walter blair tom: Xtracycle Customs...

I met Cemil Hope a while back while I was working in Petaluma. We hit it off pretty quick, talking about building stuff and the general wackiness that creative types spout. Not really sure how everything happened, but we were checking out some of the wood surfboards by Danny Hess, and looked at some of my artwork, and some of Cemil's handiwork, carpentry and bikes, and things started rolling from there. I had coffee with Cemil and his wife Jen shortly after, and it seems like every time we get together, ideas just foment like the frothy espresso drinks that emanate from the sweet little coffee house near our mutual works, ACRE coffee.

So Cemil has been heading up the Customs department of Xtracycle, and man, he's been coming up with some pretty amazing stuff. I can't talk about too much of it, don't want to let the cat out of the bag, but I would keep my eyes on him. Anyway, when I found out he was working with Xtracycle I immediately thought about a bunch of my homies that rocked those bikes all the way from Alaska to Chile, check out their journey here at Riding the Spine. Cemil makes the sweet running boards, snapdecks and footsies for Xtracycle. We started spitballing ideas about art on these sweet little customizable components...and things have been stirring.

You can check out Cemil's work on the Xtracycle site and also keep your eyes peeled at the Sea Otter Classic where two of the prototype custom bikes built by Cemil will be sporting some sweet wooden accessories and artwork brought to you by yours truly.