I shall call her “Avocado”

It started out as a winter project. How was I ever to learn how to build a bike if I didn’t just build one myself? I had the privilege of watching my boyfriend build his own bike the winter before, and once I saw the finished product, I knew it was something I had to try. This was no small feat for a first timer. There were many many nights of procrastination simply because I was intimidated by what was ahead of me ( ahem…see wheel-building post). What if I failed at building this and I just had a lonely frame set sitting in my apartment collecting dust? (I could have easily seen that happen) While I understand bicycles to be simple machines relatively, I also understand that this is mostly new territory for me. My commuter bike is a single speed and the only other work I had ever done on bikes up until this point was changing flats and replacing brake cables and housing. So, to that nagging trepidation talking, I said “scare schmared, let’s build this baby.”

Anyways, here is the story via a photo gallery and captions of the project almost entirely step-by-step (I left out one of the more difficult pieces of the process which is derailleur adjusting –woopsies–but I will say that I needed some help in the finer tuning step because I just couldn’t get the shifting to stop skipping a cog…I learned so much for this minor bump in the road).

I really can’t take all the credit for building this bike. It took a ton of instruction, guidance and encouragement from my boyfriend. I couldn’t have done this without him. For that, I say “Thank you, Andrew! You’re a great teacher! <3” I also have to thank my amazing father for adding his signature to this bike. He custom painted the front fork and did a breathtaking job to boot. I want everyone to know how talented he is. “I love you Papa!”