Ferrentino walked in yesterday. He held #30 in his hands. This has happened before. I am not able to understand but the frames/framesets, or bikes themselves that they become, are on some level progressively commoditized. This is astonishing to me. Sell your Monet why don’t you. It was an orange power coat, the serial number vague but legible. It had been passed along. Maybe it was never sold but the shop becomes a home or final resting place of the Huérfanos of Coconino. Designed for 26 wheels, this one was stripped to some degree but period correct. It was well before the NAHMBS award I think; an award that, as with the rest of the numbers & trinkets pinned and hung to the walls, might just not matter anymore for inflation of self evidence. It all merely ties the room together. The man has other interests. The craft is a job with a deep route of soul. He knows the importance of the human condition and the unwavering isolation of manhood. This seems to have been the event horizon of his life. That has been the case for a long time. We share a common resolve in that departure from this cold world will be a gift, and that gift needs no announced arrival.
And so upon that #30 frameset, I had a decisive assessment of the down tube label. The scripted soft and brazed-hand appearance of “Coconino” that, perhaps for many, is a distinguishing moniker of the man himself. Hecho in the land of the little brown people. Tuba City isn’t so far. The entire life path is a story of survival, triumph, and tragedy time over; and the implications of the past decades have only endured this theme of survival as if a man’s life pattern can change setting or severity, but it can never release from its entropic cascade of certainty. Fate has a posse. Yet from within pain and discomfort as the lead indication of availability, he continues to file, drill, bend and braze and read.
So upon this number #30 was the very basis of my interactive pathway with him. The frame also arrived with an old 100mm travel, open bath Fox fork; 32mm stanchions, and that gray blue colorway defining the decade of its usefulness. Early 2000. Pre ’04 is my guess. Horizontal drops, always. I suspect given the early number, it is a Tangé Prestige tubeset but even then he was select and I believe true temper was the alternative besides Dedaccai. My lips wet. My heart pounds. Prestige is the selection of my era. My first road bike was a Tange Prestige build Wheeler Chiostra. 50cm and thin. Ultegra STI 9spd. A true moment of commitment. On sale at Domenic’s Cycling Imports (DCI) just south of downtown Tempe, Az. Whip of steel, thin. Not brittle – not 853. I do not remember what happened to that incredible bike. That was my launch. He still has a few Prestige tubes stashed against the southern wall of the shop, waiting for the correct and desirous request; behind the quench tanks and the less needed thick metal flat-surface tables. History preserved through chromoly half life.
We sat at the bar, or he happened upon me as I sat at the bar, before he stopped going to bars; before he figured out the useless waste of time staring down redundant conversations and overpriced pints provided. The nothingness of a rotten camber. For some. Even though we try not to be downtrodden. I’m sure. The bar is always Pay n Take. I was routing down my path of drunken lost purpose. He saw my rise still valid as timing’s resonance has some delay between beings. He was exuberant in his own discovery of progress and fundamental purpose; how it aligned with the machine of his love and the ambitions of his life, pogo bouncing across the hood of the American station wagon lost to the desert. A derision of a monkey wrench. He offered. He pumped up my potential as we sat there at the bar. I had just come off that 2nd place finish against JHK and the armada of talent that those initials defined in those times – His exuberance always priority, infectious, believable, until curt realization takes hold of his wit. Then you are doomed to forgiveness that will never come; as much as he wrestles with the morality of the human struggle, self-determination is primary to life.
The matter of fact was an offer to ride a custom Coconino built of any tubeset we could desire together and practically legitimize. As a racer I sought light weight yet I knew the promise of Prestige. It was a very gracious providence. He was even willing to create it as a seasonal frame set, so light that we would in fact, anticipate its failure and not expect it to be a lifetime build. Atypical yet appropriate in competitive considerations.
We had somehow strained friends, or brothers, or that’s how all his friends were. But we had love. We always will. Just like fathers and sons. Always trying, both of us. I believe the strain was due to how agreeable our suffering (pre accident) seemed to be. Yet as I knew him I always took in faith that he was more worldly understanding of the cruelty of Man. His vantage emanated from the despair and solitude that make the colorways of Navajo; and desolation as a young child then a young man, crafted a perception that verified and became otherworldly. Of seance and smoke. Deeper than language. His forced realty at such a young age. No person was going to save him. He was huerfano. It seemed although I lacked my own awareness, we were Huérfanos. We could relate. I take no credit for durability. I just know there was a moment that lasted decades of brotherly misunderstanding. If only there was a way to cast a spell of agreement to differences in time and place and beatings. Yet we had come together and it was inate. He must have known my struggles through vibrance alone because they were his own too.
