dylannord - Tumblr blog

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Rapha Rides Recon: On the road between Los Angeles and Ojai. 

Strava: Day 1, Day 2.

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The LA Hiking Team in Machines for Freedom. 

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At the Toyota Long Beach Grand Prix

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Car Show

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Santa Monica Saturday with Daniel and Zach. 

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Sunday in LA. 

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A trip through Big Tujunga Canyon

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city halls

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The primordial glow that is Northern California on a moist morning. 

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Mt. Evans, Colorado

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I used to laugh at those dude who wore gilets in Los Angeles.

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Daylight savings, daylight spendings. 

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Surf, skid, and skip school kids… the Specialized Turbo S is quite possibly the most fun I’ve had on a bicycle. 

The pedal assist motor brings you up to an effortless 28MPH, keeps going for about 40 miles in the city, a set of 700x45mm Armadillo tires absolutely demolish, and the Shimano XT disc brakes stop on a dime. That’s a lot of smiles. 

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The Allez Sprint and Robinson R44 helicopter. Whoever said getting there is half the fun was a pessimist.

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Reunited! I spent a few lovely days in Maine rusticating and riding with Dylan. Since Dylan moved to California a few years ago I have spent a lot of time riding alone, so it’s always nice to be back on my favorite wheel, even if that wheel wants to ride down some train tracks. 

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Forward Cycling is consuming sport. It captures a lot of passionate people. I think that’s why there are so many long and involved personal histories with the sport. And while seasons can be marked by fitness, races, injuries, travel, and other events, the real chapters of our cycling histories are the bikes we ride. And on any new bike day, it makes sense to take a step back and re-read the previous chapters of our own history. If nothing else, it helps us appreciate the machines that have come before and the miles we spent on them.  As you might have guessed these photos are of my new bike. The words below are the chapters that have come before.  Chapter 1 In 2009, I bought this bike for $75 from a dusty garage in New Jersey. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I loved riding and wanted to do it all the time. I was working at Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, NY and going to college 17.3 miles away. I would ride to and from work every day and on the way home, I’d fill my bottles with our Ommegang Witte beer to have a head start on my buzz by the time I got home.

In the summer, I moved to New York and used this bike to work as a messenger. The cool messengers had fixies and u-locks, the old timers had these mountain bikes wrapped in vinyl tape, and I had this 1987 steel road bike and a 15lbs Fahgettaboudit chain. That summer, I rode down every street and avenue of the greatest city on earth and got fitter than I’ve ever been. I earned very little money. It was perfect. 

Chapter 2 After that summer, I had it bad. I went back upstate for my senior year of college. I quit drinking and directed the seemingly endless energy I used to spend partying towards the bike. I sold my steel road bike for $400 and bought my first carbon bike for $1,200. 

I found out a local team that would let me train and race with them. I learned how to paceline, attack, sprint, and a lot of what not to do. Later I discovered my school’s cross country coach was a professional triathlete in his spare time. I set on pestering with emails until he gave in and let me train with him. He taught me how to get faster. Chapter 3 I graduated college, moved to New York, started paying the cross-country coach, and joined a cycling team sponsored by Tumblr with my older brother, James. We raced 1-4 times a week together in New York for the first two seasons I was there. I saved up and got a brand new race bike. Continued racing, even moved up a few categories, and changed teams a few times.

Chapter 4 & Chapter 5 Racing in New York is unlike any other city I’ve lived in (SF and LA). Not only can you race up to 4 times a week, even morning training in the park can be a race if you’d like. It’s New York, people are competitive. I couldn’t get enough. As I was working to establish myself in the world professionally among uncertainty, I could turn to the certainty that came with my race performance and results. These chapters blend together and during this time, I broke two frames and got another stolen. But I replaced every frame with a new race bike. And each was lighter, faster, and fancier than the last. 

Chapter 6 My brother and I started Deux North, a way for us to share the experiences we loved so much–particularly riding new roads with our friends. I got my first Specialized bike and fell in love. The aptly named Tarmac is the best all around road bike ever made. For me, the Tarmac is also the best commuter, gravel grinder, and touring bike on the market. Chapter 7 I moved from New York to Oakland to San Francisco to Los Angeles in a little over a year, and while everything seemed in a constant state of change I could always look over at my Tarmac, now with di2 and disc brakes (yew!), and get that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Chapter 8 I am living in Los Angeles without a car. This means a lot of commuting. Now more than ever, I need a bike I could lock up and not worry about.  I decided to get a 1988 Specialized Stumpjumper to accompany my new Tarmac. One, because Specialized is all I ride, I love the product and the company. And because two, this bike and bikes like it were the first ones that I remember having that feeling. That visceral, instinctual craving when I was a boy. These mountain bikes represented everything you could ever want as a 12-year old–freedom, speed, adventure, air (air, how much air did I get!?), mud, and did I say air? They were bright and loud, and awesome. Still are.  So this is my childhood dream bike, a 1988 Specialized Stumpjumper, converted into my adult single speed dream city commuter bike. Welcome to my cycling story. Whooh boy. Afterword I used all these bikes to get to work, run errands, ride dirt and gravel, stay fit, race, show off, explore, and clear my head when I couldn’t sleep. My relation to each was visceral. It’s strange and maybe it’s the addict in me, but I can remember very clearly looking at each of these bikes and having an instantaneous craving to jump on and ride. I have that feeling still. I’ve owned 6 bikes since that $75 1987 road bike, and not once before now, did I own two at a time. It seemed to complicate the simple beauty of the bicycle as a tool. on instagram

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