Online Exclusive: North American Handmade Bike Show 2008

Yours for only $650. Cane Creek's ridiculously expensive--but gorgeous--ti headset with the mahogany wood inlay. I want one. Colin Meagher

Small, independent builders are good indicators of the future of bike building. As long as they have parts suppliers to work with, they are better able to capitalize on leaps in technology and offer new designs to the public much more quickly than can mainstream builders. One such innovation featured at the show was Gates’s belt drive. The motorcycle-inspired design has been in development for about a year, and frame builders like Lynskey have figured out ways to utilize it on their bikes. The Lynskey frame features a breakable seatstay for mounting the simple, light, and durable belt drive.

NAHBS provides a place for such innovators and inventors to gather together, to test out and share their ideas. Where else can you find a rigid single speed Ti 29er frame designed with a monster front wheel for defying ruts and trenches, or a single speed with chain stays that adjust for horizontal tensioning? Jones and Black Sheep have offered solutions, perhaps before many people realized there were problems.

Ultimately, the spirit of the NAHBS weekend was one of collaboration and camaraderie. A sense of solidarity surfaced in small but meaningful ways. Just before the show, Cane Creek noticed the ordinary headset on Naked’s fixie bike and offered them the use of their 110 Reserve headset as crowning touch. And appearing on too many bikes to count, Paragon Machine Works’s sliding dropouts became a ubiquitous symbol of the role specialty suppliers are playing in the small frame builder community. From Pancenti’s hand cut lugs, which support weekend builders and BBI grads without the setup to craft their own, to Calfee’s advocacy work in promoting sustainable bamboo bikes in Ghana, the show in Portland emphasized the grassroots culture at the heart of the custom build philosophy. Clearly, builders in the handmade bicycle business are in it because they love it. And because they know they’re in it together, they are ready to extend to each other a little love and support.

Perhaps the ultimate example of NAHBS’s camaraderie can be found in Saturday night’s roller party hosted by Portland-based Rapha, USA. Put together by Murphy Mack of San Francisco’s Gold Sprints, the event featured riders racing for less than 20 seconds, but trading blood, sweat, and tears for cheers of approval and for the entertainment of their friends. Such a fun-chasing, cohesive yet independent-minded community is certainly characteristic of bike-centric Portland. But that night, the crowd – made up of handmade bicycle builders and their friends – seemed particularly close. They were in the race together, ready to extend to each other a little love and support.

Mr. Pink underpants putting in the effort that got him to the finals... Colin Meagher