The ninth best NAHBS post on the internet.


Having already nabbed the most prestigious honor available, I’m ok with getting the slightly less honorable spot of ninth. I mean, after all, this post is less about what happened at the show, or more about what happened afterwords.

So, when last we were together I covered all of the ins and outs of the show (as far as I could see, which wasn’t very, as in the time since the circus left town, I saw all kinds of bad ass stuff, most notably this Allience Bicycles Homegrown tribute that I missed entirely and was turned on to after the fact by Ideal Metals);


I don’t know how I missed that, but I’m sad that I did.

Anyway, so the show was over, I’d hauled ass back to the hotel to finish up my final two SOPWAMTOS awards (Robert came up with five, and I came up with five, along with a couple of special prizes for special people.) I went to dinner with my Shimano compatriots, but had to dip out after slamming a cocktail in order to get to the bar in time to get things rounded out before the doors opened;

The crowd was already beginning to swell, all of which I bypassed with both middle fingers in the air because when you’re the host, that’s how you’re supposed to enter.

Once the doors opened, the bar quickly filed to maximum capacity, and when it did, we began with the featured entertainment, as well as killing $800 dollars worth of tall cans with quickness;






















As near as I can remember, the winners of the various awards were as follows-

Most likely To Be an Actual Dirt Wizard– Greg Williams of Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship.

The Don AwardDon Ferris.

Shock And AweDear Susan.

Nice Rack AwardPass And Stow.

The LD (Long Distance)Triton Bikes.

If We Told You, We’d Have To Kill YouArgonaut Cycles.

Belts Are For PantsGates Corp.

Paint HuffersSquid.

Don’t Eat The Brown AcidDear Susan.

Art School DropoutsBlack Magic Paint.

If I was super on my game I would have images that correlate with just why who won, did, but being that this is the ninth best whatever it is, you get what you get.

Finally, it was getting late, and I had to get up early-ish the next morning and bang out 50 miles with my squad, and whoever else felt like showing up, so that’s what I did.

After prying at least one of my eyes open a few hours later, I took on some food, and was out the door in my stretchiest of stretchy pants on a gravel rip that looked something like this;










Somewhere along the way, I seem to have lost the ability to take ride photos that didn’t suck, but thankfully homie Air Wrecka is pretty on the ball, and knocked out some real nice ones.

True to Shimano’s clockwork like precision, once we were done with the ride, we skipped back to our hotel, got cleaned up and enjoyed a final meal together;




And showed off our tan lines;


Before you could say “before you could say”, yet another trip with my SGA compatriots had come to an end, but not before we got clued in on plans for a whole new season that’s yet to be fully revealed.

I know I’ve said it before, and I’m positive that I’ll say it again, but I feel blessed beyond desciption that they included me to begin with, let alone kept me around this long. The entire experience from the top to the bottom has been absolutely life changing, and for that I cannot offer thanks enough.

Having said that, I hope you’ve enjoyed the conclusion of this award winning e-journalistic endeavor detailing all the stuff I barely remembered about the weekend surrounding the 2019 North American Hand Built Bicycle Shindig.

It took some doing, but I think we handled our biz.

It’s not easy maintaining the spot of eighth loser. I just have the gift to make it look that way.

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2 Responses to “The ninth best NAHBS post on the internet.”

  1. kiko March 22, 2019 at 5:14 am #

    .
    kinda surprising, and so happy for it, that not a single person was giving the bird, flipping the camera off. never really quite understood that… unfulfilling childhoods maybe? refreshing nevertheless…
    .

  2. Choid March 22, 2019 at 7:44 pm #

    RIP JAKE PHELPS