Now, time for the real meat and potatoes. New bikes are always fun, and I am very happy to be riding full time again, but the excitement level of cycling pales in comparison to what I’ve been working on. I am proud to announce the creation of Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses, LLC. I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a Tiny House company for over a year now. Ever since I caught wind of these small living quarters I have been more or less obsessed with them. Just about every work or business related decision I have made over the past 16 or so months has been in preparation for this moment. My decision to buy a run down camper, renovate it, and live in it on a wide open farm for almost a year was no coincidence either. My personal Tiny House that I’m building now was just as much a business decision as it was for personal reasons. The “Durango” as it will be aptly named, will act as the company’s first model house. Even my decision to start Durango Bike Trailers last spring was a stepping stone to get to this point. I actually had plans to start a teardrop camper company as an “in between” stepping stone, but the momentum has built so quickly, this wasn’t even necessary.

This week I put in my resignation from Sun Peak Builders. The owner was super cool about it and very supportive of my new venture. My time spent there has been invaluable, and I’ll be the first to say I wouldn’t have felt prepared to start this new company without the experience in contracting, estimating, planning, and management that I gained while working at Sun Peak. I have agreed to stay on long enough to tie up loose ends, as well as on a contract design basis, because design still remains a passion of mine and I learn a lot from Adam since a lot of the stuff we do is alternative building.

The company is obviously in its infant stage, and I feel a little uneasy about introducing a concept that isn’t fully developed, but at least the LLC is registered, I snagged the domain name and Facebook page I needed, and my initial meetings with the Southwest Colorado Small Business Development center have been promising. In a nutshell, here is what Rocky Mountain Tiny Homes aims to do:

• Provide quality, affordable, flexible housing in the form of Tiny Houses on wheels to the Rocky Mountain region and possibly beyond
• Offer custom solutions that other builders aren’t qualified or aren’t willing to offer
• Promote resources for the DIY Tiny House enthusiast
• Develop original Tiny House plans and models that are appropriate to the Rocky Mountain region
• Push the boundaries of Tiny House technology, function, and design. Innovate.
• Publish books and videos related to advanced Tiny House topics not covered very well in other resources, such as self containment systems, solar power, minimizing weight, customizing trailers, advanced plumbing, and more…
• Work with lending institutions to try and solve one of the biggest hurdles to purchasing Tiny Houses-financing.

The list goes on, but if you didn’t get the jist of all this, I’m going to be designing and building Tiny Houses for a living. And also if you haven’t been keeping up with the housing market, the Tiny House movement is exploding. People are tired of over-sized, lifeless houses, mortgages, and inflexibility. I haven’t even come close to pinning down my numbers for one of these things, but I’m hoping the average model will come in around $35k or less. That’s the price of a new truck or higher end car. That’s the down payment on a house in Durango, and most of the US for that matter. That’s only a year’s wage for a middle class worker. Even with a 5 year personal loan it would be very easy to pay off. Some might purchase a Tiny Home as a backyard rental or other kind of investment.

Anyways, I digress. There is going to be a huge demand for Tiny Houses in the very near future, and coincidentally, there aren’t many Tiny House builders in this part of the country, so hopefully life will be good.

I should point out that I’m not starting this business for financial reasons. Sure, I hope to have good success and do all the other things in life that I love doing, but really this opportunity will allow me to pursue my many passions: design, creativity, ingenuity, carpentry, tinkering, collaboration, entrepreneurship, and helping others, to name a few.

Getting it going will be no easy task. The next few months will be filled with brainstorming, planning, documenting, building the website, finishing my Tiny House, establishing connections with suppliers, beginning the search for clients, and so, so much more. If you feel so inclined, please help me spread the word. Nothing works as well as word of mouth referrals, but social media shares are nice too 😉

Thanks for checking in on the latest and greatest. Life has been extremely gracious to me as of late, I hope the same can be said of you too. Remember, “Less is More.”

Peace
Greg Parham

Owner/Manager

Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses, LLC

I originally started this post at the beginning of February, but never got around to publishing it for some reason. Life just gets in the way sometimes. After looking back, I actually re-wrote a lot of the thoughts into the “Ides of March” post, but there was one snippet left out I would like to share still:

 I watched the superbowl the other night, and if you recall, there was a power outage early in the third quarter that suspended play for a good 35 minutes. When the players took to the field again, the head referee came on PA and said “Let’s Go” I think that is the most awesome thing I’ve ever heard one of those guys say, in the biggest of all games, to boot.

In some ways, circumstances have been similar for me as of late. The things I enjoy most in life have taken a back seat to work….

…and my thoughts kind of continue about being super busy, not riding much, paying off debt, that sort of thing. Of course, since then, the house sold. I have paid every dime of debt I to my name. I made mention of some exciting things to come in my last post. Well, those exciting things are here!

