Toby is an alchemist of bike love, a wizard of cycling culture and a prophet of adventuring by bicycle. We’re so stoked to have him plying his trade managing our bike shop, building up new bicycles, servicing old ones and fine tuning our showroom in anticipation of the return of cool weather and a functional Toole street in front of our building.
Toby has been living the bike shop life since 2004, getting started at the Sports Basement in San Fransisco before relocating to Ventura. In 2010, Toby co-founded the Ventura Bike Hub an amazing community bike shop. Toby helped build this organization into a thriving and integral part of Ventura’s cycling community and it was a tough and sad parting of ways for him and his partner Benicia to move on to Tucson. But it is also a testament of what they built that they can move along and pass their leadership on to the next generation of HUB leaders.
Beyond bicycle wrenching and riding, Toby’s interests include surfing, restoring old cars and traveling with his family.
Easter Bunny?!?!?! – April. 21, 2025
On Easter we went for a little ride and hang with some friends. While out cruising the neighborhoods, we saw this yard with lots of cactus blooming. Of course we turned around to stop and take some pictures. While taking pictures of the cactus, out pops this cute little cotton tail bunny that was snacking on the flowers. Could it be the Easter bunny? It did hop and around and go say hi to our kiddo.
Surf bike love – April. 14, 2025
I used to be an adamant proponent of riding your bike to surf. Surfers, like bike riders, rely on the environment for participation in our activities and connection to place. As with bike riding, I find it funny how people drive all over town and the region to find some surf or fly everywhere all the time especially when most beach towns are relatively small. I always try to reduce my footprint and damage to the environment by riding my bike or walking to surf locally.
Some old memories came up and out popped up a picture of one of my favorite possibly most outlandish surf bikes I built. It started with a dumpster find beach cruiser frame that had broken cantilevers and a stuck seatpost, than I spotted a giant 64 tooth chainring on a Schwinn exercise bike that was sitting on a curb for a few weeks and it started to fall together. I found a Specialized Allez road fork in the junk pile at our shop that fit mighty close and accentuated the curve of the down tube than the bike kept evolving. Behold, the mighty surf bike. Total money invested was $25 (I already had the rack from previous use. My favorite factoid was I left the stuck seatpost in place and slipped this one over, cut to fit and screwed it into place .
To by or not To by – April. 07, 2025
The other day a fantastic coincidence happened. A wonderful springer spaniel galloped into the shop with its people. They called the dog and I answered. We all laughed. The wonderful puppy’s name was Toby!
Now this is something of an inside joke in my family; when I was kid, I had a certain dislike for my name, because a good portion of new people I met would say “my dog’s name is Toby!” Or “I had a dog named Toby!”. As I grew older I leaned to embrace it, because dogs are the absolute best and we don’t even deserve them. Now I just have to gather every dog from David’s last tidbit and invade that restaurant full of Tobys! Who’s a good dog?!?!?!
Little free art gallery – March. 31, 2025
Check out this little free art gallery that just popped up in my neighborhood. I love little free libraries and frequent them on my commutes as well as drop books into random ones whenever I’m clearing out my book stash.
This is a cool one because it has art as well as art supplies in it- so anyone can add and take from little free art gallery. Can’t wait to drop some little pieces into it!
Yellow Bloom – March. 24, 2025
Yellow bloom season is here! It’s a strong indication that we are out of winter/spring and heading into warmer weather. The Palo Verde tree (pictured here) is usually one of the first bloomers along with the Desert Senna. But don’t forget the Acacia Trees, they will soon be full of little yellow puff balls.
We recently hit 90’s (!!!) for the first day this season, with more to come. Soon we head into Terminator 2 nuke scene (as my partner calls it) when our faces melt off with heat. But in the meantime, we ride!
The foldiest of folding bikes – March. 17, 2025
Check out this hand built folding touring bike built by Drew. He swung into the shop while traveling and we were all thoroughly impressed with how cool, interesting and intuitive it all was. It’s complete with racks and dynamo and folds up to just bigger than the size of the wheels and has an easy handle to carry. Drew wrote a whole blog about building it, as well as videos of it in action! Check it out here.
