Zach Weiss of Zabrina Cycles shares the story of how his apprenticeship at Caletti Cycles grew into a deep professional and personal mentorship after John Caletti suffered a life-altering bike accident. As the torch is passed, both figuratively and literally, the student reflects on how his teacher’s influence shaped his path as a framebuilder and as a person. Take a look behind the welding helmet with Zach…

“Alright, now set the speed – no, not with the dial, only use that when it’s running. Switch the lever. Good, now load the appropriate collet – no, that’s for the edge finder.”

I was clumsy at first. John, at 6’1”, looked over my shoulder. The milling machine, at seven-foot-big-as-fuck, stared down at me as I prepared to make my first unassisted cut. “No, no, that saw’s too large. You want the 31.8 millimeter.” My hands danced from lever to dial. I was hanging on to John’s every word. “Right, now loosen the chuck. Okay, now give it a light tap because it tends to stick. Great.”

I struggled to set up the mill correctly. I was treading water in some of the simplest words that described some of the most complex processes. Did this lever control the spindle brake or the quill feed? If I turn this dial will the knee move up or down? All I could see before me was a grand, steel riveted instrument for which I had neither the experience nor confidence to tune.

My apprenticeship at Caletti Cycles began with a hail mary in the summer of 2020. I cold-called John for a chance at a job and somehow convinced him to take a chance on me. I exchanged one day’s worth of work for a day’s worth of instruction from John. I toed a fine line in those early days. I had a general art and woodwork background that I thought would easily translate to metal, so I pretended to understand as many things as he told me as I admitted to not knowing at all. I couldn’t tell if the end result made me look either overconfident or like a dunce, but I reckon it depended on the day.

I grew up believing I would be an architect. My mother showed me at a young age that nearly anything could be created with a utility knife and foam-core poster board. From grade school to high school, she helped me find ways to incorporate as much “making” into every assignment I received. With a background in art and design herself, she recognized quickly that I had to do something with my hands. I bounced off the walls both in class and at home. Instead of turning in an essay on the construction of the Taj Mahal, I presented a scale model made of paper maché and foam-core. I drew portraits of historical figures to accompany research papers, and re-drew diagrams from my science textbook in my mind’s eye; honing my creativity with a shotgun approach. With nearly everything I tried, nothing really stuck with force.

“Let’s try two weeks, and if it seems like a good fit, we’ll just keep rolling,” John said.

I packed my car and moved to Santa Cruz the day I graduated college. I biked to work the next day on a paint-chipped, bright red Lemond road bike that was one size too large. As a last hurrah to celebrate my tenure as my college’s Bicycle Co-op president, I had proudly converted it to a flat-bar city scrambler. It handled like a quaking leaf and was prone to speed wobbles. I arrived ten minutes early to work and exclaimed all too loudly, “What do you think of my bike?”
“Flat bars, huh?” John responded coolly, “I bet it handles kind of crazy, right?”

Back then, I didn’t understand head angle, fork offset, front-center, etc. I came from a world of slipshod co-op bikes that my friends and I product-tested in the foothills and campus of Claremont, California. Not quite the vibe and esteem of the infamous Repack rides, but nearly as ill-advised. From the moment I stepped into John’s shop, I understood I was completely out of my depth.

But the COVID bike boom hit like a brick and I had to learn quickly. Whether I was the perfect man for the job or not, I happened to be there at the right time. And I like to think my sharp wit (some may dispute that claim) and positive attitude are what convinced him to keep me on. I knew I had to make up for huge shortcomings in my knowledge, so I started taking trade school classes at night in machining and welding. During my “apprentice days” with Caletti, I tried to move as quickly as I could without error. It was both the most exciting and stressful time of my young life. But at the heart of it – more than the tools, more than the beauty and trails of Santa Cruz – the real gold that I knew I had struck was John himself. Without him, without the friendship and trust built between myself, him, and his wife Cory, I have no idea where I would be today.

Fast forward four years. I’m living in Oakland and making bikes out of my garage under my own name: Zabrina Cycles. It took me months of Zillow sleuthing to find a place for rent with an attached garage and only one week to drill thirteen holes in the concrete floor. Four of the holes are in the correct location and of the right size for my pedestal vise. It was the first of many fuck-ups encountered while setting up my shop.

