Bike Show Weekend Day Two

The bikes I like best are bikes that are ridden, so even though I spent several hours today ogling at handmade cycling porn inside the Oregon Convention Center at the NAHBS, the two-wheelers I appreciated most were ones I saw locked up outside the building or being pedaled around by skinny boys wearing rolled up jeans, too small shirts, and small-brimmed wool caps.

After a morning of wandering around the exhibition hall drooling over one more beautiful and gleaming bicycle after another, I had to get out of there and take a ride to remember what the point of these machines really is. A crosstown jaunt and a spin past the Reed College theater where I would have been spending my time were this thirty! years ago today and then a beer and I could face another sixty minutes or so of the show: just lots and lots of earnest and committed cycling evangelists and some very whacky and cool shit, too: I especially liked the Sycip bike with beer taps for shifters and the Calfee with longhorn bull horns for handlebars.

It was interesting to see how the crowd changed from morning till evening, too: before noon that tattoo and piercing quotient was way lower than at 4:30; but whether khaki-wearing baby boomer with graying beard or knicker-sporting hipster with septum ring, all had that same glazed look in their eyes that comes from staring at stunning craftsmanship; I watched a documentary about master builder Richard Sachs entitled “Imperfection is Perfection” in which he said something like the first 1000 frames or so he built was just to learn the craft, which is probably true, but sorta nutty, I think.

I did manage to make it all the way through the way with only buying one thing: a ten dollar steel water-bottle cage; it was either that or put down six grand on a custom by a company remaking an update of classics by René Herse.