Alex Wetmore is always busy with something…

On Saturday morning Alistair and I met at my house and biked down to Seattle Amtrak station.  We were heading to Portland for the Oregon Bicycle Constructor’s Association show.  Taking bikes on Amtrak was great, Alistair just rolled his bike into the baggage car and I folded my Tikit it and stuck it in the baggage closet at the end of each car.  Tickets weren’t too expensive ($55 round trip per person, $10 for Alistair’s bike) and it was much more enjoyable than driving.

Saturday afternoon we went to Strawberry Cycles for a gathering of builders.  I talked to Dave Levy (TiCycles), Sacha White (Vanilla), John (a builder in Ashland), Tony Pereira, Andy Newlands (Strawberry) and many other interesting folks.

Joe Broach and his wife Rachel met up with us a few hours later and the four of us went to a good Arabic restaurant for dinner.  Joe and Rachel very nicely guided us back to the apartment where we were staying (I think we would have been able to find it, but not nearly as quickly) and we spent a couple of hours hanging out with our hosts before heading to bed.

In the morning we had a nice breakfast at The Paradox (a veggie breakfast place) with a few of Alistair’s friends, then met up with Joe to ride to the show.

The climb up to the show through Washington Park was great.  I’d love to have a climb like that in Seattle.  Alistair remarked that it was like Interlake only much much longer.  I’d agree.  Oddly (especially for bike centric Portland) we only saw one or two other cyclists heading up there, most people took the MAX (light rail).

We arrived at the show at about 11:30.  It was in a pretty small room and very tightly packed.  The lighting was pretty dim, so I didn’t take as many photos as I’d have liked.  Most of the day went by in a blur of talking to interesting folks and looking at great bikes, but here are some of the highlights.

Bike Friday was there showing off some really nicely made Tikit and other bikes as well as a custom tandem.  The bike that got the most interest was a very lightweight Bike Friday (15lbs) built by Rob English,but I was more attracted to the fillet brazed frame made by Eric (one of their brazers).  It has a little front rack,steel Wald fenders, and a cool homemade seatpost.  The tandem was also incredible, it just had a lot of small details and one off pieces.  I’ve met Bike Friday folks many times, but it is usually the sales force.  It was great to talk to the guys involved in manufacturing the bikes.  I think they have some of the more interesting jobs in the bike world considering how unique the designs are.

Tony Pereira was showing off a few new frames that hadn’t been painted yet.  I really liked the 650B Randonneuring bicycle.  It had a great custom twin plate crown, subtle manipulation of the chainstays to fit wide tires, and excellent workmanship.  I look forward to seeing this bike in person once it is built up.

Jeff Lyon was showing off a collection of road, cyclocross, and randoneeuring frames.  I really like his front racks, especially the one shown here that was made of 1/4″ tubing and chrome plated.  He also has the best headlight mounts out for his front racks.  Jeff is a great guy to talk to, I wish the show was a little less busy so that I could have spent a little more timing hanging out there.

Ahearne always has some interesting bikes.  At this show they had an unpainted bike with a porteur rack, Rohloff hub, and some interesting chainstays.  It was a really stout bike and would be great for dirt road touring.  They also had Joseph Ahearne’s personal camping bike complete with a Ti Spork headbadge, a collection of great racks, and a nice fork built for the Surly Pugsley wheels and tires.

The last builder that I’ll highlight is “m.a.p. cycles”.  Mitch is just starting out but has already built two impressive bikes.  I love the rack on his porteur, I just can’t imagine mapping out of all the twists and turns in the rack deck.  He also built a really nice mixte with a Tubus Fly-like (or maybe a modified Tubus Fly) rear rack.

I have dozens of additional photos, and they are mostly well tagged.

I don’t know if Oregon BCA will become an annual event, but I hope that it does.  I’d like to see it grow to include other NW builders from Washington, Idaho and Montana.  The Oregon/NW focus (compared to the international focus of NAHBS) seemed to allow a wider breadth of experience levels and exposed me to smaller builders that I’d never heard of.