The newsletter that arrived from PAUL COMPONENT the other day carried an interview with Todd of BLACKCAT BICYCLES.
It covers his work as a framebuilder, of course, but also his beloved Triton, the roads he usually rides, why he quit art school, and even his house in the mountains and his new workshop.
Even in the parts a little removed from bicycles themselves, you can see how much Todd enjoys making things, and it was such an interesting read that I'd like to share it here in translation.
It's the kind of interview that makes you more and more curious about Todd as a person the further you read.
7 Questions with Black Cat Bicycles
I've known Todd for a long time, and I've liked him ever since we first met.
He's also a member of the “NOR CAL CARTEL.” That's a group of extremely good bike framebuilders who are not only good at building frames but also very good at riding bikes.
Todd's paint is truly wonderful, and his framebuilding skills are beyond reproach.
At one “Meet Your Maker” event in the early 2010s, I walked past him and he was sitting on a bench.
I asked, “Are you OK?” and he answered, “My glaucoma's really bad.”
I was seriously worried for about two years after that, until at some point I realized that back then it was one of the fairly easy pretexts for getting a medical marijuana prescription (laughs).
He got me good.
Anyway, Todd is one of the most talented framebuilders I have ever met.
— Mr. Paul
1: How's the glaucoma coming along?
Todd: It's under control at the moment. That said, I'm not entirely exempt from the ordinary changes that happen to the eyes with age. And even so, it still makes you pretty anxious.
2: Tell us about your favorite motorcycle among the ones you own right now. Running or not, either is fine. Why is it special? How does it ride?
Todd: For me, I think my 1953 Triton will always be the favorite.
It's a very early Norton Dominator 88 Featherbed frame combined with the engine and gearbox from a 1959 Triumph Bonneville. The name “Triton” is a cross between the two brand names, too.
I brought it home as a work in progress when I went to New Zealand in 1999. Over the many years since, I've sunk all sorts of costs into it, the usual blood, sweat and tears, time and money.
This bike is descended from the Manx Norton, which I consider, beyond any doubt (laughs), the most beautiful, attractive and purposeful motorcycle ever made. (That's a hill I'll die on, though I think the Moto Guzzi Otto comes a close second.)
In its day, the design of this frame was truly revolutionary, and it became a benchmark for decades afterward.
Needless to say, for a 73-year-old motorcycle it goes pretty well.
I've updated the suspension and brakes, so those alone are a few decades newer. But the ride is still pretty raw. Nothing to help the rider, nothing to help the mechanic. No electronics. Nothing superfluous at all.
I sometimes ride with people on bikes about 70 years newer than mine, and my Triton can hold its own.
It'll go fast enough to kill you for sure, but it isn't so fast that it's boring at low speeds below the limit. Because I have no need for a bike that isn't any fun until it hits 100mph (about 160km/h).
As for why it's special to me: I make things and solve problems all day, every day. But the things I make for work ultimately pass into someone else's hands.
Of course, I get money in return, but this motorcycle is one giant collection of projects I've made, and I get to keep it, use it, tinker with it, take bits off it and, above all, learn from it.
It pushes my skills and my appetite for a challenge, and in doing so even raises my abilities in work and in life.
For me, it has been 25 years of mental training on two wheels, something that has broadened my skills. That value far exceeds its actual monetary worth of a few thousand dollars.
But to most people it's probably nothing special at all. Just a loud, smelly old motorcycle that leaks oil everywhere.
3: What's your favorite regular weekday ride?
Todd: Actually, I've only just started riding a road bike again.
For about eight months I was more or less forced off the bike by tendinitis from overuse. It may have been from riding a rigid mountain bike in Chico on your birthday, or it may not.
You may be hearing from my lawyer (laughs).
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to being able to ride again.
As for a favorite ride, I've never been able to settle on one for any length of time.
Fortunately, Santa Cruz has lots of old, narrow, not-very-well-kept roads up in the mountains, like old logging roads that got paved. You can link them up into an endless variety of routes.
Some routes have places to swim in summer, and between mud season and dust season there are days when you can enjoy incredibly steep trails. You can also ride through quiet forest and watch the light change.
Basically, though, it's always uphill.
Apart from housing and strawberry fields, there isn't much flat, open ground in this area. And my house is on top of a hill, too, so wherever I go there's a climb of about 1,000 feet (about 300m) waiting at the end.
Get on a road bike from my home and workshop and you can ride all day without meeting a single traffic light.
On a mountain bike you can even ride without your tires touching pavement once.
It's hard to pick just one.
4: Do you prefer riding motorcycles these days? For you, what's similar and what's different about motorcycles and bicycles?
Todd: No, they're completely different things.
On a motorcycle you don't get the meditative mental release you feel when you're pedaling a bicycle.
Every time I've been away from bicycles for a few years, I've felt that difference keenly.
I don't have the knowledge to explain what it is that connects the two in an existential sense, but with so many people enjoying both, there must be something.
