Cadel-egant
Cadel Evans used to be an annoying whiner, prone to piques of anger and spectacular failings of courage when courage might just have won him a race he’d later feel compelled to complain about having lost. Then he won the World Championship. Apparently, wearing the rainbow stripes has a powerful, character-improving effect on its designated bearer. Since that day in Mendrisio, Cadel has been transformed.
Or perhaps this is just what came from training with the late Aldo Sassi for the better part of a decade, and living year round in Italy. Perhaps Sassi’s ways finally took hold, once the high guru of athletic performance was diagnosed with the brain tumor that ended his life. Sassi’s restorative powers were even thought capable of purifying Ricardo Riccó, before the Cobra himself put paid to that possibility. Perhaps the change was taking place in the run up to Worlds. Regardless.
Up to that point, we were used to seeing an exceptionally strong rider who could climb, roll and time trial, a true all-rounder, but one seldom inclined to impose his will on a race. But then the inscrutable Aussie won la Fléche Wallonne, pounding up the Mur de Huy with Alberto Contador fading behind him. It was a hugely impressive win and one that marked a real re-launching of the Evans brand.
Moody and combative became mature and almost statesmanlike. Overly cautious became bold. Bitter became very nearly joyful. This was a rider finally seeming to like his job.
A Giro stage win and green jersey followed. He donned the maillot jaune at the Tour as well, if only briefly. Third at Tirreno-Adriatico. Fourth at Liege-Bastogne-Liege. The man did the stripes proud, not only through his results, but through the style of them and in sterling attitude.
That is why a rider, once easily dismissed as a bit part malcontent, is now revered, and it’s what made seeing him standing atop the final podium at this year’s Tirreno-Adriatico holding that ridiculous trident trophy deeply pleasing. Spraying the crowd down with his valedictory Prosecco, Evans was—at last—worthy.
That he had shed every skinny Italian climber on the road to win Stage 6 in a style entirely reminiscent of his win in Huy last year was revelatory. Rather than simply winning, Evans lit up the race.
If indeed, it was the rainbow stripes that hastened Evans’ transformation, I can think of a few other riders who might benefit from the treatment.
Image: John Pierce, Photosport International
In Praise of Wrapper Food
Some months back I was at the top of a significant climb, sucking cool air during bites of a PowerBar. Not some variety of energy-type bar, but an actual PowerBar. A friend looked at me with the raised eyebrows generally accompanied by a statement of incredulity—Really? You didn’t? You’re kidding? No effing way.
“You still eat PowerBars?”
There was little I could say other than, “Yeah.” After all, said PowerBar was in my mouth and I was chewing and there were no guns at my head. I eat them. By choice.
He followed his question—which was, of course, entirely rhetorical—with, “I can’t do those things anymore. I have trouble even eating Clif Bars. I’ve eaten so many of them over the years, I need real food.”
I still eat them both. I still like them both. And while it seems to be in vogue to dis products that seems more like Play-Doh than your average frozen entree, I can attest to the fact that in one cupboard of my kitchen there’s an entire shelf devoted to Clif Bars, PowerBars, Clif Shots, Clif Bloks, Gus and PowerBar Gels. At this point in my life I’ve been eating PowerBars for almost 22 years. I actually miss the taste of the old Malt Nut flavor. Don’t get me started about how many discontinued flavors of Clif Bar I’d buy by the case if I could get them.
You’d think after nearly two dozen years of eating factory food I’d be as done with that stuff as my friend. On the contrary. I have dialed their use down to the same sort of science with which they are made. I know what I can eat within an hour of starting a ride. I know what I can eat on the bike. I know what I respond to quickest and what can cause stomach upset.
A ham sandwich mid-way through a gran fondo? Are you kidding? That gut-bomb will keep me from hitting anything approximating threshold for the next hour, maybe more.
But there’s more to this stuff than just what works on the bike. When I travel, I always take some Clif Bars along with me. Given the varieties of junk food I’m apt to encounter at gas stations and in airports, a Clif Bar gives me four really helpful items:
- It keeps the calories and fat manageable
- It gives me some protein that would never be found in junk food
- It gives me something tasty to shut my stomach up
- It is indestructible; put another way, it travels way better than fruit
Is a Clif Bar or its like an adequate substitute for a real meal? Of course not. It’s not meant to be. I use them as a great way to avoid a really bad choice, like the chocolate chip cookies or whatever catches my eye in a gas station. Save me from the Pop Tarts! Please!
