I got a nice note and some pictures from one of our customers that I’d like to share. Leslie has had her Signal since last summer. It sounds like she and her partner Tom have completed some long days of touring this summer. They did a couple local tours of the Gorge and Crater Lake as well as one long trip to Great Falls Montana in July. Tom said they did 32,500 feet of climbing on that one! Leslie has summers off and tries to get as much time on the bike as possible before fall forces a return to the daily grind. She said “Your bike performed very, very well, and got lots of love from other cyclists along the way. I am very happy with the bike, and we recommend Signal to anyone showing interest.”
This is a test. Starting today I will be posting one photo from the Signal shop everyday for a week. Maybe more? See them daily on our Facebook page and possibly as a weekly blog.
They will be the nooks-and-crannies, the intimate details, the sights not seen while moving around too quickly. Hope you enjoy! Edition 1/?
I am the second born in my family and with an older brother I was always subjected to his hand-me-down clothes, toys, shoes….. That was until I got bigger than him. So here we are, in our 30’s and the roles are reversed. My brother, Andy, is set to inherit the first bike I ever built. With cross season coming up we asked my brother to be an “official” member of the Signal cross team this year. Last year he raced in our team kit but didn’t have a team bike. I decided that I could do a few changes and improvements to bike #1 and give it to him as his team bike.
The original bike had fastback style seatstays that offered very little mud clearance so I chopped them off and brazed in some capped stays in addition to a new seat tube sleeve that we use on all current fillet brazed Signals. It was fun to see this old frame again and make some improvements and keep it in the family!
So when you see Andy racing his new single speed this year feel free to roll up to him and remind him how rad his hand-me-down is………he could’ve gotten shoes!
I saw a “back to school” advertisement last week and realized that summer is almost over. With a longer, wetter spring than normal, it feels like it never really started here in Portland. After a couple difficult weeks of work I was feeling pretty burned out and decided I needed to take some time off. The plan: drive to San Francisco to visit friends for a long weekend.
We rolled out of Portland at 8:00 pm and drove through the night in order to maximize the time spent with a sleeping baby. Parents with young children are known to do crazy things like this. Our plan worked perfectly, we rolled into Oakland at 7am. The only downside was that it was difficult to function through the sleep-deprived fog for about a day and a half.
San Francisco is a beautiful city. I wasn’t sure about this statement being true, but after spending a few days walking around outlying neighborhoods, eating amazing pastries, drinking fabulous coffee and constantly being shocked at the diversity of life (plants and animals), the city left me impressed. We stayed with friends who are Portland transplants and met up with other Portlanders that were visiting the same weekend. It was a Portland reunion weekend!
On the way home we decided we would stop of in Napa and visit our friend Curtis Inglis. Curtis is the man behind Retrotec bikes and his namesake brand Inglis Cycles. I first met Curtis at a cross crusade race in the famed Estacada timber park. Curtis is the kind of guy that never touts his credentials. He prefers letting his actions speak for him. When Nate and I started Signal, Curtis was one of the first “old school” builders that engaged with us. When we talked about problems that we were having with the business, he assured us that everyone in this business has gone through the same thing. Every year at NAHBS we get to spend more time with him and his wife Mitzi. It’s always a highlight of the trip.
Getting to see his shop was really nice. It’s about 2x as big as the Signal HQ, and has a lot more machines. Curtis showed me a little of his process for tube setup and mitering and some of the tools that he has made over the years to make life easier. Lucky for Elizabeth that she dropped me off and went touring the Napa valley, Curtis and I were talking shop for a couple hours. I could’ve kept going.
I got to ride in Curtis’s cool BMW Isetta car. It’s a 300 cc single cylinder motor. You get in by pulling the front of the car open. It’s nuts to see a guy as big as Curtis get in that thing!
Good times, and I’m glad we got to take advantage of the summer a bit before it all slipped by.
Tonight was the end of the seven week Portland Racing short track series. I managed to get out to all of them, but raced only six. Since I have taken a year off of racing (and that includes training) I thought I’d to pretty terribly but hopefully improve over the weeks of racing. The first race was hard. Harder than I remembered. My eyes stung with sweat and I inhaled half my bike weight in dust. I finished near the bottom end of the singlespeed class, 34th place and I had a blast! Over the course of the series I managed to somehow get 3 more 34th place finishes! My wishes to see improvement were not happening, but I was still enjoying (almost) every minute of it.
This led me to think about why I race. It’s hard. It’s expensive. It is difficult to do with a young daughter and a wife that likes to race too, without being selfish (thanks Liz, I owe you!). It requires time sacrifices that are difficult to justify. But without the race, I don’t challenge myself on my bike. I don’t push as hard. I don’t go to that place of pain, and I don’t feel the relief on the other side. It is cathartic. And I feel that it is a positive outlet for beating out stress.
At tonight’s finale I felt great. The course was the funnest one yet. I rode hard and even saw the front group not too far ahead after the starting straight! I pedaled through some pain, and when the results come out tomorrow, even if I got 34th, I felt like I was killing it.
Portland in the summer. No place I’d rather be. If it gets too hot, just go to the coast. If it’s not warm enough, just go east over the mountains.
So what’s going on? I’m about to head to Mountain Bike Oregon to work for the Bike Gallery as a wrench and hopefully ride a bunch of the state’s finest trails. MTBO has been going for about 5 years now and it seems to have some good momentum. The town of Oakridge was a mill town whose fortunes were linked to lumber production. When the mills closed, the town fell into some pretty hard times, but recently they have seen the beginnings of a rebirth as a recreation center. With hundreds of miles of trails, a reservoir, hot springs and a lift serviced mountain close by, not to mention the headwaters of the Willamette river, there are plenty of ways to enjoy the outdoors. Mountain Bike Oregon has helped expose the amazing trail networks to hundreds of bike riders. It’s really cool to see the positive change that is happening because of bicycles.
