It’s a foggy Friday here in Portland and all we can think about are ski boots drying by the fire and enjoying a toddy with a few of our close friends in a cabin, somewhere intensely beautiful. To fuel our visions of tranquil getaways, we’ve been perusing the pages of  FreeCabinPorn, a blog that provides “inspiration for your quiet place.” You’ll find a few of our favorites below:

There are many things we love about our friends at Grain Surfboards. Not only do they build beautiful, natural wood surfboards akin to a work of art, they do it sustainably.  Rooted in traditional boat-building, Grain uses locally harvested cedar to carve out stunning modern boards built to last. And, as we learned, they’re not afraid to share their secrets.

This week, in the Thought Kitchen, our friends at Grain give us a little insight behind the business of building surfboards, how they came to be here, and why you should come to Portland (or their hometown in Maine) to build one of these handcrafted wonders yourself.

Grain Surfboards is a small hive of activity located on the coast of Maine. With our small, tight crew of eight, we handcraft, classic surfboards, out-of-the-ordinary wood belly-boards, hand-planes, and skate boards out of local timber. And in the process of creating beautiful, custom boards, we end up building an off-kilter community of independent thinkers around us.

To find yourself in the business of making stuff for people feels a bit odd, especially to those of us disinclined to accumulate things. But as Brando once said, “one must do something” and at Grain Surfboards, we’ve found that there are deep rewards and contributions to be made even in the world of making what – on the surface – appears to be mere consumer goods.

That may be because of the way we originally came to build surfboards; out of a desire to make our boards in a way that felt more real, more lasting, and of better quality than what we felt was being offered by the so-called “surf industry.” Those origins, combined with our experiences with traditional wood boats, brought us together some years ago. We all had the same idea: to craft surfboards in the same way that boats are built – as a hull around a frame, an essentially hollow vessel, built to last.

Along the way, we discovered that we could adhere to a pretty strict ethos of sustainability, even as we taught others that there were options to the short-lived, industrial surf-craft that has become the norm.  Our teaching roles expanded as we realized the many rewards inherent in “rolling our own” surfboards. We figured out how to assemble wood parts, hardware, and knowledge into the most complete surfboard kit available and began to share the experience of building your own board with people from all over the world. Eventually, we invited people to build boards in our shop. And now thanks to the help of some like-minded companies like Nau, we are able take our classes on the road in cities like Portland, Oregon.

In the process of helping people build their own surfboards or custom build their dream board, we collected a community of people around us. This is one of the great rewards of doing what we do. People often find that what starts as a simple customer-vendor relationship ends in friendship and community. We believe this happens simply because, for us, the emphasis is on the experience and the inherent meaning of what we do rather than on the thing itself.

Ultimately, we found that we can be more than a mere purveyor of stuff. By offering products built with passion that will never see a landfill, we help give surfers a chance to join the collective voice of our customers and friends—a voice that celebrates great experiences, good friends, sustainability, quality and longevity.

In addition to building surfcraft and surfboard kits in Maine, Grain Surfboards holds classes in surfboard building all year long.  A traveling class will be held in Portland, Oregon in an old shipwright’s shop in March.  See details here.

Stunning. That’s the word we utter when we look at the photos from Jim Denevan’s massive land art on an icy lake in southwestern Siberia.

Some of you might remember him. Back in 2009, this surfer-turned-environmental artist created the world’s largest drawing in the fine sand of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Using chain link fencing and a single engine plane, he carved out more than 1,000 circles covering a swath of land wider than Manhattan.

A year later, Anthropologie commissioned Jim to create a massive drawing for the anthropologist, a thought-provoking website which showcases the work of inspiring individuals. Over the course of two weeks, Jim and his crew carved a startling spiral of circles, along a Fibonacci curve, on the frozen surface of Lake Baikal, eventually converting nine square miles into a work of art. A team of filmmakers, photographers and artists were there to capture every moment and turn it into the breathtaking film—Art Hard.

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To find screenings of Art Hard, visit their website at Arthard.com.

Find out more about Jim’s impressive environmental art installations by visiting his website at JimDenevan.com.

Yes, we love bikes, and we also love people who build bikes, like our friend Tony Pereira. In just six years, Tony has built everything from utility and transportation bikes to randonneuring and touring rigs, road, mountain and cyclocross bikes. Inspired by the French Golden Age, his sleek, fillet-brazed steel bikes have won him awards at the North American Handmade Bike Show and, most recently, at Oregon Manifest’s Constructor’s Design Challenge where he took home top honors for building the ultimate utility bike.  He’s been called a “master of his craft.” And not only by us, but by Rapha who recently selected Tony to craft a one-of-a-kind bicycle for their master framebuilding collection.

We were lucky enough to catch up with Tony at his small shop in Portland to talk about—you guessed it—bikes.

