IN PRAISE OF DIFFERENT
Often times we get into the habit of sameness. We like to self-identify with a specific ‘style’ or ‘vibe’ and then soon everything tends to feel too much like the exact same picture over and over again. Eventually a catalyst comes along and shakes up your psyche and suddenly it’s out with the old and in with a new, fresh kind of sameness.
We’re not cursed to this fate however, if we’re conscious of it. If we accept that minimalism was invented by big small to sell more less, and that maximalism is the only obvious recourse, we can then decide that life should be a little bit more eclectic.
“Different is good.”
This was said to me the other day and even though it’s a simple idea, it’s universally applicable. Even if ‘different’ is a bad idea, at least you learned something.
In this case ‘different’ is wrapping a bike frame in your friend’s old pants.
Yes I made it about bikes again.
Behold the Denimeleon? Jameleon?Jicycle? Whatever it is, its definitely… different.
I desperately wanted to build a trekking bike after my last foray into bikepacking. Something I could absolutely beat on, and tackle all variety of roads on. My Stigmata was great but it kept giving me a feeling of total and utter ‘blah’. It was perfect in every way that I needed it to be sure, but the next week I went out for a ride and a guy on the exact same bike, bone stock from the shop floor rolled up next to me and said,
“Nice bike!” and we both chuckled a little and smiled as I rounded a turn and split off.
Now this was a pretty nice little moment, like an acknowledgement of our shared good taste in bicycles. It lacked something though.
Whimsy. Genuine childlike glee. A gentle tugging of a smile that is equal parts ‘what-the-fuck’ and ‘that’s-so-sick’. When you see something that tightrope-walks the line between ‘stupid’ and ‘actually cool’.
I’ve had so many of these interactions over the past year, revolving around the bikes I hand-painted for a few races. People reaching out and offering help with components, exposure on their Instagram pages, even a job offer.
More than anything it started conversations with folks who normally, would just pass by on the trail. Boy, oh boy there is nothing I love more than talking about the things that I love.
If Im being completely honest, this build came together in about 24 hours. I had fitted the components to an XL frame I had from my beloved ‘shitbike’ but things were looking too long on that frame to actually warrant building anything useful.
As fate would have it though, I found a couple hundred dollars accumulated in my Venmo wallet, which is the digital equivalent of finding a loose couple dollars in a jacket pocket. It’s free money. So I locked down a properly sized Chameleon frame that was heavily blemished and decided that I was going to do this thing.
Some backstory on how I decided on the denim, since you’re probably wondering where that comes into the equation. I had a dream about an art exhibition where I made a bunch of bike frames out of various inconvenient materials like stained-glass and porcelain. From there I kinda ran with the idea of a denim bike since it was relatively achievable given my current skill set. It just made me laugh, so why not? Until now I didn’t really have a bike to do it too though.
So after scrounging, trading, and bribing friends and coworkers for parts, I went home after work one day and before I even began building, I contemplated what I could do with the frame. Denim was the only answer, it was a perfect vessel.
6 hours of huffing 3M Super 77 later, the dream was realized.
Some areas couldn’t be covered neatly, at least for now but it honestly came together so much better than I thought it would. A friend had donated two different shades of denim to I was able to play with placement of those on the rear stays and head tube. The seams of the denim were incredibly fun to play with, running the thicker stitching along the down tube or wrapping the chain stay.
I was grinning as I was putting this thing together. Just aghast at what I was creating. 200mm rotors and Code RSC brakes? Sure. Bigger is better right? Chris King headset was all I had laying around, so it went on.
Bet you’re wondering about the tires too.
Maxxis Tread Lite 2.1s, gifted to me from the bottom of a box of much more useful tires. Both the tires and wheels on this bike are no longer in production so you bet I’m going to ride them until the cords are showing.
The frame bag is next, designed and stitched up by a good friend for the aforementioned ‘shitbike’ that I raced at Sea Otter. I made some modifications with a plastic runner that bolts to the bottle cage mount to offer some rigidity to the otherwise floppy bag, but this might need some more tuning later on. For now it allows me to run less straps, and keep the bag centered in the frame easier.
Next is some funny handlebars that I wrapped with the only bar tape I had laying around, which happened to be red. Not a huge fan of the color but it feels great and I already had it and that’s what matters here.
The bag in the hole of this Surly Moloko, is a backwards Rapha bar bag. The straps gave up on me about a year ago, and I stashed it away just in case. It happens to fit extremely well in the hole and rests on the Restrap Bumper Bar to keep things off the head tube with only two straps. I can then strap my sleeping-bag-stuffed drybag on the front cross bar. Sick.
My favorite details here are small, and most likely overshadowed by… all the denim… but it’s what makes things like this so refreshingly fun and rewarding. The dropper remote was MacGyver’d by my coworker from two different broken remotes. The drivetrain was what another friend had laying around and involved a bagel transaction. The dropper itself is missing an alarming amount of parts from the internals, but still works somehow.
The first reaction I got when someone saw this was “What the fuck. Oh my god.” over and over for like 5 straight minutes.
Bingo.
Can I ride it in the rain? Not really. Can I wash it like a normal bike? Definitely not. Does it make the bike heavier? Don’t care.
It’s different, which to me, means it’s good.
Like so fucking good. Just look at it, it’s like watching a plane crash. You can’t take your eyes off it.
Thanks for reading about my stupid bike. If you take away anything, I hope it’s something that spurs you to try something different. Even if it’s absolutely idiotic and everyone says it’s a dumb idea. Resist the sameness and try to embrace the chaos.