The North American Handbuilt
Bike Show, or NAHBS, is happening this weekend in Denver. Bike nerds rejoice! This means 3 days of the most beautiful,
innovative, creative, wild, wacky, and irresponsible use of bike building
skills and materials in North America.
Everything from the most functional Di2 equipped mountain bikes to
completely functionless but still lovely in every way works of a custom
builders’ imagination. This is the
beauty of NAHBS. Everything wins. It’s a mega-art gallery of epic
proportions. Every weird idea that these
weirdo bike builders (trust me, they’d appreciate being called weirdos) could
drum up in their caffeine and booze-addled minds was then formed, cut, welded,
and painted and will be on full display this weekend. There will be a cornucopia of innovative
bikes and ideas, using the newest-to-market standards and components, prototype
parts, etc. There will also be the full
onslaught of classic lugged steel road bikes, commuters, track bikes, fat
bikes, and hopefully a tricycle or two to feast on. Frame-building materials will span the entire
spectrum of various types of steel, aluminum, carbon, titanium, magnesium,
wood, bamboo, etc. etc.
I’ve been to NAHBS twice, and
been completely blown away and overwhelmed twice. I don’t expect this year to be any
different. In fact, given the high
concentration of custom bike builders on the Front Range, and in other parts of
the west, I expect this year to be the biggest yet. I think mountain bikes and fat bikes will
dominate the spectrum. And not to brag,
but just to boast, it will be pretty cool to have a frame-builder there who is
in the process of building me a bike!
I wish I could spend a couple
of days immersed in this ocean of bikes, only coming up for a breath of fresh
beer before diving back in. But, as life
dictates, NAHBS will be sandwiched in between work, so Saturday is my day to
get wet. It’s Friday. That means beer. Cheers.
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