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve walked in the door following a ride and been too shattered to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; instead, I’ve wolfed down some bar, grabbed a quick shower and then staggered back to the kitchen for a real meal.
I’ll admit that there are some bars out there even I can’t stomach. Some of the high-protein bars can stop my intestinal traffic like Manhattan gridlock. I don’t need protein that much.
I love that there are people out there thinking about good nutrition solutions to less than ideal situations. That said, I wish Trader Joe’s carried more of the many flavors of Clif Bar than they do. From time to time I’ll find myself walking into a grocery store and noticing a flavor I haven’t seen a while. If they are 99 cents or less, I might stock up like I’m preparing for the Big One.
Still, I don’t think the innovators behind these many products thought of them as a way to short-circuit a short-circuit. But for me, that may be their greatest value. Reaching for an energy bar as I’m driving through California’s San Joaquin Valley frees me of the guilt I’d feel from munching a Moon Pie.
So if you’re sitting behind me in the movie theater and you wonder what the sound of that wrapper is, if I’ve been a good boy, it’s a Clif Bar instead of peanut M&Ms.
Paris – Notes
The Race to the Sun wrapped up Sunday in the pouring rain. It was the second day of wet misery in a row, and it made for a pretty excellent race. I hate to hope for bad weather races. The boys in the peloton don’t come to my office in mid-winter, throw the windows open and eat chips while I type my daily missives with chattering fingers. Still, the technical element that bad weather adds to the racing, not to mention the way it draws the hard men out of the pack, I find completely thrilling.
Having said that, here are some impressions from Paris-Nice:
1) Tony Martin is a worthy winner. I wish I had more glowing praise to heap on the German. He’s so strong. I’m just sort of bored by guys who win races on the strength of their time trialling. It’s one thing to be a strong cyclist. It’s another to find ways to win out of the pack. The $1M questions is whether young Tony can become a Grand Tour rider, or whether he’s going to have to carve his career out of winning one week races.
2) Having said that, Thomas Voekler is a total stud. Two wins, from two breakaways. The way he dropped Diego Ulissi on the descent into Nice yesterday was all class. I also loved the way he bunny-hopped the water off his rims rather than tapping his brakes.
3) Was anyone else surprised/disappointed that RadioShack couldn’t muster any sort of attack on Martin on the last day? I never expected to see Klöden on the podium, so good for them, but they seemed to go out with a a whimper, rather than a bang.
4) Vacansoleil’s performances were solid gold all week. From de Gendt wearing the yellow jersey twice to Matteo Carrera bullying guys in the final breakaway (before breaking himself), the boys in blue were fun to watch. It made me sad they even bothered to sign Riccó and Mosquera.
5) Poor Sammy Sanchez. I really thought he was going to pull off something big yesterday, but it wasn’t to be. At least he tried. There are a few other teams in the peloton that might ask themselves if they gave enough to get a result.
6) I know I said I liked watching bad weather racing, but there was NOTHING thrilling about seeing Robert Kiserlovski wedged under a truck by the side of the road. ‘Stomach turning’ is the phrase that comes to mind. That guy’s going to need some counseling before he rides a bike again.
Meanwhile, Tirreno-Adriatico has served up more great racing (my DVR is full of it), down in Italy. Stay tuned to see if Cadel Evans can close that one out, or if one of the Liquigas boys will push him off the top step.
Image: John Pierce, Photosport International
An Afternoon With Cyfac
Any time a shop breaks the routine of business as usual, I get curious. It’s easy to put your head down and spend your days concerned with inventory turn, how many bikes were built and how fast those repairs get picked up. So when someone takes the time to bring in a representative from one of the brands they carry, I like to check those events out.
Bike Effect, the studio in Santa Monica, brought in Eric Sakalowsky, one of the owners of the French bike manufacturer Cyfac. I’ve been hearing about Cyfac and reading about them for years, but have never written about them, mostly because until I’ve had a chance to talk with someone at the company, I don’t feel like I have a proper feel for what they do. There’s nothing like getting the story from the horse’s mouth.
Bike Effect has invested in Cyfac in a big way, making them one of their marquee lines, along with Serotta. I spent some time with Eric, learning about how his involvement came about (he had been their North American distributor and dumped his other lines to buy into the company), just how intimate an operation it is (they have 15 production staff) and how they manage to produce custom carbon fiber frames (more on that later).
