U.S. Built Bicycles in Titanium and Carbon-Titanium Mix
U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix
We received this cool video the other day from our friends at Tenafly Bicycle Workshop. How fitting that the first bike posted to our 7 here in 2019 features the special edition Four-Seasons paint scheme.
This is Peter’s Evergreen PRO. Watch it being assembled by the pros at TBW!
The roll-top door at our shipping dock makes the same sound now it made in 1997. The electric motor makes a loud click and then there is a drone and rattle as the door’s wheels trundle up and down their tracks. It’s one of those familiar, even comforting sounds that attends daily business here at Seven.
And maybe opening doors just seem more poignantly symbolic on the first work day of a new year. The door rolls up, low winter sun streams in, bike parts, titanium tubing, and people follow. Late in the day, bikes go out.
The bike season is funny. By some loose consensus it starts October 1st and runs through the end of September. But in real life, there is nothing quite like the turn of a new year, right?
After 22 years of bike building talking about new dawns feels dramatic. What we can say for certain is that no year (or season) ever looks quite the way we think it will. Riders bring us new challenges. The industry churns up new technologies and trends, and the one constant is just the group of us, building bikes, which makes for a nice constancy and safe place to sit and ponder how we can best respond to all the ideas we’ll hear, how best to present all the ideas we’ll have.
We’re excited. The bicycle is still a miracle machine. It’s still fun to ride. And every day people call us up with great ideas for new bikes for themselves. We look into the near future and see a busy year of bike building.
We got this note and photo recently from Kate Harris whose book, Lands of Lost Borders, was just written up in the New York Times Review of Books. It’s been a good year for Kate, and if you’re looking for a good holiday (or any time) read, we recommend Lands of Lost Borders. It’s a good and powerful reminder of the value of exploration, no matter where you are.
Thanks so much for the newsletter love for my book, Seven!! I’m forever grateful for your support of our wild Silk Road ride, and I’ve taken my loyal Expat S steed on several bikepacking epics since, including a winter ride from Dawson City in the Yukon above the Arctic Circle to Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories via the now-defunct “ice highway.” Skinny wheels, studded tires, loaded bike, sheer ice—no problem. Warm wishes to all of you at Seven, and I hope I can someday get back to Boston and visit you!
Cheers,
Kate
Here’s a handsome crew. Our friends at Outdoors, Inc in Memphis sponsor a race team called Los Locos (pictured here with some of their Sevens), and this is a shot of them just after the Race Between the Bridges, a local gravel grinder. Seven rider Hart Robinson, second from right, made this year’s race podium. Outdoors, Inc. owners Joe and Carol-Lee Royer are in the middle.
Out of 100+ starters, only approx 38 finished the race due wet conditions with clay mud and gravel.
Brad and Matt are at it again, this time taking on the 1200km Coulee Challenge in Minnesota and Wisconsin. We remixed their TransAt bikes for this new event. This ride differs from the TransAtlantic Way they took on last month in the quality of the road surfaces (thus the switch to 700c wheels) and the type of climbing they’re doing.
From the ride description:
Our RM 1200k route includes great roads and bike trails in Minnesota and Wisconsin with a focus on the challenging coulees of Southeast Minnesota and Southwest Wisconsin. The terrain will have some hilly sections, with multiple, occasionally steep, hills crossing ridge lines followed by pastoral valleys and quiet, bucolic roads. Along the way riders will enjoy passing through a number of small towns in the coulees and river towns on the Mississippi River.
A coulee is a deep ravine, one of the defining features of the terrain in Minnesota and Wisconsin. This is no flat, mid-Western romp,so we reconfigured Brad and Matt’s bikes for the occasion.
The Coulee Remix bike is a progressive gravel bike that features a number of innovations, special offers, and incentives. It’s also available for a very limited time. The Remix employs the SRAM Force 1 group set with mechanical shifting and hydraulic brakes, aiming for the lightest weight, simplest design, and purest performance.
