Today we’re 1 year old.

On November 30th 2010 I wrote a blog post about an idea that I’d had. I had no immediate plans, no idea how I’d make it happen but thought that writing it down was the right thing to do.

Within a few weeks a friend put me in touch with Brian Curtis and we met for the first time on January 31st.

On February 19th I had my first brazing lesson with Brian.

By June 10th we had a stand at Bespoked Bristol, and our own website.

In September we had a 4 page article in Boneshaker Magazine.

On November the 1st we launched our crowd funding campaign.

By November the 6th we reached 100% of our funding goal.

To date 183 people have pledged money towards the project and 23 have pledged their skills and time.

We’ve raised over £40,000, booked up all of our courses for 2012 and have a very healthy waiting list .

We’re currently talking to another frame builder and have some really exciting partnerships lined up too.

All this has happened whilst juggling a full-time job and 2 other projects too.

Thanks for all the support over the past 12 months, to everyone who helped make things happen, who told their friend about us, tweeted, linked to us on facebook or pledged their money or time – it wouldn’t have happened with out you.

It’s been one hell of a ride so far and yet we’ve only just begun. So here’s to our second year…I can’t wait to see what lies ahead.

x

After getting all excited about making time to ride my bike I managed to break my wrist – so no riding for me for 6-8 weeks! Rubbish.

I was riding home from BCC Bike Polo going pretty fast when I saw a lady walking her dog in the middle of the road that I was turning into – the road has no street lights so she was in the shadows meaning that I saw her at the very last minute. I swerved and braked slightly but as I did I hit a drain cover with my front wheel that knocked my left hand off the bars. The front wheel jacked and I was highsided over the bars then landed on my wrist before flipping (via a bang to the head) and sliding for ages on my back as my bike tumbled past, before I came to a stop in a tangle I said “hello” (in a ridiculously British way) so that I didn’t startle her (ALWAYS remember your manners!). All in all I was very lucky to come away with only a broken wrist, a sore neck and some grazes.

So, my to do list last week consisted of resting and remembering to take my painkillers.

I’ve caught up with most of my emails now and am getting stuck into things again today; got a lot of exciting stuff to blog about so will do that later – right now I’m off to Bath to meet Dene from iL Soigneur to look at musette fabrics and discuss designs for the crowd funding rewards – Exciting!

I took a little bit of time away from working on TBA to run a monthly DH event for the Black Canon Collective yesterday… everyone had a great time, Brian came along to watch and I got to ride my bike. With everything that’s been going on lately I haven’t ridden much over the past few months and I’ve really missed it. I’m lucky enough to be riding twice this week though, with the first BCC Bike Polo event taking place on Wednesday it feels like Christmas!

But what’s really exciting is the fact that at the tender age of 70 (!) Brian is keen to get back on two wheels to show us “young’uns” how to ride – that’s right he liked the local DH scene so much he left Longleat planning a return to two wheels!

I’m really looking forward to riding with Brian, after all he’s not just legendary in the bike building world but was one of the top motorcycle scramblers in his day… looks like he’ll be giving me more schooling than I thought!