How the CZU Fire Impacted Caletti Cycles

John is a Bay Area native who started his own custom-built bike frame business here in Santa Cruz. To help support the relief of California State Parks destroyed by the CZU Fire Complex, John was kind enough to donate a custom-built frame to us in order to help raise funds.

Right before the Out of the Ashes fundraiser went live, John invited us over to his shop (which is super cool, by the way). John gave us a tour of the shop and then we sat down to ask him about a little bit of everything, from the history of Caletti Cycles to where he was during the CZU Fire Complex. Get all the answers and more below!

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Q: For folks who don’t know, tell us a little bit about who you are. What brought you to Santa Cruz and why is this where you chose to build bikes?

I grew up on the Peninsula, so I was riding mostly on the other side of the range. Then I went to school at UCSC, moved away for a few years working odd jobs (like teaching snowboarding up in Lake Tahoe) and came back in 2000 for good.

I love it here mostly because of the bike riding. The terrain and variety of riding are great, plus the weather makes it accessible year round.

Q: How did you decide to start Caletti Cycles? What was that like?

I had been into bikes for a long time, and I had had a little experience welding and machining through my Dad. He knew how to do that stuff, and I grew up with us always having a lot of tools at the house. In fact, the milling machine in my shop today is from my Dad’s old business.

I really loved making things and creativity, particularly with metal work. I got introduced to custom bikes in college, seeing the Rock Lobsters around, and at that point Bontrager bikes were also made in Santa Cruz and Rick Hunter was just getting started.

After college, I got a job at Wheelsmith bike shop in Palo Alto, and learned a lot about fitting and customization. That job gave me a deeper knowledge of custom bikes. So there was a lot going on in the mountain bike world locally, and once I figured out the whole custom thing I was excited about not only getting to make the bike but also resolving fit and design issues for the customer.

I remember that I had a Rock Lobster cross bike that I put a flat bar on. It was when 29ers were just starting to become available so I could get a 29x2.1” tire on the front. I really enjoyed the bike this way, and later when building my own bikes, I could develop 29ers around new parts and ideas. Similarly I was making “All Road” and Gravel bikes long before they went mainstream. All those things were really exciting to me.

When I moved back to Santa Cruz, I worked at Bicycle Trip for a while, then at Spokesman, and was really itching to learn framebuilding. I kept working on that skill, and then that just gradually grew over time into just making bikes for myself, and then friends, and then other people wanting them. Things slowly scaled up into the Caletti Cycles you see today.

Q: How long has Caletti Cycles been in business?

Probably about 16, 17 years by now. We’ve been in our Westside location for the past 6 years.

Q: What sets a Caletti apart from other custom builders?

Each builder has a unique style in terms of aesthetics or how they might work with a customer. Others have specific materials they use, or the sort of bikes that they do most often. I think many times people start looking around and find a builder they resonate with most. I usually get phone calls and emails and chat with folks before diving into a project to make sure we’re a good fit.

I do mostly titanium bikes nowadays. I do some steel, but don’t get as many orders for that. I do a whole variety of stuff, which I like. I ride road, gravel, and mountain bikes regularly; so it’s great to mix it up and have the experience riding each type of bike when it’s time to design a custom frame. Especially when looking at various forms of gravel that exist today—I like to look at all forms of road and mountain bikes and be able to combine elements of those disciplines into something really special. I’ve been making something that I call the “Adventure Road Bike” for a really long time, plus the “Scrambler”, a flat bar-specific gravel bike.

The Santa Cruz Mountains definitely influenced my designs. There’s so much good riding here, both on road and dirt, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s fairly mild dirt riding that’s accessible without driving. I don’t necessarily want to ride my mountain bike all the way to Big Basin, but it’s a really cool ride for an all-road, gravel bike, or a Scrambler. Even in Wilder, some of the laps that I do are really fun on a gravel bike. It’s helpful that locally there are so many rides like that, and it’s been amazing to see gravel become so popular. It’s awesome to see big tires, disc brakes, and a willingness to go off-road. Santa Cruz has so much history for bike innovation, and the terrain really supports that.

Q: Moving on to the fire - where were you on August 16 when the lightning storm happened? Tell us a little bit about your experience with the fire.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night and hearing it, because the wind was so loud and moving the windows. I was super groggy and watched it for a while and saw the lightning, and I just thought, wow, it’s so weird that there’s a storm like this in the summer. I just fell back asleep and didn’t think much of it. Then, I remember we were out walking the dog the next morning and I couldn’t believe how smoky it was outside and how red the sky was. We were starting to get a sense of the gravity of it.

It was pretty scary to think about the people getting evacuated and how massive it was and how horrible the air was. Even a week or two later it was still horrible. It was an intense time to be in Santa Cruz. I think about it a lot now because we’ve been having little bits of heat, and just the bigger picture of climate change. We’re poised for an even worse fire year this year than last year.

Q: So, you realized things were going wrong, and then what?

Well, we were just about to go out of town as things started, and so we left not really understanding how bad it was. We’d get calls during the day checking in, and our friends who were dog-sitting for us were getting evacuated. We debated heading home, but weren’t sure what good that would do.

Then we realized that our home could help others. We called up [SCMTS Executive Director] Matt De Young, and realized his family needed a place to stay, so we had them stay up in the apartment above Caletti Cycles. They were quickly joined by Bruce, an SCMTS Trail Crew member, and his wife, who had been evacuated from Felton. During the fires last year, we had four people staying in our house for a while.

Q: Why is supporting this raffle important to you?

We used to love to do big gravel rides in Big Basin, but haven’t done that in, wow, over a year now. My friend Chris has some photos he took from the day before the fires, and it’s crazy that all that’s burnt up.

I was doing this with MBOSC (SCMTS’ former name) for the past few years, as part of our 1% for the Planet giving. I’ve been doing that for a long time and that’s just part of my commitment to trying to offset the damage done by producing bikes.

SCMTS is doing good work getting more people outdoors. That’s the avenue through which people will develop an appreciation for the natural world, and then they’re more likely to do things to protect and preserve the environment. That’s crucial.

I love cycling, and mountain bike access is quite poor if you look at the numbers compared to other user groups. That’s a sad bias to see, and in the years since I’ve been riding here in the 1990s, it’s barely gotten better. Being in the middle of a climate crisis, we need as many people caring about the outdoors as we can possibly get. I’m very keen to try to get more trail access for cyclists.

We need to keep getting more folks outdoors, and engaging a broad base of people to care for nature.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Just that I hope that the last year has helped everyone understand the importance of the outdoors. I wish there was more public funding for parks and trails.

The pandemic is a good reason for us looking into how we can design trails well for a high number of users and types of users. Directional trails, alternating days, etc., are all great strategies but a lot of the time there isn’t the staff or financial resources to do that. We should be looking at the new opportunities that are arising or challenges we face after a year with COVID-19.

So many folks went outdoors last year, and that should be our signal of the huge value of parks. There’s a growing population of outdoor enthusiasts, and mountain biking in particular has never been more popular. More maintenance will need to be done to all our trails as a result of the new users, and we should really notice that and take action.

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