Quench'd: Reinventing Everything but the Wheel

September 20th, 2025 | by Caleb Campbell

Caleb is a friend of mine who works with his dad to make wooden bike frames: Celilo Cycles. The first time he showed me one of his bikes I was shocked and amazed! I wanted to hear more, especially about him working with his dad.

I love how Celilo Cycles describes riding their unique bikes:

“If you’ve only ever ridden metal or carbon bikes, it’s hard to explain just how different wood feels. It’s not mushy or dead-it’s lively, grounded, and quiet. There’s a connectedness to the road that doesn’t punish you for every crack and pebble. It’s the kind of comfort you don’t notice until you switch back to something else and wonder why everything suddenly feels harsh.”

- Keaton Smith

Caleb is a friend of mine who works with his dad to make wooden bike frames: Celilo Cycles. The first time he showed me one of his bikes I was shocked and amazed! I wanted to hear more, especially about him working with his dad.

I love how Celilo Cycles describes riding their unique bikes:

“If you’ve only ever ridden metal or carbon bikes, it’s hard to explain just how different wood feels. It’s not mushy or dead-it’s lively, grounded, and quiet. There’s a connectedness to the road that doesn’t punish you for every crack and pebble. It’s the kind of comfort you don’t notice until you switch back to something else and wonder why everything suddenly feels harsh.”

- Keaton Smith

I live about seven hours away from my parents. That means I don’t get much time in the shop with my dad. Instead, our collaborations happen over the phone on hour long calls after work where we hash out details, throw ideas around, and wander down rabbit holes that start small and end up big. There’s a pattern to these calls. One night we’ll both agree: let’s just finish this bike. Let’s call it done and leave it alone for a while. But by the next call, that plan is gone. The goalposts move. A redesign is on the table.

Take the other night. My dad spent over an hour convincing me why we needed our own pivoting dropout. While he talked, I sat at my laptop looking at sliding dropouts for mountain and gravel bikes, browsing framebuilding suppliers with tidy little kits. Each time I said, “What about this one?” he had a reason why it wouldn’t work. Some reasons made sense. Others felt like a stretch. By the end, I was frustrated, he was triumphant, and our bikes had one more original, untested part to carry.

This is the cycle. We want the closure of having a bike be finished, of riding it, enjoying it, and sending it out into the world, letting it stand as is. But we never get there. As soon as it feels close, my dad sees another angle and flips things over again. Because why would we use someone else’s solution when we could design our own?

Take the other night. My dad spent over an hour convincing me why we needed our own pivoting dropout. While he talked, I sat at my laptop looking at sliding dropouts for mountain and gravel bikes, browsing framebuilding suppliers with tidy little kits. Each time I said, “What about this one?” he had a reason why it wouldn’t work. Some reasons made sense. Others felt like a stretch. By the end, I was frustrated, he was triumphant, and our bikes had one more original, untested part to carry.

This is the cycle. We want the closure of having a bike be finished, of riding it, enjoying it, and sending it out into the world, letting it stand as is. But we never get there. As soon as it feels close, my dad sees another angle and flips things over again. Because why would we use someone else’s solution when we could design our own?

Of course, the first version rarely works. The second stumbles too. Sometimes even the third fails outright. But eventually the design usually holds. When it does, it’s strong, clever, and ours. That’s my dad’s way: nothing gets left alone until it checks every box. Exhausting, but it's what makes his bikes really stand alone.

And it’s not just the bikes. At home, we both drag out projects that could be done quickly, and we especially refuse to get something that we could do ourselves, which a lot of the time to both of our partners dismay means that it takes weeks, months or even years for things to happen that really could have just been paid for and bought off the shelf. A cat door for my mom, my refusal to buy a wine rack when, in theory, I could make one myself that might be 10% better.

By now, there’s hardly an inch of the frame my dad hasn’t rethought. It makes me think maybe the calls will slow down, or we'll talk about regular family things instead of bikes. Maybe we’ll finally be done with a bike. But then he sends me an email with no body, just an attachment: a 3D model of a fork to complement our frame. A week after I assured someone that there was no way we were going to start making forks, the frame was enough work by itself…

So no, the debates aren’t ending. And I don’t really want them to. He drives me crazy, but I'll always answer the phone. Because the truth is, I’m the same way. Reinventing everything but the wheel isn’t just his habit - it’s mine too.

Of course, the first version rarely works. The second stumbles too. Sometimes even the third fails outright. But eventually the design usually holds. When it does, it’s strong, clever, and ours. That’s my dad’s way: nothing gets left alone until it checks every box. Exhausting, but it's what makes his bikes really stand alone.

And it’s not just the bikes. At home, we both drag out projects that could be done quickly, and we especially refuse to get something that we could do ourselves, which a lot of the time to both of our partners dismay means that it takes weeks, months or even years for things to happen that really could have just been paid for and bought off the shelf. A cat door for my mom, my refusal to buy a wine rack when, in theory, I could make one myself that might be 10% better.

By now, there’s hardly an inch of the frame my dad hasn’t rethought. It makes me think maybe the calls will slow down, or we'll talk about regular family things instead of bikes. Maybe we’ll finally be done with a bike. But then he sends me an email with no body, just an attachment: a 3D model of a fork to complement our frame. A week after I assured someone that there was no way we were going to start making forks, the frame was enough work by itself…

So no, the debates aren’t ending. And I don’t really want them to. He drives me crazy, but I'll always answer the phone. Because the truth is, I’m the same way. Reinventing everything but the wheel isn’t just his habit - it’s mine too.