The $21 dollar weekend

One mission .....

Spend the least amount of money possible going to the North American Handbuilt bicycle show (NAHBS ),without getting caught or looking like a cheap ass ....

The weekend started with me hitching a ride to Sacramento from Oakland ( about an hour or so drive )
Cost for a ride - $8.00

We rolled up to bicycle polo in one of the most radical places I have seen polo played in.... Think it was called the rats nest or something like that and it was right downtown Sac, like about 6 blocks from the state capital. Luckily I was able to throw in on a game and go back to my polo playing roots and hang with the big dogs for a game, I am really not bad at polo but damn the players are getting so good, I looked like a rookie out there really. The Polo was all indoors in an old warehouse... so sick !

cost to play polo - $0.00

I decided to walk around the streets by myself for a while and along the way I happend to run in to Mike Cleaver, Josh and the crew. Cleaver as you may not know can get in to trouble on a regular basis and this night it happened to be getting booted from the state capital for climbing the orange trees, or maybe it was everyone at the base thrown oranges at him while he was at the top. Either way he got security to kick him out.

 cost to raise hell - $ 0.00

 I was lucky again... Josh offered for me to crash at his hotel that was provided to him by Chrome Bags for building that cargo bike, so I crashed it and kicked it all night in the hot tub in the room. Plus food in the morning..
Cost of a super nice hotel room - $ 0.00

this is the outside of the hotel- The American Dream !

it was a nice place !

The NAHBS show Saturday was super rad and happening. Got to see all these really rad bicycles and see everyone I always like to see at the shows. Ran in to Chris D. from QBP Problem Solvers, Chris King, Ross Shafer founder of Salsa, Bruce Gordon, Kyle from Chris King, some fellow aerospace welders and so many others.

Found this photo on the Chris King website

It was a really great time, Josh and I went in the morning to get dry ice for his booth and upon arrival we noticed a blue neck laniard laying on the ground so I put it on and walked in to the show. Kinda cool it was laying there, figured Don wouldn't mind if I was at his show, think its way more fun cruzin around BSin with everyone then if I would have had a booth there anyways because I don't really sell stuff.

Wasn't really expecting so many people to say hi to me and chat about MLS, so thanks to everyone that did that, it made my day getting recognized, I felt cool.

Cost of the show - $0.00

I happened to run in to Jim from  Cranky's bicycles in Santa Barbara, CA. You might remember I built his bicycle shop racking years back on one of my MLS blog post. But either way he thinks its a great idea to sponsor my lunch since its a contest to see if I can make it the weekend under 20 bucks. But the deal is he wants logo hits..... I felt like a sell out eating and drinking at the show.... But I was hungry......

Cost of lunch $0.00 + loss in dignity

The sticker tasted as bad as the coffee

Thanks Cranky's Bike shop for the lunch

Sell out...

During the day I was handed a card.... Almost like a drug dealer hip transfer, I look at it and it happens to be a special invitation to a special party thrown by the crew, such crew as All Hail The Black Market, Blue Collar bicycles and Soulcraft bicycles, later Saturday evening.

the front of the card

The back 

 The party was rad.... It was all the people you all want to see at a party. Paul and Kate from Paul Comp. were there, wearing a coat that I wanted so bad, I used my free beer wrist stamp to try to get him free beers until I noticed he had the same stamp ( I just wanted him to get so drunk I could steal his coat )

Paul from Paul had the most rad coat 

K&T Milwaukee Milling machines jacket

I have a K&T machine in my shop, its my baby....

That patch was NOS on ebay and was like 40 years old.

 Chris King and his crew were at the party enjoying the night ( Spent a bunch of time talking to Chris during the afternoon, hes really a rad dude ),  Mo from Rebolledo Cycles was there and he won best track bike of the year so Stevil bought him a big drink called a SEX KITTEN for winning the award.

Cost of the night of getting so drunk I couldn't see straight -  like $8.00 in tips, drink were on the house.

A photo I saw on All Hail the Black Markets site

That night I crashed at a friends place down the street who had a bunch of dogs.... I had a dog that looked like Todo at my feet, a lab at my side and a herding dog on top of me.... Talk about a night !

Cost of smelling like a dog - $0.00

Grabbing a ride back to Oakland Sunday morning was not hard, the polo crew in Mikes truck was expecting my drunk ass anyways I think, what was hardest part of the ride, was not barfing in the truck because I was still drunk which I blame on All Hail the Black Market.

Mt. Dew and skittles did the trick!

Cost of getting home and sobering up -  $5.00


Over all the show was great, the people were great and the bikes looked great.

Had a blast - Party on Wayne !

San Diego.... Party !!!!!!!

Well, looks like things are calming down after the custom bicycle show in San Diego. I would like to thank Brian Baylis for putting on another (  the third year ) kick ass show making me want to go back next year....

I keep under the radar most of the time and wander the shows without anyone knowing, so it was kinda weird having a booth and getting to meet everyone and see the response to my projects and my efforts. Thanks to everyone that stopped by the booth and let me know how much they enjoy the blog, only makes me want to post more stuff and build more rad stuff... ( like I tell everyone sorry I can't post everything here - only about 10% of the stuff I build gets posted due to security reason)

So here was the run down

We left ASAP to get there by Thursday morning and made it at 2pm due to having to stop by Cranky's bike shop and also Golden Saddle in LA to drop off racks and pick up my Penny Farthing.
As soon as I got everything locked in at the show, I made some rounds and started picking on Soulcraft's Sean, Stevil and Mo.  I was off to LA to party and for a business meeting with a big bicycle company.

