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Don Walker Cycles
I have been thinking about this moment, half dreading it actually, for the last month or so. I don’t consider my writing (or lack thereof) skills could possibly be up for the challenge of what lies ahead for Smoked Out. Sure, I wanted to be included, but, how does one really tell their story without boring the readers to tears, or at least that’s what I think will happen when I tell my story. If you get real bored, which I suspect will happen about 3 or 4 minutes into the read, go grab yourself a nice adult beverage and see if that helps you finish my post.
I grew up in Sacramento, Ca., a city in which I absolutely loved, up until the mid 90s, but that’s another story. I learned to ride bikes in front of my house on Whitney Avenue on a Columbia brand girls bike that was new probably 15 or so years before it was handed down to me. That bike was bulletproof, as my older brother Russ (6 years older) and I would make ramps out of wood and bricks and jump that Columbia. It got ghost ridden too, more often than not, and would hold a perfectly straight line until it ran out of steam and then would simply tip over. “They don’t build ‘em like that anymore” would be a perfectly appropriate quote in this case. As I grew into the rambunctious teen years, almost all of the neighborhood kids were buying road bikes and doing weekend organized rides, metric centuries and stuff like that. I was probably the youngest to want to do that. I convinced my old man to buy me a new bike. So in the spring of 1980 we went looking for my first 10 speed bike. I ended up with a Windsor Carerra Sport. At $250, it was a decent bike for a guy who wanted to do weekend rides, but it definitely wasn’t a racing bike. So I rode quite a bit and started hanging out at The Bicycle Barn on Arden and Watt in Sacramento. During one of my visits a salesman named Larry Robinson took an interest in how much I had been riding and basically talked me into racing. Back then, I was considered an “Intermediate” in category. I raced through the first season and mainly was a pack finisher. I discovered I wasn’t all that great on hills as the other kids, but there was no way in hell they could drop me in the criteriums, so that’s where I mainly focused my training. It was then that I discovered Hellyer Park Velodrome and with the urging of my friends in the Bay Area, I started racing there and a true love affair began with the track.
Sometime in these early years, I read an article in Bicycling magazine about a guy who had built his own frame, but out of aluminum and it really intrigued me. So when I started lining up at races, I started actually looking at the brands around me. Lighthouse, Lippy, Colnago, Celo Europa, Holdsworth (which I would later own one) and other brands like Dale Saso and Della Santa… all of these in the junior and intermediate ranks. I think this was the first time in which I actually dreamt that “one day I will build bikes”. I continued racing throughout my junior years with a few small wins and several top 10’s, but it was time to graduate high school and move on with my life. I took an airframe & structures class in Southern California and was hired to work structures on the B1-b bomber. I got married at 19 to my H.S. sweetheart and gave up cycling for a life in the working world.
It only took a year or two, but I got FAT. The once svelte, fast kid was fat. I began training January 1st 1989 and by my birthday in September, I had lost 40 pounds and went from a Cat 4 to 2 on the track and the cool thing was that working in aircraft had given me a skillset that I could use in making bikes.
Now, here’s where it gets interesting. In 1990, I met Al Wanta, a builder in Santa Barbara. I had broken a frame and wanted advice on fixing it or replacing it. I must have called him 20 times in a week or two asking dozens of questions. I think he got tired of me calling and bugging him when he finally said “you sound like you have a real keen interest in framebuilding. I am getting a new jig, would you like my old one?” I told him I was a starving aircraft mechanic and couldn’t afford it and he said “No, I’m giving it to you!” “Oh wow! Sure, thanks!” So, now I had the first piece of a large puzzle. It took another 6 months of studying the Paterek Manual daily before I attempted the first of 3 or 4 total abortions. I got a rideable frame on #5. I was determined to make a go of this passion that’s been inside since my youth.
Fast forward a couple years, after I had built about 50 or so bikes. I went on a trip to the Caribbean island of Trinidad. They have a big race there every year called the Easter Gran Prix. While there, I met Shaun Wallace of England. This meeting would prove to be very fruitful for me later that year when Shaun called me and said “Don, the UCI just outlawed the O’Bree position. Can you make me a new bike?” I was stunned, here was a seasoned pro rider asking me for a bike. “Of course I can make you a new bike, how soon do you want it?” I asked. He came back with “Well, I leave on Thursday for Victoria for the Commonwealth Games” (it was Saturday evening when he had called) I think my response was something like “ Oh shit! I won’t even have time to get the tubing in or anything.” He said he was pretty sure I could make it with whatever I had laying around at the time. He had fedexed his own drawing (Shaun has a degree in mechanical engineering, btw) and I got started on the bike. I had two days to make it. Once I finished the bike, I had missed the last call for UPS, so I had to drive to the airport and ship it on United. Shaun built the bike up, did a warm up on it and a flying 3k ad got off the bike and said “we got a good one here” and packed it up and then went to the airport to catch his flight to Victoria.
The bike was still raw, without even having the flux removed, but Shaun made the best of it and painted it with Krylon and Testors model paint between two dumpsters behind his hotel room and put the bike back together. He qualified in the top 3, and the bike briefly held a Commonwealth record. He ended up with a Silver medal in the pursuit, on a bike that looked awful close up to it, but great from 30 or more feet away! I am always thankful for that chance meeting of Shaun and he and I remain friends to this day.
On June 22, 1995 (yesterday was the 15th unhappy anniversary) my shop in Sacramento was burglarized. As I wasn’t a “businessman” but a framebuilder, I didn’t have insurance and lost everything. The Sheriff’s detectives took about a month to build a case on the scumbag and during that time, he fenced off about $30k worth of bikes, groups and tools for his drug habit. Since the DA didn’t have enough hard evidence that he committed the crime, they only charged him with receiving stolen property and he was sentenced to 141 days in county jail. He served half of it due to jail overcrowding.
After that experience, I got back into the aircraft game and became a contractor, a modern day gypsy, going wherever the contract led me. I had lived in Long Beach, Savannah, Ga., Greensboro, NC, Lafayette, LA, Wichita, KS and Hewitt, TX. It was in Hewitt, that I started build again. It only took 6 years to rebuild what I had owned before. I was still hooked on building road and track bikes.
I relocated to Speedway Indiana 3 years ago for a job offer with a company that I really don’t want to talk about ever again, but decided to open my own shop and haven’t looked back since. At this point in 2010, I have built more bikes than the previous 2 years combined. I am on pace to hit 30, but believe with a focused ad campaign, I can make it to 40.
Now, for the bikes… I am somewhere in the high 300’s or low 400s. Mostly all fillet brazed bikes with a few out there with lugged BB’s and about 10 or so fully lugged. My passion has always been and will always be racing bikes, but I like other styles as well. I don’t really do much stainless mainly because I think it’s too gimmicky and it doesn’t make my bikes perform any better.
Anyhow, if it hasn’t been covered here, feel free to ask questions. I will answer all!
Thanks for your time.
DW
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Originally Posted by conorb
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