Assembling my shop showed me how spoiled I was working in John’s space. Each aspect of Caletti Cycles was deliberately designed. John has a custom tool for everything: machined aluminum gauge blocks to center seat tubes, a fixture for drilling bottle bosses, dummy-pucks for various tire widths, multi-radius tube benders – a framebuilder’s paradise. It wasn’t until I was faced with having to make my own tools that I truly understood the magnitude of what John had built. Running into problem after problem in my own laundry room of a shop, I keep asking myself, “How the fuck did John make this?” The answer is that he took his time to design smartly, and that I’ll make two stupid versions before getting it right.

John is a deeply contemplative and scrupulous person. He sees everything as an inspiration for growth and is constantly pushing himself to learn new things. We used to watch Moto GP together during lunch. And where I would exclaim, “Hooooly shit, look at that pass!” John would hypothesize on the lean angle, counter steer, and what type of rubber the tires were made of. He’s obsessed with understanding the razor’s edge of performance and design. Which is why, as I was preparing the sale of the first bike I’d made out of my Oakland shop – a blue-black gravel bike with gold lettering – I was shocked to receive a text that said, “John’s been in a serious bike accident.”

It took more than six hours for the doctors to fully evaluate the extent of his injuries; fractured cervical vertebrae (all of ‘em), two shattered thoracic vertebrae, a fractured sternum, cracked ribs, broken scapula – even more would be unearthed in the weeks that followed. I’ve broken my share of bones and had more than my fair share of bike crashes, but I couldn’t even put it all into perspective, and still can’t. He underwent emergency spinal fusion surgery the very next day. After eleven hours and seven vertebrae fused, John emerged from a successful surgery, adding a unique addition to his titanium portfolio and – more importantly – a stable spine.

The thought of crashing is something you try to repress when riding. It’s both never going to happen and inevitable. A deep pot-hole or an off-camber turn are to cyclists as sharks are to surfers. They’re there, but surely they won’t mess with me right? I chased John down every descent we went on together. The week before his accident, I joked I was getting close to keeping up with him. I just try to copy his every move; look through the turn, point my knee, and lean HARD. It’s easy to forget that mere millimeters of rubber is all that is keeping one from catastrophe. But isn’t that the point?

“Eh, I think I’d like the seat-stays to hit a little lower,” John said from a chair behind me, “Try increasing the lower bend a hair, and pushing the dropout miter to an off-set of 5 millimeters.”

Close to two months after John’s crash, after he’d spent a month in the hospital, I went back down to Santa Cruz to give him a hand. I quickly found myself in a familiar position; John offering insight and direction while I twiddle with machines and tubing. John had a couple of frames in the queue when he had his accident. Unable to work to his standards, he asked me to come down so we could miter the frames together. He still wanted to deliver the bikes as described with integrity. He believes that if they’re getting a Caletti, then it ought to still be in his mind’s eye. Each miter I cut, each fit up I filed, and bend I made, I’d show John to get his seal of approval. I also wanted the fit ups to be as good as possible so our friend B Vivit (of Hot Salad Bicycles) would be able to enjoy welding them.

“It’s incredible watching you do this, Zach,” John said from his chair, “Like, you’re so familiar and comfortable with the machines, it’s just a joy to watch you dance around. Even the seat-stays seem easy to you!”

“I used to be so nervous when you’d watch me build!” I said as I set the angle on the rotary table. “I just never wanted to screw up and let you down. Now, it’s just fun! I really feel capable because – well, because of you! I mean fuck, if I screw up now then really it’s actually all your fault.”

”Do as I say, not as – no, actually do as I would do too.”
“Minus the crashing, maybe.“
“Yeah, don’t do that.”
“ Shit, John, that was one of the few things I thought I was actually better than you at!”

The wave of support John and Cory have received since the accident is overwhelming to them, but it’s no surprise to me. I know I’m not alone in feeling in a great debt of love in all they have done for me. Friends from decades ago have flown in to help John get to and from his physical therapy appointments. His friends who are doctors and nurses took it upon themselves to handle all of his insurance squabbles and clinic placements. Meal trains, neighborhood walks, and FaceTimes have quickly packed his schedule. For a guy with a bad back, he’s hard to pin down these days! And at the heart of it all is Cory; holding everything together with the grace and tenacity of a Formula 1 pit crew. She deserves a million hugs and chocolate bars.

