Meet Michael Hartley

In so many ways, Michael Hartley believes it really is all about the bike. The best way to know this craftsman is to get to know his work and his philosophy on cycling and how it can change society for the better.

You can see his work here on the website by reviewing his Featured Builds and his Restoration and Curation work.

And there’s no better way to get to know his philosophy than to revisit his words from 1971:

Change – and by that is meant engineered change – often can be initiated when an already existing solution (or solutions) to an existing problem is presented. Paradoxically, existing problems quite often are recognized (or perhaps acknowledged) only when a solution is presented.

In other words, change quite often is resisted. Success doesn’t always breed success. It depends upon the timeline of one’s perspective. The tragedy of empires is that they falter and fall because their existing way of doing things, by which they rose to ascendency and dominance, brings about in the world changes to which they cannot adapt because they insist on doing the same things which had worked so well for them in the past.

It may become difficult to acknowledge that an existing way by which things have been done for decades, or perhaps even centuries, just isn’t working as well anymore. Even as evidence to the contrary is accumulating, if an existing way of doing things still works, any suggestions that problems with it exist and solutions must be engineered are often refused (the ‘if-it-ain’t-broke, don’t-fix-it’ scenario). Perhaps it isn’t known whether any proposed solution(s) will cause more problems than they will solve (the ‘solution-worse-than-the-problem’ scenario); perhaps the cold reality is that a workable solution is neither ready-at-hand, nor acknowledged, or perhaps both (the ‘we-don’t-know-what-to-do, so-there-is-nothing-to-do’ scenario). Without an existing solution, even pressing problems quite often are simply not acknowledged (the ‘head-in-the-sand’ scenario).

An individual, a city or country, or even an entire civilization, perhaps may become blind to the possibility that real, engineered, change can be accomplished when we engineer solutions to existing problems.

Mike’s Bikes is about the conviction that real change for the better is possible; that we can change how we live together, for the good of all, by changing how we move ourselves, goods, and services. Changing how we move ourselves, goods, and services can be brought about by engineering changes: in what we think and how we think about it in the public forum; perhaps by implementing new, re-built, and/or already existing solutions in new and existing ways to accomplish that new public thinking.

…Revolutionary change in how we move (is) now being engineered in North America and Europe: the change of perspective and policy allowing municipal governments and citizens to redeem civic life by causing urban centers to be re-designed to a ‘people-first’ format; banning the use of private automobiles from main streets, intersections, squares, shopping areas, parks, and gathering areas; re-purposing transportation corridors and municipal infrastructure once dominated by automobiles to transportation corridors for bicycles, walking, and other forms of ‘micro-mobility’ transportation. The main agent for implementing many of these revolutionary, engineered changes is the bicycle, for moving people, goods, and services.

Mike’s Bikes is about the conviction that the bicycle is truly our ‘life-cycle’. The bicycle, and specifically, the utility bicycle, is an already existing solution to many of the problems which humankind faces – today and in the future – in societies the world over; that riding bicycles is key to feeding, serving, housing, and maintaining the spiritual, mental, and physical health, of people in densely populated urban centers; ensuring breathable air, the viability of mass private, personal transportation, and the delivery of goods (including food…) and services, in every corner of the world.