Upcycles

Almost forgot to post this from yesterday! Jullein took home a new Pure Coaster to re-discover the love of bikes. I brought 3 of these into the shop some long time ago and they sat and sat and then suddenly I sold 2. 1 left! Come get it. Probably the cheapest new bike you'll find in a bike shop, and way below MSRP. #🤑

The old Upcycles is dead. Long live the new Upcycles. Details will appear on the website in the next week or so. Basically, I can't tune-up your bikes right now. All drop-off service is paused until further notice. I have my own baby boy to raise Mon-Fri and then limited interest in devoting my evenings and weekends to cleaning up after adults, so drop-off service is going to have to go to other shops. If you got a tune-up from me in the last 2.5 years, you got one of the last great deals in Portland, Oregon, but you can be forgiven for not knowing that. We often fail to appreciate the blessings of the present moment. The day will come when I will pick up my son for the last time. Will I know it was the last time then, or will I only realize it long after the fact? I don't know, but in the meantime, I'm going to pick him up every chance I get and someone else can clean your bikes. The business isn't closing, but it is pivoting abruptly and I owe exactly zero people an apology for that. The focus will be on sales and empowering people to do their own maintenance. When service comes back, it will look very different. If we lose you as a customer, that'll be okay. We'll gain others. Please take care. If I completely fail and do later have to close up shop, well good, then I don't have to do any of this crap anymore. In the meantime, I'm going to try to make it work in a way that fits my life better. Details soon.

Also, preview of a tshirt design I dreamed up last winter. No one steal my idea. (C)(TM) Upcycles PDX, LLC.

I did some investigation last night after I had some time to digest the loss of my dear friend and the failure started at the lower tip of the lug. I had starting hearing a creak 2 rides prior, but life is happening, so chasing out the source of a new sound just wasnt a high priority and then yesterday morning i ripped my downtube into 2 pieces under the awesome force of my quadriceps. Sound is movement, and some movement is a crack in your frame. Not common, but obviously it happens. This frame came off the assembly line in 1977. I paid a neighbor I otherwise didn't know $11 for it in 2015. It was in a trailer of mixed scrap metal he'd collected to sell. I saw it and knocked on his door and made it mine. It's had 49 years on God's green Earth, was nearly sold for scrap 11 years ago, but then got a whole 2nd life as my main ride for over a decade. It's been to the painted hills, to crater lake, and it carried a friend of mine from Philly down to Assateague Island. In Texas, we would get up at the ass crack of dawn to ride before the heat of the day hit. That's a lot of adventure for a thoroughly mid bike made damn near half a century ago. Chosing to be happy about that. I'm tempted to finally learn to weld, using this as my impetus, but for now, it'll just be a broken thing I have and a story I tell. I've been biking in traffic on the regular since 2007. I've never broken a bike before. I've been fixing bikes as my occupation since 2014. I've never seen a frame fail like this before. Life is full of surprises. 1 such surpise: your legs can rip steel apart.

R.I.P. red bike. Kinda good timing for a catastrophic failure tbh. But also, I love you as much as a reasonable person loves any object and I'm sad now.