So much of framebuilding is about testing your limits. It’s about breaking things with the hope of learning something new. But in the back of your mind, you have to think about what’s salvageable. There’s no coming back from burning a fat hole in a tube when welding – you can’t always fill it in. But you can hacksaw the tube out, grind off the welds, and try again. If you power-feed something in the mill too forcefully, you can destroy the machine. It’s this frantic game of break it/fix it. But in the stress and fear of failure, there is a reward. It’s a perpetual chipping away of self-doubt. Being a craft person is about chasing an idea that does not exist, it’s about aiming for perfection and getting exponentially closer – never touching it.

It wasn’t until I saw John in person and took a look at his x-rays myself, that I began to understand the true extent of his injury. When I heard “shattered vertebrae”, I imagined a handful of pieces. In reality, it looked more like stardust. It’s hard to see someone you love in so much pain. Even harder still to see so much of yourself in that person. I owe so much to John, and I see myself in him in that he quite literally – file in hand – helped shape me into the person I am today. But what makes it easier to stomach, is seeing him be his normal self. He’s tackling his healing process in much the same way he approaches any challenge or failure. He’s taking small, meticulous steps to understand and confront each issue. John’s recovery will be a difficult and arduous task, but I couldn’t think of someone better equipped for the job.

Going back to the MADE Bike Show this year, for the first time with a bike of my own to display, was bittersweet. I brought with me the last frame I ever built at John’s shop: a titanium flat-bar gravel bike. We always joked that I was getting my masters in framebuilding with him, and making a Ti frame under his watchful eye felt the nearest to a capstone I will likely ever experience. I made a segmented fork for the frame at my shop in Oakland that felt befitting of a torch being passed.
In the wake of John’s accident, when it became clear that I’d be the one to bring his bikes up for him, my Ti bike came to represent something different. More than the bikes that had Caletti on the down tube, I felt that the one I had made most accurately represented who John really is. A selfless, generous friend who’s too humble to call himself a master builder. Whatever talent or skill I appear to possess is wholly his doing.

I’ve only been to a handful of bike shows, but I seem to make new friends at every one of them. I feel so blessed to be able to call a number of builders for advice, and immensely grateful for how eager they are to share their wisdom. I cannot stress enough just how loving and supportive of a community there is in the world of North American builders. It has been the absolute delight of a lifetime to feel accepted within it.

John is both a cornerstone in my personal ethos as a builder and to the community as a whole. Peter Thomson, John’s longtime friend and graphic designer for Caletti Cycles, worked together with me to wrangle loose ends for MADE. Everyone we reached out to for support was eager to help. B Vivit took care of designing the booth space, the folks at Chris King shipped me wheels and bearings at super late notice, James Bellerue at Stinner Cycles painted a fork for us in the nick of time – I’m sure I’m missing a dozen other names, but everyone I reached out to was eager to be there for John and Cory.
My greatest takeaway from MADE had nothing to do with bikes. It’s hard to believe, but I barely batted an eye at all of the fully-internal cable routing and electronic shifting. No, what I left MADE with was an overwhelming sense of community. It’s remarkable that we can fill an abandoned shipyard full of people who are direct competitors with one another, and for it to feel like a celebration rather than a competition.

So many peers – role models, really – came to check in on me. Before I even got there, Aaron Stinner called me as I drove up and let me word-vomit for an hour on the phone. B Vivit fed me hugs and vegan pastries for three days straight, Tom Lamarche kept me distracted with wise cracks and cynicism (personally, my favorite way to cope), and Adam Sklar poked me to raise my prices and made me blush. From Zach Small (which makes me Zach extra small) daring me to do donuts in the MADE parking lot, to John Watson letting me soundboard about my career to him – everyone made me feel cared for, and I know I’m missing fifty names.

I left the show with the sense that everything was going to be okay. From friends and family to framebuilders and “bike people” galore, I knew everyone would be eager to show up for John. What I did not expect was to receive care and love myself. In the days leading up to the show, my excitement slowly dwindled. All I wanted to do was shoot the shit with John Caletti and absorb as much of his insight (which he has a lot of at these shows) as I could. And also – goddamnit – we had plans to go go-karting!

I was dumbfounded to find that so many people throughout the industry recognized what he means to me and in turn means to them. It filled my cup as much as it filled his. It reaffirmed to me that, with John down for the count, there’s a village of people doing all that they can to help him Ride Metal again.

Thanks to Chris Corona for supplying some images for this piece from his own work with Caletti Cycles, which you can find in the related stories section below…