Maybe it's because both are experiences that involve the physical senses, in a modern world where everything tends to become a disconnected experience.
Building your own motorcycle or bicycle is a very long process of piling up one task after another with intention.
And then when you take it out on the road and ride it, as much physical sensation and stimulation as you can cram into a day comes rushing at you all at once.
…That came out sounding terribly overthought and pretentious, didn't it (laughs).
I don't know…
They may be alike in that with both you're trying to keep your balance and not fall over while your mind is in a “flow state,” but for me the two don't actually overlap all that much.
I mean, wearing leather pants to ride a bicycle is really weird. But as the number one reason to ride a motorcycle, that's the undisputed one.
5: I have to ask. Did you go to art school? Your “dropout” is one of the most famous names in the bike industry.
Todd: Ha ha, thank you.
I did in fact try to study art at college. But it didn't last long. At the time, far more than I needed to take another drawing class, I needed to get completely away from my childhood and the environment I grew up in.
I had scholarships and grants, too, but even so I needed to put that first.
I moved to Oakland with a friend, thinking I'd go to CCAC (California College of Arts and Crafts).
Or else I was thinking of working at a particular fine art print shop in San Francisco. I was interested in silkscreen printing, in other words serigraphy. But once I got to Oakland, the financial reality of attending CCAC came into view.
And I happened to get to know a woman who worked at the very print shop I wanted to work at, and she said, “This place is the worst, and the boss is a jerk.” Whether that was true, I don't know (laughs).
So my dreams of being an artist were pretty much dashed, but moving to the Bay Area (around San Francisco Bay) put me in what was the center of the culture at the time, and let me see a whole new world that lay beyond the environment I grew up in.
That was worth far more to me.
Honestly, I don't know what I would have gained from getting a degree in silkscreen or silversmithing.
In the end I picked up all sorts of things on my own.
So the name “Art School Dropout” describes my background pretty much as it is.
Well, it's your typical, slightly heartwarming coming-of-age story. Just with a bit more bike shop work thrown in.
6: How many full-suspension frames have you built so far? They're very impressive bikes. How long does it take to build one? About how many do you plan to build from here on?
Todd: Only three so far. But I think I'll end up building about two more.
Thank you. Those are without question a challenge in design and problem solving.
I built the first one because riding a bike I hadn't made myself didn't feel quite right to me.
And its design came about naturally from how to solve the problems using the tools I had on hand.
I design them using the skills I've acquired over the years, with the Grand Prix motorcycles of the 1950s and '60s as a filter.
If I 3D-printed all the little parts it would be far easier, and I could also get the kind of “better result” that today's bike industry values.
But that's not what I'm after.
And I'm not so full of myself as to try to compete with modern manufacturing technology like that.
Making every part on manual machine tools is far harder.
And the designs and finishes that result include plenty of things that no modern manufacturing process, in its right mind, would ever produce.
But riding something a little out of the ordinary is far more fun than riding a run-of-the-mill bike from a big brand.
That's all there is to it.
As for how long it takes… I don't want to think about it (insert a hysterically crying emoji here, ha).
Every one so far has been built from scratch, so each has taken a vast amount of time and money.
The number of people who will pay to have a one-of-a-kind full-suspension bike designed and built on manually operated machine tools is pretty limited.
So I don't expect to be building many in the future.
They're almost without fail fun, rewarding projects every time, but they badly disrupt the normal flow of production in the workshop, so keeping them going as regular business isn't very realistic.
It's obvious that I love a challenge and love making things, though, so who knows what will come along.
7: It can be a little off the subject of bicycles, but have you been doing any woodworking lately?
Todd: Nothing remotely at the level of woodworking you do (laughs). But about six years ago I bought some land up in the mountains.
It came with a house that needed repairs and land that needed work. I've been renovating both the house and the land ever since. So I'm doing quite a lot of woodworking.
Felling trees, running a chainsaw, rough framing, right through to finish carpentry; I'm trying my hand at all sorts of things.
Switching from a head used to precision metalwork to one that accepts the reality that “when you're fixing up an old house, there's no such thing as a 90-degree right angle” took a fair bit of struggle.
Last year I re-dug an old pond and laid a new liner.
It was pretty heavy labor and, honestly, a job with a few question marks on the safety front (laughs), but I'm rather pleased to have a frog pond in the backyard.
On top of that, the mud that had built up on the bottom of the old pond over decades did wonders for the tomatoes. Thanks to that, the tomato plants have become like trees.
I'm also getting ready to build a new shop now. I'm really looking forward to that. I've always wanted a barn-like building of my own to work in.
With luck, it'll happen before too long.
Right now everything is just scattered around a place like a shantytown crammed with half-rotten sheds, so having a real shop where I can bring all my scattered tools and hobby gear together under one roof would be a dream.
For someone who loves making things, it's a pretty fun life.
– Photo Credit： PAUL Component newsletter.
