It's a while since i last posted, a busy two weeks it has been. Two weekends ago was the fun one, Jennifer and I went down south of the Mason-Dixon line to hang out with some old friends and meet some new bikes at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. NAHBS was grand, and we stayed about the appropriate amount of time, though it would have been awesome to spend that time over the course of 2 days rather than cramming 8 hours of bikes into one day at the show. It was great to see all the bikes and get up close and personal with all of those purely custom vehicles. I finally had a chance to see so many of the bikes that I've been dreaming about and using as reference points for my own work on the bamboo ones. I was sure to come dressed for success in the Raleigh sweater that I had stolen from my dad several years ago. It's my favorite sweater ever, it looks great, and actually fits my minuscule upper body well. We stopped to say hi to some of the people that I'd met at other shows, and some of the builders from Philadelphia who were there as well. It was awesome to be totally surrounded by bikes, sweet bikes at that. At one point Jennifer and I were walking up to the Pegoretti booth to check out some of my favorite custom steel frames. As we approached the booth, a middle aged Italian guy came up to me and said, "Nice sweater!"

I responded, "Thanks, it's real vintage gear, I stole it from my dad."

The guy said, "Yeah, I know, I designed it."

My eyes probably bugged out a bit, and then he introduced himself as Giorgio Andretta, the founder of Giordana bicycle clothing. He had worked with the Michael's Cyclery cycling team back in the middle 80s when they were a dominant force in American bicycle racing. He introduced his son, and they took some pictures of me with my vintage sweater and then we chatted a bit about the good old days, when I was about 7 and Michael was running the team out of the shop in Ames.  

I remember as a kid always wishing that we had more money, and being upset because we couldn't afford a Nintendo, and we had to check out a VCR from the library, but I was always psyched that my dad worked at a bike shop. That was coolness to me. I am even prouder now to say that he owns his own shop.

I sometimes shake my head when I look at my $120 paychecks from Trophy Bikes after 6 years and a bazillion dollars that I spent on my own higher education, but I always find a little lift in my heart whenever I walk through the doors of a place that deals with my favorite conveyance.

The rest of the trip was good too, not to discount the joy of seeing Paul and Mary in DC and then Brendan and Meghan when we visited Meghan's place in Baltimore. We had some tasty food courtesy of Crisp and Juicy chicken in DC--some amazing Peruvian roast chicken that we demolished with just our bare hands around Paul and Mary's kitchen table. It was also great to catch up with B and Meghan, and hang out with their respective significant others. I always like hanging out with my first college roomate. B and I are not always the most alike, in fact we're pretty different aside from our general tallness, but we've always been extremely compatible. Part of that is just that Brendan is compatible with most people; he's the slowest person to anger I've ever met, or perhaps he's just the slowest to show it, and he seems to always know how to make people comfortable. The other part is that somehow we just clicked, we were excellent roomates, we always seemed to get along. I can't speak for him, but I can say that he never actually pissed me off while we were living together, though I certainly shook my head at his Malibu Coconut rum and his propensity to shower BEFORE heading to soccer practice. We recounted all of these things and we laughed a great deal about all of the dumb stuff that we did back in Dupre 3E. It was great.