OTG: You’ve been building handcrafted bikes for over 6 years now, everything from single-speed bicycles and randonneuring rigs to touring, road, cyclocross and transportation bikes. With all of these different styles of bikes, what is your overarching design philosophy that ties them all together?
Tony: My design philosophy is informed by two totally separate worlds. One is the early mountain bikes. I started mountain biking in the 80s, and the high end bikes at the time were out of California made by Tom Ritchey and sold by Gary Fisher. Those were all built using fillet-brazing. So when I started building, I was drawn to that technique. But on the other side—the road bikes, city bikes, touring and randonneuring  bikes—they’re all informed by the French Golden Age, the bikes of the 40’s and 50s. They established the form and style of bike that I’ve been so drawn to. And it’s a form that still works. I can build bikes in a style that is still useful. But if I was drawn to bikes of the 1890’s, they wouldn’t translate because the geometry and components have evolved. But by the 40s, geometry had stabilized, and they had figured out what worked well for riding quickly over long distances.

So fillet brazing is a kind of seamless process?
So the fillet is the shape of the joint. I’ve seen it used in manufacturing where there is a rounded edge on a surface which is what they call a filleted edge.

As opposed to lugs?
Right. Lugs are fittings that the tubes slide into. Then it’s a lap joint where you add filler between two pieces. So it’s a dissimilar metal that melts at lower temperature than the parent metal. You’re heating up the main tubes to the melting temperature of the filler, and just the filler melts. That’s what I like about it. It gives you that kind of sculptural flow between the tubes. The other more common lugless joining method that you see today is called TIG welding and that’s how most bikes are built. In the 80’s and before that, TIG welding was expensive. Then in the late 80’s, the cost came down enough that it started to be used in bike building. And ever since, it has taken over for steel and aluminum bikes. But a really good TIG weld, to a trained eye can look good, but to me it never looks as good as the fillet brazing. That’s why I have stuck with fillet brazing as my primary style of building.

In just six years, you’ve already earned a lot of accolades and recognition. You’re doing this collaboration with Rapha, and you won Best of Show this year at Oregon Bike Manifest. But I’m curious about the bike you built for Oregon Bike Manifest— the electro assist, sound system, lockable storage. Where did you find the design inspiration for this bike?
That’s a bike I have been thinking about for a few years. I’ve been intrigued by electro assist for about four years now. I thought that most of the electro assist bikes that have been made so far have been pretty ugly, and I wanted to try and make one that resembled a motorcycle. I also wanted lockable storage on the bike, so you could leave stuff with the bike and walk away.

Sweet.
Yeah, I think that’s one of the limitations of the bicycle. You show up somewhere and you have to take all of these bags off your bike and walk into your meeting or the store or wherever you are. You see bicyclists around and they’ve a helmet and a couple of bags, and they’re sopping wet dragging their things around with them wherever they go. With this bike, you can take your helmet off and leave your stuff behind on the bike. And it locks. With the sound system, I went with this idea of a car replacement. We’re used to having stereos in our car. It’s a little bit goofy— you’re riding down the road and your radio is blaring and people are looking at you funny.

And you had some statistic you threw out about bike commuting….what was it?
So 85% of all of the trips made by car in the US are under five miles.

Wow. That’s a lot.
Yeah, and it’s something like 50- or 60% of trips made by car in the US are under TWO miles. And I’m not the biggest environmentalist or policy wonk, but it just makes sense to me, that if we’re going to change the way we use fossil fuels, then we need to change the way we look at transportation.

Well, that leads me into my next question. I like this quote that you had on the Oregon Manifest’s website: “Most of the products being manufactured today are not meant to last very long. They are made in factories far away by people we will never meet. The modern craft movement —and I do think it is a movement— can help change what people expect from the tools they use and the items they adorn their life with.” So what do you mean by this and how is it going to change things?
Because the internet has made the world such a small place, we are all able to communicate with each other so easily that you can get exactly what you want no matter where you are. Prior to the internet, in order to find a hand-made anything, you had to seek it out. Now everything is more accessible. And it has spurred this modern craft movement. I don’t know if it’s widely perceived as a movement. But there are a lot more craftspeople out there who are able to exist because of things like Etsy. Hopefully it will keep some of the old techniques alive. Fillet brazing is sort of dead in manufacturing. I see it used randomly in things out there and I’m usually surprised

And that’s because?
Stuff is usually welded because it’s faster and cheaper. It doesn’t require as much skill. There are certainly some applications for brazing still, but it’s sort of obsolete.

