seven of us riding together, which on a bike ride over several days can feel a little like herding cats. But all of us got along really well — no fist fights broke out — and, thankfully, we had no major bike mechanical problems, nobody crashed, all and all we made it through smiling, even if exhausted, sore, dirty and overheated.

Kristina: Tough as Nails

Kristina did partially tear her achilles tendon during the ride, and now, after having gone to the doctor, she’s wearing “the boot.” She’s tougher than I am, I think, because she was clearly in some serious pain while riding, but we were so far out into the middle of nowhere, that, as she said, “What choice did I have but to ride?”

Seven in Shaniko

 

The route was definitely remote. I don’t think we saw a car for the first three days. Lots of cows, hawks, some deer and elk, many different kinds of rodents, several snakes and lizards, a million types of birds, all kinds of carcasses in varying poses and levels of decay. The trails and gravel roads were relatively smooth, but over hours in a day the vibration was tiring. My sore ass and sore hands. I lowered my tire pressure, which helped, but I didn’t go too low because with the but with the weight on my bike I didn't go too low for fear of getting a pinch flat.

Campfire Dinner

I don’t even know what to say about the ride in general except that it was pretty awesome. Pretty and awesome. I saw parts of Oregon that I’ve never seen, and from a perspective in which I could smell it, feel it, taste it, my body had to push over it. The sky was so massive dynamic. The nights were cold, the days mostly hot. The wind was intense. It was an adventure, and every day presented a new challenge; big gravel climbs, stream crossings, unbroken heat, water scarcity, threatening storms, physical & mental exhaustion, new aches & pains, the existentialism that comes with being in big empty places. It’s interesting watching the internal dialogue that goes on while pedaling on a long, hard ride, and how the tone of optimism or negativity of what’s streaming through your head is directly linked to how your physical body feels in any given moment. When you’re tired, hungry, or in any sort of discomfort or pain, the volume of the negativity may turn up. Or, if you’re well rested, well fed, cruising with a tail wind, the voices in your head may sing with joy. You can’t listen to either voice too closely because as sure as the road rolls under you the voice will pass away and some new thread of thought will arise. Letting it go (pedal-pedal-pedal), and letting it go again. This is the meditation of cycling, watching your breathing, your body taking over where your mind leaves off.

Barn & Sky

This ride was challenging, for sure, but I felt like the route was well chosen, the maps were close enough to accurate that we didn’t have much trouble finding our way. We stopped at a few intersections, consulted each other about which route was the “right” route. There was no back-tracking, except for the time when Jrdn took us up the massive hill that he wanted to climb, the one that came to a dead end. But that was all in fun, and we’re still thanking him for that.

Jrdn's favorite climb led past this sign

Climb out of the Columbia River Valley

Donnie of Velodirt really did his homework when putting together this ride. The days where water was scarce were well noted on the cue sheet, and as a group we made sure to come prepared with plenty of water carrying capacity, and filtration systems. Whenever we came across a stream and knew that it might be our only source for some miles to come, we loaded up. And for food, each of us carried enough to feed ourselves for several days, and resupplied when the opportunity presented itself. We didn’t pack light. We had tools and patches and spare tubes, extra fasteners, first aid and gorilla tape, bug repellant and some whiskey. We didn’t have to use a lot of the extra things we brought, but what we did need we were glad we had.  I don’t think this was a very good bike tour for someone with no experience — not a good learning trip because the stakes were too high, and there was not really any good way to bail out of you lacked something crucial. But, if prepared, and prepared to rough it, there’s no better way to tour than away from traffic.

As for the four Ahearne bikes on this trip, there were no complaints. We were all grateful for the fat, knobby 650b tires, for the inherent flex of steel to help take up the road shock, and the carrying capabilities these bikes offer. The handling on fast gravel descents was confident and sure, at least as much as fast gravel descents allow. They climbed well, and took the abuse of being fully loaded over days of bumps, dirt, pumice sand and stream crossings. There were no mechanical issues, and each person said they were really pleased with the overall ride of their bike. Better yet, this bike has been officially named. From here on out it’s going to be called the Outback. The off road touring bike. I’ll talk more about the bike soon. 

The Outback Machines

London & Berlin

Joseph AhearneComment

London Canal

There’s London, and then there’s Berlin. It’s the nature of travel that you find your own story wherever you go. You arrive, you breathe, maybe the air smells different. You walk around, eat the food, see the streets, the way the history pours out of the cracks and the way the people walk right over it, like it’s a stage and they’re in the play, right where they’re supposed to be. Your eyes, hopefully, are open, seeing everything for the first time. It doesn’t really matter what you do, this unfamiliar environment is going to be the backdrop through which you are forced to see yourself in a new way, beyond your habits. That’s travel, yes?

