I’ve been getting a handle on café racer culture recently. A good place to start is the documentary below available on youtube:
A motorcycle phenomenon that combines DIY backyard mechanics, customization, restoration, links to British post war culture and a focus on pure two wheeling? I’m in! When you also factor in the old RAF inspired bike gear café racing only gets better. What first got me thinking about it was It’s Better In The Wind, a beautifully shot and music themed short art piece about friends on their classic café racers. As a mood piece it captured a lot of the gritty romanticism in motorcycling.
Last summer I was reading Shopclass As Soulcraft, and in it Matt Crawford described motorcycling as ‘a beautiful war’, which captured the risk and reward beautifully. That book is mind expanding stuff written by a guy who walked away from academia and the magical thinking of the thought economy to open his own independent bike repair shop. It’s a must read, change your life kind of book that will make you want to get your hands busy again; just the sort of thing that racer building encourages. I’ve tried my hand at restoring old cars or just keeping them on the road, but that tended to be a make it work to get to work kind of situation, lots of stress in that. This is a hands on project that may very well lapse into a piece of rolling sculpture. Mechanics, electronics and sculpture? I’m in love with the idea! So, I’m on the lookout for an old bike that needs to come in out of the cold for the winter, one that’s looking for a new lease on life. It can be rusty and rough, the more it needs changing the more I’ll want to change. The end result will only enhance the feeling of oneness I’ve already felt with the Ninja. There are many café racer links that will catch you up online: http://rustyknuckles.blogspot.ca/2010/03/cafe-racer-magazine.html http://www.caferacermag.com/ http://www.caferacertv.com/ http://silodrome.com/triumph-cafe-racers/
1964: The ‘leather boys’ later generation rockers on modded cafe racers
Rocker style, 1950s England
The leather jackets, boots and gloves, the helmets and googles, RAF uniforms
were an obvious inspiration for the cafe racer look
I’ve been frustrated with motorcycle insurance and the blanket approach it takes to covering a bike, even one you’re not riding. When I’m paying the same for a new car as I am for a seven year old bike that I use for only a few thousand kilometres a year, usually in very good road conditions, it strikes me as unfair. The car does about five times as many kilometres and can do much more damage in a crash. It also has to drive through snow storms and the other perils of winter driving while my bike sits in the garage undergoing a full maintenance overhaul.
Maintained to within an inch of its life and spending the most dangerous driving time of the year in a garage.
Speaking of maintenance, the bike sees a heck of a lot more of it that the car does, especially in the winter. The bike is checked before each ride and sees weekly maintenance and checks on a larger scale. The bike is a cherished tool of self expression, the car is an appliance. When I called up the insurance company I’ve been with for over twenty years and asked for a quote they said they wouldn’t even consider me, but told me to come back in a few years. Nice, eh? I finally got in touch with RidersPlus, who specialize in bikes. It wasn’t cheap, but they got me sorted out quickly. My first bike isn’t a big cc monster, I tried to be
One of these things is not like the other, though both are the same in the eyes of insurance
sensible with my first ride and only considered mid-displacement machines. Having insured a lot of cars, I knew what could happen between a Mustang and a Crown Vic, yet in motorcycle terms these two vehicles would be considered equal simply because they have the same displacement. I was on the verge of getting a KLR (a big, single cylinder on/off road bike) when I came across the Ninja. It has almost identical displacement though almost nothing else in common with the KLR. One is a sport bike for the road, the other is an all terrain bike that rides on the road when needed. The Ninja is fast and agile, the KLR sturdy and stable. With such different intentions and abilities, I expected the Ninja to be a much more expensive option, but was shocked to be quoted the same price. What is at the bottom of my insurance despair is that a second bike costs me pretty much the same as the first. At the Toronto Motorcycle Show last weekend I stopped by RidersPlus again and had a chat. The guy there confirmed that your insurance does in fact drop quite significantly over the first few years of riding and by my forth or fifth year I’d be able to insure two bikes for basically what I’m paying for one now.
Honda CB500X, a nice fit, multi-purpose machine that is easy on insurance
In the short term if I want to minimize insurance costs while I’m learning to ride, a low displacement bike is the key. I sat on the Honda CB500X at the show. A nice, tall bike that could handle a wider range of duties than the road focused Ninja. I’d be giving up a bit of power, but even a 500cc bike still has a much better power to weight ratio than most cars. Another option is to dig up an older enduro bike, like the Suzuki DRZ-400. This would be a go-anywhere bike that I’d get used and not worry about tipping over occasionally. Being an even lower cc bike, it would be even cheaper on insurance.
