Monday, October 25, 2010

Steel 29'er :: Best Wedding Present Ever

My good friends Jon Frederick and Kathryn Grant got married this past weekend. Congrats you two! It was a beautiful weekend.

Katie asked me a few months ago about having us build a custom IF for Jon as a wedding present. Jon's been lusting after an IF for years, and developed a habit of describing his dream paint job to me. His best idea yet: a toned-down Gulf Racing paint scheme based on a Tag Monaco watch.

Asymmetric stripes. Orange on one side...

Baby blue on the other.

We pulled off some super secret spy missions to get the fit just right. Katie "lost" the keys to their garage twice so I could get a close look at his other bikes.

Groomsman and IF Racer, Todd Yezefski, gave extra feedback about Jon's fit on his current mountain bike. We turned that into a frame design and left the steerer and cables a little long to give room for fine tuning.

IF crown "number plate".

Katie presented the bike to Jon on Friday night. Jon was literally speechless. It's pretty great when a surprise really works.

Jon didn't let go of the bike for practically the rest of the night. Rubber donuts kept the paint safe. Blue zip-ties really tie the whole look together (nice!).

So much more fun than a watch.

Congratulations again, Jon and Katie. Here's to a wonderful life together. Cin cin.

- k.w.

12 comments:

Craig T said...

Lucky guy. Great paint scheme.

Dave said...

What a kick ass story! Great idea, great gift, love the collaboration of so many.

Well done!

MM said...

She have a sister?

New England Bicyclist said...

Jon married the right woman. You make beautiful bikes but helping make this nice bike while secretly finding the right sizing make a great story.

Dan O said...

Insanely nice bike. Sweet bike and wife.

Back in '86 my wife told me to buy myself a new mountain bike as a wedding present. I got to select it, same idea though.

What did I pick? A Fat Chance - damn nice. I still have the bike....and the wife. Great things are worth holding on to.

Unknown said...

That's one nice wedding gift but my new bride gave me a trip to the 2011 NAHBS in Austin for my wedding gift (back in June). :-)

ducati said...

What a bloody rip off. Visit Baum Cycles Australia and see how it is really done.

Unknown said...

Ducati, you can find numerous other bike builders that have done a Gulf team inspired paint scheme. This is simply how our customer wanted his bike painted, and he did a great job in choosing this. His bike looks fantastic and he loves it. I'm sure Darren's customer feels the same way. Have some class dude.

Avi said...

Love the paint on this thing. Clint, did you do this one?

Hopefully a Steel Deluxe is in my near future and with any luck it'll look as great as this one.

BTW the Elvis sheet music paint job you did for my Steel Planet-X still amazes me every time I look at it. Thanks again.

Unknown said...

Biking is a great experience and an adventurous one at that. It is a better idea to gift a bike for a wedding as both the bike and the wedding will last longer. But not only for wedding, even for welding purposes, steel fabricators are essential and look no more than Equifab for best steel fabrication.
Sheet Metal fabrication

The Expert said...

Nice post accordance to welding. Welding always do great job.
metal cutting

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