2006.
In a corner of Nagoya, a strange tour began.
The band's name was Circles.
They've put out no records.
They have no hit songs.
To begin with, they barely even own any instruments.
But the tour, at least, went on.
Oregon
California
Massachusetts
Colorado
Utah
Tokyo
Aichi
Osaka
Taiwan
Canada
Denmark
Everywhere they went, they met some pretty unusual characters, too.
DeSalvo
Hunter
SyCip
Retrotec
BIKE FRIDAY
BREADWINNER
NITTO
Chris King
PAUL
MKS
Bassi
OMNIUM
One who builds frames
One who machines parts
One who keeps on building wheels
One who sews bag after bag
One who just makes strangely cool things
Sometimes working together
Sometimes drinking by the bucketload
Sometimes going across the sea to see them
It's not as if anyone ever called it a “tour,”
it's just that, looking back, that's what it looked like.
2006 to 2026.
We thought we'd simply been in the same place for 20 years,
but lined up across the back, it does feel as if we've come quite a long way.
So 20 years is nothing more than time, and we didn't want to turn it into something like a monument.
Still less write “20th Anniversary” large in gold letters; that would be a bit embarrassing, and something about it isn't right.
What we wanted was something like a tour T of uncertain origin, bought long ago somewhere in America.
The kind you pull out from the back of the closet after a long time and go, “What band was this again?”
So, of course, we asked TACOMA FUJI RECORDS.
A man who has made all sorts of things, with a face that says they really existed.
For the design it had to be, of course, Kantoku.
Someone who has been close to us for a long time and knows bikes, mountains, the city, and the troublesome people around them, very well indeed.
Because if we asked these two, it surely wouldn't turn out to be a proper, respectable commemorative item.
And that expectation, you see, was right on the mark.
Cycle to Odyssey.
Beneath it are lined up the characters we've met along the road over 20 years, the places, and the dates we met.
Friends along the way.
That probably describes these 20 years most accurately.
Rather than having kept a shop going,
we went off to hang out with all sorts of people, and somehow 20 years had gone by.
Maybe that's what it's like.
2006–2026.
No final show announced.