The mural is done! – March. 10, 2025
Wanted to share that the amazing mural by Ignacio Garcia is finished. It celebrates 100 years of the Rodeo (longest running non-motorized parade in the country) and Tucsonense culture. This mural is beautiful and is massive (that’s a 6 story building!) the best part is that it is on our test ride route so we get to ride by it multiple times a day! It was a cool process to watch as all the shading was done first in black and white while it was painted over with semi transparent paint over it to give a really beautiful effect.
Old Man Mountain’s mountain of new & rad projects – March. 03, 2025
This last week, we were fortunate enough to have Chris (one of Robert Axle Project owners and founders and Old Man Mountain owners) come to the shop and do an in-person training! It’s a rare thing when you get to do in-person training these days and they are incredibly valuable to gaining insights and learning about the products. I’ve had lots of experience with Robert Axle Project using their axles for BOB and other trailers.
I was also a big fan of Old Man Mountain products and even before when they were building stuff for Jandd out of Santa Barbara. I used their products touring for years. Then they joined forces to provide the ultimate rack mounting solutions for bikes! After years of road touring, I started spending more time in the backcountry and veered away from the roads yearning for paths less pedaled and some peace and quiet from the cars. I used nothing but homemade and randoneering bags because we broke racks on some early bikepacking adventures (which made for some terrible times and hilarious times (so much duct tape was used!).
It’s been really cool to see the resurgence of racks with the Elkhorn and Divide racks (that can be mounted on almost every single bike and setup ) and now after the last trip (my first with a rack in maybe 13 years) and I am a convert and stoked as ever! Check out the new line of Old Man Mountain products and get your setup bombproof with all their new solutions! I’m really stoked on the versatility of the Hemlock cages and bags as well as the clean lines on the Atlas Rack pack.
Rez Gravel – February. 24, 2025
I was fortunate enough to be able to help out and participate in our friend Elisha Bishop’s fantastic event, Rez Grvl. Rez Gravel is an event that is hosted in the Gila River Community and led by Elisha, a tribal member of that community. It is a rare opportunity to be able to traverse those lands (closed to the general public) with a tribal member. It’s important and especially pertinent to my last tidbit that indigenous communities are the original and usually best stewards of the lands.
It’s not common to have a bicycle event led by an indigenous person, let alone on tribal land. It was an awesome day that ended with popover tacos and a Powwow celebrating Ira Hayes (who helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima) and Gila River veterans. Elisha is truly a special human and I love that he leads these rides as well as does bike fix days and rides twice a week on the reservation to help get more people riding. He can use some help purchasing tubes and repair parts to continue these events.
Support Elisha’s Impactful Work
You can contribute to Elisha’s mission through the following platforms:
- Venmo: @RezGravel
- PayPal: @RezGravel
BCT OMG – February. 17, 2025
Just got off 3 days in the trail riding the Black Canyon Trail as part of our shop trips. All I can say is that the trail time was much needed and it was absolutely incredible, amazingly beautiful out there. The trail was very well designed and maintained. The technical single track sections were so fun and challenging. I’m very appreciative to work for a place where I get to do this and for our access to these beautiful places. I recommend everyone donate time, money and resources to saving access to public lands in this critical time where many stewards of public lands are being defunded and losing jobs.
Fight like hell and ride on!!
#ridefinds – February. 10, 2025
This weekend while getting some much needed and wonderful trail time, the trail provided me with a sweet ridefind. We were cruising through a cholla tunnel when we rounded a corner and was greeted by a strange green. Lo and behold it was a Vittoria air liner stuck in a bush. The dude abides when the trail provides. We always try and grab trash and clean the trail as we cruise around, but this was something special. The wild thing is that I was about to buy one because I recently put a couple nasty dents in my rim and would rather not rebuild in the near future. One persons trash is truly another persons treasure.
Hot City to Nature in 20 minutes. – February. 03, 2025
Yesterday was some amazing weather here in Tucson (81* F or 27* C for our non-bald eagle unit using folks) I wore a T-Shirt and shorts all day and got the opportunity to night ride in the same!
One thing I love about the location of the shop is its proximity to awesome city life as well as a quick escape to hop on your bike and ride through a corner of the city and be in beautiful nature in short (but exciting) journey. As the sun set the temperature slowly changed from hot to perfect. Here’s a shot of the ride we did while trying to squeeze in some extra rides to get ready for riding the Black Canyon Trail bikepacking route next week.
