A week in the life...

An insane amount of living has been been going down in this small town...  there are only two bars to drink at, and nothing else to do after dark, yet the days are just packed.

here is the first bike i completely painted!  it is a steel crown jewel in corsa red, with black and white decals, and it is going to be a demo bike on display in our show space.  pretty sweet!

here are two works in progress.  i did almost all of the masking on both these frames: a titanium planet cross bike with a 3/4 paint job and pale pearl pink stripes; and a titanium factory lightweight with its raw carbon seat tube and black panels.  Bam!

on friday night a crew of us went one town over to the Lee USA Speedway for some car racing.  it was the most white trash spectacle ever, pretty much the whole place was crammed with drunk fat rednecks and their fat kids, loud engines and the smell of gasoline.  during the small block modified feature race, 5 cars stacked into a corner and all piled up sideways.  as the excited crowd jumped to our collective feet, the drivers of said cars got out and started fist-fighting each other in the middle of the track while the rest of the field kept racing.  it was so awesome, and only ten bucks!

saturday was oyster fest and olde home day up here in newmarket.  i worked for 5 hours, saw the governor of utah, ate 15 oysters that were harvested in the local bay at the mouth of the lamprey river and got too drunk to remember the fireworks that happened at night.  a bunch of crappy old man bands played on a flat bed truck to no one that cared, and it made me be glad to be in the audience also not caring, instead of on the stage.  

sunday brian and i did a long bike ride up to york, maine.  we looped north through dover and across the river into maine, onward to york where we stopped and checked out this crazy lighthouse, ate a quick lobster roll at the beach, and rolled back through kittery and portsmouth.  it was about 70 miles in total, and two minutes after we got home the skies opened up and it has been pouring ever since.  score!

beware the ronimal !!!

ridin bikes and catchin fish

life in the 'shire is pretty sweet.  i got myself a beautiful company bike to ride around town, on loan from gary.  its a SSR (stainless steel) made with columbus xcr tubing.  its got full sram red, handbuilt chris king hubs laced to mavic rims, an enve carbon fork, and the same exact saddle alberto contador rode in this years tour de france.  

this is truly a top of the mountain machine!

here's a little dream set up down the basement.  i got some of my bikes hanging up next to my tools and my tackle box, with my fishin' pole restin up on nails just overhead.  i spend a lot of time down here just sippin' beers and rearranging everything just right.

this pretty bridge is sittin' atop the wiswall dam over in durham.  its really close to john baker's log cabin, and the site of the first fish i caught up here, a large mouth bass that was not very large at all.  i hooked him on a jointed rapala, one of my all-time favorite bass lures.

kiss my bass!

just below packers falls on the lamprey river.  apparently the fishin' here is real good, i just need to get better at fishin' the ripples and casting into a current to confirm that fact.

and finally, the whole reason i moved up north in the first place.

paintin' a bike rack for a place to put painted bikes!

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.