To be Handed Satisfaction

     I had hoped to get around to working on my father's bike by now, but the sad fact is that I currently lack the funds to procure even the most basic and essential of the parts that I would need for the project.  Additionally, since I would have to perform this project at my place of work, but on my own time, I want to wrap it all up in one fell swoop, so that I am not leaving anything lingering where it should not be.  Hopefully I can start this soon, but in the meantime I guess I want to discuss where I come from.

     I have an immense urge to work with my hands.  It sadly took me nearly twenty-one years to realize this, and to begin nurturing it.  I wasn't especially unaware of this part of my personality; growing up, some of my favorite "toys" were Lego, K'nex, and even a more obscure set called Construx.  I loved building anything I could imagine, be it space ships, tractors, or even a working fishing pole.  When I got a little older, my fascination graduated to a more real-world application and I became extremely interested in woodworking tools.  Yet I soon discovered that being into woodworking wasn't very well accepted or understood by my peers in junior high school, and in my desperate struggle to "fit in", I abandoned it.  It really wouldn't be until I was hired as a bike mechanic in 2010 that I would begin rebuilding the deeply satisfying gift that I know I have.

Towards the end of my tenure at Ike's Bikes as a bicycle mechanic.  August 10, 2011

     It is easy to take for granted.  All too often I find myself completely expecting someone to know how to hold a tool the right way, or to know how a simple mechanism works.  And I feel I am usually surprised by how wrong my assumptions are.  Not that I hold it against these people; they are almost always much more adept at what I'll call "real world" skills, such as communicating with people effectively and balancing check books.  These are things I am rather lacking in.  It truly takes all kinds.  But it is usually in these times that I get a glimpse of the fact that I possess something a lot of people don't really have, a skill-set that allows me to help others where they cannot help themselves.  I take great satisfaction from practicing that.

     But I feel this talent is beginning to hunger.  For just about two years now, I have repaired and assembled bicycles, and I find it quite satisfying on most levels.  Despite this, I find myself wanting to do more with bikes.  I've built one bicycle from the ground up for a friend, and I greatly enjoyed the process.  Figuring out which components to use, and essentially calling all or most of the shots in turning a frame into a complete bicycle to roll on the road gave me a tremendous joy.  I would really love to do it more often.  But I still feel I could do more.  And so I've started to look into frame building.  A monumental undertaking for someone such as myself, certainly, but I feel an unusual amount of confidence.  I know it'll be a challenge, and it may even put me down once or twice, but I know I'll be able to pull it off.  It's in my blood.

The book I purchased to learn about frame building.

     To stay at least a little in tune with the very general and loose tone of this blog being a reflection of my father and his impact on my life through bicycles, I'll just briefly touch on some of my father's several skills.  He learned to weld so young that by the time he was in high school, he actually helped teach the shop class concerning welding, or so my memory of a story told to me goes.  He turned a motorcycle frame into a four wheeler, helped construct a homemade dump truck that my grandfather still uses, and even created an improvised grader blade and plow from scrap metal for our tractor when we lived in upstate New York.  He  was a self-taught machinist, being very skilled with a manual lathe and milling machine, both of which are dying rapidly in machine shops.  After my parent's bike shop was closed, he found work in a small machine shop and quickly became known there as one of the best users of a manual lathe.  For those who aren't aware, manual machining is obviously not computer-controlled, which has been dominating the field for some time now.  Manual machines require the machinist to use several dials to control the cutting tool, usually an ultra-hard piece of tungsten carbide, to cut a block or cylinder of metal down to measurements that are specific to a thousandth of an inch.  While not impossibly difficult, to be able to translate a mechanical drawing into a series of dial turns to shape a block of aluminum into a complicated shape is no small task.  To be able to do it well and efficiently takes talent, a talent my dad had no short supply of.

     He also restored multiple vehicles, including a 1968 military Dodge Powerwagon, in which he eventually installed a dump-truck assembly, and a beautiful 1966 Mercedes 200D my family owned in the mid 1990's.  When my mom tried her hand at making homemade soap and selling it, my dad designed and built all of her equipment from scratch.  This included a collapse-able mold, a frame to support her large mixing cauldron, and a soap cutting machine that used piano wire to slice the blocks of soap into standardized bars.  These were perhaps some of his greater challenges, simply because he had nothing to really base these machines from, unlike most of his mechanical endeavors.  Although he never had more than a high school education, my dad could sufficiently engineer when the need arose.

The 1966 Mercedes 200D, before and after.  All done by himself.  Date unknown, sometime in the  mid '90's

The homemade four-wheeler.  Date unknown, possibly 1987

My dad's Warner Smasey lathe.  Could you operate it?  Date unknown, sometime in the mid 2000's

     In additional to working with metal, his preferred medium, my father also enjoyed working with wood.  He helped build my family's first house and almost single-handedly built my family's last house.  When we lived in an over-a-century old farmhouse in New York, he took it upon himself to completely restore the upstairs, which hadn't been touched since the 1930's.  One of his great joys in the final years of his life was a log cabin he built by himself in my family's woods.  He briefly attempted to sell rustic "Adirondack" furniture in 2000 and 2001.  His final business endeavor was carving walking sticks, usually into the likeness of his beloved morel mushrooms, which he "hunted" every spring.  When you see how incredibly detailed and similar his wood carvings look, especially when compared with other people's attempts, I think you will get a glimpse of his innate talent for working with his hands.  His talent was, by leaps and bounds, far beyond my own.  This could even be said of my dad when he was my age, twenty-three.  He was twenty-one when he helped build his first house.  I was just beginning to work on  bicycles at that age.  For reasons that I think I understand, but still surprise me, I feel a great urge to follow in his footsteps, to learn the trades he knew so that I can make him proud.  I have long stride to fill, but I know one thing:  I may be far behind, but I'm on the right trail behind him.

One of my dad's morel walking sticks.  Background unknown.  October 15, 2011

My dad and his cabin, mid-construction.  Without a doubt his favorite creation.  Date unknown, late 2009