Running on no sleep for days, I made it back to San Diego for a solid day of tradeshowing on Friday.

the penny, gravity bike, the beach cruzer and the guard dog Poe

on set up day which was already busy at the booth

Had lunch later in the day with writer Patrick from Red Kite Prayer and the crew, good times...

Friday night Jim decided to pass out at my booth

Ok, Peter at Cane Creek, I think that counts at a logo hit on my blog..... Pay up!

Saturday started strong with a race between Soulcraft and Monkey Likes Shiny

the Wizard Staff comp.

You might need to look at this blog for the results...

all hail the black market 

thanks to Kyle from Tracko for the photo at a highlight in the day

Saturday night was off the hook with the alway super rad party at velo cult bike shop

followed by Paul from Paul and I shutting down the bar. After splitting off from everyone and riding for a while I found myself here......

with a beach cruzer chained to my leg...... I guess when your drunk you go to the thing you love!

I think we need to look at all the +s here

1. I was eating donuts at 4 AM

2. I was eating hotdogs at 4 AM

3. I made Paul buy me drinks all night

4. I had a bike chained to my leg

5. I woke up later to find a bike still chained to my leg

6. I kinda made it to the show on time the next day

Sunday - well, I crashed the speed bike twice during photoshoots and my leg looks like well I am sure you get the idea. I am sure its only a matter of time before you see some high side crash photos of me.

A day at the circus ........

A while back while doing Nitro Circus for MTV, the location for the shoot was a old circus way out in the desert far from LA.
Really kinda weird and odd feeling because of how run down it was, but either way, made the most of it and did a rad shoot with my Penny Farthing I built about a year ago.

Peter at Cane Creek and Avid threw it down for this one.....

I didn't have the chains on it cause I didn't want Travis P to ride it and crash it before interbike.

this was a picture from an art show and it shows the chain drive better

The wheel is so big it needs split drives, unless your 8 feet tall your inseam is to small....

Now its on display at Jims Shop "Cranky's" in Santa Barbara,CA

Some shots from Cranky's Bike Shop

Jim posted up some photos of the racks I built for him a while back.

The best way to describe the racks are they can be moved like poster racks where they can swing almost 180 degs. Or if theres a need for a change in the wall and remove the bike rack to replace it by the clothing racks I made or helmet racks or Frame racks or ....... trust me I made A LOT of racks for everything.

Theres about 6 inches of hight adjustment as well.

Jims first week in his new shop - the bike racks on the left wall

Cranky's Bike Shop - Santa Barbara,CA

Just off Interstate 101 / PCH hwy 1

Cranky's Bike Shop Bicycle racks - DONE

Well,

This weekend was action packed.......

I finished up the racks with my helper at like midnight on Saturday and with some kind of urge of excitement and energy to see them on the wall and make sure Jim could get his shop ready for the grand opening.

I decided to leave LA and drive up to Santa Barbra at midnight Saturday with Brie and drop off the racks and then drive back to LA that night, then take a shower and head for San Diego for a meeting Sunday morning with Cane Creek at the Hand built bicycle show.

So with a full truck load of racks, 50 total.  We got to Jim's shop and started to set up. Jim had put up all the brackets on the wall during last week so everything was ready to go once we got there. If you look back a few post you will see the basic design  of the racks.

All the racks can be linked like blinds over windows so they can all move together with one lever 

and change angles, or they can be changed in angles one by one.

Sunday morning came quick and I was really tired from the 250 miles I drove sleepless to Santa Barbra.

With my super high quality Iphone camera I snapped some quick shots at the show, but I think you should check out 

Jeff Thrasher's Blog about the show and read more info about the show.

I also met up with Cane Creek for a while and talked to Peter about all the new things and some secret projects coming out of my shop. Its really rad to see Cane Creek at a show like that because they don't make any money going there, but it really shows the support for the frame builders and lets them know that Cane Creek supports everyone with the same attention to details - doesn't matter if you are the first time builder buying one headset or if your Trek buying millions of headsets.

 I didn't see any other big players in the bicycle industry there.

Erik of Peacock Groove wasn't there but had a few bikes on display.

This was a little road bike that he built for a customer - THIS THING IS MINI 

Jeff Thrasher and his crew invited me to go to the bar and watch the Paris road race on TV.

While I was at the bar I noticed they had some beer cans on the wall from my home town

Schell's Beer - New Ulm, MN 

It made my day :)

prototype bike racks

I was asked a while back from a friend Jim to design and build bike racks for a new bike shop opening in Santa Barbra,CA called " Cranky's Bike Shop", we knew the time line was going to be short and that it needed to be dead nuts on, the first time.

 I designed about 30 different styles of racks and wasn't really feeling any of them, so the night before we were going to meet up with Jim and lock down all the designs, I threw it all out and started designing a kinda fresh design based off window blinds and the way they moved; how they could all be connected to all sync together or could be moved one by one based on the users choices.

A modular cantilever style rack that offers the bike shop to change the layout of the bikes and make it so easy that it could change the racks even with the changes of the sun. Loosen the two bolts and pull out the rack once you sell a bike, so that your bike shop never looks empty.

The next deal was to get the go ahead and start building all 50 them.

The bike shop "Cranky's " will use the full adjustable racking system.

The wheel trays are a reclaimed roof from a building downtown LA 

almost 200 of these brackets are on the wall 

That will offer millions of different combos of shop layouts

Stacks of them, these are just the bike holders 

I didn't take any pictures of the frame, clothing and wheel holders