Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

Doing it all.

I’ve read many book about the establishment of northern mining towns and I love them. I read the stories of different people who have adapted to their environment and who weren’t afraid to do whatever they needed to to survive.

Many, it seems, ended up doing things they weren’t necessarily educated in doing or had planned to do but did them because either someone asked them to or that particular thing just needed to be done.

I cherish this mentality and it feeds my constant wandering mind of ideas. 

Heck I can go from planning a piece on Yellowknife to baking bread to building a website to planning a content strategy. Why settle for just one thing?

How to do everything

Photo credit: http://howtodoeverything.org/

Remembering Bishop John Sperry

In the summer of 2002 I made my first trip to the small community of Bathurst Inlet. The community in partnership with long-time northern family the Warners operated an Eco-tourism lodge in the community, appropriately called Bathurst Inlet Lodge.

It was that first summer that I met a man by the name of Jack Sperry. Everyone knew him as Bishop John Sperry though, because that is who he was, but to those of us at Bathurst, it was Jack. At one time he traveled the arctic, mostly by dog sled, visiting communities along the way. Honestly, I don’t really know what he did back then, other than it was Anglican missions related and I regret that.

I was so fortunate when I was younger to be exposed to the history of the Arctic and its people, but at that age I didn’t comprehend a lot of it. There is so much I think back on that I wish I could have done to hear those stories, the history and about the people. I admire them nowadays, and I’m saddened to hear of the loss of Bishop Sperry.

For a few summers after I remember seeing Bishop Sperry talking with the guests of the Lodge. Telling them stories of the past and how life use to be. And although he wasn’t a native to the north, the detail he processed when it came to the culture and the language was captivating.

I hold people like Bishop Sperry very high, not because of what they may have done all those years ago, but because they continued to share that knowledge. They were so passionate about it that they continued to tell the stories and pass on the history.

On February 7, 2012 Bishop John Sperry received a Diamond Jubilee medal to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s 60 year reign of the United Kingdom. On February 12, 2012, Bishop John Sperry passed away in Hay River, surrounded by family.

To quote Page Burt, another friend for Bathurst Inlet, “he leaves a great void in the hearts of people right across the North, and far beyond.”

Read more here. Photo Credit: JANE GEORGE

I was big into the Biking Business

I may not be very entrepreneurial these days and I’m certainly not that much into biking as I use to be, but there was a time.

Back when I was 14 years old I was the bike guy. I started my 1st business called the YK Bike Corner. From 13 to 16 I was into biking, cross-country and downhill, I loved it, but I wasn’t very good at it. I still enjoyed it though, what I did start to get into was the mechanics. The 1st mountain bike I ever bought was a Kona Scrap. That is actually the only mountain bike I’ve actually bought, everything since then was built from the ground up. I then moved to a duel suspension bike, with a KHS frame. I rode that for about a year until settling in to a Giant AC 1 frame. I actually had two of those frames, one for back up parts. So in the time I spent building these bikes I acquired a set of skills, skills that I could use to help others.

My First Client

While looking through a local online classifieds site I found someone who needed help gearing their bike. I was 13 at the time I thought what the heck, I don’t know how much a person charges, but I can help. So I did just that, I rode my bike over to this persons place and I fixed the bike. I think I made $20 for about 15 min. of work, I was living large.

Business Began

After that first client I started to market myself. I built myself my 1st little website, albeit it was a free one, on a service that I don’t even think exist anymore. Anyone remember freewebs? I would put flyers up around town, I would put up classified ads, and I even went to the extent of advertising on the local classified site. Things actually started to pick up. At the same time as I was doing the bike stuff I was also flying into Treeline Lodge where I would work for a couple of weeks and then come back again.  Over the course of 2 summers I got myself established, people actually  started to know who I was. I made enough money to buy myself an outdoor tent garage, and convert it into a bike shop. I had a bike stand, and I had all the common tools, plus a lot of the specialized ones, for things like the crank and cassette. At 1st my whole shtick was that I could come to the client, and I wasn’t talking about big repairs here, but the little things that the average person can’t do. So I had my backpack full of tools and I would bike around town and fix people’s bikes.

Then I turned 16

When I 1st turned 16 and got my license it was a whole new world. Instead of going to people, I could go to them and get their bikes, bring them back to my shop and fix them there and return them the next day. It was awesome. There’s nothing like working in your own shop, in your own environment, with your own stuff. It was pretty cool, at one point I even had people coming to me and dropping off their bikes. In the summer of 2007 though, I spent most of July up at a place called Bathurst Inlet Lodge and when I came back I took off to British Columbia for most of August. I think this was the last summer that the bike business was still going. I had done a lot of work in May June, but when I started to go away things dwindled. I lost interest in the biking and really had no time to do the fixing anymore. Do I miss it? Absolutely! A year or so after I stopped fixing bikes I contemplated trying to get a job at the local sports shop, but it wasn’t for me. What I liked about my little business, was that I got to talk to the people, and I got to meet them. You will be hidden away and just fixing something and then sending it out again. I like the interaction.

In the past

The reason my memory got jogged about all of this, was because the bike forum, Pink Bikes sent me an e-mail the other day. I hadn’t signed into my account in probably 4 years, but it still worked. ykbiker!  Not only was able to sign in, but I was also able to find some old pictures. Here’s some pictures from my past… Which was actually not that long ago.

Pinkbike3

This is my complete bike to this day, with minor changes. I have a stronger rear rim now and a different rear shock, which has a blown seal.

Pinkbike1

Pinkbike

This was the parts frame. With all the moving parts on this frame I wanted to have extra bearings and bolts.

Pinkbike2

This is a Haro frame. I had bought this as a complete bike for my brother, but then he didn’t like it, so I stripped it and sold it.

Pinkbike4

Finally we have a .243 Frame I bought second-hand. This stuck around for a while although I don’t remember what I did with it.

Kylebike

I did just manage to find a picture of the KHS frame before I swapped everything onto the Giant frame. I of course am in the picture… back in 2005, while visiting Jasper.