I went to London to attend the Bespoke Handmade Bicycle Show. Most of the attendee’s booths were in the center of a bank-walled cycle track at the Olympic Velodrome. People rode the track around us throughout the entirety of the show. It’s cool because people use the velodrome kind of the way we use a public pool for swimming laps. You go, take a class to certify that you are aware of the safety issues of track riding, and then you are able to come to the track during open hours and ride until your legs are on fire and your lungs are exploding in your chest. If that’s what you want to do. 

The show was well attended, for sure. I took a couple of time lapse videos that show the surge of people during the peak times. The show was spread over three days from a Friday. By the afternoon of each day, as my voice started to give out from having spent the day talking over the heightened decibels from the crowd buzz, I could see in people’s eyes a spiraling glaze forming. The number of pretty bikes one person can look at in a day depends upon that person’s constitution. I’d give most averagely bike hungry  individuals 2.5 hours of relatively continuous active interest before cogs, stays, tubes, angles, features and head badges begin to vibrate and swirly in an exhausted mesmeric pull toward somnambulism. 

Bespoke Show, Day 1 Time Lapse

Busy Bike Show

Why I liked this show: New people, new friends. Bicycle building is really taking off in the UK, and, I think, in Europe in general. People are looking at the U.S., and how the market has grown, and are very excited about this sort of re-birth of the hand made bicycle industry. England has, I think, a lot of similar issues as the U.S. in regards to its society becoming more oriented toward the service industry, and is losing (or has already lost) much of its manufacturing to overseas interests. Consequently, people aren’t being taught to use tools, how to work with their hands. But, as in America, there are a lot of people who find a great deal of satisfaction in taking raw materials and making them into functional, useful things. Now that there has been this sort of re-introduction of bicycle craft, the general hunger for it is there, and it’s taking off fast and furious. 

Bending in the Shop

Raw Bike in Process

I found it interesting talking with builders from the UK about how, forty or so years ago, people from here in the U.S. who wanted to make custom bicycles had to travel to the UK to find a builder to learn from. But then something happened, and the custom bicycle scene in Britain died nearly completely, or went mostly underground, so that only those who were paying the closest attention even knew what a custom bicycle was. In that time, some of the grumpy old guys here in the states (I say this lovingly) learned and perfected their craft. But it wasn’t until the mid to late nineties, and more-so shortly after the millennium, that the “new breed” of bike builders started to take up the torch, so to speak. This is the generation of builders with whom I’m associated. This was also the beginning of the real splash of popularity in the world of custom bikes. You could point to bike shows and the internet, both working like giant marketing campaigns. And then there was the United Bicycle Institute and a handful of private teachers who showed that you, too, could learn to build your own bicycle. I theorize that at least some of the popular desire to learn to build bicycles was a result and repercussion of the general societal trend toward desk jobs with lots of screen time. Not everyone is satisfied being sedentary and cerebral, and yet, unless you carve your own way and are looking specifically at learning a trade, children and young adults are not getting the opportunity to discover if turning a wrench would even be interesting to them.  Somewhere along the way getting your hands dirty lost some of its respectability. People wanted to be managers, and they expected that their children ought to be managers, and so shop classes and home-ec classes (and so on) lost funding and support. 

But wait, how did we get here? I was talking about a bike show. 

Ryan from Oak Cycles is one of the UK builders whose business is there in London. His workshop was about a six minute cycle from the velodrome, about the closest of anyone’s to the venue. I think he said he’s been building for about four or five years now, and he makes some very cool bikes. One of his recent projects is a long-john style cargo bike. One thing I noticed in London was that there weren’t too many cargo bikes on the roads. I saw a couple of Bakfeits, and a Christiana box trike, and maybe a Bullit. Ryan said that cargo bikes hadn’t really caught on yet. Momentum was beginning to build, but they were still some years out. 

Oak Cycles Cargo

As far as the build went, I think Ryan pretty much nailed it. And, when I asked him about it, one of the first things he discussed was the things that he did differently on this bike from the last, and the things he will do differently on the next one. That, in my opinion, is the sign of a good builder — always looking for ways to improve. Especially when building bikes that are somewhere outside of the traditional two-wheels, two-triangles, it’s like a puzzle that can go together in so many different ways, some of which function better than others. The only way to learn is to build it, ride it, revise your ideas and build it again. There’s no such thing as perfection, but you’re always trying to get a little closer to it. 