Behind the behind the scenes – January. 27, 2025
There’s a lot of things that go into running this place. It’s full of idea people who have cool ideas as well as full of a million tasks on the day to day. Here’s a shot of Josh, the proprietor of this fine establishment working on one his idea of riding different bikes from the shop, filming them and taking pictures. Check out that rig!
New Shop Cat!!! – January. 20, 2025
So, we were getting close to closing time and all of a sudden this cat walked into the shop. It greeted a few folks, slunk in and out of bikes and creeped through nooks and crannies of the shop like it knew the place. Slowly the cat became friendlier and friendlier. Hopefully, we have a new shop cat. Our theory is that is has been coming in through a small opening in the basement and eating mice. It makes sense now why we haven’t seen mice around in a while. What should we name it? I’ve been told it looks like a tiger so something along those lines. Or perhaps Campfire the Cat or Campy for short.
Bike ride buds – January. 13, 2025
I made it out the other day on a fun ride with my kiddo and my bud Nate. The day got derailled from my original plans of either riding with FUGA or going out and riding ironwood with Sarah Swallow for her Sky Island Adventure Rides. Well, our heater went out and we were due for a few below freezing nights 🥶. Some of us desert folk don’t do so well in the cold and freeze easily. So I spent the morning repairing it. We were jonesin for a ride so we set off to ramble. We got a couple miles of trail and rode mostly on the loop for a pleasurable 30 mile cruise with an intermission at a fast food joint (it’s how I bribe my kid to come ride, don’t judge me lol) we had a great time and the miles passed with smiles and laughter. If only I could motivate myself to do this more often.
What to you do to motivate to get out and ride in those little windows of time?
Visions and resolutions – January. 6, 2025
Sometimes life gets busy, you feel tired and so much is going on. You ride to work, you ride home, eat dinner, go to sleep rinse and repeat. Sometimes you get talked into all kinds of things and time slows down and you enjoy yourself. This year I’m trying to get an after work ride once a week as well as a cool family event to make time move slower.
New experiences have a way of slowing down time and making life seem more magical. I went out on a ride with my buddy last night and time dragged on with magic hallucinations and visions of wild desert plants that let our imaginations run wild!
Always stretch!! – December. 30, 2024
Sending out a reminder to keep stretching during riding and after to stay limber and keep the muscles fresh. It’s a special necessity after the holiday relaxation and food! Here’s a pic mid-ride pic from the other night with my buddy Ben giving a nice stretch on the three tunnels sign. Happy New Year!
Bikes for kids! – December. 16, 2024
It’s always awesome when a kiddo gets the stoke of riding a bike. It comes with so much awesomeness, the freedom of independence and the confidence of making yourself move.
Jake just built up this rad little shredder for one of our favorite shop kiddos, who’s just starting to ride their own bike after commuting everyday of their life on the back of the family cargo bike. This is gonna be one rad Christmas gift. Enjoy your new whip and freedom Aven!
Grail bikes. – December. 9, 2024
Last Saturday Evening while attending the annual Bicas Art Auction (a fantastic fundraiser and event help by our awesome local community bike shop) I came across one of my grail bikes in their racks. It’s an Albert Eisentraut rainbow trout in immaculate condition.
My Grail is a limited by Albert, but I would definitely settle for a rainbow traut. I worked at a shop in the late aughts that had a race team sponsored by Albert and they all had custom Eisentrauts with a pink and blue argyle pattern painted on them. Albert is from Oakland, CA and began building in 1959. Many consider him the person that really brought back post war American frame building and craftsmanship. His frames are always beautiful and full of amazing details.
Saying goodbye to Lonesome George – December. 2, 2024
Most of you probably don’t know this, but I pride myself on being an everyday bike commuter for the last 22 years. During my adult life my family have been a 1 car or no car household. But I do have a dirty little secret. I really love vintage cars. I’ve owned and build cars ranging from the late 20’s to the early 70’s. I don’t usually keep them long, I usually buy them for $500 and get then mechanically sound and cruise them a bit here and there and get over having a car since I never drive it and some bill or large expense comes up and I sell the car.
