As it turns out, actually learning to build bikes isn’t that simple. For a start you need the right teacher. After a long search Mike found his Sensei in Mike Flanigan of Ant Bicycles, one of the original founders of Independent Fabrication. The one-on-one full-time tuition they discussed was still untrialled, and Mike moved from Pittsburgh to Boston to build bikes nonstop for two months. “I’d build ’em, ride ’em and then break ’em,” he says, to study the welds. The price tag for the teaching alone was $30,000. So was it a dilemma to invest that much money? “Yes it was, but at the age of 54, 55 … you have to give it a go. You have to follow your dream, no matter what it might cost.” Mike set up his workshop in Pittsburgh, equipping it with vintage hardware, including a World War II Nichols Mill (“I think they just work better. I like the way they feel”). After a little practice he began turning out bikes. It wasn’t long before Mike began to attract high praise, most notably from Keith Bontrager who described a Maestro-build as his “favourite handmade bicycle on the market”. But then something unexpected happened. It started with a visitor, Vince Eberie from Austin, Texas, who had been visiting the Bike Heaven museum just down the road from Mike’s workshop. Vincent’s dwarfism made it impossible to find a bike with geometry that suited him. He was inspired by one he saw in the museum, when somebody there mentioned Mike’s name. He wanted a single speed like his friends, so Mike built him one with 24-inch wheels. 56
“It was great, to see the smile on his face. And to get the email saying, ‘Hey, I put on 35 miles the other day … I never could do that in my life’, is really cool.” But it was Mike’s next special project that caught all the news. Ukrainian-born Pittsburgher Mike Trimble has no arms, a birth-defect caused by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Adopted by a US couple when he was seven, Mike graduated with a degree in Political Science and now lives independently, but had never been able to ride a bike. He had a bike, a cruiser, which a sports teacher had adapted for him but wasn’t right. Despite approaching a number of other bike shops and builders he had been turned away again and again. And then he found the Maestro. Where so many others had been nervous, Mike didn’t think twice. In the end, instead of building him a bike, Mike decided the best solution would be to modify Trimble’s existing one. “My philosophy was ‘let’s give it a go’. The whole idea was to get him on a bike and see how it went, and after that work on improvements. And that’s kind of what the new bike’s going to be. The improvements.” The new bike that Mike is only now building from scratch will include an eight-speed internal hub and a coaster brake. A friend of his, also an engineer, is working out a way Trimble can gear shift with his stump.
