The Mind of John Drake

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Day 42

John Drake breathes bicycles, thinks bicycles, dreams bicycles.

Wise and sometimes funny is how you’ll find John as he talks about the challenges and pleasures that come with working on and repairing and constructing bikes—something he’s been doing for over 40 years. You will often hear him talk about the merits of thinking and doing and moving and wrenching—always extolling the value of making and fixing things in a masterful way. He’s in his shop daily, and at times it’s a curious and lonely occupation allowing contented isolation. 

Watching John work teaches you over and over again the difference between him and us. When John looks at a bicycle, he has a question in mind, which generates more questions. The bicycle is the locus of many, many mental threads—some nascent, some spanning his career. The notes John makes when building up a bike are not some lifeless data; everything he perceives, everything he engages in, is a preoccupation with building a particular bike. With exact mechanics and artistry, depth and clarity, range, beauty, and originality—John wrenches on bikes. He is the Gödel, Escher, and Dvořák of building up bicycles. The mind is such an unusual piece of software, and what John does every day and has been doing every day for 40 years is a masterpiece of programming. And a hell of a useful and fun thing for the mind. 

The bicycle will transform you.  

John Drake is a lifelong cyclist (another hell of a useful thing for the mind). He enjoys all aspects of both road and mountain-bike culture. He enjoys two-hour rides on long, flowing mountain trails or on roads, with sprint finishes (his 1997 Blue Weigle has 40K miles and it’s one of six bikes) often in the company of good friends, before going into his shop, where he constructs performance bikes to the highest standards of excellence that exist. 

Being a collector.

The world is divided between people who collect things and people who don’t know what the hell is going on with people who collect things. And if you are a collector you can’t inculcate the wonder of the object, say a bicycle in this case, can’t impress, or teach neophytes into what makes a particular collection of bicycles highly desirable and rare to find. Rare is rare for a reason and it’s certainly not because everybody wants it. Furthermore, people who appreciate the rare in the realm of bicycles are just as rare as the things themselves. John Drake is one of those people. The rare collector of rare bicycles.  

A vein of gold. Or, how collectors shape collections.

The collector sees something in the bicycles he collects. He enters a flow state. For the collector it’s exciting. There’s a sense of adrenalin in the gentle search for a particular bicycle. You’re basically in a place where somebody has put their life energy, their physical presence and their intellectual energy into making these bicycles. All the bicycles John Drake has collected are a beautiful form of the thing itself and all are especially, aesthetically pleasing. But it’s in looking closely you see the deep logic in this particular builder’s bike. Looking closely, you can see in one of these objects what the builder was thinking, what they were interested in. The bikes John has collected inspire the deep logic of the each builder. The logic of that particular builder’s universe. And the searcher/collector finds beauty embodied in the logic, the joy, and creativity brought to each bike. Collecting is a process of total involvement with the life of each particular bike. 

It's art. 

It always comes back to the visual object. A collector, in this case John Drake, is searching and finding beauty embodied in a particular bicycle’s construction. The quality, or aggregate of qualities in each  bicycle. The wonder in the deep order that shines through in a bikes particular shape, form, sight, color. These are works of art. The joy and creativity we find in these bicycles is the same joy and creativity we find in a spiritual cosmology, or if you will in God’s glory. The bicycle imposes a levelness on an irregular world and the process of total involvement with life is called, “riding a bicycle”. 

Mind weeds. 

Bicycles are more than bicycles. They are a way of being fully human. Riding a bike quiets the mind, clears the mind of all confusion. But, having said that, riding a particular bicycle, one you have searched out – a Weigel, a Nobilette, or one built by Yoshiaki Nagasawa is even more insanely nourishing. The heart is even more beguiled and entertained. Riding a bicycle, all bicycles, provides a path that is truer and go deeper and then we are free. Bicycles provide life altering moments. There’s a magic we can feel being in the saddle. We continue to learn and to grow through the practice of biking. Or, on some days, it is just the spontaneous joy at being out on the bike, because after all, the bicycle is the most perfect expression of our actual nature. Some just more than others.  

He is the jam in the sandwich, as well as, the sandwich. 

John Drake loves dealing with bicycles. It has just never seemed like work. For people who don’t know his backstory, it’s really interesting. He is a man who understands rare in the realm of bicycles.

The bicycle is the universe.

• First pro bike was a 1977 Austro-Daimler Extra Light with Campagnolo Nuovo Record and tubular tires.

• First mountain bike was a 1983 Ritchey Timber Comp.

• First tandem was a 1983 Mark Nobilette custom.

• First custom road frame was a J. P. Weigle.

• First Japanese custom frame was a Nagasawa Road.

• First bicycle convention was New York Show, 1980.

John Drake’s first pro shop—Mike Kolin’s Cycling Center on Hoover Avenue in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

John Drake’s entire adult life has been in bicycle retail. He started out as a bicycle mechanic in the back of his dad’s sporting goods store in Saline, Michigan.