Seven – Page 4 – Seven Cycles

Through the Night, Together

More than a format, randonneuring is a culture highlighted by long routes and camaraderie. Rando legend Melinda Lyon suggested that, first and foremost, randonneurs are always polite: you can ride hard, but your speed remains secondary to consideration for everyone, whether it’s another rider, a course volunteer, a motorist, a citizen with no affiliation with the event, or your own safety. In races, other riders try to drop you; in randonnees, your company is a welcome part of the journey. The course itself is the daunting competitor.

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The Bikes We Build

When people find out we build custom bikes, they ask, in the grocery store, at the school drop off, at the donut shop, “What kinds of bikes do you build?” And we pause, as you do when the answer is much larger than the question, and then we say, “Well, all kinds, road, mountain, commuter, cyclocross, whatever people want.”

Except that’s not the half of it.

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Something in the Soil, Something in the Water

Seven Cycles sits in a squat, red brick building in Watertown, MA, six miles from downtown Boston and a stone’s throw from the Charles River, which ribbons through the city and out into the western suburbs. Just up stream from us is the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation, and not even a mile further on is the former site of the Waltham Manufacturing Company.

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A Tiny Meditaion

For all our love of the bicycle, it is but a tool. We’ve heard from cycling advocates, green activists, and city planners how the lowly bicycle is the most efficient method of multiplying energy, of moving through the world that humanity has yet devised. We may nod, but in our bones we know that misses the point. We love the bicycle not because it is efficient but because it makes us efficient. We see the world; we flow through it like water down a river and we move, yes, we move like birds happily tethered to the earth, as if being still is a theft of freedom.

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Everything Is Possible

When a bike company talks about research and development, most people think in terms of products, new bike models, new components. But when we look at our R&D plan, the discreet projects are much smaller. For example, we have redesigned the drop outs on our road bikes a dozen times over the life of the company, evolving, refining and improving with each iteration.

New bike models, such as they are in the world of custom building, mostly come out of these smaller projects, the accumulation of progress coalescing into a vision for a new bike. Very seldom have we set out to design a bike from the ground up. Innovation, in our experience, takes the form of a series of breakthroughs that can be put to good use. There is no flash of lightning, no thunder clap.

It’s not unlike the experience of a long, testing ride. You can’t cover 50, 100 or even 200 miles all at once. You have to ride each mile as best you can, and see how it all comes together at the end.

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