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.
Adventure story telling series – May. 5, 2025
I’m really excited we get to cohost another adventure story telling with the fine folks from Roadrunner Bikes. With everything going on we wanted to highlight folks that help advocate and maintain public access to lands that we recreate on. This one is especially bittersweet because we will be at Borderlands Brewing who is just a couple of buildings down.
Borderlands has graciously lent us their beautiful outdoor space for many events as well as opening it up for many community groups and people. They are unfortunately losing their space of over a decade (long terrible story), so this will likely be our last event with them unless they find another space or some kind of miracle happens.
Anyway- if you are in town, come hang out and enjoy some good ol’ fashioned story telling and community hangs. (Sign up here) And don’t forget to send Borderlands Brewing some love and buy lots of beer and swag from them! Big shoutout to Mo (Revolta Art) for the amazing artwork!
The Ultimate Touring rig? – April. 28, 2025
Are you ready for your next forever touring bike- ready to travel the world, cross the country or just some local roads and errands in comfort and style. The Surly Disc Trucker is one of the benchmarks of durable, long lasting, no nonsense touring bikes. We are fortunate enough to have this amazing custom built Disc Trucker on consignment here at the shop.
It’s a very thought out complete build in size 56. Features such amazing and well thought out pieces as White Industries VBC Crankset (variable bolt circle diameter so you can run a large combination of chainrings to get exact gearing you want) and Bottom Bracket (all machined in Petaluma, CA), Shimano Ultegra 2×11 ultra wide shifting (44/28 up from with an 11-42 cassette for a range of 18-110 gear inches or whopping 599% gear ratio!) with hydraulic brakes to save your wrist with stronger braking with less effort, Velocity Dyad USA made Wheelset (a bombproof touring classic wheelset), Brooks Saddle (a touring classic), Tubus Front and Rear Racks and a full set of Ortlieb Panniers (full set of Front and rear and banjo bros handlebar bag)
This bike is fully kitted out and ready to tour! The best part is you can save thousands on this barely ridden build! It can be bought locally for $2599 or if it needs to be shipped out for $250 more ($2849).
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!