Big Rooms

There’s something about big open air rooms with a load of people inside sharing a common interest. Conventions, conferences, rallys, gatherings, whatever—throw in the love for bikes and you’ve most likely got yourself a good time. I remember Interbike a couple years ago was downright ridiculous; if only it wasn’t in Vegas I’d be inclined to go every year. More locally, I’m looking forward to a couple such events coming up soon.

Namely in February is the annual Seattle’s Bike Swap, Saturday the 23rd. This year it’s being put on by Cascade—not sure why, but hopefully it’ll still be a wealth of obscure and/or necessary parts for cheap! Make sure to watch out for those seeming low-cost items like stems that may be missing integral components like binder bolts or their wedges. Those bits are getting hard to come by. And also make sure to hunt down Charles at the Wright Bros booth to say howdy and check out his wares.

A couple weeks prior to that is of course the North American Handmade Bicycle Show (February 8 – 10 in Portland, OR).
I don’t know enough about frame manufacturing, but hopefully I’ll learn a few things. I am pretty positive I’ll be seeing some really sweet bikes. It’ll likely tip the inspiration enough to really want to get a workshop of sorts and a torch of my own I bet. At any rate, there’ll be plenty of things to see there.

See you there.