ABCTHE LIFE
62 May 2019 _ PopularMechanics.com For a shoppable list of the clothes and tools featured in this story, see page 65.
HERE IS THE WOOD, and there is the bike, and both
challenge Shane Kline. Both provide relief, give him
focus, require concentration. Both are solitary, in their
way—pursuits into which he can disappear. In both, an
inanimate object feels animate, and there’s a relation-
ship—he pushes the bike and the road, and they push back.
The wood? “I let it tell me what it wants to become,” he says.
Both have their season.
Like this morning: Dust from a 1,000-pound planer catches the
yellow Pennsylvania light inside the Family Tree Traditions wood-
shop. The smell of stain, the last coat on a stack of butcher blocks,
dampens the air. Talk radio stumbles through machines that whir,
wail, and hiccup. Ray Kline, 59, Shane’s dad, is powering every-
thing up for the day.
Shane? He’s asleep on the other side of the wall, in an apartment
that used to be part of the shop. He’s a carpenter, third generation. He
is also trying to make it to the Olympics. So yes, right now he’s asleep.
During the five-month track-cycling season, there isn’t much
time for woodworking. Some mornings he grinds out a six-hour
ride in the hills around his home, others it’s two hours of punishing
sprint intervals, hammering on the pedals. Evenings are for
another workout or local race. “It’s hard to train for six hours a
day and then come home and stand on my feet for another eight
in the shop,” he says. This morning, race morning, even with the
buzz of his father’s work passing through the walls, the shop is
further than ever from Shane’s mind. He puts down his coffee
mug, grabs his kit and his brakeless race bike, and heads out to
the Trexlertown velodrome.
Shane’s been handling power tools since he was three or four,
when he used to fall asleep on a piece of cardboard as his father fin-
ished late-night kitchen remodels. He didn’t start cycling until he
was 13, when he first visited the velodrome where he’ll race today.