September 5th, 2024
Hey hey, Summer from the bike shop here! Reporting back from the 2024 MADE bike show in Portland - a showcase of artisanal handmade bicycles, components and accessories.
I had a very inspiring trip to Portland to attend the Made bike show recently. It's hard to summarize such a stimulating weekend-long bike extravaganza of in one blog post, but some highlights from the show were:
A breathtaking custom bikepacking frame with integrated racks by Good Grief:
Many glossy, intricate paint jobs, creatively built frames and artistically customized components - like these customized Paul Component brakes by Tomii Cycles:
Playful touches like the animal head badges by Buendia Bicycles:
Getting to meet Ronnie of Ultraromance IRL:
Chatting with the good folks of Velo Orange, and watching an inspiring documentary called Camera Corner by The Radavist, about the birth of mountain biking, as documented by photographer and rider Wende Cragg (a must-see!)
But most of all, I was inspired by the bikes I got to ogle in the bike valet area outside the show that were ridden in by the attendees. As beautiful as an unscathed, freshly built bike is, the bikes we love the most are the ones that are ridden often, patina and all; fine tuned, adjusted, customized and worn in according to the lifestyle of each rider.
Riding in with my new Susie Longbolts Rivendell bike and spotting at least half a dozen fellow Rivs parked around the show was a particularly fun experience! Lots of yellow and green ones, oddly!
My Susie!
Peep Blue Lug in the background of this Platypus photo, making their own much more thorough parking area bike check video (spot me and Quinn in the background around the 43:00 mark!) ...I wish I showed them Susie up close!
Overall, I felt in very good company to be surrounded by a community of people who were passionate about artistic expression and elegant functionality of well-made, durable, pedal-powered bicycles, and am feeling as eager as ever to work on more customized builds for Seattle riders on vintage or tomorrow’s-vintage frames (relatedly, we are a Rivendell dealer now and have some test ride Rivs set up for anyone interested in checking them out!)
Oh and of course, a trip to Portland would be incomplete without a ride through Forest Park with Quinn!