U.S. Built Bicycles in Titanium and Carbon-Titanium Mix
U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix
People sometimes say our bikes are art, and that they should be hung on a wall. We very much appreciate the sentiment, but emphatically disagree with the practice. Bikes are for riding, and we hope every one of our riders is out on the road or trail at every opportunity.
We met Kevin W at NAHBS last month, and his wife, after teasing him about how much he loves his bike, went one step further and turned his Seven into actual art. This seems, to us, like a solid compromise.
It’s becoming something like a tradition, our friend Mike emails us about his new calendar, sends us a few, and then we spend the year daydreaming about riding the Southwest US where he rides, camera-in-tow, and gets up to some serious bikepacking.
Mike is a Seven rider, and he is always kind enough to include us (we’re June this year!). If you’re looking for something inspiring, pop over to his site, gaze at the vistas, and then go ride your bike.
In 1899, Major Taylor, the first African-American sports star, was the sprint champion of the world. That’s only 36 short years after the Emancipation Proclamation, which makes what he did all the more remarkable. Luckily, through a series of books and videos, more riders are aware of the contribution Taylor made to our sport than only a few years back, when his story had drifted into the mists of time.
We are proud to share this short video with you, to highlight some of the inspiring riders keeping Taylor’s story alive and pushing it forward with their own contributions to cycling.
Last week a pair of Sevens showed up on Bicycling.com in a piece about the Trans Atlantic Way Race. It’s well worth a read just to find out more about riding along the Irish Coast, but there are also some good tips on riding fast over long distances, as well as some photos of a pair of handsome, purpose-built bikes.
Here are some brief excerpts:
The race kicked off at 11:30 a.m. on June 7, 2018. Brad and Matt had 200 miles planned that day, and they expected to be riding until about midnight. Halfway through their first long day, they dined curbside on pizza after the first checkpoint. They ate as much as possible because food options would close well before their planned finish. Being vegetarians, pizza was frequently on the menu.
Along with avoiding the normal hazards of exhaustion, fatigue, and other standard issues with long days in the saddle, the duo had to adjust to riding on the left side of the road.
We spend all our time building custom bikes and talking about custom bikes and trying to tell the story of custom bike building. So it’s sort of mind blowing when you work with a customer who fully documents the process from their own perspective, and you get to read it and it opens your eyes to what it is you really do.
A recent Expat S build, for Dan H, gave us this opportunity. Dan has an excellent, personal cycling 7, and he starts right from the beginning on this project, narrowing down his choices and ideas. Then he orders his Seven and does a deep dive on the details. Then we detour into naming the bike, a process that is equal parts goofy charm and intimate portrait of how bicycle riders bask in the culture of riding bikes. That part was pretty inspiring. At last, Dan comes to visit while we are building his bike, and then we deliver it to him.
You can read for yourself that Dan is quite a character, a passionate cyclist, a big thinker. Getting to know our riders is one of the very best parts of doing things the way we do. That Dan is local to Seven and comes to us through the excellent Ride Studio Cafe is great, but we have had this sort of experience with riders from Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, Germany, Spain, the UK, Texas, California, and Ohio, too.