Welcome to Hook and Spoke, my own attempt to share my largely mundane life. My apologies for the pretentious name, but it sounds better than Rob’s Blog About Bikes, and Fishing, and Woodworking, and Maybe Other Stuff Too.Wordpress.com. This blog will serve multiple purposes. I want to chronicle my adventures as a novice fly fisherman, an experienced (albeit fat) cyclist, and a part time woodworker. I also want to use this as an excuse to write, as I haven’t done much since school and it is not entirely joyless. Thirdly, I hope to keep a reasonably consistent writing schedule; an ongoing effort in my adult life to discipline myself. This first post is as much a mission statement to potential readers, as it is to myself. Hopefully, by announcing my goals, I will provide enough of an outline to keep my attentions focused and my writing diligent.
To give a bit of background, I spent most of my childhood outside. Sure I watched a lot of TV, and like most of my peers who came of age in the late 90s, once the internet became available I gorged myself; but nothing was better than hopping on my bike and riding to the pond down the street. Back in these days I was obsessed with ultralight spin fishing. 4lb test and a 6ft rod were my tools. Rubber worms and topwater lures dominated my tackle box, and if I could convince my dad to load up the canoe in the truck, life was pretty perfect.
It was also around this time that I saved (largely in thanks to my grandmother) enough money to buy my first real mountain bike, a Trek 6000. On the lower end, for sure, but to me it was perfect. It was a sub 30lb bike with an elastomer suspension fork, v-brakes and 24 gears. I couldn’t be happier. Despite not yet having my license, there were miles of single track available to me within riding distance of my house and I took advantage of it. My love of cycling was born.
Bracketing all of this, was the woodshop. My father was a woodworker by profession, both in teaching and practice. Many evenings and weekends were spent on the outfeed of the table saw as we ripped sheets of plywood destined for cabinets. As I grew older, I would accompany him on jobs. Bathroom remodels and cabinet installs were the norm and I took every opportunity to watch, learn and later participate.
On slow nights, I could often be found puttering around the shop like an old retired guy: sharpening my knives and starter chisels, maybe doing some carving, but mostly stoking the wood stove and dreaming. While there are few pieces I ever built in my childhood that I was ever truly proud of, or kept around, just being near the tools, watching how my dad used them and absorbing everything I could gave me a knowledge I didn’t truly understand until later. I was an apprentice without knowing it.
Cut to college, living in Boston I was surrounded by pavement. I had fallen out of cycling at first, opting instead for a brief foray into skateboarding; a failed venture I might add. Fishing was left for summers back at home, although even then my time was more often spent chasing girls and drinking beer. And finally, I did almost no woodworking except for one summer spent remodeling homes and doing some finish carpentry.
Finally, after a couple years, I grew tired of relying on public transportation, and brought an old Batavus road bike up to Boston to commute to co-op job I had landed in Cambridge. While the bike was beautiful, a real race bike in its prime, it was showing its age and within a few months of commuting I had killed it. I forget exactly what happened, but I think I destroyed the rear wheel somehow. I remember looking around at all these messengers riding fixed gear bikes and thinking it looked like great fun. On top of being simple, with no gears to worry about, it was also one of the cheapest options for me to get my bike back up and running. This was where I began diving into the world of building bikes. Getting a new rear wheel with a fixed/free hub was just the start. I decided I wanted to go all in. Remember before I said this would be the cheapest option…..no. I stripped my frame completely, filed off any cable stops and painted it flat black. I rebuilt every part, repacking the loose ball bearings in the bottom bracket, front hub and headset. I took off the redundant front chain ring and finally installed the new wheel. In true hack fixed gear style, I also chopped and flipped my drop handle bars and turned them into bullhorns.