Notes
Some interesting Stats-Canada vehicle collision statistics – very easy to look through. It shows a downward trend in accidents, injuries and deaths over the past twenty years. Glad to see my insurance is coming down with it. Forbes Article: The most dangerous time to drive – A Saturday in August in an urban environment. It turns out the most dangerous places to drive are where there are a lot of other people – places most bikers avoid like the plague.
What does the double hair pin at Forks of the Credit look like on a sunny Sunday in May?
… and I missed the first ten that went by right to left!
It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon on May 25th and I’ve got an afternoon on the Ninja. Rather than do a pointless local loop I aim at The Forks and head east. It’s a nice ride on relatively interesting roads across Wellington County, Hillsburgh and Erin to Belfountain. When I get there I realize that I’ve just walked into a mecca of bike culture in Southern Ontario. The parking lot of the local ice cream and coffee shop is covered in motorcycles of all description, from Harleys to Ducatis and everything in between. I hang a left and head onto seven of the best kilometres in Ontario. On the ride down I’ve timed it perfectly, no one is in front of me and I lean the bike more than I ever have before. Suddenly timely gear changes are vital to balancing the bike and the tires get some wear on the sides. I’ve been coming up to The Forks since I got my driver’s license in the 1980s, but this is the first time I’ve done it on two wheels (except for once in an Escort GT, but that wasn’t intentional). On my way back I get stuck behind a guy in a Prius (a Prius? Really?) and decide to pull over at the hairpin to get some media. An OPP cruiser slows as he sees me on the side of the road but I give him a wave and when he realizes I’m taking pictures and not hurt he gives me a wave back and continues on his way.
That train of bikes in the opening video was actually ten bikes longer, I’d already put the phone away when they started and didn’t get it out and recording until halfway through the two wheeled parade. Watching the cars lumber around the hairpin is a stark contrast to the bikes as they weave through the 180° hairpin. At one point I thought one of the cars was going to have to back up to make it. Back in Belfountain (where I got married sixteen years ago), I have a cup’o’tea and wander around looking at the bikes. There is a constant stream of people coming and going, all ages, genders and interests. The leather clad Harley guys are there, adventure types in their Aerostich, the sport bike crowd in their leathers, the touring riders on their Goldwings with pillions in tow, and even some cafe racers in their vintage gear. It’s a cross section of Ontario motorbiking culture.
That’s me on the right.
After my wander I do The Forks once more, this time I’m clear both ways. I pass back through Belfountain and a whole new flock of bikes have flown in. My blood is pumping now and I get home fifteen minutes faster than I got here. Pictures from The Forks of the Credit on May 25th, 2014.
The Fireblade project has come together nicely thanks to the strangeness we all find ourselves in with the COVID19 pandemic. With a suddenly extended March Break, I was able to sort out the fairings, get the LED indicators wired up and finalize all the plumbing for fuel delivery. It was all fiddly, last minute stuff, but with the time in hand it was easy to sort. The adjustable indicator relay got wet when I cleaned up the bike which prevented the LEDs from flashing, so it got waterproofed and sealed. The first ride was enlightening…
That’s the first time it’s been running since Obama was in office. It’s a very different thing from other bikes I’ve owned. I’m a big guy and 50 years old, but the yoga helps with the flexibility needed to ride this machine. The foot pegs are significantly higher than anything I’ve owned before, and I’m leaning forward over the gas tank in a much more prone position than on the Tiger. I was very conscious of the clip-on handlebars and the lack of leverage you have when cornering – steering on an adventure bike is much easier because you’ve got big, wide bars that offer a lot of pull. The Fireblade was so much harder to turn (the weight of leaning forward doesn’t help) that I actually thought the steering was obstructed, but it wasn’t, it’s just a lack of leverage.
After the first ride I thought, ‘this thing is virtually unrideable!’ But as I was working out the details and getting used to it the riding position started to make a different kind of sense; I think this bike can teach me things. The centre of gravity is so low, and the bike is so much lighter (over 40 kilos!) than my Triumph Tiger, while producing thirty more horsepower, that it’s a significantly different riding experience. I wouldn’t want to go touring with it, but for an athletic afternoon out on nearby twisty roads, it’s the instrument of choice.
