U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix
I learned to ride a bicycle on my own: as you may imagine it was a rough start, but soon I was rolling around the suburbs of Portland Maine and began exploring farther and farther away from my home base. The sound of wind past my ears and the first feelings of self-inflicted inertia let my imagination put me in the cockpit of a little spaceship. Riding bikes became my all-time favorite thing to do.
Those feeling may have hibernated for a while, but they never fully went away. In 1996 I founded SCUL, a sci-fi fueled bicycle gang that makes playfully custom 'spaceships' out of discarded bicycles. With the leftover pieces of steel I make friendly robot sculptures under the name Skunkadelia. I try to pass on what I've learned by teaching TIG classes at the Artisan's Asylum.
I worked with Rob, Matt, Skip, Tim, Jennifer, and Mike at Merlin Metalworks in Cambridge. Seven supersedes and feeds all the other aforementioned things I do. Seven taught me to make things, to weld, to explore and nurture crazy ideas.
Seven is inspiring – constantly looking to improve the art of craft, the ability to listen, and the thirst to innovate. It's more than a job, it's a way to look at how look at how one wants to live their life. I know that sounds far-fetched, but it's the truth.
I was a machinist when I first started working at Seven. Since then, I've taken on many roles, including final machining and finishing, welding, shipping, inspection, and repairs. In the summer of 2006 I found my true calling as the in-house graphic designer for Seven. Much of my day involves photography, print and web design, coding, as well as clothing and softgoods design. Illustrator, Photoshop and In Design are my mainstays, with a fair share of Notepad++ thrown in for good measure. However I'm game for just about anything thrown at me, and love to help out in whatever ways I can.
For about fourteen years I commuted almost exclusively on a heavyweight cruiser dubbed the Skunkamobile, but after a crime-fighting shoulder injury, the rough Bostonian roads felt too harsh – harsh enough to have had to grab my messenger bag mid-air as it catapulted out of the Wald giant delivery basket as the Skunkamobile would slam into the puddle-camouflaged potholes of Cambridge. I had considered building myself a juggernaut of a mountain frame with racks galore, however Rob urged me to try out the Evergreen SL to see if I could use it to finesse over some of the terrain. I was skeptical, but after testing things out on a demo bike, I was completely convinced.
This bike frame is only Seven I built from start to finish: once my frame drawing was done I took the it through machining, welding, final machining and finishing. Of course, I created some special understated graphics to blast on the frame. It was a special treat to take a week off to come to work side by side with my fellow Seveneers in production again, making the best possible bike for me, from the ground up.
This cross between my horse and my sword was dubbed 'Redshift' after the phenomenon that happens when light or other electromagnetic radiation from an object is increased in wavelength, as in shifted to the red end of the spectrum, which is used in astronomy to measure the speed and direction of a star moving away from Earth. While I use Redshift for just about everything, I like to think of it as my get-away-from-it-all vehicle. In fact I often veer onto a tempting trail just to get away from the already explored.
Every time I go a ride with Redshift I'm still left impressed – that feeling you get when everything feels just right, and things are perfectly dialed-in to the nth degree – it never gets old.
And on the opposite end of the efficiency spectrum is USB Cloudbuster, a 170-pound tallbike equipped with sonic disruption, lights, and rotating, glass disco mirror ball known as 'the Discobobulator'. It's the flagship of SCUL, and it has completed several hundred missions, including short multi-day tours and more than a few centuries, which take me any my crew about fifteen hours to complete. As you can imagine, it is very slow up hill, but hey: it is also very fast downhill!
It's amazing just how responsive and agile a bike can be, as if every pedal stroke somehow amplifies the transformed energy into unadulterated speed. My first Seven, a titanium Axiom, epitomized that feeling. Alas, I found that I worried too much about all the rough terrain those razor-thin tires were dealing with in the city, so Redshift took its place in my heart, as well as in my stable.
The only stainless Seven ever made. Complete with S&S couplers. Unfortunately, stainless in inherently low in fatigue strength, so it's no longer around. It rode as beautifully as it looked, and was a sweet ride while it lasted.
Paddleboarding on the idyllic Nashua River
This is Star, one of my favorite Astrobots.
USB Cloudbuster and JVH Trinity on top of Peters Hill in the Arnold Arboretum.
USB Cloudbuster on a rare daytime long-distance tour.