DAMN..........

no words needed, i think. ben's bike came out SWEET. fork by rick hunter, paint by sycip, yo. enjoy. steve.

select shots of what be happenin'

her's some cool pics of what i've been up to. got in a quick'n'dusty spin up waterline road for a couple of hours solo the other day. the wind whipping around the dust at my level had me picking little crustballs out of my eyes for a day or so. also, we went fishing at knoll lake. pretty! we camped out on the edge of the mogollon rim - a 3000 vertical foot escarpment that runs across the middle of arizona at around 8000 feet elevation - and watched storms and lightning march across the huge expanse of land below us for the sunset in what was the first rain of the upcoming monsoon season. the next day we hit the lake by 6:30am. all together we probably got around fifty trout that day, and saw a bald eagle, several ospreys and a snake. i've got the smoker going right now cooking up some of the larger and less fortunate trout. unfortunately for them, they are delicious. here in it's near completion is ted's frame. i just have to de-flux the braze-ons, drill the bottom vent hole, and stamp the serial # on it and it's off to paint. lastly, my final chore for the day - lacing george's sweet new wheels! steve.

bad pictures of cool stuff.......{sorry}

it's been hot & i've been busy. we got allan's 29er all built up yesterday, it came out really nice! he's got it set up in the touring personality, but it can swap over to a full on trail bike no problem. color - butterscotch with goldflake. once again, sorry for the sucky pics this week, maybe it was the heat.......got ted's bike just about done, here's some SWEET brazing shots before and after de-fluxing. not much polishing to be done on those. and, hey, all you steel bike owners - here's a visual reminder to pull out your seatposts and shoot some lube in all your vent holes - a totally rotten OM flyer jonathan was trying to rehab. lastly, a pic of a great post card from zak in seattle - it's ignatz mouse and officer pup! sadly missing is krazy kat. this threesome populated the comic strip "krazy and ignatz" by george herriman which ran for about forty years. i have some of the collections from the 20's. they lived in kokonino county and the art was awesome and the humor was dry and really odd and all in all it was a pretty psychedelic comic, one of my favorites.

fishin' and stuff.

went out for a fine day fishing on friday! especially after the mayhem and spectacle that was "free fishing weekend" last week. wow. they must not have caught many {surprise, surprise} as there were plenty for us left, we probably caught at least fifty trout between the four of us. here's a sweet shot of mormon mountain behind a glassy upper lake mary at about 6am. it sure is nice out early in the morning. there were at least fifty elk in the meadow behind lower lake mary, and some deer out by happy jack. out on the rim the thimbleberry and the dogwoods are done blooming, but the banana yuccas and the beargrass are going off, as are the locust and rose bushes, giving off a sweet smell when the breeze blows. we only got a few big trout, they are still dwelling at the bottom waiting for the crawdads to all crawl out, and we saw quite a few.........the really good trout fishing is during the monsoon season when you have to get there at the crack of dawn and get chased off the lake by 1pm by rain and lightning with a limit of fat trout. lastly, here's the big/bad news around the garro house - denise is on crutches. she cracked her tibial plateau. we're not sure how long she is down, but it has cut out biking for both of us for a little while. sucky, but we've seen worse. it's slowed down production in the shop a bit as we have to cooperate on just about everything we do {how many gimps does it take to.....} and she keeps stealing my wheelchair when i lay down, stranding me. but, i'm brazing ted's bike up this morning before it gets hot and allan's is back from paint. i'll put up pics of both in my next post. careful out there! steve.

stoked guy!

here's ben with a couple pics of his new 29er cruiser - he's stoked! that's one beautiful frame, i put ALLOT of work in that baby, just like every cruiser. the fork in the second pic was made for ben by rick hunter and is a work of art in itself. AND, he's having rody from groovy cycles make him a pair of love handles AND, i'm lacing up some phil wood hubs for it. he'll have one of the blingy-est rides around, representing three custom builders on one scoot. last pic - ted's bike is coming right along. i'm going to go work on the seatstays today, i may or may not get them done as i have a PT session scheduled for this afternoon, maybe they can help me with the pain issues, they got me back up on my feet so i trust what they think allot. also, tonight we are going to see the DRIVE BY TRUCKERS at the orpheum theater. i am stoked! final note: see the alignment table that ted's frame is bolted to? it's ground to a tolerance only slightly off from that of an average human hair across it's entire surface. many people think that it's used to bend a frame into straightness after it's built but it's not. the tubing used on modern frames will buckle if forced into straightness. it's used to gradually coax a frame into straightness during the build process by checking each step and sub assembly resulting in a bike that is built true and will remain that way for years free of built in stresses from applied force. QC, ya'll. steve.

dave's bike, matt's bike, ted's bike. any questions?

