live free or die

brian and I moved to newmarket, new hampshire, over the weekend, on our bicycles.   we left boston and pedaled north to newmarket, covering some 80 miles in 7 or so hours.  the original idea was all brian's, he brought it up one day at buddy's diner in somerville during our lunch break.  

we made bikes in somerville, we will be making bikes in newmarket - the hell with cars or trains or buses, lets move from one bike factory to the other, on bicycles!  

genius, i'm in!

we met up at buddy's, the site of the plan's hatching.  we arrived in full bike kits (read nerdy superhero spandex suits) and looked at maps while drinking coffee and eating eggs.  we both were ready to hit the road and get the hell out of dodge.

our chariots!  mister eddy merckx, meet independent fabrication's titanium factory lightweight.

we cut north east towards the coast and route 1A north, driving our steel horses past wretched hives of scum and villiany like somerville, everett, malden, lynn, saugus, peabody and salem.  after salem it started to de-suburbanize and get a little bit country.

1-A was one of the best roads i have ever ridden on, shredding up the coast, past salt marshes, trashy beach towns, ocean views, good roads.  the only hiccup we had in navigation was due to a bridge being out in newburyport, but it made for a good detour as we raced a high school kid on a mini bike and just crushed him.  the sound of that little craphead's whining motor topping out at twenty miles an hour just desperately trying to get past us made us put the hammers down.  

big ring davey!

3 tasker lane.

newmarket new hampshire, 03857

dont be afraid of the "weird biker gang" that dwells within, write letters and come visit!

swimming in new york city

aaahhhh, new york city...loud, dirty, crowded, and surrounded by water.  on america's birthday jenny and i rode bikes through 30 plus miles of bikepaths and greenways, drank a bunch of mikes hard lemonade and red white and blue budweiser cans, went swimming, ate hot dogs, and it ruled.

this shot is from owls head in brooklyn at the start of a rad mike tyson's punch out style bikepath.

jamaica bay, in brooklyn

jamaica bay, brooklyn

my "new" bike.  a 90s eddy merckx lugged steel racing machine, running with full campagnolo gear, including a '94 centaur ten speed group and vintage fir aero rims.  it's a tank, quick and snappy, and i can keep all with all my cohorts at IF on their fancy light future bikes.  

yeah right

j geils bridge.

watch out for repeauda the beauda hanging her gnarly hair off the edge, and beware the breezy dog stand at the other side.

fort tilden beach in brooklyn.  in new york city.  yeah, seriously.  atlantic ocean fun-time, an easy hour bike ride from brooklyn or park slope, clean sand, clean water, topless girls, no lifeguards, abundance of 24 oz coors cans - totally awesome.  get offline and go swimming right now!

bye!

last days here

clearing out the independent fabrication factory space on dirty old joy street in somerville was a hot and grimy week long process.  we left the old racing jerseys up till the end, i guess to remind us that we were racing against our own deadline - june 31st at midnight.

benny and ramponi hustling to get another bike out the door before we closed up the shop.

meow!

these are three of the last frames to be painted and finished in somerville.

these guys are currently in boxes, waiting for me to start prepping them for paint work in newmarket, new hampshire.  these bikes will have an interesting story, straddling both sides of our transition.

scrap metal, copper piping.  i cut a lot of these down using a sawzall and bolt cutters.

extra tubes not going north, but south.  a little present to our friend thomas at horse cycles in brooklyn, new york.

tearing down the old paint booth with the help of our friends brian and chris from circle a cycles down in providence, rhode island.  it was probably the gnarliest part of breaking down the shop, and took two days.

chris from circle a, looking like a coal miner as the last wall of the booth comes down.

our blasters and media collector up on the riggers flatbed.

shop bikes in chris rowe's big ass pickup truck.

all said and done, we had two flatbed trucks packed with machinery, two 24 foot moving vans, a ford fan, a volkswagen euro van, chris' pickup truck, plus two huge dumpsters filled with scrap and crap.

here's a look inside what is no longer independent fabrication of somerville, but a new home for somebody else to chase their dreams in.

it sure is a long way up

Top of the mountain!  Looking east!

Rainy saturday morning rides south through dorchester, down along the lovely and scenic neponset river, through milton to the blue hills reservation, and a quick jaunt up the observatory access road on great hill.  the great hill is a mile of an almost straight up climb that twists through the woods above the ski hill.  

some psychos were full on training day and just going up and down, up and down...

for me once was enough, a little rest at the top to drink some rum from a hip flask, check out the view, and then fly down the hill fast and loose.

ski trail.  westerly view.

Quincy.  

red line bridge next to the hancock st bridge over the ol neponset rivah kid!

for those about to ride

i got a new job, working in a factory.  we build bicycles by hand.
this is my workbench, prepping steel and titanium frames for
the paint booth with some filing and blasting.
open the blast doors!

this mean looking machine is the sandblaster!  he mixes high pressure air with little abrasive particles of media to clean up a steel bicycle and make the metal all nice and ready for paint to stick too!

close the blast doors!

paint

this is my "office".  i've grown up and graduated from sitting on a bike saddle all day, and now wear a full body suit and spaceman lookin' helmet to hang out in this cross draft spray booth.
the future!

new toy for some lucky so and so.  carbon fiber tubes, ready to be cut and glued into a super light and stiff bicycle.  read - fast as hell

independent fabrication corvid.
one of the perks of the new gig is gettin' to test ride some crazy high tech bicycle machinery.  this guy is all carbon fiber, weighs less than twenty pounds built, and is so fast it screams up hills.  i rode this from provincetown down to brewster, and back, on ol' cape cod memorial day weekend.
the nicest bike i've ever put between my legs, this shot is at cahoons hollow beach in wellfleet.

yesterday's parties

we salute spending 80 dollars on beer and hotdogs at sporting events.

this was at a bruins game, and we won 4-0 against the blackhawks.

give a stranger a high five!

test riding shiny new bikes at the new amsterdam bike show in new york city.
the best part about the whole bike show was the bar, which featured haggard looking 'gansett girls
serving up ice cold tall boys of narragansett for 25 cents!  

beer for the bike show after party at horse cycles in brooklyn.   the picture barely does it justice, but it took
two grown ass men (myself included) a mighty struggle to wheel that hand-truck to the shop with
seven cases of beer.
we were rewarded handsomely with all the beer we could drink, and since i don't remember leaving the party
or how i got home, it was probably enough.

victory

this is my new bass, a gibson victory standard!

made in kalamazoo michigian sometime between 1980 and 1985, it is impossible to tell really because the neck has been replaced with what seems to be a precision bass clone of sorts.  ted nugent's bass player, rob grange, used to play one of these guys.  it has a real long scale like a thunderbird, making it a man's bass!

 built neither for comfort or speed, it is truly a beast of nineteen eighties american industry.

 keep it fast and loose, wild and lazy