To woo prospective clients Bike Effect owners Steve and Allison served up fruit, cheese, cracks and wine. It made for a relaxed atmosphere and it wasn’t long before I heard people talking specifics about sizing and colors.
Eric (left) and Steve discuss what makes Cyfac, well, Cyfac. Eric and I are working on an interview that will run as part of the Artisans series at peloton. Though the company offers a number of different models (I lost count as I studied their web site), the ones I’m most interested in are the top-of-the-line carbon models, the Absolu in particular. Though the tubes are produced in Taiwan, every other aspect of fabrication occurs at Cyfac’s Loire Valley headquarters. The only reason the tubes are produced overseas is because they haven’t been able to source a French producer capable of meeting their needs and they aren’t yet in a position to do it in-house, though from my conversation with Eric, it sounds like they may be headed that direction.
Each customer who purchases an Absolu gets a book documenting the creation of their frame, from the mitering of the tubes, to the masking for the paint job—Cyfac uses no decals. Honestly, I was stunned to learn that they often have more hours invested in a paint job than many manufacturers put into the building of a frame. And while you’d think such devotion would make such a bike unaffordable, they are competitive with other top shelf brands.
Cyfac’s custom work offers incredible flexibility to the client. Not only can they vary the sizing, they can vary the geometry, so that if you want something that fits like your beloved Seven, but descends like your old Moser, you can have that in custom carbon. And say you want it as stiff as your old Merckx built from Columbus Max tubes, you can have that as well as they can vary just how stiff the tubes are. It’s a level of customization some companies said we would never see.
I look forward to learning more and reporting more. I’ll try to present some reviews as well.
Friday Group Ride #61
Klöden leads Armstrong on the climb to Bagneres du Luchon
The professional racing season is underway in Europe. The pro peloton are all racing to the sun in France or from sea to sea in Italy, and there are finally more articles about actual racing than about the Contador case. At last, Paul Sherwen and Bob Roll are doing their best to enliven the first few hours of television coverage, when the peloton’s main business is riding through gray-ish tan villages, hucking empty water bottles at small pockets of people just out of the café for a few minutes.
And while certain bits of the story are running to script the racing has already offered up some surprises.
For me, the biggest has perhaps been the riding of Thomas de Gendt at Paris-Nice. The Vacansoleil rider came out of nowhere to win Stage 1, engineering his win from a three-man breakaway with Jeremy Roy and Jens Voigt. The Belgian then kept the jersey through the Stage 2 sprint, but lost it on Stage 3 by just two seconds. Not content with his performance up to that point, de Gendt found his way into another successful breakaway and pulled the golden fleece on again. Not a threat for the overall, de Gendt has still been able to light up the race with the sort of smart and swashbuckling riding every fan likes to see.
Of course, another big surprise was Andreas Klöden’s win on Stage 5, out sprinting Sammy Sanchez of all people. In doing so, he put enough time into de Gendt to take the leader’s jersey as well. Klöden won this race 11 years ago, but did ANYONE mention his name in any of their previews as a possible overall winner? Answer: no.
This is not to focus all our attention on the Paris-Nice. At Tirreno-Adriatico, the sprinters are all tuning up for Milan-San Remo. After the opening Team Time Trial (TTT), won, shockingly by Team Rabobank, Tyler Farrar took a win in Stage 2, and then JJ Haedo took Stage 3, just denying Farrar the double. Of course, the name missing here is Mark Cavendish, who has finished well down the order on both sprint stages.
This week’s Group Ride asks the question: What has been the biggest surprise of the week for you, and why?
1. Mark Cavendish’s failure to win yet at Tirreno-Adriatico.
2. Andreas Klöden’s win at Paris-Nice.
3. Thomas de Gendt (who?) in the yellow jersey at Paris-Nice.
4. Team Rabobank’s TTT win at Tirreno-Adriatico.
Image: John Pierce, Photosport International
Enduring
Luis Ocaña on the Ballon d’Alsace in the ’69 Tour
A bicycle-less vacation. An intractable stomach virus. An ultra-marathoner’s autobiography. And a fellow who cut his own arm off. These are the things that have me thinking about endurance.
It started in Florida, where my wife took us for a week of warmth and sunlight. We lumbered off the plane into the Fort Lauderdale sunshine, a bedraggled crew of New Englanders, pale and hunched from months spent under winter’s thumb.