Apathy and self disdain were my most prescient limiters. I didn’t think I was good. I wasn’t, actually. It took some time for me to see enough to believe my self hatred was so deep I may not survive it. I had decades of work to do to overcome it. I had assumed from childhood and ancestry. It was a perfect mixture to compel competitive pursuits. Everybody else was in survival mode too. It was all a prime moment of salvation – those decades – for persons who did not know or care to be saved.
I softly denied the opportunity to build the frame and I felt my heart recoil with condemnation of self upon every word, yet I understood my candor as the correct path because I did not believe in myself. I knew in some way that I was downward. Something endured, but our relationship ceased to grow any deeper bond at that point. This was maybe 25 years ago. I said no thank you then at the bar because I did not want him to sweat work for me. I held to the faith of my logic and proletarian salvation. I was at the slow beginnings of ending everything. Trying to convince myself that I was forever no good, and I just didn’t want him to go to the trouble. Making frames is maybe more subliminal that being an bike mechanic. It was as distilled as the labor. All else was forsaken upon ignorance. Deep self loathing was the foundation of that sentiment. His disappointment was immediately perceived. Nobody gets past me. It wasn’t disappointment in me per se, but disappointment in himself, for having hope, and then me. I reflected rejection upon him, as he had endured to become the magnanimous independent man he was. Yet I still struck his child nerve. I would never be able to recover honor. Our friendship endured another 25 years on endurance however the tinge of soured disappointment would never abate. It would always be attended to, and in review of our mutual candor, existed so as to never allowed either if us to reside in brotherly love and acceptance of our mutually difficult paths. This is because of where we came from.
On a turn of approximated 2023 serendipity, wisdom, compromise arrived. Yod had him build a piece. For whatever conversation that followed, the product of his labor wasn’t correct. Something to do with spacing. The frame was scuttled to the shelf. A one-off abandoned Coconino Baja Cruise. Immediate NOS, like all these huerfano framesets of his that I continually come across. An inch too long for my gnome stature. As with my first mtb, a Yeti of 1988, it didn’t matter. I swung, no question, paid full pop that is the tacit demand of his going weight in ferrous proverb. The deal was done in moments. Swift. Clean. Respectable like a drug deal.
It has been some two+ years that I have simply stared at the basis of the machine and put assemblage poetry to my chords. I disdain unrummaged builds. But I will in fact build from mostly clean slate for this one. I’ve mentioned Richard May before. My Richard Maybars are in Arizona, stranded, as I am stranded in central Colorado, stranded. Plan one. Get those. Then the bb will be Phil stamped and JIS precise. Thusly Paul will cockstamp the cranks unless I find epiphany beforehand. NOS M950 (M730 not out of the question), and the point is the narrowest q-factor that ever existed on dirt. And so the hubs will be Sprag based. Onyx. Rims? Progressive. NASA. Who cares. It was a hoax. Mon? brass nips though because Zimmerman is approved. The bars, the stem, the cranks. They are set. And beyond those pieces I will maintain accord with labor. Ron’s cages. Stalwart Oury grips. Safety wire tied (a thing I need to show the pups.). 2.4-2.6 tyres. 32°. Not SS. Perhaps 2x. I need to plan my route. Follow through will be based on momentum and courage. Everything else is in the cards.
In the aftermath of my continuous failure, tolerance was accommodated. It took some 20+ years to pay back the moment of opportunity that I denied. The resolve, although not of perfection, was a relief. I had done right and while the transaction was processed as business terms are processed, the understanding, rote as ever, was there, diminished only by an honorable transaction. I did my best to recover. And I learned that recovery is, as with most things of this ilk and depth, a second best, at best.
What remains. The Coconino Baja Cruiser that I now own, I will slang with the deepest affection. I have already drenched it in gun metal bluing which has emanated great flares of roku’esque flashing among the brazing. I am unable to cover the brazes with anything. I simply must be able to see the results of his methods and to powder coat it would be an abomination in my mind. A fingerprint, a run of brass, a bead… thus, she is bare and I am a happy man with a deep sense of gratitude upon a topple of the greatest and hardest endurance of my life and his, to acquire her. She is currently adorned with her first component, a NOS M950 seatpost.