The inline four cylinder 918cc engine makes a glorious noise when you crack the throttle, and the ‘Blade is responsive in a way that makes any other bike I’ve ridden feel heavy – that’s something I could get used to. On subsequent rides I got my legs into the cutouts on the tank and once locked in place the whole thing suddenly clicked. It’ll take all the core work I’ve got to work with it, but this machine expects you to take riding as a sport rather than a leisure activity.
So far I’m at $1200 for the bike delivered, $250 in taxes and registration, $280 for a replacement carburetor which I cannibalized with the one I had to create a working one (if anyone needs late 90s CBR900 carb parts, get in touch), and another $200 in parts that included the shop manual, oil and filters and the LED lights. All in I think I’m at about $2000 on the road and running like it’s new again. Looking up CBR900RRs online, a one a year older model with three times the kilometres is on for $2800. Low mileage mint ones are going for $6-7000. I think I could sell it in a year for a thousand more than I put into it.
When the pandemic happened here just before March Break I took home the Structure Sensor 3d scanner and did some scans, which is what you’re looking at here…
It’s very satisfying to bring the ‘Blade back to life. Now that the mechanicals are in order I’m thinking about racing stripes. Amazon has some well reviewed ones on for a good price, I’ll give them a go rather than painting them on.
Unfortunately I’m stuck for getting the bike safetied and registered on the road because everything is closed at the moment. I’ll spend the time making sure everything is order and looking to the aesthetic details and hopefully I’ll be able to put the bike on the road when we put society back in motion again in May.
Some home-made Versys diagrams of what a high/scrambler type exhaust might look like – it looks good! I have to wonder why Kawasaki never did this with the bike…
A more all round capable Versys… The asymmetrical nature of the rear shock (only visible from the right side of the bike) means that, aesthetically, a high pipe might look balanced running up the left/empty side. The pipes and muffler are all usually mounted at the bottom – not ideal for off roading where soft exhaust components can get pounded flat. Having them wrap around the left hand side of the bike and finish up under the rear frame means a protected exhaust. I’ve always wanted to try custom exhaust building, this might be my chance. Pipes and muffler out of the way mean more ground clearance even with a steel skid plate installed.
At five kilos lighter and with a four horsepower bump, the Akropovic tail pipe for the ER6 motor (what the Versys has a version of) would lower weight while offering a gain in power. The titanium tail pipe would also look good while not taking up too much space under the rear fender.
Creating a custom metal heat shield around the pipe would protect from burns while also protecting the pipe. Most scrambler style/high exhaust pipe use this as an excuse to decorate. The ER6 parallel twin is a very efficient and cool running engine. Even the exhausts don’t get nuclear hot. With some careful routing and smart use of heat shields, this should be doable. The new exhaust might upend the fueling, so this would be an ideal opportunity to try out a Power Commander and get into computerized fueling control for the first time. The next step would be to find some scramblery tires. A road focused tire with some off road capability would do the trick. Fortunately, Pirelli’s MT-60 dual sport tire not only gives the Versys some real off road capability, but it also improves road handling over the stock tires. They come in Versys stock sizes (120/70-R17 fronts and 160/60-R17 rears) and cost about five hundred bucks for the pair online. At under four hundred pounds the Versys is already a light machine. The goal would be to make changes that don’t add significantly to the weight. This light weight, multi-purpose Versys makes for an interesting Swiss-Army knife of a bike.
You’d be hard pressed to find a more neutral riding position.
A 1 inch seat rise only makes it more relaxed and usable.
A taller rider online said that increasing his seat height made the bike an ideal long distance tool. A number of places seem to offer that very modification. The stock windshield is a bit weedy as well. I got a Givi windshield for the Concours and think it a great piece of kit. The Givi item for the Versys is slightly taller than stock (not a problem, I’ll look over it anyway), but looks good.
I keep thinking I’m at the end of the riding season but opportunities are continually arising. After a fairly miserable trip to the doctor I found myself free on an unseasonably warm late November day. My usual M.O. is to head into the country and find twisty roads. Less people+twisty roads = happiness! This time I did the opposite. I was curious where my local Triumph dealer was now that I own one. It turns out it’s 136kms away, so not exactly local. Getting there involved a blast down the highway, something else I don’t frequent. In fact, I don’t think I’ve been on a major highway since the Lobo Loco Rally in August. I live in the country and avoid population centres and the highways that connect them. People are tedious. People in traffic are doubly so.