This bike was a mess, I had a 700c rear wheel, a 27″ front wheel and my building skills were not what they are now. You know what though? It flew. Honestly I think I was faster on this than when it had gears. I hauled ass everywhere and it whooped my ass into shape. More importantly, it reignited my love of cycling. Riding in the city was like mountain biking on pavement. You had hard starts and stops, bursts of acceleration to leave you wheezing from the cigarettes smoked the night before. Dodging cars and pedestrians like trees in the forest, the risks far more severe, the rewards….amazing to no one but yourself as you just raced that #39 bus down huntington and beat it.
This brings me to now, almost 10 years out of college and no longer in the city. Between that first fixed gear I built and now, I have built and ridden countless steeds, some road, some mountain, nearly all fixed gear or at least single speed. I love the simplicity, the weight reduction and the reliability. Once I graduated and had more time to ride and a little more scratch, I built some mountain bikes and started riding off road again. Half of my bikes were cobbled together from old and less than desirable parts but I made them work, and work well. Then I met my wife-to-be, a non-rider, despite my best attempts. As I spent more time with her my riding diminished, but at least I was still commuting by bike so I was still clocking in more than 70 miles a week. By my late 20s however, we had moved out of the city, far from my job and I joined the restof the shmucks on rt 95 spending almost 2 hours out of every day sitting in my car. I still ride, though far more infrequently. I’m fat and out of shape, but I have recently started riding pretty hard again and I’m working to get back in shape to maybe even start racing. I’m sure by that time I’ll be with the old men.
I have, in recent years, relapsed into my old drug of choice. The tug. At some point while I was in college, my dad started fly fishing and he never really looked back at the old spin rod. After a few years of watching from the sidelines and playing with his outfit, I took my first hit. I started fishing some local ponds with a hand me down setup given to me by my dad and I was intrigued, but one seemingly harmless September day three years ago changed everything. I was introduced to the salt. With a borrowed rod and kayak, my dad and I launched off the south Cape and we hunted albies (I really had no idea what this was at the time), bluefish and stripers. We didn’t find any albies or stripers that day, but I hooked up with a bluefish and had the fight of my life. I had caught them before on my surf rod, but the fly rod was a different beast all together! It was bent over double and the drag was screaming as I struggled to understand how to properly fight it with tools that seemed so…flimsy. Needless to say, my life changed. I came home from that trip knowing I needed an outfit of my own. After almost another year of saving, I picked up a used 9wt rod and reel from the Bears Den in Taunton, MA as well as the other odds and ends I needed.
That was two years ago now. I spent that first year struggling. I didn’t catch a thing. Luckily, most of the other guys I knew who were fly fishing weren’t catching much either, but I hadn’t even had a sniff. It was a frustrating, but educational year. I spent the winter reading, learning to tie better flies and scouting new locations. On a warm May evening in 2016, I caught my first striper. A respectable schoolie, he clocked in around 16 inches. This was the final nail in my coffin. I spent every hour I could manage standing in water or out on my kayak (another sign of my addiction) throwing flies.
Its now late in the evening, and I have written so much more than ever imaged I would for a simple introductory post. I’ll finish by saying that in recent years I have also immersed myself back into the world of woodworking. Through my wife, a chair caner by trade, I was introduced to the world of chair and furniture repair. I now work part time at The Caning Shoppe in Somerville, MA, doing anything that is required of me. I took the summer off, it cut into my fishing too much, but now that it is getting colder I have rejoined the crew for the winter. Unfortunately, this is most of the larger scale woodworking I can manage, living in a small apartment has its disadvantages. I do however carve quite often, mostly creating wooden spoons, bowls and wood spirits.
That’s it. If you made it through that post, congratulations. I never expected to write that much but there it is. I meant to begin this blog much earlier in the summer to give a place to better document my first successful year of fly fishing, both from shore and kayak. Seeing that it is now November and I’m just starting it now, I foresee many posts related to fly tying. I also tend to do most of my biking in the winter when it is nice and cold, and I have, as I stated before, begun working at the shop again so I will have some good content from both of these sources coming up.
Keep your lines tight, your wheels true, and your edges sharp.
Hook & Spoke 