A buddy’s dad, who worked at construction sites, had a handful of abandoned bikes that he took home from a site because he didn’t want to see them go to scrap.
So we did what any reasonable person would do. We cut them apart, found unique and ridiculous ways to weld them together using an oxy-acetylene torch, coat hangers, and absolutely no welding experience whatsoever.
I came up with the concept and basically cut apart bikes and tried fitting tubes together until it made sense. Once it it was together, it took me more time to work up the courage to actually mount it than I expected. But it worked!
I was going to college at the time so I brought it to campus. Once I’d shown off my silly creation to my peers, I just left it un-locked at the bike rack. Each day I’d ride it a little bit and leave it somewhere else on campus. It moved around from other people trying it. This went on for probably a month, but one day I found it in the bike rack like below – it finally broke.
So as you may have noticed from my bike history page, mountain bikes were front and center when it came to my interest in bikes basically from my teenage years through to my thirties, when I started to diversify a little – but MTB remains an important thing to me.
For all of my twenties, basically, I was a hardtail diehard. Then, in 2010 or 2011 I tried a buddy’s full-suspension Banshee and was immediately sold. I went through a few bikes but the Knolly was the first “dream build”, made possible by a very generous bonus at work that year. The frame I found used, and the build centered around the just-released SRAM XX1 drivetrain, which was the first 1×11 to market – kind of wild to think now, but this was a brand new concept at the time and only available as a top-end spec.
The bike was built by Matt at North Shore Bike Shop, after hours while I sat and watched drinking beer (I had brought him a 6-pack not realizing he doesn’t drink). My first ride on the bike was Ladies Only on Fromme, and the bike performed admirably – this is a pretty hectic trail to ride on an unfamiliar bike (at least at my moderate skill level) but it felt comfortable straight away.
This bike consolidated my MTB quiver to one, from previously owning a Bandit 29er and a TR250 park / shuttle bike. It survived many Whistler bike park trips, slabs of Squamish, and many north shore days both pedaling up and shuttling.
Notably it also carried me through a three-day bike-packing trip in the South Chilcotin mountain range, fittingly its namesake. I rode this with one buddy, and the fact that this is grizzly country never left our minds for a moment. We were fortunate (unfortunate?) to see a group of grizzlies hunting marmots on the final ascent to Windy Pass – which meant we didn’t spend a lot of time on the summit. Too bad too, because it was the most picturesque point of the whole trip.
Going back to the mid 2000’s, I was really only into mountain biking and biketrials. Mountain biking had been a part of my life from childhood, while biketrials was something I picked up in my early 20’s. Riding on pavement was never something I was interested in – it was a means to an end only.
Then I test rode a Giant Bowery singlespeed road bike and was blown away by the pure speed. That test ride changed my perspective entirely. However, it wasn’t until this bike, my Soma Rush, that I really felt a deeper connection to a pavement-oriented bike.
Even brakeless, I rode this bike all over the place. This was a time before strava but I’d love to see my mileage and heatmap from these days – I lived in Pitt Meadows at the time but rode this bike all over Vancouver, North Vancouver, New West, and beyond – including a number of 100+ km days in preparation for the 2009 Ride to Conquer Cancer which yes, I rode on this bike.
The fact I rode that 230km event on a fixed gear with 49-17 gearing is a bit baffling in retrospect – the weather was absolutely terrible, I remember that, but otherwise I had no concerns about the bike or my fitness. Weird!
This was a Craigslist score for $1200 in 2013. The previous owner did a great job with the build, and I’m afraid all my changes over the two years or so that I owned it only drew it away from the balance it had, which is likely why I sold it. Below is mostly as-purchased form but all the racks and panniers were my additions.
The above was a test fit for a tour that is depicted perfectly in the following photo – the farmer’s market on Mayne Island.
I wasn’t convinced about the moustache bars at the time, and tried drops .. and they didn’t spark joy either. Then I fitted some Jones loop bars which were pretty good, but never really felt like things were exactly right.
My second custom build from Dream Cycle, five years after my Salsa Vaya build. In the couple years prior I bounced between 700c (the Vaya, a Surly Ogre) and 26″ (Surly LHT) and finally landed on the goldilocks 650B wheel size, which, in retrospect, is pretty obviously the optimal size for my stature. I wish I realized about three bikes ago.
Days after bringing it home, Feb 2016
This was a bit of a higher end build than my Salsa Vaya spec, essentially my dream build at the time – a Campy Athena groupset, Compass Babyshoe tires, White Industries hubs, and so on. Sadly I wasn’t enlightened enough to go dynamo at the time, but that upgrade came later.
