Cyclokairos

The most regretful people on Earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

Mary Oliver

What do I create? In a previous life, I worked as a medicinal chemist in the field of drug discovery, trying to design and make new drugs. Established chemical reactions may have been the bread and butter of the process, but creativity was vital in how they were used to carve out a unique space in a well trodden landscape. There was the satisfaction to just create, to actually make something with my own hands, but I never actually saw what I produced. It being there confirmed by not seeing it but rather the right peaks in some form of analytical technique confirming its presence. Nowadays, I teach teenagers chemistry. Moulding minds, or preferably helping the child mould their own mind, I guess is some form of creation; and the way this is done can be achieved creatively, although to diverge on a pedagogical tack, there’s much to be said for direct instruction.

Where I feel most creative, and generate the greatest joy and fulfilment in being creative, or at least attempting to be so, lies outside of work. Although is this satisfaction simply a case of it not being work; and if I were to turn a hobby into work, would it be a fast track to dissatisfaction? Well, a bonus (the cynic in me me cries, “The only bonus!”) of being a teacher is significant holiday time to dedicate to hobbies. Gardening takes up a lot of that time, and is there any more a greater act of creation than to produce a living thing? To then place those plants creatively, and if the light is right, a chance to taste the sublime.

Not to say what I create is Chelsea-Gold-Medal-Winner standard, but the contentment of creation is there. For crying out loud Chris, I come here for bike stuff and you foist gardening on us. You know there’s better places to read that stuff. As a matter of fact, your bike stuff is nowt special either, but you know, preferable to plants. Bikes then, that other avenue of creation. There’s one in gestation – The Green Bike.

A Harry Hall frame in British Racing Green, that will be a stab at a Rough Stuff Fellowship bike of a bygone era (that is, completely unsuited for off-road). Harry Hall ran a shop in Manchester; it’s still there, but not in its original location and I think I’m right in saying they don’t make their own frames. In fact, when they did, it wasn’t Harry Hall that made them; there was an in-house builder – Roger Kowalski – and work was also outsourced to the likes of the builders at Bob Jackson in Leeds. It was as a mechanic that Harry Hall cemented his reputation, providing a free neutral race service at UK events and serving as a team mechanic for the national team at international races (he was at the infamous 1967 Tour de France where Tom Simpson died on the slopes of Mount Ventoux).

I’m unsure of the provenance of this frame. I bought it on eBay, where it was advertised as a cyclocross / tourer. The 130 mm rear spacing suggests early 90s in terms of age, but perhaps it’s older and been cold set? It has the features for cyclocross / touring: cantilever brakes, braze ons for mudguards and a rear rack, and the clearance is decent (eyeing it up, I think 700 x 35 mm tyres will fit, in the absence of mudguards). Features that also tick the Cyclokairos box, especially so when adorning skinny lugged Reynolds 531 tubes and a threaded 1” fork.

The frameset came with a Tange headset and Shimano cable stop for the front brake, and there’s conveniences such as a pump peg and chain pip.

If I’m true to my usual speed of bike building (see the labours of The Blue Bike build at my former blog), tune in sometime in 2025 to see The Green Bike completed.