Description
All My Spokes Are Broken
Mixed Media Assemblage — William Pilch
This piece comes from a bicycle trip I took at the end of my senior year of high school with three friends—Buck McVeigh, Jeff Weinstein, and Randy John. Jeff designed the route, and it was ambitious for a group of teenage riders. We set out on a multi-day ride through the mountains of northern Colorado and into Wyoming.
I rode a five-speed Schwinn loaded with gear. The trip pushed us into terrain far more demanding than anything we had attempted before. One of the defining moments of the ride was climbing Trail Ridge Road out of Estes Park, which at the time was known as the highest paved highway in the United States. For four teenage riders with loaded bikes, it felt enormous—thin air, long climbs, and miles of exposed mountain road stretching above the tree line.
Later in the journey we crossed into Wyoming and rode across the Continental Divide along Interstate 80, the highest paved interstate highway in Wyoming. By that point our legs were already tired, the wind was strong, and the ride felt endless. For young riders pushing themselves across mountain passes and high plains, it was both an adventure and a test of endurance.
About halfway through the trip, my bicycle gave out.
The rear wheel couldn’t handle the weight I had packed onto it. One by one, the spokes snapped until the wheel collapsed. I remember the frustration and anger of that moment—being stuck, feeling like something had failed underneath me when I needed it most.
That memory stayed with me for years.
In this artwork I recreated that moment using materials that carry their own meaning. The spokes of the wheel are made from spaghetti—fragile, brittle, easily broken under pressure. The wheels are constructed from beads and found objects, echoing the circular rhythm of a long journey. The bicycle itself is assembled from fragments, wires, small mechanical pieces, and symbols from different parts of my life.
There is a small football embedded in the piece, referencing that same year when I played in the Shrine Bowl All-Star football game. At the time my identity was tied to athletics, strength, and endurance. Yet on this trip something as simple as bicycle spokes brought everything to a stop.
Other objects scattered throughout the work—small toys, farm imagery, bits of machinery—reflect the strange and random things we encountered along the way. Long rides through rural landscapes imprint unexpected memories: fields, roadside objects, mechanical failures, hunger, and even something as ordinary as the ketchup bottle I remember smashing in frustration during the trip.
The orange background carries scratch marks that resemble roads, cracks, or scars. They map the chaos of travel, effort, and the friction of growing up.
The title, All My Spokes Are Broken, became more than just a literal description of a bicycle wheel. It became a metaphor for the times in life when the support structures holding everything together suddenly collapse.
But even when the spokes break, the journey doesn’t end.
It simply becomes part of the story.