Ok, one more question. So, let’s say your garage is on fire, and you have to save one bike from your entire collection, which one would it be?
The bike I call the roaring 29er, a single speed styled after a 1920’s cruiser bike. I feel like it’s the bike that got things rolling for me. It won two awards at the 2007 North American Handmade Bike show: best off-road bike and best fillet-brazed bike.  You know, I’m still proud of all of my bikes, but that bike, it’s kind of different.

[Here at Nau, we like people who are challenging paradigms, trying out new technology and pushing their chosen area forward. We also really love bikes. So when the River City Cyclocross guys asked us to sponsor their team, it was a no-brainer. The Gates Center Track/ River City Bicycles Cyclocross Team has been formed to show the cycling world that single speed and belt drive are both more than viable options for riding and racing. Based in the Pacific Northwest, with exposure to the largest body of cyclocross racers in the country, they're poised to showcase and advocate for the virtues of belt drive single speed bicycles. Here, in the first of a series of dispatches from the team, John Walrod introduces the single speed rocket ships bikes they ride.]

“Single speed – really? Belt? Why would you do that?” Those are the questions that precede the inevitable – “Can I try it?” That’s followed by “Holy @)#(!, that thing is a rocket!”

This summer I was invited by my good friend Dave Guettler to join Alex Criss, Seth Patla, and Ryan Weaver on a cyclocross team co-sponsored by his shop – River City Bicycles (super shop of the country and shining star of Portland, OR). I have raced for Dave for about 10 years but this idea was different, we’d be teaming with Gates Carbon Belt Drive to do the drivetrains on our bikes. Long story short – we recently took delivery of 4 Carbon Fiber Raleigh Hodala frames and built them up with the Gates Carbon Center Track belts.

Cyclocross Magazine did a review of this very bike earlier this year. The bikes are flashy and really light (belts/pulleys end up a fair bit lighter than a chain) and they garner tons of attention. Riding in the first few races we dialed in the fit and waited for a true test to come. That came a week ago in the form of unexpected rain at the CrossCrusade season opener. Thank you Nau for the super dope trench coats – they are gonna get some high mileage this year!

Single speed bikes are counter-intuitive: Gears are supposed to make you more efficient, right? Not always. On many cross courses, as well as mountain bike tracks and urban adventures (just ask any messenger), some of the best riders sport one gear. Why? Because there are no derailleurs to fail, there’s much less friction in the drive train—a big efficiency savings—plus much less weight. A reliable bike that weighs a lot less and is more efficient sounds good huh? Yeah, it’s really good.

In the mud, which we got in spades last week, single speeds shine: no parts to argue with, and nothing to fail you when you need it most. Just one gear, and you, both agreeable to the task at hand.

Single speeds are better in the mud than gears and the Gates Carbon Center Track makes my old chain single speed feel like a donkey. Chains, even single speed chain bikes, clog up. I won’t bore you with more words – look at this: I couldn’t get into my pedals, and somehow my drivetrain was as clean as the day it was installed!

- John Walrod

French Mazots, Signal Sheds: here at Nau, we’ve always been fascinated by small living spaces. The idea of downsizing, both as a way to use fewer resources, and to live a simpler—and perhaps more focused—life, holds a lot of appeal. It’s also a design challenge, and we’ve been inspired by everyone from designers offering purely conceptual ideas, to our friend Dee Williams (of Portland Alternative Dwellings) who’s walking the talk in her Little House on the Trailer.

So it’s no surprise that we’ve become addicted to “Weekend Cabin,” a weekly feature from our friends at Adventure Journal. Sharing cabin porn from around the world, it has us salivating over amazing small spaces, from modern mazots in Switzerland to the epitome of simplistic shelters in Chile.

Below are a few of our favorites; Adventure-Journal posts a new one every Friday.

If you look for it, you might not see it. Rising high above Wallowa Lake, hidden in the shadows of the Eagle Cap Wilderness in Eastern Oregon sits the award-winning Signal Shed—a 130-square-foot modern mountain outpost. Built with mostly recycled materials, the outbuilding is simple in detail, yet beautiful in design: recaptured wood siding is stained dark to help the shed blend into the natural landscape. Cedar shutters protect the windows and secure the interior in the winter. A large, sliding barn door opens to create an outdoor living space. And the entire structure is built on floating piers to lessen its impact.

It’s the ultimate expression of minimalism. In fact, a judge from a prominent architecture magazine recently praised it as “the absence of almost everything.” And we tend to agree. Its simple beauty, low-impact design and effortless utilitarianism reflects the same principles that we follow in our design process.

To get a closer look, we decided, with some stealthy sleuthing, to track down its mastermind—Ryan Lingard. The Portland architect was more than willing to sit down with us and share his insight into his process of sustainable design, off-the-grid building, and how he did it all for under $10k.

