On A Wing And A Pedal

Megan Dean and the Flight of Moth Attack Cycles.

- Betsy Welch

Megan Dean builds bikes in the shadow of a jealous airplane.

Since she was a kid, Dean’s been hanging out in her dad’s shop — now her shop — in the creosote-studded hills outside of Las Vegas. For as long as she can remember, a dismantled airplane waited like a patient Humpty Dumpty while other projects came and went. (When they were 18, her father and his best friend salvaged the wrecked plane from a mountaintop crash site.) Dean and her sister shadowed her father while he tinkered, learning the subtle artistry of fixing things. Now, her own nephews wander into the shop, wanting to know what she’s doing, if they can help, or finding out if something is too hot to touch. Wings, fuselage and tail pieces still adorn the walls, but steel bike frames are what fly out of the door now.

Dean isn’t really your typical frame builder, but “typical” has probably never been used to describe someone whose days are spent darkened by a welding helmet. What she’s done for work — from her childhood helping her dad with auto body repairs to booking punk rock shows as a teenager to working as a bike courier in Los Angeles — resembles disparate parts that, when fused together, actually form a coherent history of someone who decides to build bikes for a living.

“I was just looking for something that would suit my interests,” Dean said.

If you flip to the middle of the Megan Dean story, you end up in Rifle, Colo. Talk about disparate parts: Rifle is equally known for oil shale and sport climbing, but it’s also home to a frame building school. The owner and sole instructor is Koichi Yamaguchi, who, in the late 80's, worked with the US Cycling Federation as national team mechanic and was the official frame builder of the United States Olympic Cycling Team.