The Tiger almost ended up here last March
until I made a desperate plea to the previous
owner on the eve of him trading it in. It
finally showed up at the dealership it was
almost sold to for a quick visit.
Inglis Cycle is located in the east end of London, Ontario. I hadn’t been around there since attending the air show in the late 1980s; it’s much more developed now. After a blast down the 401 at warp speeds I worked my way through an awful lot of traffic lights before finding the dealership behind an abandoned factory. With their parking lot cut up and the neighborhood looking like a demilitarized zone I cautiously went inside.
I was met by one of the Inglis brothers and he gave me a quick, low pressure introduction. Walking into a dealer you sometimes get the sense that they’re only interested in you if you’ve got money to spend that day. Inglis Cycle was welcoming and relaxed. I felt like I could wander around and look at the bikes on display without any tension, so I did but I was only really there for one particular brand, the one I can’t find at home…
The Street Triple is a pretty thing, but I still think I’d go Z1000 if I were to get a naked bike.
I really like Triumph. I consider them an example of what Britain is capable of when it doesn’t get all bound up in socialist nonsense or historical classism. Freed from all that cultural weight the new Triumph is a competitive global manufacturer.
After a wander around the Triumphs on display I came back to the Triumph Tiger Explorer which is a nice piece of kit. As an all purpose machine it’ll do everything from swallowing highway miles to light off road work. I’ve thrown my leg over enough bikes to be aware of how silly I look on typically sized machines; the big Tiger fits.
The Street Triple is a lovely looking thing but too small. Were I to do the naked bike thing it’d be on the more substantial Kawasaki Z1000. The other classically styled Triumphs are also things of beauty but I don’t think I’d fit on any of them.
I wrapped up the visit with a trip to the accessories department where they had your typical assortment of dealer-type motorcycle gear and a sad lack of the lovely gear Triumph sells online. I ended up picking up an Inglis Cycle Triumph t-shirt, but it was a pretty low rent printed t-shirt compared to the bling on Triumph Canada. It’s a shame as I was ready to drop a bit of coin on a nice bit of Triumph wear.
I headed north through heavy lunch-time traffic out of London getting stopped twice by people wanting to know what kind of bike I was riding (it says Triumph Tiger on it). Score another one for the increasingly unique old Tiger 955i with its Lucifer Orange paint and stripes.
Once clear of the flotsam I was able to burn down some country roads in June-like temperatures, though all the trees were bare. I’d seen a comely sign for St Mary’s when we were riding back from the Lake Huron navigation so that was my lunch destination.
I’d looked up Little Red’s Pub the day before (highest rated place to eat in town) and was aiming there for lunch. As luck would have it there was a parking spot right out front and a front window table waiting for me. I had a lovely fish and chip lunch (hand made fries, a good bit of halibut) and a good stretch before getting back on the Tiger for the long ride home.
Since that day the temperature has plunged (below freezing as a high every day) and it has snowed multiple times. This time the end really has come. The batteries are out of the bikes and down in the warm basement on trickle charge. This time of year with its increasing gloom and lousy weather makes that first ride of the spring feel so very far away.
Since seeing pictures of my granddad on a motorbike I’ve been curious about my family history with bikes. Knowing that bikes have been in my family for generations is kinda cool. When home in August I got to see some more bike-related family history. My Uncle had a couple of albums I hadn’t seen before that had some fantastic pictures in them. It’s always nice to see pictures of Granddad, and seeing him working on his bike was wonderful. I guess if you rode a bike in the 1940s and 50s you spent some time making sure it was running right, or it wasn’t running at all.
There were also some pictures of my Granddad Bill in his RAF uniform on a bike. With war-time scarcity, getting around on two wheels was the way to go. I imagine the RAF used bikes extensively as personal transport. Granddad rode in their motorbike tatoo – doing stunts and coordinated high speed riding in huge groups.
I love the poses; the bikes, the suits, and some rural Norfolk scenery! No doubt that Granddad Bill loved his motorbikes! I can remember him letting me sit behind the wheel of his lorry and steer when I was four or five. I wish I’d been around him longer.
