Phil Delio asked me to construct a bike around an S-Works single speed mountainbike frame set

We wanted to give it some gears, so I popped an Alfine 11 speed hub into the Roval rear wheel.

I love the sleek look of the bike from the rear; it kinda reminds me of one of my favorite motorcycles, the Ducati 916.

I recently strung some hoops for my pal, Marck Aguilar. We opted for reliability with a lively nature; the result? Velocity A23 rims laced 3 cross on Shimano Ultegra hubs

I really like using A23′s for their light weight and width, which is, you guessed it, is 23mm

We opted for DT Revolution spokes for the front wheel and Competition for the rear

Some people think Shimano hubs are boring; if reliable, relatively inexpensive and easily adjustable are boring, then I completely agree

JONES THE WHEELMAN TO HAVE FOR SERIOUS CYCLISTS

By Mike Takeuchi, Lifestyle Sports, Santa Barbara News Press, Friday, October 21, 2011

I still think about the one that got away. But my “lost love” wasn’t a person, it was a pair of blue anodized Mavic Open 4 rimmed Dura Ace-hubbed and double-butted spoked wheels built by master wheel builder John Jones.  The buyer insisted I include them when I also regrettably sold my 1995 Trek OCLV 5500—but that’s another story.  Oh, those wheels.

Over the last quarter-century, the soft-spoken Jones has honed his craft time while building over 2,000 custom bicycle wheels (sold at jonesprecisionwheels.com) for national and international champions as well as cyclists who simply want something better to ride on.  In addition to wrenching at local bike shops he has been team mechanic on the circuits of both the road and international mountain bike racing circuit.

This year, the 53-year-old worked as a wrench with Team Garmin-Cervelo during May’s Tour de California.

The modest Jones has gained renown and reputation simply because of his love of working on bicycles, specifically wheel building.

“There are two ways to prove your skills as a bike mechanic, build a frame or build a wheel,” Jones said.  “I don’t have the talent to build a frame like (local frame builder) Aaron Stinner does, but I think I have managed to reach that point through what I have done.”

His eyes lit up when he explained his craft.

“It’s an act of creation,” Jones said.  “It’s like building a life where you have all these different components like marriage, kids, and job placed together in a state of tension and you need to try to make them run true under any circumstances for a long time.  In essence, wheel building is the same way because you are putting all these different parts together so they can run smoothly and harmoniously.”

Since the former club racer moved here from Birmingham, England, in 1986 to work first at Open Air Bicycles and the original Hazard’s on De La Guerra Street, he has built the winning wheels for 1991 US pro champion and Santa Barbara native, Kurt Stockton, as well as Pan American Games gold medal winner, Tony Vincente, and world downhill mountain bike champion Kathy Sessler, while working with several teams on the pro mountain bike circuit.

While wheel building and circulating through the local bike world, he also was the production manager at the then local Chris King Componentry.  While continuing to build wheels, he left the bike shop world to create a coffee business, running it for 12 years until returning two years ago at Bicycle Bobs.

“It was time to return to my tribe,” Jones said.  “I was out in the wilderness all that time and it was time for the prodigal son to come back to the fold.”

This past spring a voice from the past came calling, Alex Banyay, the number two mechanic for Garmin-Cervelo, asked Jones to work with the team during the Tour of California.

“When I was working with Jim Hopperstad at Bikesmiths back in the late 90′s, Alex was this 18-year-old, wide-eyed kid, who couldn’t get enough of the stories and experiences Jim and I had,” Jones said.  I was very happy and proud to have the roles reversed— to be the apprentice working for the master.

During that eight-stage race (in which it was reduced to seven because of the snow-canceled first state at Lake Tahoe), Garmin-Cervelo, which featured world champion Thor Hushovd and coached by Jonathan Vaughers, won the team championship thanks in part to zero mechanical failures during the race.  Jones credited Banyay whole heartedly for this.

Despite a rewarding experience, the long hours and more important time away from his wife Ines DeRomana, son Lukas Checa, and loving cat Ben, he said even if an offer to work at the prestigious Tour de France came, it would be summarily rejected.

“My time on the road is over,” Jones said.  “It would be an honor, but there are younger guys who can do a better job.  Besides, there is nothing I would prefer to do more than build wheels and then come home to my family.”