I had seen this trip as a good opportunity to ride my bicycle in a warm, flat place, spinning out oodles of base miles in a suffering-free environment. But traveling with a bike was out of the question. My two young sons and their car seats and various electronic accoutrement ate our entire packing budget, so I resolved to rent a bike. As it turns out, none of the local shops would rent me anything that wasn’t a moose-antlered cruiser.
So a week off the bike then. OK. No problem. I’ll read a book.
By now, you’ve probably heard of Aron Ralston, the mountaineer/maniac who, by freak chance, pulled a boulder onto his right hand, while hiking, alone, in an isolated canyon in Utah. Eventually, he cut the arm off and hiked out, then wrote a book, Between a Rock and Hard Place, which became the movie 127 Hours, starring James Franco. I had met Ralston a year or so before his accident (in fact, I shook the hand he eventually lost). He worked at my office for a few weeks, while in Boston visiting some friends, but I’d not gotten around to reading his book, because I thought I knew the story.
I didn’t.
Or at least I didn’t know the important parts, the parts about the bending and warping of the human brain as its resources become more and more depleted, the emotional bits and ups and downs of straining for survival and accepting impending death.
Ralston isn’t just some idiot who got himself into a bad situation. He’s a serious mountaineer with vast back country experience. The story of his accident is as much about the way that experience helped him live as it is about the durability of the human spirit under extreme circumstances. That he knew, ultimately, how to survive, allowed him access to the experience of enduring the suffering that survival required.
Ralston’s story got me thinking about the things we do to test our abilities, which brought me to another book in the sports section, Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karnazes. You may have seen this guy in the Road ID commercials with Levi Leipheimer. His schtick is that he runs. And runs. And runs. 50 mile races? Yes. 100 mile races? Yes. 135 miles through Death Valley in summer? Yes. 200 miles without stopping? Sure. 50 marathons in 50 days? Yeah. That, too.
The point of Karnazes’ book is two-fold. First, Dean Karnazes is a complete freak. Humans don’t run 200 miles at a time. They don’t. Only freaks do that. Second, despite the fact that Dean Karnazes is an alien from Planet Freak, we are all capable of more than we think. The limits we impose on ourselves are arbitrary. Sure, most of them have their root in physical or mental pain, but still they are not hard and fast. There is a land beyond those limits, and there are interesting things to discover therein.
In cycling, the closest analogue to Karnazes is probably the recently deceased Jure Robic, multiple winner of the Race Across America, and widely acknowledged freak of physical ability and endurance. If you take the time to read the New York Times interview linked there, you will learn some of what lies beyond the limits we normal humans impose upon ourselves. Hint: there’s a generous dose of madness out there.
All of this brings me to my post-vacation mindset and a stomach bug that emptied me out and gave me a sneak peek at the wilds beyond my own normal limits.
Since reading the aforementioned books, I had resolved to find new ways to confront my limits and also to question them. Too often, I think, I have accepted the messages coming from brain, messages that say, “back off,” or even “stop.” If any of the evidence on offer holds, then those are just messages. Their truth is a thing to be questioned, not blindly accepted. I began to believe that I could expand my experience of cycling by confronting some of these limits, by pushing on when my brain told me I was done.
It is, after all, just pain.
Then, last Wednesday my youngest son turned four. We took him out for pizza, because that’s his favorite. He ate a lot of it, really much more than you would expect a four-year-old could put away. That’s why, when he woke up later in the night projectile vomiting in his bed, I was so shocked by the volume of no-longer-pizza. It looked like a collaboration between Charles Manson and Hieronymus Bosch.
Next I did what parents do. I cleaned up.
Having danced this dance before, I was also fastidious about washing my hands every time I encountered my young son’s vomitas, which was many times, over the ensuing day-and-a-half. Apparently, it didn’t help.
By the following Monday I was wracked with stomach cramps. My insides turned to hot sand. I was rent asunder by everything I tried to put into my system. More seemed to come out than went in. I was afraid that I was actually, somehow, creating matter. It was an affront to Einstein. And Newton.
And each time I thought, “Oh, Jesus, this is the worst thing ever in the history of things, ” I remembered Aron Ralston and Dean Karnazes and the possible unreliability of the messages coming from my cerebral cortex. I was able to step back from what was going on and say to myself, “This is just suffering. It will pass.” And that turned out to be a pretty effective strategy for enduring my illness.