The bit of family history I didn’t know revolved around my great Aunt who rode a bike too! She was a single woman who was a serious rider at a time when women didn’t really remain single, let alone bomb around the countryside on motorcycles.
I loved hearing about her, and even when I discovered that she died in the saddle in a motor accident I was glad to have learned about her. I wish I’d have known her. I feel like the family I have who are into bikes are far from me. I also talked to my cousin who owns a Fireblade and a BMW R1200. It was nice to have a bike talk with family members, though I feel like the ones I most wanted to chat with aren’t with us any more.
My first year of bike gear had a certain style to it, it also happened to be the least expensive stuff I could lay hands on. After the no-name boots and pants I did a second round of gear buying as the summer began. The Alpinestar boots and Macna pants I got were next level, but this year I want to expand my kit to include a more traditional biker look; it’s time for the leather jacket and an alternate helmet. Since everything else is technicolour, textile and sport-bikey, I’m going for more traditional looking gear this time around. When I’ve eventually got more than one bike I’m hoping that a range of gear lets throw a leg over anything and go.
This time round I’m looking for an open faced helmet for the short commute to work and a leather jacket. My current choices were found on Canada’s Motorcycle, Motorcycle Superstore and Leatherup.ca. I’ve been looking for a classic motorcycle jacket that does the vertical stripe thing. That look is surprisingly hard to find. Short of going to a Pakistani garment manufacturer directly (along with the perils of ordering that way), they are surprisingly unavailable.
The flat black G-Max helmet is inexpensive and simple. The Shark Soviet looking helmet is cool and expensive. I’ve got gauntlet gloves and mesh gloves, but a pair of black leather gloves would be nice. Since I started riding I’ve been finding that jeans are handy if I suddenly want to take the bike out. A leather jacket would be a causal but convenient way to quickly get out on two wheels. The full-on textile armoured jacket and pants still do the job for intentional longer rides, but for quick jaunts the leather and denim thing would mean just throwing a leg over a bike, not to mention not looking out of place on a more classic ride. Getting on a Bonneville with the textile race wear looks a bit out of place.
LLeatherup.ca‘s prices look reasonable too. If they get back to me about the weird sizing on that jacket, I’ll be ordering shortly.
I’ve been messing around with 360° immersive video at work. One of the best ways to quickly get familiar with the technology is to use it in a difficult circumstance so you can find its limitations. At work we’re building immersive video to show a virtual walk-through of our school. If the gimbal and camera we have will work on a motorbike, it’ll work stuck to a kid’s head as they walk through the school. There are a number of barriers to admission with 4k video and image stabilization. Fortunately, the 360Fly4k windshield mount I have is so over engineered that it easily handles the weight and motion of the gimbal and camera rig.
I’ve previously done 4k video with the 360Fly4k, but it has a big blind spot on it, so this would be my first true 360 4k video. The Fly is a tough thing that takes great footage, but I’d describe it more as a 300° camera than a true 360 one. This 4k 360 camera is the Samsung Gear 360. I’m running it off the camera because the app won’t run on my Android non-Samsung phone because I guess Samsung don’t want to sell many of these cameras – it’s kind of a jerk move on their part so if these things don’t sell (because you have to have a Samsung phone to access it remotely), then they’re getting what they deserve. The Gear 360 has a small screen so you can see settings and using the buttons is fairly straightforward, though you’ll find yourself constantly accidentally pressing buttons while you’re handling it. The Ricoh Theta 360 is still my ergonomic favourite in terms of control and handling, and they just came out with a 4k version of the Theta – perhaps they’ll lend me one to test. The gimbal is a Moza Guru 360°Camera stabilizer. The typical gimbal design has weights to the left or right of the camera to keep things balanced, but on a 360 camera that means you’re blocking all sorts of sight lines. The Moza gimbal is vertically stacked with the weights hanging below, mostly out of sight. It has a power button and a push button joystick that lets you set shooting modes and centre your camera so it’s looking where you’re going rather that looking down the ‘seams’ between the two cameras.