Mike Takeuchi, a life-long Santa Barbara resident, has penned Lifestyle Sports for 11 years.  It appears in the News-Press on Fridays and the opinions expressed therein are those of Mr. Takeuchi and not necessarily those of the News-Press.  Email:  irontak@yahoo.com.

Big horsepower in Solvang; the riders warmed up on trainers untill it was time for each man to go to the start line. It made me tired just to watch the warm up!

Another rainy day in California. Here the race bikes are being loaded onto team cars to go to the start of stage 3. It turned out to be our last day of rain.

I thought I should probably throw a snap of yours truly into the mix to show I really was there! Solvang 2011

Sunny San Jose! I’ve got the rig all ready for the returning riders and I’m getting busy working on the time-trial bikes for the Solvang stage

The Tech area at Squaw Valley. This was how tech looked at 6.30am on the morning of Stage two. I had to carry all the bikes a quarter mile from the hotel on a frozen slippery surface with ice two inches thick! No pressure.

RE-INVENTING THE WHEEL; THE PRIDE OF JOHN JONES.

Several months ago my sister Myrna, who lives in Los Angeles, somehow won a bicycle in a contest. Not being a cyclist herself, she kindly decided to make me a present of the machine, which could be claimed from any Schwinn dealer and she sent me the papers to present locally for that purpose.

I myself didn’t want or need a new bicycle, but I went down to Hazard’s at 115 W. De La Guerra, Santa Barbara’s oldest bike shop (since 1914) and the place to which I’ve always gone for bike repairs, to just see what the deal was. I found that they had a new manager, a young man by the name of John Jones, with whom I had at least one thing in common; we were both of English extraction. John Jones had extracted himself much more recently than I. He still had his accent and (even more remarkably) still had that strangely obliging and considerate manner that shopkeepers were once all supposed to have, but which seems to have more or less died out on this side of the Atlantic.

It was a complicated transaction I brought him since I was not the official claimant and since Hazard’s did not even have in stock the particular basic model being offered as a prize—-and I made things even more complicated, after he had actually ordered and obtained the bike for me, by admitting that I would much rather have the cash. So he bent a little farther over backwards and said he would try to sell it for me. Eventually he managed to do so—-but the commission he charged was so small that I still felt beholden and asked, in a rhetorical way, what I could do for him. Knowing my own line of work, he cunningly suggested that I write something. Actually, I had already been thinking about doing just that, so one day we met for coffee at Nordstrom’s and he told me the story of his life.

At first, it appeared to be an ordinary life. Like me, John had grown up in England and had attended college both there and in California. (He first came to the U.S. and to Santa Barbara in 1983 to complete a year-long course in American Studies at our local university.) Also like me, he had an American wife. But it was only when we got onto the subject of bicycles, a life-long involvement, that he began to use words like “love affair” and “passion”

It soon became apparent that John Jones, despite his deferential demeanor, is not only a passionate, but a very proud man. He is proud of being British—-although he found life in England to be intolerably stifling—-and has no thought, so far, of becoming a U.S. citizen. He is also proud of being associated over the past few years with several of the top rated bicycle stores in our area. But most of all, he is proud of one very special art of which he claims to be a master—-the art of building bicycle wheels.

In theory, it seems so simple that you almost think he must be joking. It is simply a matter of taking a rim, a hub and a bunch of spokes and putting them together. There are books and manuals on how to do this, John concedes, yet he points out, “Stradivarius didn’t learn violin making from a book.” There are innumerable variables, calculations, nuances. When John builds a wheel he must keep in mind not only what particular machine the wheel is destined for, but also who is going to be riding that machine and how he or she rides. One night I had a chance to watch him at work in the little shed behind his Westside home. (Yes, of course he takes his work home with him). I noted with what pride he affixed his “JONES PRECISION WHEELS SANTA BARBARA” sticker to the rim on which he was working, not at the end of the job, but right at the start, as if to keep always before his eyes his own standard of excellence. As he worked, he spoke of the wheel as if it were a living thing, describing, for example, what I would have called a “wobble” as a “neurotic” tendency. And to my surprise, as well as using a variety of very specialized tools, among them a “spoke wrench” and a “nipple driver”, he used his bare hands quite freely, squeezing spokes together to “seat” them in an operation faintly reminiscent of playing the harp.

