About… the Artist

Originally written for Ripton.

Sometime between the end of high school and my life taking a more defined shape, a best friend's boyfriend picked up riding fixies and wouldn't shut up about it. We're from NYC, and none of us rode the train was convenient and comfortable and your chances of getting hit by a car or a bus were 0, but he picked up riding while in school out in Madison, WI. After a year or two of pushing, he managed to finally convince me, and only me, to try it. I was 19, skeptical, and in flip flops, but from that first pedal forward, I understood. I understood his incomprehensible enamoration of this two-wheeled machine completely. There was an immediate and tangible connectedness with my trajectory through the world, and in that instant, that was it. I had found the love of my life (BIKES, not my best friend's boyfriend). That summer, I bought a fixed gear conversion off Craigslist for 100 bucks as a birthday gift to myself and we instantly became a unit. I was no longer Ashley, but Ashley and Her Bike. I commuted all over the city on that one bike for a decade. At some point in the back half of those 10 years, I crossed paths with a person who asked me if I raced track. In response to my blank stare, they nodded at my bike. "Track cyclists race fixed gear bikes; track bikes." "Track bikes?" He briefly explained track racing and velodromes and, "there's actually a velodrome in Queens." After 7 years of solely navigating from point to point together, Ashley and Her Bike had a Big Bang moment.

I joined an amateur track team that spring and met other people who shared and understood my type of love of this type of bike. Late fall after my second season racing, one of those incredible beings, a teammate turned dear friend, asked if I had ever thought of messenger work. I had been sharing about feeling stuck at my job -- a non-profit I had been with for almost longer than I had been riding. I started as an intern the summer I had bought that first bike. The internship turned into a part-time associate position and, by this point, had been a full-time lead role for a handful of years. We'd worked with public schools throughout the 5 boroughs and I'd ride my bike to our job sites to build out classrooms, or work with and train teachers. Sometimes I'd have the opportunity to hang out with and teach the students. Some days I'd be riding with a backpack full of tools or supplies. Sometimes a bag full of books. Rain, snow, humid AF; it didn't matter. At some point during my time working there, something shifted and the riding became the only part of the day I enjoyed. I was sharing this sentiment with my teammate and friend. "So, have you ever thought of messenger work?" they, a messenger, asked. I kind of laughed at them, and myself, "oh, no. No way. I could never do that." They just looked at me with a straight face, "you've actually been 'doing that' for quite a while. Try it. Say yes and I'll get you a day on the schedule with me and we can work a shift together! And then we can work more shifts together!" So I said, "fuck it. Yes!" and that first day was another "that was it" moment. Well, actually, it was the Christmas rush period and it kicked my ass and I didn't understand the flow or order of anything and I cried multiple times -- but I was in love with the challenge and determined to learn and master the art of messengering. And, just like that, the world of bikes and how they would bring me through life continued to expand.

I thought I'd do that job until the day I died. I honestly thought I would one day be the oldest messenger in NYC. But then that prospect of my own death, which had never felt all that close in the past, started to feel more imminent than it ever had. I felt forced to make a choice, and I chose to leave and take space away from the city, a job and people that I loved. That search for space brought me to Colorado. I have family here in Colorado (an uncle who left Queens at 17 for The Great American West and never looked back), and after a few months of crashing at his place, mourning what I had left behind at home, feeling lost not having any daily structure or full-time work for the first time in my life, riding my bike to explore my new home, making friends in what we did not yet know was nearing the end of The Before Times, my uncle nearly literally shook me by the shoulders one day and asked me what my plan was. "Plan? I think I'd like to navigate this NOT having a plan thing for a little while longer." "Well, I love you, but you need to move out, so you need a plan." "Oh... Right. Yes." Recognizing I had nothing else to add, he started brainstorming. And then he said it. "Okay, well, you clearly really like bikes, and you have this background in designing and building..." hands gesturing through the air, "things. Can you combine those? Can you build bikes?" Yes, up until that point, the idea that a skilled human being MAKES the bikes I ride never occured to me. Ever. I'd design and build hydroponic greenhouse classrooms at the non-profit I was with, and more than once, a child had remarked on how they never knew tomatoes grow on vines. Tomatoes were always just there at the store, or in a can, and the thought about tomatoes and where they're from never went beyond that. Here I was, realizing that bikes were my tomato. "Oh, wow. Yes! People make those! Maybe I can make those!" And that was it; the next expansion.

To be honest, I'm not working toward an end goal as a framebuilder or with Significant Other Bikes. My first day as a framebuilder was similar to my first day messengering: I didn't totally understand the flow of it and it completely kicked my ass, yet, I've realized that something about the challenge of learning and mastering a new art that involves the love of my life ignites a passion for patience and practice. SigO is my place to play, experiment, and push boundaries — to continue expanding. The last few iterations of Ashley and Her Bike have revealed to me that I should keep learning and focusing on the art that inspires me and find comfort in not knowing where it will lead -- and that where it leads might not even matter, and what holds the significance and value is the daily practice of the art itself. "It's not about the destination," right? but how you get there -- and maybe the bike you take.