The Captain’s Log

I’m not sure if it’s the full moon or just one of those days, but I had two old friends returned to me from the lost and found bin today. The first, Bill Lucas, popped up in email after a few years of no contact. He stumbled across this website and dropped me a line to let me know he was riding again. The other, Brooks Mitchell, was at a gathering several towns over that I wasn’t all that psyched to attend, but went anyway. Boy, am I glad I went anyway.

Bill is my oldest, in terms of long-standing, friend. He’s two years older than me, but when we met thirty years ago, he was really old. We were both disciples of Phil Fisher, a backyard bicycle frame builder and counterculture icon in Albany, NY. Phil was as pro-bike as he was anti-car. Bill and I were both doing stuff with him, but hadn’t yet met. I was headed over to Phil’s to fix a busted spoke from a rough race weekend when I met him and Bill, on bikes, headed out to get some pie and coffee. Phil implored Bill to ride my bike and check out how it handled. Bill rode it, handed it back to me with a sneer and commented that it was in such poor working condition that he couldn’t tell anything about the frame. I was pissed. It was the start of a lifelong friendship.
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Christmas break was just a blur, but somewhere in there was a day. Let’s call it a Metal Health Day. Dr. Dizzle and I ventured north one day to seek out Frank the Welder in his Bellows Fall, VT lair. Frank the Welder was recently inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame for his copious contributions to the mountain bike industry by way of his innovative bike designs and immaculate construction. Starting at some BMX company I forget, moving on through the Yeti years (and several world championships), to Sinister (those lovely dirt jump/skate park/freeride/downhill rigs) to his most current incarnation, the Viris WTF trials bike.

We got the nickel tour of the aluminum tubing rack, complete with handy dandy rollers and built-in chop saw, various vintage Bridgeport mills set up for specific tube mitering operations, the ubiquitous frame builder’s welding jigs, an engineer’s table, drill press and a CNC machining rig that reminded me of the Millenium Falcon in Star Wars. Then we went to the Miss Bellows Falls Diner for lunch.
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