This latter operation took place with the wheel resting vertically in a device known as a “truing stand”. For a wheel to be true, John explained, it must be exactly round with the rim exactly above the center of the hub at all times. But, as I watched him carefully adjusting and re-adjusting each of 32 separate points of contact, I felt I was seeing some other kind of truth emerging here. It had to do with honesty and integrity, a kind of craftsman’s honor which dates back to the best traditions of British workmanship nurtured in great manufacturing towns like Birmingham, where John grew up (towns which, sadly, when I lived over there, were simply enormous industrial wastelands to be avoided whenever possible). Like every great craftsman, John Jones is quick to acknowledge there are others greater than he. He speaks reverently of a man named Spence Wolf who lives in Northern California whom he considers “a genius at wheel building”. And of course he disdains the machine built “production bike wheels”

A machine, he says, “can never be as good as a person.”

To my sister, a bicycle could never be as good as cash, so I was very happy to be able to send her the money her prize had bought. It came as a pleasant surprise and she, in turn, felt obliged to send me a small commission. So, thanks to John Jones, that particular wheel of our lives came full circle. But for me, the true reward of this experience was discovering the source of one man’s pride.

It takes John about an hour to build a wheel, and he charges so little that he probably makes less in a whole day than some other kinds of wheeler-dealers (such as some of our local lawyers) make in an hour.  Obviously, despite the current bicycling boom, spokes, rims, and hubs are not where the money is.  Yet John insists there is no other way he would rather spend his time.

It’s comforting to know there are people like him hiding out among us.  These days, we seem to hear complaints from all sides that people no longer really care about their work.  But I don’t think John Jones can build a bad wheel to save his life.

Ashley Brilliant is the author of eight books published by Woodbridge Press, including I Feel Much Better Now That I’ve Given Up Hope and We’ve Been Through So Much Together—And Most Of It Was Your Fault.  Thousands of his syndicated BRILLIANT THROUGHTS, also known as POT-SHOTS are available on postcards.

I remember explaining to a young child how the gearing system worked on a new bicycle that her father was purchasing for her. Asking that she circulate the bike shop parking lot, I called out instructions for her to manipulate the gears; the look on her face was worth a million bucks as she visualized steep roads that she would now climb, neighborhoods a little further away to which she could now cycle. And still be home for dinner! Something happened to that young pilot, a realization similar to that which women felt at the start of the last century when bicycles allowed them to venture out of the home unburdened by a chaperone. The world opens up when you jump on a bike!

I became a wheel builder because it was a sign of progress in my skills as a bicycle mechanic. I really can’t say when I absorbed a deeper appreciation for them, but at some early point I began to understand wheels as living things; capable of amazing exploits if assembled with care, but conversely, able to disappoint terribly if built poorly. There is a sixth sense that a skilled wheel builder develops, a sense usually connected with his or her hands and fingertips. An ability to listen to a spoke as it comes close to maximum tension, or a feeling that tells them when a rim is ready to finally surrender to the spoke wrench and run true. I remember building a wheel late one night, after the shop had closed and silence reigned, when I was struck by a thought that has stayed with me ever since. It was a Mavic MA40 on a Sanshin cartridge bearing hub laced with Wheelsmith 14gauge butted spokes, but I don’t think the components, or the beer I was drinking, were the source of the notion I was about to entertain! I was struck by the similarities between building a wheel and building a life. A wheel has, if you count all the nipples, spokes, rim and hub, somewhere between forty and eighty components that would prefer not to be bound in states of great tension with each other and be required to work as a single-minded entity.  Then, they are expected to run true for long years over ruts and holes, loaded with a rider in all kinds of weather and circumstances. How similar to a life, I thought. All our lives have competing interests and obligations, not just the big stuff like our marriage, children, careers and health, but also the small stuff like remembering to pay bills, keep food in the house, get the laundry done, and find time to sit, relax and finish a book. Our lives have competing forces pulling against each other and we are expected to keep all those tensions in balance and produce a harmonious whole that allows us to live well.

How like a wheel.