Bicycles
Over the past seven years, I have built bicycle frames for friends, strangers, and dreamers from as far away as Australia and the United States. Each one has its own quirks, its own small battles of alignment and material, but nothing ever quite prepares me for the moment when a customer—someone I may never meet—receives a frame I have shaped with my own hands. That sudden spark of joy, the knowledge that something I’ve made will carry them on their own adventures, still catches me off guard.
It’s been nearly eighteen years since I first picked up a wrench in a bicycle shop. The time has slipped past with the quiet inevitability of a changing tide, and with it, the industry has shifted. Mountain bikes, road bikes, touring rigs—what was once simple has grown tangled in its own progress. They call it "gravel" now, as if the act of riding rough tracks needed a new name. And yet, somewhere beneath the marketing, the soul of it remains the same.
I have worked in shops where I was expected to sell carbon fiber dreams to people who needed something else entirely. It never sat right with me—convincing someone that an expensive upgrade could replace a proper fit or genuine comfort. I didn’t last long in those places.
Truth be told, I’ve had shops of my own over the years. Some flourished; others faded away like so many half-remembered roads. I once tried a cycling café, believing in the romance of strong coffee and steel frames, but I made the mistake of opening it in a town where riders measured worth in watts rather than the pleasure of a long, slow ride. It wasn’t the first lesson I learned the hard way, and it won’t be the last.
But bicycles—bicycles have always been the constant. Whether new or secondhand, precision-built or pieced together from salvaged parts, each one is a machine of possibility. I never expected to make much money from building frames, and I was right. If I had the means, I would probably give them away. The real reward is in seeing a rider light up at the sight of their new machine, knowing it will carry them beyond the edge of the map, even if that’s just the morning commute.
Cycling has never truly been about the fastest bike, the lightest frame, or the smoothest tarmac. It is about escape, about the stories written in dust and rain, in punctured tubes and borrowed tools, in the quiet satisfaction of pedaling into the unknown. The so-called alt-cycling scene is proof that adventure isn’t confined to race courses or Strava leaderboards. It’s found on forgotten tracks, down city streets before dawn, and in the weight of a well-packed frame bag before the start of a weekend ride.
At House Blend Cycles, it doesn’t matter what you ride, how far you go, or whether your journey has a destination at all. What matters is that you ride. Whether you’re rolling on a vintage steel frame, a gravel-streaked workhorse, or a machine held together with hope and spare parts, you’ll find the door open here. Every bicycle carries a story, and every rider deserves a place where they belong. Because in the end, it has never been about the bike. It has always been about the ride.