I’ve been riding in Oakridge since about 1995 and have seen a lot of changes in the town since then. I think rock bottom was sometime around ‘98-2000. Boarded up buildings and negative population growth were the indicators that the town was dying. The trails were always some of the best that I have ever ridden, and thanks to MTBO more people are finding out about what Oakridge has to offer. About two years ago a brewery opened on the old main street, and last year a hostel opened. Both of these businesses have a lot of mountain bikers as their main customers.
I’ll post some pictures of the event over the weekend. If you are looking for a great place to spend a week mountain biking, take a look at Oakridge!
We’ve uploaded some detail pictures of the two latest bikes to roll out of the signal shop. Nahanni’s mixtie is made of Columbus tubes with some 4130 toptubes, and a Dedaccai fork. The “lugs” are sleeves that fit over the head tube and are fillet brazed to the top and downtubes. It’s the first bike we’ve made using this process and we’re pretty excited about how it came out. Ben Leonard of Trucker racks made the beautiful racks for this bike. The front rack is one of the first of his newest production offering. The bars around the platform can be unbolted and arranged in several configurations.
Ryan’s road bike is one of those long reach brake, fender bikes that we’ve been getting a lot of interest in lately. This bike is pretty similar to Myles’ blue road bike that we took to NAHBS in February. Columbus spirit tubes Richard Sachs lugs and bottom bracket, Dedaccai fork legs. We did add internal rear brake routing and we have a really nice stem that wasn’t ready when we shot these shot these photos. Ryan picked the bike up and started riding down the Oregon coast the next day! That’s one way to break in a new Brooks seat! The paint colors came out beautifully. Ryan is one of those customers who came to us because he likes what we’ve done and whenever a question came up, his answer was “Do what you think is best.” So we did. We picked a sensible component group that would provide trouble-free riding, and a paint job that will turn heads. It’s always nice when Nate and I can sit down with a paint book and just do what we want. I think it came out beautifully. Thanks Ryan!
The sun is high and assembly of Ryan’s bike is coming together. We should have some full photos coming soon but I thought a teaser would be nice. This is a rad paint job and a new greenish color that Signal has never used. We love it!
Our first bike heading to Japan. It was fun working with Shinya Imafuji. I really want to go to Japan some day. Maybe I can fit in the box…
In other news, we haven’t got power to the garage yet, so the mighty Monarch sits idle. The problem (as I see it) is that I can always convince myself that the 10 hours of cutting concrete and digging ditches could be better spent with a file and emery paper. We’ll get there soon. It’s mid-June and for some reason we still feel the need to turn the heater on. This spring has been pretty brutal. It’s the kind of weather that makes the Californians think twice before really committing to living here. Truthfully, it’s probably been one of the more difficult springs I’ve been through here. And I’ve been in Oregon since ‘86. In all likely hood the sun will come out in a week or so, and all of us will collectively sigh and say “It’s too hot!”
There are plenty of bikes to build this summer. In the works right now are a geared mountain bike, a s-bend road bike, and a special city bike. Looking ahead we’ve got a cross bike or two and several more road bikes. We’ll be picking up a light rando bike from the painters tomorrow for Ryan. It’s a really cool bike. When ever we got to a point where a decision needed to be made Ryan’s answer was “Do what you think is best.” We did, and the resulting bike is very cool. Stay tuned!
Fasil approached us last year. He was thinking that he needed to get on a new bike this spring. We talked a bit about design and found out that he is a steel bike guy, he owns a few other steel bikes, the one we got to look at was a cool old Steelman. So he decided on a straight forward Signal road bike, s-bend stays, but not too flashy. The paint is a one color liquid color called Asphalt (appropriate) We built the bike up with Corsa Concepts wheels and Chris King R-45 hubs and a full Ultegra kit. It’s a good example of a completely useable, real world bike. No tubular tires, or wheels that blow up. Ultegra has to be the sweet spot of value and performance in Shimano’s line up of components.
So the bike came together beautifully! The subtile blue accents add a bit of pop to the gray scheme. We used a blend of Columbus tubing in mostly oversize specs to give the frame a nice response to the rider input. The s-bent seat stays give a little spring that should make those longer rides a little more comfortable. And they look cool!
When Fasil picked up his bike, he was all smiles. It’s a good feeling to see customer and bike united for the first time.
After his first ride I got this email: Hi Fellas,
First real road ride with the machine today…..all I have to say is AMAZING!
Went out with my old buddy Greg Johnson, we were just going to go to Sauvies but due to winds, decided to do some climbing…..my arch nemesis Newberry Hill was the first climb…I have to say I know that hill like the back of my hand and the bike is so good in the climbs…light, nimble, very responsive….felt so great climbing the first switchback, I didn’t listen to my legs and just punched through the first couple of turns of course this didn’t last long..but I ended at the top of climb with a big smile on my face which is usually not the case.
We ended doing a loop and climbed up Old German Town road on the way home…and got to test the handling of this new ride on the German Town road descent…..let me say this bike holds a line like no other I’ve ever owned. Felt very confident in the saddle of this bike and for good reason. I’m so glad I gave you guys a call on this project. Thanks for the hardwork and a bike I’ll own the rest of my life.