In the week between vacation and illness, I had only began to test the waters of my new approach. I rode all the miles I normally ride, but I added some distance running and weight training to the mix. I stayed with the pain of fatigue a bit longer than I might otherwise, and I pushed through it a couple of times to discover further reserves of energy and will.
This was but a short trial. I have not yet discovered the cure for human frailty, but the early returns are encouraging, not just for my ability to ride ten more miles or climb one higher grade at the bouldering crag, but also for my ability to endure the everyday shit that life dishes out, all those little things you have to do but don’t particularly care for, like cleaning vomit or working for a living,
Image: John Pierce, Photosport International
Builder Brand
Some years back during an excruciating romantic entanglement the object of my endurance railed against coworkers who she sniped performed only the work they found easy. When I mentioned the nature of competency is to veer toward those acts we do well I suffered for it.
But that’s the nature of a career, in a nutshell. We find work that we do with competence, maybe later, mastery. Becoming good at something causes the brain to release reward chemicals so that our proficiency becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. We do it over and over because it feels good to be good at something. And frankly, employers may sometimes want more, but they never want less.
The dream of the average frame builder is to be the torch set’s version of a one-man band. The fantasy most hold is one of days spent with the trade’s tools in hand. If not a torch, then a file. The reality is that what’s in hand is as often a phone, a pen or a mouse.
The pressure of being a sole proprietorship forces questions of profit and loss, fixed costs and production rate—details as unromantic as toilet paper, yet no less necessary. But even a mastery of the tasks necessary to run a successful business won’t it make.
Brand. For all the passion, technical wizardry and expert work I saw at NAHBS, the detail that united most of the builders there was a lack of branding.
Some years back a builder I was interviewing complained that his bikes didn’t get the same air time as those of Richard Sachs. My reply was less than sympathetic. I said, “Yeah.”
“Well how come.”
“I called you.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Richard calls me. Any time he calls me, he has something to show me.”
While I thought the message was clear, the builder’s profile rose not one stitch. I’ve never seen a T-shirt with his logo. His low output is at times the butt of jokes by other builders.
Sacha White has paid attention. He anted Sachs and then raised. Branding isn’t a cool logo. It’s not just your logo on T-shirts and tchotchkes. It’s more than a good graphic designer.
There’s no way to deconstruct how a pink grenade conveys speed, style and lust, but it does all of those things, and more. Further, my sense of what his brand stands for is just that: my sense. Because it’s my emotional connection to what he does, it doesn’t even matter if my perception is different from yours if both are favorable. Done well, most folks will get the same impression, even if not everyone ends up liking it. After all, no one gets loved by everyone.
I kept wandering by the Vanilla booth at NAHBS, partly because I just liked the booth, partly because it was near other stuff I liked (though the same could be said of every booth at NAHBS) and partly because it had a lively atmosphere with an ever-revolving cast of characters. In short, it was a good place to be. And though I’m not a coffee drinker, I know they were serving good stuff. I know this because of the coffee snobs who stopped by for a fix.
That Sachs and White both have waits that are measured not in months, but in years, has generated both gasps of respect and amazement as well as eye-rolling dismissal. As if all those customers were schmucks for their willingness to wait, when they could buy … well what would they be buying?
And that’s the thing. There were a great many beautiful bikes there. Strip the paint off all of them and the number of truly stellar bikes might surprise you. One of my very favorite builders there, a guy whose impact on road bikes can be felt in lug design and geometry—to this day—showed bikes of such ordinary appearance I don’t think I could buy one.
A bike should be stylish in my eyes. It should be something that unavoidably short-circuits my brain to associate its lines, its graphics with my sense of fun on the road. A glimpse of the fork should make me dream of descending some mountain. If, instead, I find myself thinking, “I should have sent it to someone else for paint,” then the joke is on me.
Say what you will, but a wait list is a bold-face confirmation of connection with admirers, admirers who became clients.
At the very least, most builders would benefit from the creation of an internal style guide. Any time I see a powder blue so light it looks like a faded duck egg, I know it’s a Speedvagen. And that hot pink? Well, since I stopped seeing Serottas in that color, Sacha has cornered the market. Even without a full-blown style guide, builders would do well to develop a signature color palette. The point isn’t to be hard-nosed about the appearance of their bikes; rather most would benefit from having a few colors that could announce the presence of their bike even when it’s moving too fast to read the decal.
Builders: Give us more to look at than just your bikes. Give us a window into your passions, your quirks, your whimsy. Give us a way to connect with you beyond just the frame. Be personal. Take a stand. Embrace risk.