Most 360 cameras are actually two or more cameras working together. The resulting footage is then stitched together in software to make an every direction video. The raw footage from the Samsung looks like this (on left). A front and back facing fish-eye camera capturing separate footage. Because both cameras are capturing different scenes, you can often see where they are stitched together because of a difference in ISO which shows up as a clear line of brightness difference (on the right). They all tend to be identical, fixed-lens cameras, so the aperture and shutter speed tend to be identical. The first test video has the Samsung camera set at highest resolution (4096×2048 pixels in video) and 24FPS. The gimbal is in locked mode, so it’s always looking in the same direction even if I go around the corner. The gimbal provides smooth video by taking the bike’s motion out of the video (it’s always looking in the same direction as the bike and I rotate around the shot), but a bike’s motion is one of the best parts of riding, so for the second shot I set it in tracking mode so it followed the bike’s motions.
Uploading it to YouTube out of the Gear 360 Action Director resulted in a flattened video that doesn’t allow you to pan. In order to produce that kind of video in the G360-AD (what a ridiculous name), you need to PRODUCE the video in the software and then share it to YouTube from within the program. My issue with this is that when you bring the program in it takes an Intel i7 VR ready laptop the better part of twenty minutes (for less than ten minutes of footage) to process it before you can do anything with it. When you produce it (again) for YouTube you end up waiting another twenty minutes. The Ricoh Theta saves the video (albeit 1080p equivalent) in a fraction of the time and the resulting saved version is 360 ready for YouTube; the 360Fly software is likewise efficient at 4k. I’m not sure why I have to wait forty minutes to produce less than ten minutes of footage on the Samsung. I know it’s a lot of data to work through, but it isn’t a very streamlined process. So, after a lot of post processing, the 4096×2048 360° video out of the camera shows up on YouTube at 1440s (s stands for spherical rather than p – pixels – spherical footage is stretched across a wider area and tends to look less sharp). I’m not sure where my 2048s footage went – I imagine part of that big post processing was to shrink the footage to fit on YouTube more easily?
If you click on the YouTube logo you can watch it in YouTube and adjust the resolution (bottom right) to see how it looks (make sure to do it full screen to use all your pixels). If you’re lucky enough to be watching it on a 4k display, this will come close to filling it.
The quality is excellent, the microphone remarkably good (they get beaten up pretty badly on motorcycles), but the awkwardness of post processing and the ergonomics of the thing don’t make it my first choice. Trying to manage it with gloves on would be even more frustrating. What you’ve got here is a good piece of hardware let down by some weak product design and software.
The software does offer some interesting post processing options in terms of wacky arts filters, but if you’re shooting at 4k all this does is drastically reduce the quality of your video. If you’re going to use those filters film at way lower resolution so you don’t have to wait for hours while they process.
I’m aiming to go for a ride tomorrow to look at the fall colours after our first frost. I’ll bring the Samsung along and see how well it photographs. It’s promising 15 megapixel 360 images and high dynamic range landscapes, so I’m optimistic. Photography is timeless and my preferred visual medium anyway, I find video too trapped by the continuity of time. Maybe the Samsung will be a good photography tool. Of course, I won’t be able to fire the thing remotely because I don’t have a Samsung phone…
I figured the Forks of the Credit would be silly over the long weekend, so I thought I’d head over there on the Friday afternoon. Still lots of people about, but I got to have a couple of clean runs up and down the twisty bits where I wasn’t on the bumper of a duffer in a cage. I’m not leaving rubber doing this, and I’m usually within 10km/hr of the limit, but cars through this twisty, technical road are a bit of a disaster. It was nice to get a couple of runs without worrying about the processing capacity of the driver in front of me.
Photos are taken with a Ricoh Theta V on a custom built mount attached to the wing mirror. Screen captured in the Ricoh software and modified in Adobe Lightroom:
The switchbacks at The Forks…
The little guy on the side of the road said, ‘woah!!!” so loud I could here him on the bike. 🙂
Always look where you want to go – sometimes that’s over your shoulder!
In the moment on one of the frew curves between me at the Niagara Escarpment. If I lived in California I would be a regular canyon carver on the weekends.
Beautiful weather, minimal traffic and a frisky Tiger. It was a good 50th birthday ride.
Last summer I was reading Shopclass As Soulcraft, and in it Matt Crawford described motorcycling as ‘a beautiful war’, which captured the risk and reward beautifully. That book is mind expanding stuff written by a guy who walked away from academia and the magical thinking of the thought economy to open his own independent bike repair shop. It’s a must read, change your life kind of book that will make you want to get your hands busy again; just the sort of thing that racer building encourages.