This bike brought me a lot of places, above is at Persephone brewing on a credit card style tour to visit my mom. It was a good bike, I liked it a lot but never quite felt fully satisfied with it either. All these parts were transferred to a Sam Hillborne frameset and that’s when the magic happened for me.
Of all the bikes I’ve owned, this is the one I’ve had the longest at this point: about 12 years and counting. I bought it off a friend for $100 and it was completely stock. It was 2009 and I was immersed in the teachings of Sheldon Brown, which led me to spend more on this modest base than I might otherwise have.
The most annoying thing about a stock Twenty is the friction of the headset, which uses a plastic bushing in place of bearings on the upper race, to facilitate the folding mechanism. Pretty cool tech for 1969, but not ideal. Me being me, I decided to address this by having a new steerer welded into the original fork, and fitted a 1″ threadless Chris King headset to the frame. This eliminated the folding function but it steered smooth as butter with a headset that can last a lifetime.
Well heck, if I’m in this far, I might as well upgrade the cotter-pin crankset; the bottom bracket is unfortunately non-standard and the only drop-in replacement was the pricey (but unparalleled in quality) Phil Wood. These two modifications were the catalyst for a full rebuild with little regard for the purchase price (and typical value) of the bike.
The result is above – at the time I was in college and this was a pretty optimal means of transportation. The wheelset was an oddball find in the QBP catalog at the time; a 406 wheelset with alloy rims, 32h, and a SS rear hub which I fitted with a White Industries freewheel cog.
As I built up other “nice” bikes, a few choice parts were stripped off this modest bike, such as the Thompson stem and Brooks saddle. Nonetheless it remained a staple in my collection through the 2010’s, even though there were years it was barely used. Even with a lot of the visibly expensive parts removed, the bike remained too high an investment to part with. Plus, how cool is it!
Fast-forward to 2020, and for the first time in a decade I made a second large capital investment into the bike: a new wheelset, consisting of a pair of Sturmey Archer hubs (drum brake all around, dynamo front, and 5spd rear). This breathed new life into the bike as an extremely practical all-weather bike that could still be locked up downtown for hours at a time without too much concern it’ll draw attention.
December 2023 Update: Last week I put 80km on the Twenty; one commute (about 28km round trip), some errands, and also taking me to my work holiday party (44km round trip with a 4.5 hour lockup on the street). I’ve swapped the bars to some hand-me-downs from my partner’s Raleigh e-bike as she upgraded to Jones bars, and put some Ergons on that I had in my bin.
Oh, also I have switched the tires to Marathon ‘GT365’ which are not studded but have winter tire siping and a pretty aggressive tread. They are still pretty quiet, so I might run them year-round!
This was my first full custom, shop-built bike that wasn’t a mountain or trials bike. It was built in 2011 by Dream Cycle, and if I had just realized that I could do 650B on this bike, I might have kept it a lot longer (I sold it in 2013 or 2014).
I never did any long-distance touring, but as you can see above, it saw some great loaded tours of the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island.
In 2012 I did the Ride to Conquer Cancer for the second time on this bike; the first time was in 2009 on my fixed gear Soma Rush. Despite the fact the ride was fully supported I chose to carry my own gear, I suppose because I was such a biketouring keener?
I started doing tricks on my 20″ Kuwahara around the age of eight, taking jumps, riding no hands, standing on the saddle, etc. My parents upgraded me to a Trek Antelope which I took my skills to the next level as I learned to wheelie for long stretches at a time. I also started doing XC mountain bike races at this point, and quickly I was pushing the mid-level bike past its limits – plus, suspension was improving rapidly and all the other folks at the start line had better shocks than my three year old Trek.
My dad, always happy to enable this kind of sport, arranged an incredible build of a Norco Team prototype that was left over from the elite racers, with a really interesting downtube that had external ribs that ran the length of the tube. It was kitted with the best of everything, full compliment of Syncros and XTR and a really cool early Marzocchi fork. Sadly, it was swiped from the back of my dad’s truck only a few months later, and my time with it was both short and exclusively winter.
Feeling some guilt I’m sure from the complacency of leaving it in the back of the truck even in our rural driveway, my dad purchased a Marin Team Titanium for me, also with a pretty high end build. It was a 19″ frame when I wanted a 17.5″, but that didn’t stop me from riding the absolute heck out of this bike for ten years – ten of the most influential, memorable, and transformative years between me and cycling.
When I got this, riding bikes was my life. I rode to school most days, despite my commute being down (and then back up) a mountainside. I rode basically every day after school, and explored my local trails (Burke Mountain) every weekend. I knew those forests like the back of my hand. I raced the full XC circuit, working my way up to expert class, and I honed my technical skills with log rides, wheelies, and even learned to hop on the back wheel and do trials pedal kicks from rock to rock. I wore out several sets of tires, and broke most of the components at one point or another, until very little of the bike was original.