Be yourself and we’ll love you even more.
Carbon Creations
A great many people I talk to about NAHBS speak almost exclusively of steel bikes built with lugs. To the degree that lugged steel bikes dominate what is displayed at the show, it’s not a particularly unfair impression. However, show organizer Don Walker should get credit for having welcomed builders working in any medium to the event. Ineed, one-third of the original bunch to show at NAHBS work in carbon.
Those two, Nick Crumpton and Craig Calfee, have been joined by a great many other builders working in carbon, such as Parlee and Alchemy. The perception that NAHBS is a show all about steel sells the event short for surely one of its best aspects is the sheer diversity of designs presented to attendees.
The simple fact that carbon bikes are being shone isn’t enough to get excited. What gets me excited is how far they have come in the last five, six years. Roll the clock back to 2005 and most all carbon fiber bikes were being built either as two or three-piece monocoque designs or as tube, lug and glue constructions. Things have come a long way.
The shot above is of a Parlee custom head tube. The cutaway view shows how the tubes are mitered and then wrapped with carbon fiber before going into a mold to cure. The knock against traditional tube-and-lug designs was the redundancy of material and the risk of stress risers at the transition points. The amount of extra material here is minimal and the transitions, all things considered, are terrifically smooth.
Next up is an example of a Parlee Z5 made overseas. You’ll notice the incredible compaction and the lack of unnecessary material. The quality of the molding is as good as I’ve seen. All this lacks is the ability to provide the custom sizing you find in their domestically produced frames.
The BB of a Parlee Z1.
This matte-finish frame shows the care taken in fiber placement.
Nick Crumpton’s work has always impressed me, but I have to say that this bike achieved a level of quality I really didn’t think possible from a one-man operation. Crumpton miters tubes and then wraps them with additional fiber and molds the frame into its final form. The smooth transitions, internal cable routing and features like seat masts redefine what I thought was possible from a small builder.
Nick positioned the battery pack for this Di2 bike under the down tube, but that’s not what’s most impressive about this bike. Even though you can see where he begins wrapping the down tube above the bottom bracket, there is no sudden material bulge. That conservation of material results in a lighter frame that will last longer.
Between the internal cable routing and the seat mast design, I couldn’t take my eyes off this bike.
Alchemy’s name isn’t as well known as Calfee’s, Parlee’s or even Crumpton’s, but they showed some very impressive bikes. This TT bike features tubes drawn to Alchemy’s spec; the down tube is shaped according to NACA profiles for real-world aerodynamic properties. They also offer a road version of this bike, a la the Cervelo Soloist or Felt AR. Only this one is available in custom sizing.
I’m accustomed to seeing work of this quality coming from a much larger company.
Working with the same mitered, wrapped and molded technique seen in Parlee and Crumpton, you can see the ever-so gradual transition from one tube to another.
You won’t see this down tube on anyone else’s bike.
Final thought: It wasn’t long ago that I thought that a custom-sized, strong, 900-gram frame with great ride quality just wasn’t possible. Not without spending $15 grand. Times are changing and What is possible in custom work can truly rival the best work out there by manufacturers like Cervelo and Felt.
NAHBS: Outliers
Some of my favorite bikes from this year’s NAHBS were items that clearly were not for sale. Don Walker has done a good job of courting companies that don’t seem the typical fit for the show, of which, most exhibitors have fewer than six people on staff. In encouraging both Serotta and Ritchey to attend Walker was able to embrace nostalgia in the show in the form of bikes that were built even before some of the builders present were born.
Ben Serotta got his start at Witcomb Cycles in England along with Richard Sachs and Peter Weigle. When Serotta first hung out his shingle he worked on his own, but he quickly followed a more traditional European model and began adding apprentices to work under him. Today, Serotta is lauded for straddling the worlds of production building with custom-fit frames.
The frame shown here is #164 and dates from the 1970s. Built before the terms “politically correct” and “female objectification” had entered the common lexicon of stuff not to do, the frame is a most unusual collaboration. Two sculptures, one adorning the head tube, the other wrapping around the bottom bracket were crafted by Serotta’s sister, Marcie. She also cut the lugs into their asymmetric feminine forms. Ben handled all the actual fabrication.
I’ve seen a great many bikes with lugs cut into unusual forms, but the combination of asymmetric designs paired with an unusual (and memorable) theme make this my single most favorite bike of the show. It shows a degree of creativity that would be fresh today, but was unheard-of for the 1970s.
