My day job for the past decade or so has been working as a mechanic and service manager in various bike shops around the country, including Portland OR, New York City NY, Baltimore MD, and Anchorage AK. I think that one thing that sets my framebuilding work apart from many others in this field is my background in the world of repairs and maintenance. To me, repair and design are two parts of the same thing, two aspects of the same process. Many framebuilders come from either an artistic or fabrication background, both of which provide a great set of principles to draw from in the process of putting a bicycle frameset together both conceptually and physically. To my eye, hand, and brain, the frame and fork are components that only really exist in unison with the rest of the components of the bike. I like to know exactly what set of parts are going on the bike, I like to have the actual wheels that are going onto the bike to check tire clearance and alignment, and I don’t really care what color it will be. I want to work to relevant tolerances, not chase the endless spiral of alignment and clearance perfection. I want my production methods to be efficient, repeatable, and adaptable. I want to stay in touch with industry productions trends and “standards” and exist in a relevant sphere of compatibility (for customers more than for myself). I want my bikes to solve a problem. Repair and design are just two different ways to solve problems.

“Akratic Cycles” is a reference to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, specifically akrasia, which he takes to mean a sort of weakness that prevents a person from acting according to what they hold to be best principles. I take akrasia not as a weakness, but simply as the tendency (no moral weight) to act against one's own best principles. There is a strength, an admirable and wholly human strength in that tendency. In fact, if you were looking for a really succinct definition of the purest form of courage, you could do worse than "to act against your own best principles." In the political climate that we are currently cursed to inhabit, I feel that it is critical to note that akrasia is the tendency to act against best principles, not the act of doing so. I will not blame a Trump voter for wanting to vote for Trump. I do blame them for actually doing so. It seems that in many cases, they actually thought that they were acting in their own interests, and thus were not in fact acting against the principles that they held to be best.

While I am not exactly accepting orders at this time, if you have an idea about something you'd like for me to make, get in touch with me and we can chat about it.