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When I was a kid my dad used to go and pick up an old frame at the local tip
he would clean it up
fit up some pretty bullit proof wheels and tyres
mount up these big chrome motorcycle style bars
with hand grips that used to have tassles on them
they were all single speed bikes because he was a tight old sod
and he wasn't going to cough up for fancy schmancy stuff like gears
I loved the bikes my dad built
I went everywhere on my bikes
and as I grew
he would just build me another one
time moved on
and in the early eighties I became a courier in London
and I got bang into riding hard and fast in the traffic
I did that for seven years and I loved every bloody minute of it
I lived in a squat and got involved with Moving Target
through MT I blagged a Chas Roberts hybrid
straight from the man himself
A bike that I would continue to ride for another fifteen years
each time it got wore out I just rebuilt it
over the years the wheels got skinner and the gears fell off
then one day I was thinking about fitting some bullhorn bars
and I surfed onto velospace http://velospace.org/node
they had all these bikes that looked like the bikes my dad built
(without the tassles)
within an hour I had found hubjub http://www.hubjub.co.uk/
and within a week I had all the parts on order
that was the spring 2006
I had never seen anyone riding a fixed in Paris before then
I love riding my fixed
But even more
I like building'em
Now I know why my Dad built my bikes
rather than just gone out and bought my bikes
there is something really satisfying about building bikes