I hope people can see beyond the two sculptures and into the greater celebration of the female form. I find a surprising harmony in it; I don’t really find the two sculptures titillating.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect to this bike was simply its appearance at the show. That it hasn’t been lost to the sands of time by being sold off to some collector is a great argument for why publicly funded art galleries should exist. I’d love to revisit this frame each year at NAHBS.
When I was a shop rat in the 1980s, I worked for the one and only Serotta dealer in Memphis, Tennessee. It was kinda like being the singer in the best band in Iuka, Mississippi, I suppose. Regardless, the Serotta Colorado was a bike I coveted the way a guy in a midlife crisis covets a Corvette. I couldn’t live without it, but had to. The swaged down tube that fit in a lug at top and was fillet-brazed over the lug points at the BB shell, the S-bend chainstays and the stellar paint had me dreaming about racing this bike over every road I could find. To me, the Colorado was the perfect marriage of superior design, impeccable performance and gorgeous appearance. It was Pamela Anderson in steel.
I’ve never owned one, though I’ve ridden a few and spent nearly a year riding its protege, an Atlanta, one of my all-time favorite steel bikes. Everything about the Colorado was class, right down to the sloping fork crown, pantographed with the word “Colorado” and the Serotta “S.”
I recall showing dozens of friends how the down tube grew in diameter so much that it fit over the socket for the down tube at the BB shell. It was my undeniable, irrefutable sales pitch for the superiority of the Colorado. You want stiff? This is stiffer than anything you’ve ridden.
Later, Dave Kirk, now of Kirk Frameworks, invented a rear suspension system. The DKS suspension was the only rear suspension for a road bike to go into serious production. Where the seatstays met the chainstays they were bolted together with the aid of a bearing. The curvature of the seatstays was designed to allow for a bit of vertical compliance. Kirk told me that for most riders, vertical travel was only about 1mm, but that single thumbnail was enough for most riders to sense and to recognize improved tracking on rough roads. To provide damping, two silicon bumpers ran along the seatstays. The bumpers were available in three densities and while folks at Serotta thought most riders would opt for the stiffest of the three bumpers, most riders who tried the system (including Davis Phinney and Ron Kiefel) preferred the light grey bumpers shown here, the softest bumpers, which allowed the greatest travel.
Though it’s no longer in production, the DKS suspension was a remarkable step forward. I’ll be interested to see what comes next.
This bike had to be the other real rock star of the show. Tom Ritchey built this frame in the 1970s for his father. Yes, his father. Sitting behind three other frames Ritchey built just for the show (a Swiss Cross and two mountain bikes), this one was rather easy to overlook. Despite its position at the back of the booth, it was, in my estimation the most interesting bike in Ritchey’s booth because it showcased Ritchey’s abilities in creative thought, mechanical wizardry and artistry.
You’ve already seen this shot and the incredibly filed and shaped lug. Be sure to notice the cap-less fork blades. The weep holes are situated at the very bottom of the fork blades to make sure water will drain should the rider (Dad) get caught in the rain.
Thanks to Ritchey’s way-before-its-time seat mast design the brake cable is perfectly centered as it enters the top tube just ahead of the seat lug and then exits what would otherwise be the bottom of the seat lug. It makes for a very stealthy look.
This has to be the single smallest cable guide I’ve ever seen.
The integration of the seat post into the seat is very cool looking and was no doubt really light for its day, but perhaps what is most surprising is that Ritchey had to have the fit absolutely dialed for while the saddle could be raised and lowered, fore and aft adjustment was not possible, nor was tilt. You got one shot to get it right.
These are the elusive Cinelli clipless pedals. They required sliding the cleat into the pedal and then locking the cleat into place by sliding the lever at the front of the pedal. All the sets I’ve ever seen were in display cases of one form or another. Even if they had been ridden, the fact that they were so hard to use without near constant crashing meant that after what were often fairly expensive (for those days) efforts to secure the pedals, no one wanted to get rid of them. They remained cool even in the face of near suicidally poor operation.
NAHBS: Great Lug Work
Atmo’s Newvex lugs in a naked frame.
Sachs’ lack of overflow silver is part and parcel of why he is considered the best in the biz.
The Newvex BB.
Front view of the same frame.
The one-color paint is rather lackluster, but Mark DiNucci’s lug work is second to none.