But this one was different. Lonesome George (named after the last gallapegos turtle) is a 1969 Dodge A-108 pop top camper van. We surfed, camped and traveled all over the California coast and desert with this van and I owned it for 12 years (probably 5 times longer than I’ve had any other car). It took a long time to get this van safe enough and it was a reliable pleasurable slow cruise that provided us wonderful nights of sleeping next to the sound of the surf breaking. Lonesome George is off to its next adventure in Pennsylvania and camping in the Poconos. You will be missed!!
New Mural! – November. 25, 2024
One of the rad things about Tucson is that there are sooooo many murals around town. Murals and street art keep a city or a town vibrant and fun. As they pop up, you get something new to look at or as you meander around town you find new ones constantly or you are paying attention.
The best murals tell a story of the community or culture of the area you are in and help instill a pride in tradition and culture. Here’s a new one going on down the street. It’s done by an amazing local muralist Ignacio Garcia. Check out his work at https://www.ignaciotheartist.com/. This mural celebrates the tradition of the Tucson Rodeo that is celebrating 100 years and is the country’s longest non-motorized parade! Here’s this giant mural in progress. Keep in mind this is a 6 story building!!!
Civic engagement: It’s important. – November. 18, 2024
To make bikes really equitable, safer and better utilized it’s important to build better infrastructure as well as community engagement neighborhood by neighborhood to make sure people have what they need and is wanted. I want to give a shout out to the folks and organizations that are organizing in the neighborhoods and working with the city to advocate for these things and work on connecting people physically and metaphorically through community events and rides!
This is a shout out to FUGA for making these rad events happen and for their tireless work here in Tucson. The picture today is of an event that just happened. We also have LSA (Living Streets Alliance) doing amazing work in the city as well with their advocacy and previously mentioned open streets event Ciclovia! Fill out those surveys, write those letters and show up to events; It makes a difference! Become a YIMBY!!!
Kamoot Rally and Fiore’s wood bike – November. 11, 2024
Last week at the shop was a super busy week here after a few events in the shop as well as rides and events the week before. One of the big highlights was meeting a bunch of the rad folks that traveled into town for the Kamoot Rally that was hosted by Lael Wilcox. The Rally is a cool format that is community oriented aventure riding. The ride is limited to 75 women who came from all over the states as well as around the world.
They will be riding 394 miles with 24,500 feet of climbing. Last year was the first one in Arizona and we meet so many rad women who came into the shop. One of the highlights this year was meeting Fiore from Italy and her really cool gravel bike made from Frassino wood (European ash tree). Feast your eyes on this Georgeous bike! And cheers to everyone on the Kamoot Rally!!!
Speaker Series – November. 04, 2024
For our 6th(!!!) speaker series event collaboration with the fine folks at Roadrunner Bikes (Elliot specifically) we were fortunately enough to have storytelling from Elisha Bishop(Rez Gravel) and Claudia Jackson (SiiHasin Bike Rides) travel over and bless us with storytelling.
Claudia came all the way from Indian Wells and Elisha came all the way from Gila River Community (near Casa Grande). It was really inspiring to hear these two amazing voices community and ride leaders talk about how they got started and the process through developing their own style of rides, steeped in community, support of each other and creating a special space where people could feel vulnerable.
Please take a moment to check out these incredible programs and consider supporting them with a donation for supplies and ongoing support:
- Watch the short film “Two Wheels, One Nation” about SiiHasin [here].
- Donate to SiiHasin [here].
- Read about Rez Gravel [here], and Donate to support their efforts [here].
Thank you! And if this speaks to you, please donate and share!
Tucson Alleybat – October. 28, 2024
I was fortunate enough to help out at the annual Tucson Alleybat. What’s an Alleybat you ask? It’s like an Alleycat messenger style race, which is basically a scavenger hunt and you have to find efficient ways to get to different checkpoints. The Alleybat is less competitive and more mischievous with checkpoint focusing on fun and mischief as well as costumed! It’s such a good show of Tucson community and this year was a fundraiser for Tucson Food Share and Community Care Tucson. The organizers did an incredible job of setting it up and organizing the fundraisers and raffle, the folks that designed all the check points had amazing activities and people did an amazing job of bringing the fun and mischief!!! Huge shoutout to Burger, Blix, Aliz, and Hannah as well as everyone who helped for making such a wonderful fulfilling night! Special thanks to Slow Body Brewing and the medieval wedding next to us for putting up with us and all the teams who were so fun to watch!