One of the most memorable times on this bike was a tour of the southern Gulf islands, organized by a teacher at my school who headed the Outdoors Club, which was essentially a cycling club, and I cannot overstate how important this club was to my life as a high-schooler.
My second Rivendell was purchased only two months after my first – during the holiday break in December 2019, Rivendell put the 45cm Clem H on web special of $750. At the time, I was riding an old Nishiki MTB as my around-town bike and it was fine, but a Clem Smith Jr would be the ultimate for this utility job – and all the little upgrades I’d made on the Nishiki would swap right over!
It’s initial build carried over from a Nishiki Barbarian
I made a small handful of upgrades over the next year, but ultimately sold it about a year later, after around 1100 km put on the bike, because as you can probably surmise by the seatpost extension, it wasn’t quite the right size for me. A 52 would have been a tad large, but better, though it wasn’t available on the web special anyway.
We had funThe final form before I ultimately sold it
I co-planned this ride with a pal, but ended up not being able to join the 8am start – instead, I found myself walking the dogs at 9:30am, and every paved surface was so icy that I was constantly nearly falling and choosing to walk on grass whenever possible. I couldn’t believe that nine friends had already endured 90+ minutes of this (there were plenty of crashes).
But I got the green light to go at 11am, and headed out. It was still very icy! There was a couple instances of wanting to turn, trying it and finding out that the front tire was just going to slide, and deciding against turning in general.
The route plan was about 115km, with about 40% gravel and the rest pavement. Due to the treacherous roads, I ended up taking more trails than initially planned just to keep on a more grippy surface.
If there is one thing I am known for, it’s finding all manner of sneaky trails, connectors, and decommissioned roads to connect up where I want to go – it comes from a place of really not wanting to share my space with cars, and also the joy of exploring my surroundings.
I followed the Trans Canada Trail (more or less) for the first 30 km of the ride, which took me to a favourite brewery that had just released some barrel-aged stouts. I picked up a couple, and headed further east towards Pitt Meadows by way of the Poco Trail – a really lovely gravel MUP that was seeing a lot of use today, despite the cold temps.
I then crossed into Pitt Meadows, known for its flood plain topography and acres upon acres of farmland segmented by dykes you can ride atop. The birding here is good, and I always see a bunch of bald eagles.
Past that, farmland roads of steadily deteriorating quality took me to the most pothole strewn kilometer of my life on a dirt road that provided access to the Pitt Addington marsh pathways. These are mentally and physically taxing to ride, as they are deeply rutted and bumpy, but provide the most incredible views of this magical valley.
I should have taken a photo of the “paved” road out of this valley which I had looped to. Those who’ve ridden to Pitt Lake know, but otherwise it’s hard to convey just how rough the pavement is. Roubaix-like, for certain. I was running relatively low pressure in my Babyshoe Pass tires and was struck by how well they damped out the vibrations. Still rough, though! And the odd pothole large enough to send you over the bars if you hit it straight on.
I’m getting a bit ahead of myself on the photos though – below is the main dyke that runs along the south edge of the lake (to the left is actually “marsh” but sure looks a lot like lake here). At this point it was just after 3pm, and I was 60km from home with about 75 minutes of daylight left. I fished my lunch out of the bag and ate it while riding, because I couldn’t spare a minute at this point. I knew as soon as the sun set, the ice was coming back. It never left the surfaces which didn’t see sun, mind you, but that wasn’t most surfaces thankfully.
The sun set when I was about 30 km from home after a good hustle on the flat farm roads back out of Pitt Meadows, helped by a gentle tailwind. Below was the last kilometer or so of Pitt Meadows – the bridge in the background was what took me out of this suburb.
While it was now dark, and increasingly icy, I really wanted to complete the route as planned and so I took the Burnaby Lake trail which was technically closed as of 20 minutes earlier. This is part of my work commute, and is a beautiful stretch of double track that feels extremely rural despite being a stone’s throw from the highway at points.
I didn’t take too many photos of the last 20 km because it was dark, and generally not that interesting – I did pass through the main roosting location for much of Vancouver’s crows at a really neat time (about an hour after sunset). The trees are completely packed full of sleeping crows on every branch, on both sides of you, for hundreds of feet – it’s really neat to experience. Thousands upon thousands of crows, yet it’s nearly dead-silent.
The ride finished at just shy of 115 km, and not a ton of elevation though that is somewhat misleading with the undulating trail for the first 30 km and then long miles of gravel, and barely-roads. I am toasted!