Cozy Kitchen

Ryan’s wife, Nik, was at the show as well. She is a mechanic, and works at a bike shop and cafe called Look Mum No Hands on Old Street. Nik’s a fiery Irish woman with long red hair and a broad smile. She’s quick to laugh and loves bikes as much as anyone, probably more than most. She and Ryan make a pretty good team, and are constantly scheming where they’re going to go on their next bike tour. They live on a house boat on the canals of London. I didn’t know this, but there is a whole culture of people living on their boats. Canals run all throughout London, and out into the countryside. You can go just about anywhere. It’s pretty cool because they can move to various parts of the city depending on what’s going on in their lives on any given day. They’ll tie up near Ryan’s shop for a while, and then move closer to Nik’s work, and maybe go a little further out if they’re looking for some peace and quiet. Between the boat and their bicycles, they’ve got a fairly mobile life. The boats that people live on are all of a certain style, long and narrow. It’s a lot like living in a compact mobile home. There’s a kitchen, a bedroom and a shower, and the small living/dining room area of Ryan & Nik’s boat even had a little wood burning stove. Very cozy. 

Nik and Ryan were incredibly generous and helpful with my bikes (which I’ll get more into in a moment). They made dinner for me on the boat the last night I was there, a delicious vegetable and rice curry, and then delivered me to where I needed to catch a bus back to my flat. Over dinner Ryan and I geeked-out on bike stuff and talked about the business of bike building. The bike building business is similar in many ways to that of any craftsperson, or musician, painter or sculptor, writer, and many of the arts. The end result is different, of course, but the business functions in a similar way for all of these, and demands of the artist or craftsperson a similar sort of attention. We’re all trying to learn how to survive doing what we love to do, and we’re all trying to learn how to do what we love to do in a way that won’t ultimately make us hate what we do. If you come to hate what you love to do, the organism dies, and some piece of you goes with it. Then you’re fucked and you get a job and you adapt to something else and never stop wondering if you had tried this or done that or not given up when you did, would it (ie: the business) have succeeded. And maybe this wakes you up at night and you mentally spar for restless hours and fall back asleep, dream of being trapped on a crowded bus without any pants on, not sure if the bus is the right one to take you where you need to go, and you're too embarrassed to ask.  You hide at the back, just hoping that all the people will get off the bus so you can figure it out, and they never do. You wake up sweaty and parched and feel like shit but go to your job because that's your new agreement with life, and from work maybe you go to the bar, the movies, home to sit in front of the television. Every two weeks you get paid enough to drink, eat and sleep your way through the next two weeks, and this goes on for years, the same pant-less dream haunting you, shriveling into oblivion. (?)

A Little Older, A Little Tired

The Unexamined Life

Ryan likes to build bikes, but, he says, he hates being a salesman for his products. He doesn’t really like to call his bikes “products.” They’re not products, he thinks, they’re bikes. There’s some personal attachment there, which is understandable. Translating this attachment into business-speak (products!) takes some internal reevaluation. I wonder how many bikes one has to build and sell before the semantic transformation happens. That’s what it is, really: Semantics. I wonder how long one has to live on a barely living budget before one’s moral perceptions or personal ethics (again, semantics) evolves into something different? What we’re doing, in the end, is making a product and selling that product so that we can live. It’s hard, though, when the product we’re making is conceived of and built out of love, a desire to create, the hope to make the world a bit better place in which to live. How not to be attached to this? How does the writer write the story and put it out in the world and not feel some sense of attachment to it? There are many parallels to having a child, each bike a baby, each painting, each song from the musician. As the parent, you want the best for it, but in the end, when a bike or book goes out into the world, the one who created it has to let it go. And, in strict marketplace terms, we’re doing a job in hopes of getting paid. Thus, at the end of the day, whatever you’re making, no matter how much love and creativity are involved, if you’re making it for money, it’s a product. Sell it and watch it go out the door. 

Or maybe all these words are clear evidence that I’ve sold my soul. 

Stainless Touring Bike For Sale

Stainless Touring Bike For Sale

Lucky for Ryan, he’s got the ever-practical Nik to work the sales for him. And, as it turns out, it’s lucky for me, too. At the bike show I had a fair bit of interest in my bikes. There were a couple of people whom I thought were seriously considering taking one home with them. But in the end, neither the road bike frame set, nor the stainless steel touring bike sold. On the last day of the show, Nik came to me with an offer. Look Mum No Hands is on a street in London with a lot of foot traffic, and they have a huge front window in which they are happy to display beautiful bicycles, the more interesting the better. If ever a bike could be called “interesting,” I believe the stainless touring bike might likely qualify. Nik talked with the owner of her shop, who agreed to put this bike on display. So, if you find yourself in London, and want to visit a very cool bike shop that happens to be attached to a cafe that serves delicious food, go to Look Mum No Hands. The stainless steel touring bike will be in the front window, and yes, it is for sale. I’ll be posting a detailed description of the bike, with it’s dimensions and features, in the near future. 

The road bike frame set that I showed at the Bespoke Show is also for sale. I brought this one back with me to the states. It’s available as a frame set (with rack, stem, brakes, pump and fenders), or we can help set it up as a complete bike, if that’s what you’d like. Details about this bike will also be posted on the website soon. 

This is the end of the first part of my trip. Next stop: Berlin.