Building Your Titanium and Carbon-Titanium Bikes in the USA for 28 Years
U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix
Here is a do-everything touring machine we built for Joe with our friends at Spokes, Etc. in Alexandria, VA. This Expat SL incorporate S&S couplings, front and rear rack & fender mounts, a kickstand, belt drive, generator hub, extra water bottle mount and a pump peg. We like this build because it really demonstrates the extent to which a rider can personalize a Seven to produce what is, for them, the ultimate bike for the purpose (or many purposes).
Photos by Mike Gregerson
Our buddy Joe is a bike-packer of some skill and repute. Regular readers will recall that we built him a Treeline SL recently, in advance of a trip to Alaska (more on that to come). Now that he’s back, we’ve received an early review of the bike that we thought worth sharing.
Hey Seven,
Though I’ve had the Treeline for over a month, I’d only ever ridden it in Alaska on frozen rivers and snowmobile trails with a full load. It was fantastic in that context, the most perfect adventure bike I’ve been on.
But tonight I joined up with our Thursday Night Mountain Bike Worlds and rode it unladen. Holy s*%t: that bike rips. I pointed it down chaotic corkscrew chunky pitches and it just carves and carves. The geo is brilliant, super fast turning but so easy to throw your hips to stand it back up it seemed like cheating. So many thanks for your hard work.
More soon,
Joe
Bike building doesn’t offer up a lot of natural holidays. We can build every day of the year (we don’t), and still have work to do. So when most folks were packing in around a table to pass the turkey and stuffing this year, we were boarding a mostly empty flight to Atlanta.
This time of year we’re looking to ride where it’s warm, where it’s mostly flat, and where you might not think to find good riding. Georgia, specifically Athens and Augusta, is something of a secret cycling gem. The locals know how good it is, but you don’t read a lot about its flowy, endless single-track or its labyrinthine red clay roads.
We found the Georgia woods perfect for Evergreening, free of the rootys and rocks that make our New England woods so challenging to ride. For the first time in as long as we can remember, we never felt compelled to stop. Local mountain bikers take such good care of the trail systems, and there are so few momentum-sapping obstacles, that it was only fatigue that forced us to take a break. This kind of riding is really good for the soul, endless, twisting paths through gorgeous woodland, long, straight roads of firm, dry, red clay.
On the road, we found drivers universally courteous, and even on the edges of the cities, the mixed terrain riding was outstanding, ribboning along rivers and snaking under highways.
We flew back the Monday after the long weekend. There were, after all, more bikes to build, but Evergreening Georgia was as worthy a way to spend Thanksgiving as we could imagine.
See the Seven Evergreens .
It is tempting to say we have a fat bike. Riders have been asking us for one for a few seasons now. But, what we have instead is Treeline, not just a fat bike but an all-season mountain bike with the ability to run super wide tires like most fat bikes, but also the adaptability to be a 27.5+ war horse or a long haul bikepacking rig.
Treeline can be a flat bar bike or a drop bar bike. It can run suspended or rigid. It can take racks. It can be built fully thru-axle or with QR front and rear. In short, Treeline is a fat bike worthy of being a Seven, capable of fulfilling all your winter dreams without being a just a one-season luxury.
The Treeline S is built with our Integrity™ straight-gauge tubing, ultra durable. The Treeline SL, built for long-distance comfort, features our Argen™ double-butted tubing.
Because we build our bikes one-at-time, for their riders, we don’t have to manage an inventory of anything other than raw materials. That allows us to build the bikes riders want instead of trying to guess what they want or trying to convince them to buy what we have already built.
The challenges our riders have been taking on this last year really bring home to us how the way we do things allows our customers to lead us forward, to take us where they want us to go.
Mike Bybee rode from Arizona to Canada on his Sola SL bike-packing rig. Brad rode across the US, from Oregon to Virginia on his Evergreen SL, set up for loaded randonneuring. We rode in Yorkshire and on the Isle of Man. Matt Roy and David Wilcox attempted a 1000km brevet in the worst heat wave the Pacific Northwest has seen in decades. Daniel Sharp rode the Oregon Outback. Seven was at the Mt.Evans Hill Climb, in the Pyrenees and at Dirty Kanza. Sevens have been ridden through the night, through two full centuries, around Lake Michigan, through Paris and over the Paris-Roubaix cobbles.
Sometimes we shake our heads in wonder at all of it. What ends up happening is that, as much as guide Seven riders through the process of designing their bike, they guide us through the world of cycling. They show us what is possible and change our own ideas about what a bike can be.
Image: Daniel Sharp