Spaces closed to cars – October. 21, 2024
I really love the way that spaces get activated when areas get closed to cars. Whether it be outside seating or entire blocks that are permanently or temporarily closed. The first one I experienced was weekly closures at Golden Gate Park than ciclovia in San Francisco. It really brought joy to see all kinds of members of the the community come together and spend time outside. It gets way more people moving slower into business areas. During Covid my home area of Ventura and Santa Barbara closed the Main st (and State street) to cars and have continued it. I’ve never seen so many people walking around in downtown Ventura year round. It really brought some life into a slow afternoon only, kinda Saturday and closed Sunday community to a busy all day every day area. Sorry my picture is of a side street on a foggy early morning 
. But in the meantime- go check out LSA’s Ciclovia Tucson this weekend to get a taste of what open streets is all about! People! We’ll be there fixing bikes at the south side of the route all day on Sunday! Come say hi!
Old Pueblo trolley transit museum – October. 14, 2024
I’m a big fan of public transportation (even though I mostly ride my bike, I do enjoy hopping on a streetcar or using a train or bus to get around) Recently I was lucky enough to ride by the Old Pueblo Trolley Museum also called the Southern Arizona Transit Museum. It’s an amazing collection of unrestored and restored public transportation vehicles ranging from mule pulled trolley, streetcars and busses. It’s all ran by volunteers. A couple of them have been friends since they meet on a bus 1958. They started as an organization to revive the streetcar in Tucson (it had been dead since 1930). They built tracks on 4th Ave and operated vintage streetcars until recently when our transit service took over the line and purchased new streetcars. They have collected the history or local transit and have been acquiring streetcars and busses that were used through the region as well as streetcars from around the world. Their collection is amazing and it’s awesome to talk the folks and hear stories about these old vehiclesl. Their goal is to run streetcars through sour Tucson that would hear out from the museum. It would be so cool! Go check them out at oldpueblotrolley.com
Car space < Living space – October. 7, 2024
Recently we had Parking Day here in Tucson. One of the best parts of this event is demonstrating how much liveable space we lose to cars. Whether it be road space or parking space. There are estimated 2.5-7 spaces per every registered car. That is a huge waste of space! One of my favorite waste of space is the El Con mall here with an always mostly empty parking lot of almost 6000 spaces. Imagine what we could do with those spaces; open space for nature, housing for the houseless and mobile businesses, but, instead we have this huge, ugly, hot heat island that just reflects heat and puts an ugly scar in the city.
During parking day my friends Logan and Gustavo made a demonstration parking space structure called “the shed” to show how the space could be a tiny home so someone can have secure housing, it could be an office, a guest house, office, storage or whatever you can imagine. From their website: The “ The shed’s walls are constructed from locally fabricated Insulated Concrete Form Blocks. Each block weighs approximately 3 pounds, making them easy to lift and assemble. The entire wall system can be pre-assembled into 15 manageable panels and loaded onto a single trailer. Although these panels are lightweight and easy to handle, we recommend that two people work together to place each panel due to their size— the largest panels weigh around 50 pounds and measure 3 feet tall by 10 feet long. the whole shed can be built very nicely for under $10,000. I really love Logan and Gustavo’s vision for creative use of small spaces and infill. Learn more at https://silvaandhavens.com/
Reminiscing about northern Arizona. – October. 03, 2024
As we hit another heatwave of 100 for a whole nother week it’s hard to believe it’s already October. As I sweat sitting here I’m dreaming of cooler fall weather, some clouds and trees to provide shade and cold steams to filter some water from and perhaps take a little dip. Doing the lobo Lupe’s upper lollipop loop really let me know I was about done with the long summer and ready to ease into fall. I am usually a summer person, but it’s been constantly over 100 and stayint there even at night (I think our neighbors in Phoenix hit a new record of 100 days over 100) and without the usual breaks even though we had some amazing monsoons it just didn’t cool off enough. Here’s too some upcoming cooler weather and riding season here in Tucson!