At its most basic ‘The Bryson’ is a mythical bike tool. Like all good myths, it’s rooted in basic fact and then aggrandized from there to illuminate some greater life lesson. Fact: Hayes made, and in fact makes, an awesome pad spreader and rotor alignment tool with a stupid name – called the Feel’r Gauge. Fact: Jeff Bryson has had one since before recorded history and has come up with a few improvements – which I’ll leave out of this story in case he ever decides to pursue the idea or Hayes-Manitou wants to slip him a few bucks.
Where the myth starts to leach into our story is the night Jeff and I were doing a teardown at Bikeroom #1 when one of the most epic humans in the Vancouver bike scene – Mighty Ed – happened to drop in, with his two dogs, to visit Jeff. Jeff had recently acquired his epic barbershop chair (but hadn’t yet found his epic barber), he’d had a couple of pops, and he was pumped to elaborate on his tool idea.
And I’ll tell you what. The Bryson – credit Ed for the name – is a genuinely good idea. A simple idea and therefore a beautiful idea. Something Abbey Tools could legitimately sell to everyone who works on bikes for a living and a fair few folks who don’t.
Ed offered to buy a half-dozen on the spot and I was down for a pair (one for me and one as a gift for Pope Jimmy – he has all the tools) and that’s when things got seriously hilarious, I mean hilariously serious, because Jeff doesn’t actually think about how he could make money off his various ideas, he just wants to share his passion for all things bike.
Within five minutes Ed and I had rigged up an entire business plan to sell Brysons to everyone we knew!
I can’t recount the number of times Jeff looked at something we were working on and said “you know, I think they should have done it like…” and all I could do was nod. I’m not talking about re-engineering complex products, just the little details that maybe the engineers who design products but don’t work on them wouldn’t think of. Like bolts that also have wrench flats so they can still be torqued down with awkward clearances. Or, putting ruler lines on pretty much everything. Or, just doing some proper R&D (rip off and duplicating) when other companies have clearly resolved the design issue you’re having.
Jeff keeps it simple smarty pants. I’m going to miss having a focus on those little details within an easy bike ride of my house (it’s a long pedal to Kaslo).