2026 Brother in the Wild Builds: The Woods Cyclery Picks – John Watson

While at the 2026 Brother in the Wild, John managed to document a handful of builds in between the rain showers. Today, we’ve got two builds from the staff of The Woods Cyclery to feature. One of which was pedaled from Mexico to Peru…

Jack and His GT Vintage MTB

While we have a full week’s worth of content on the way from The Woods Cyclery, I wanted to showcase two of its staff and the bikes they brought to the 2026 Brother in the Wild. These two bikes represent a good portion of the Beautiful Bicycles people bring to the weekend event, with many riders converting vintage mountain bikes to modern gravel bikes and ATBS.

Jack works at The Woods Cyclery as a mechanic. He’s also the brand’s in-house graphic designer. During the winter months, he’s a ski instructor but still spends his free time tinkering in his workshop. That’s where his GT build was born. Once he sourced the frame, Jack began to plan out the build, and he looked to Stridsland for inspiration.

Sourcing a Beachcomber fork and Magic Wormbars to bring the bike’s insufferably low stack height up to a legitimate and ridable position. Other components of note are the Middleburn cranks, a vintage Hope rear hub, Nitto BMX stem, and a dropper post. Of which, he reduced the OD from 27.2 to 26.8 to fit the frame by hand with an emery cloth.

“The post has a taper to it now, when you look at it in profile.” Jack noted, adding that “I definitely voided the warranty!”

Not that a thirty-year-old frame still has a warranty, but Jack surely voided it by converting the rear brake to disc. He looked to the London-based builder Stayer Cycles, who’s also on the Stridsland database sheet for disc conversions. Stayer added ISO brake tabs and a stiffener to ensure the frame can handle the braking forces. I love that Jack left the repairs raw, allowing this part of the frame’s story to be told.

Jack, like the rest of the crew at The Woods made me feel like I was part of the family for the week we hung out. The best w…