OTG: Let’s start from the beginning; how did this all start?
Ryan: We had owned the land for about a year when, during a backpacking trip in the Wallowas, a bear attacked our tent. At that moment, we knew we needed to build something a little more secure. But we also didn’t need everything you would find in a traditional vacation home, nor did it seem appropriate to bring in all the traditional utilities and affect the landscape. We also wanted a structure that would sit more delicately in the landscape: to be modern and minimal, but on the other hand, fit into the pallet of how we saw the environment. We also wanted it to appear as if it was a utility building or a lean-to shelter, so in passing by, you didn’t realize it was an actual home. In the end, we built this utilitarian structure that fills this kind of pragmatic protection of warmth and security that we weren’t getting out of a tent.

Did you have a certain approach or a process in designing the shed?
We wanted the structure to have the minimal support of camping, but offer the comfort of a more traditional residence. The big sliding barn door, which is probably one of the biggest architectural moves, is the nexus of that. We can throw that door open and have indoor/outdoor living, especially with the dock-like deck that cantilevers out.

Also, given how steep the lot was, building the whole cabin without an access road into the property was an enormous undertaking. One way we resolved the issue was by constructing this super-minimal pier foundation that sits on columns, so it serves the intent of sitting lightly on the landscape. It also makes it easy to minimize the amount of concrete and the amount of “earthwork” we had to do. It also decreased the amount of materials we had to bring in.

Since we would be gone for long periods of time, we also came up with the idea of using shutters as way to secure the shed. When they are closed, you can’t see any of the windows. And in the winter, when the interior lights are on, the rays seep through the slats in the siding to create this gorgeous, almost, sculptural piece.

Obviously, you sourced sustainable materials: reused windows, recaptured wood. Do you feel like that put constraints on the design? Or were there some happy accidents?
Some things did impact the design, like the windows. We had an idea of proportion and function and we knew we wanted a series of horizontal sliding windows, as well as a focal window looking out across to the mountain and the tram. We were willing to pay for new windows if we found the right ones, but we were able to find some great old windows from the Rebuilding Center in Portland.

For the recaptured wood, we found this character that runs a portable saw mill. He travels to different locations where he finds fallen tress. And his story was much like ours: he had built three signal sheds, connected them with two roofs and now lives in them with his wife and two kids. So it felt good to have a wholesome environmental story around the material, but also the added romance that we were doing the same thing.

So in designing the shed, were you influenced by any current design or architectural trends?
Basically, the intent of the whole project was to be very quiet in the landscape, to hide in the shadows, and let the views and the surrounding wilderness be the focus, not the structure. Ultimately, the design was more driven by pragmatic and practical ideas, then a specific style. The minimal architecture lends itself to a very basic, but high-quality streamlined design. I guess that is an architectural movement, but it is also an ethos that is much larger than a style: the idea that everything has to be functional. So you don’t have extra trim or extra frames.

That’s a lot like our philosophy; great design is not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away, when everything has a purpose, a function. So given this approach, what did you learn in the process of building the shed?
Before the shed, I had an almost academic appreciation for builders and craftsman. But through this process, I garnered an enormous respect for the art of crafting something that appears rather simple. Building something simple can actually be much more challenging, especially when you are in a rural environment and the collective resources and knowledge in the building community are otherwise very traditional, which I understand and respect, but it can make things more challenging.

You know, it’s easy when you go camping, because you know you’re only going to be out there for a few days, maybe a week, and then go home. But when you are building a structure and are intentionally eliminating certain luxuries, well, that can be hard for people to understand.

Yeah, you realize all of the crap that you don’t need.
Yeah, exactly. When you go camping for a lengthy period of time, everything gets reset. You come home, turn on a faucet or flip on a light switch and are amazed at the convenience. It’s exactly like that comedian, Louis C.K. says when he jokes about people who complain on airplanes, and he’s like, “Really? We’re flying dude! This is amazing.”

A few quotes we stumbled upon—or should we say tumbled upon—on our Tumblr travels this week. Lovely words to live by. Have a nice weekend!

This clock we found on Etsy is absolutely perfect. Elegant, modern, and understated, it’s one of those simple things that makes you say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” This is probably the best use of bike parts for home decor since Picasso put together some handlebars and a bike seat and made his famous bull’s head.

This particular one seems to be sold, but browse through Pixelthis‘ other recycled items (the bike crank clocks are also pretty nice) and there’s a good chance you’ll find something that will make counting the minutes until your next ride a little easier.

We’re finally getting a few sunny days in Portland. It’s Friday afternoon and our minds are drifting to post-work brews somewhere outside. And—wouldn’tcha know it?—we stumbled across a video that validates our decision to enjoy one of our favorite local beers. It turns out that Windmer Brothers is making wooden beer taps out of local salvaged trees. Not only is the video of the process mesmerizing, but it’s also a small symbol of a big company’s efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Is it happy hour yet?