Let’s start with some bonafide in your face bragging rights. I normally try to keep my ego in check as well as try to be an overall humble person, but damnit, I’ve gone through enough crap the past few years to justify a complete bling bling post about what else?- brand spanking new kickass bikes! I haven’t bought a new performance bike in quite some time. Probably all the way back to 2009 when I think about it. The YBS was kinda new, but also kinda more of a prize, a fun bike if you will. Whenever my friends post pictures on Facebook of their new bikes that they get like every 9 months I’m like “who gives a crap?” or “ what was wrong with the last bike?” or “so what if your bike is $8k and 1 or 2 lbs lighter than mine or has the latest and greatest whatever-I’ll still kick your ass on my steel singlespeed or 1986 Trek Elance 440!”

That may still be true, but now, with some new machines in my clutches, I will really kick some ass, and have more fun doing it. I introduce to you not one, not even two, but THREE new bikes to the caveman stable. Eat your hearts out bike junkies.

Allow me to start with what I consider the coolest bike I have ever owned, despite probably being the heaviest bike I have ever owned, and bike that will never ever see the likes of any race course, lest it be of the cruiser pub crawl category- the Kona Ute.

This bike is the F-350 of bikes. It can haul however much crap you can strap to the cargo area, or, however much weight your legs can push up a 4% grade, which is about typical for some of the short hill bursts here in town. Anything over that, forget about it, you’re walkin’. But anyways, I picked this thing up used for $300, and although it needed a little TLC, I figured that someday it would pay for itself with a lot of trips to the grocery store, Home Depot, the Laundromat, commuting, giving cute girls a ride home after a few too many beers, and possibly some short distance camping trips. The dude I bought it from said he rode it from Telluride with a guitar strapped on, so I know for sure this bike has some mountain mojo to it.

Next up is the last hardtail 29er I might ever have to buy. My new love. My new bikepacking/MTBultra-distance / 24 hour racer supreme-the Kona Raijin.

For those of you who know bikes, you can skip the rest of this paragraph, but for those who don’t, let me delve a little deeper. This bike is handcrafted by Lynskey in Tennessee out of element 22, otherwise known as TITANIUM. I have always wanted to try out a Ti bike, but have never had the resources to do so, until now. I told myself I would only buy one or two nice things from the sale of the house, and this is thing #1. There is just something pure and beautiful about Ti that is hard to explain. It is metal extracted from the earth. It is smelted, purified, and manipulated into shapes according to function. It is then taken by a master craftsman and cut, mitered, and welded by extremely demanding processes into this work of art that can assembled as a bicycle. And not just any bike. One that has been meticulously designed by Kona, a legend in mountain bike performance. The original intent was to build this thing up with the all new top of the line 11 speed Sram XX1 groupset. Everything was in except for the hub driver needed to accept the unique cassette, which I had a hard time tracking down, but is currently being shipped. Wanting to ride this bike badly, it finally occurred to me to this rig has sliding dropouts, and can be run SINGLESPEED. After slapping myself on the head for tardily coming to this realization, and furthermore that I had all the parts necessary for a singlespeed build just laying around, I rushed home from work, threw together a SS build, then I took it out for test ride on the world famous Test Tracks here in Durango, aka Ned Overend Park. It was awesome. It was heavenly. It was the sweetest virgin ride I’d ever had (and I mean EVER, if you know what I mean 😉 )  As much as I like to rock the one cog, I will have some gears setup on this machine for some upcoming LOOONG races. Gears just make more sense in tour-type races in mountain terrain, especially as I add a few years. However, having felt the joy of the one gear on my first ride, you can bet this rig will see some awesome SS action down the road. That is the beauty of such a well thought out bike-lots of versatility. Raijin is Japenese for “God of Thunder” I kinda like that, but I might still give it another name when it comes to mind.

Last, I introduce you to the Volagi Viaje. Volagi is a new company out of California. Their philosophy is driven by long rides, and disc brakes on road bikes. As of now, they only offer two different models- a carbon framed road race oriented bike with disc brakes and an “adventure” steel framed road bike with disc brakes that can handle larger tires. I came across these guys on kickstarter, and feeling like they had something going, decided to contribute to their cause and in return got one of the steel frames. Other than the cool shape of this bike, it’s has some other cool features. It can handle large cyclocross tires up to 42mm, it is reasonably lightweight with the included sweet carbon fork. It has disc brakes which offer incredible control, and also means I can use my mountain bike wheels with it. It includes braze-ons for front and rear racks, and is designed to carry a moderate touring load.  I can still run road tires on it for training rides or local hammerfests. The Viaje has a HUGE gear range with a 2×10 setup (50/34 compact crank with 11-36 cassette) making it easy to cruise up mountains fully loaded or down them at full speed. It utilizes a tapered headtube and pressfit 30 bottom bracket, both of which increase the stiffness end efficiency of the bike. Volagi has a patented feature they call “bowflex stays” whereby the seat stays bypass a connection to the seat tube, as is standard, and instead are welded to the top tube a few inches ahead of the seat tube. The theory is that this isolates road vibration from the rear wheel and adds some cushion. Based on my initial observations, I’d agree it works! Lastly, it just feels fun and comfortable. I’ve already taken it on everything from paved road to gravel road to light trail and handles each admirably. This steed shall serve as handily weapon in road, cross, gravel grinders, touring, and whatever else I can come up that fits the bill.

Ok, so bike bragging is out of the way. Part 2 of Go Time shortly to follow, and trust me, it will be real exciting news, not boring bike stuff. I promise…