here ya go. the latest coconino revolving door bike parade. dave's bike is all done and ready for a ride. we're calling this color "general lee." i like it. it's hard to go wrong with orange, the fastest color! matt's bike is finally going to paint, it's going to be "root beer", a totally awesome color as well, it must be seen in person to be believed. brown with red, gold and green flecks. it'll be back in a couple of weeks. lastly, ted's 26er getting together. it's gonna be light & right. it's been a long string of 29ers and it's fun to mix it up a bit. next is sam's 29er with {gasp} a straight toptube. cool! like i said, mix it up. here we're all about variety! steve.

a fine day fishing.

had a good day out on the lake yesterday, limited out again, got one really nice one and lost another big one as i was trying to net it. it makes you sad when you loose a big trout after actually touching it! anyway, no biking today, gotta go work, denise hurt her knee yesterday biking so i'll get another day ahead on bike builds. running the smoker right now, got a bunch of trout to smoke. everybody loves smoked trout! in a truly odd note, we noticed that there were a huge number of wierd people in wambly floating rigs yesterday, and we just couldn't figure it out until we got back to the put in and found out that it was the beginning of arizona free fishing weekend. evidently, there are ALLOT of people out there sooooo cheap they won't go fishing except for one day a year when it's free. these guys were the highlight of sketchiness we saw {except maybe the guy who went clear to the bottom of the lake trying to get into his canoe at 7am right next to us - but hey, whose to say that DIDN'T happen to these guys after we left.} they still had wally-world stickers on all their stuff and oddly {and sorta creepily} only one sleeping bag between them.......

just some finishing pics.......

fresh outta the dunktank, lot's of shining up to do, but those are some mighty smooooth fillets, so nuthing to complain about there - it's actually become my favorite part. enjoy! hope to wrap up this baby today, steve.

some nice days off.

had some nice days off! went fishing one day and went armbiking another and brazed up matt's frame in between - i'll do a post on it tonight. it was nice to be out in the forest for some good amount of time, i spend way too much time indoors by my self or just being on pavement. my previous life was about as different from that as could be. anyway, on friday i must have caught near twenty trout! i released all the dinks and anybody that wasn't harmed and still caught some good foot-longs. barry and jeff both caught a couple nice fatties in the 16-17" range. a trout sure gets allot bigger for every inch over a foot they live. a 20" trout is huge. then, got up into the drylakes hills yesterday and kicked out climb three/upper brookbank/lower wienie walk. very nice! i kicked it out in a little over three hours, pretty fast. it made me really tired. put me on the couch. all the forest is really greening up and flowers are coming out fast. they are ready to pop after holding tight during the late cold spring. gotta go, i have to load up and go to my MRI....... steve.

just a quick update on stuff.

been running around allot the last few days and doing many things to do with framebuilding but not getting frames built. it's true. there's allot of things you have to do other then just join metal and watch the coin roll in! also, sorry if the pics are on the technical/boring side, there's three bikes at paint so there should be some pretty stuff to show off soon. soooo.... i've been spending allot of time trying to get some upcoming build kits together, ordering supplies for builds, organising, streamlining and just connecting the dots. also, went to my favorite place yesterday - the doctor! i've had huge pain levels for the last month in my hips and it's getting hard to deal with. unfortunately, they found nothing wrong. i'd rather have it where they found something wrong so i could go down the path of getting it fixed up. being in terrible pain and not being able to ever say why sucks. any of you who know me and what i've been through know my pain level is high and that i hate hospitals so it's gotta be bad to get me in one. oh well, getting an MRI on monday, so hopefully that will tell me more. at least i can concentrate on building intensely enough to get my mind off of it allot of the time. anyhoo, going to the doc kept me from getting matt's bike brazed up yesterday, but it's almost there. looking REALLY nice. the flow on this frame is especially pleasing to my eye. soooooo..... here's some build shots to keep you going. let me know if you have any questions! gonna take the next couple days off of actual building to run errands, go handcycling and canoeing/fishing. also, check out the now homepage for my website, a sweet shot from cameron clark. she sure knows her way around a lens! thanks for reading! steve.

all kinds of stuff.......

tiring day, doing all kinds of things. finally got matt p.'s front triangle all tacked up and checked out on the alignment table - looking sweet! gonna get the chainstays on it tomorrow and it will look allot more like a bike. also, i got his wheels all laced up - pretty! i was impressed by the stan's rims. it was the first set of them i have laced up, and they were quite straight and round, and tensioned up really even and true with the jewelery-esque mango chris king hubs. can't go wrong there. also got ted m.'s bike designed. here's the blueprint. it's the first 26" wheel mountainbike i've done in a while. it's nice to mix it up! after this it's back to 29erville for at least three consecutive builds.{not that there's anything wrong with that!} AND, there's another double toptube cruiser in there too. currently, i'm taking orders for February 09'. lastly, a sweet picture from the barnette family of their two coconinos chilling stunningly before the grand san francisco peaks here in flagstaff. CURRENT BIKE STATUS: dave w: bike at paint. ben p: bike at paint. allan y: frame waiting here for the correct rack to show up so i can put on the correct brazeons. NEXT SIX BUILDS: t. martinez, s. correa, j. reddan, g. deckey, p. creary, ivan voronec. let me know if you have any questions, steve.