Evergreening – Page 17

On the Road – Evergreening Paris

We caught the red eye, the last flight on the departures board before an air traffic controller’s strike shut down the Charles De Gaulle Airport. We set our bikes up at the hotel (we’ve got reassembly down to 22 minutes now), and immediately hit the pavement, excited to see Paris from the saddles of our Evergreen SLs.

It might be lame to cast Paris, the City of Light, as an amalgam of American metropolises, but to us, Paris was like a perfect cross between Boston and New York, windy and narrow like our hometown in Massachusetts, but congested and massive like the Big Apple. Fortunately, Paris’ motorists don’t resemble Americans. They drive a bit more slowly (the roads don’t permit much speed), and they are far more accepting of cyclists. We don’t recall a single horn being honked in anger, despite the fact all the bike lanes run opposite the flow of traffic. This was confusing and occasionally terrifying, for a pair of over-tired, over-excited Americans, but it seems to work well for Parisian cyclists. It would be hard not to want to ride a bike there every day, or all day on the one day you had, which is what we did.

Characterizing the riding in Paris in general is hard, because the whole city doesn’t conform to any one style. There are cobbles aplenty, as well as the asphalt you expect from any place this massive, but there is also a fair amount of dirt and mixed-surface, whether it’s grassy verges or sprawling park and garden spaces. Our shake out ride did more than whet our appetites for more, but having skipped food after coming off the plane, we needed to get back to the hotel and prepare for the real exploration to come.

We gave ourselves some time the next morning to rest and refuel, not throwing legs over top tubes until 10am, but it was fourteen more hours before we returned. We wanted to maximize our ride time here, to do a week’s worth of exploration in the one day we had, and there is always something to see in Paris, some bit of architecture, an open plaza, an opportunity for food that kept us going until midnight.

We followed the Seine out into the suburbs, clinging to it like a trail of bread crumbs, trusting it to take us someplace great, and it delivered everything, from the drama of the city center, to factory districts, to bucolic suburbs and a lone hill overlooking the magical sprawl. We found urban double track, and abandoned, nearly primitive sections of the city’s manufacturing past.

We could have kept on riding, but rolling back into the hotel after a full day and night on our bikes seemed smart with the Paris-Roubaix Challenge on tap for the weekend. We did another ride around the city center in the morning, before repacking our bikes and boarding the train to Lille and the shuttle on to Saint Quentin, where our adventure would continue.

Chris’s Evergreen SL

This is the kind of letter we love to get. Not only does Chris love his new bike, even more importantly he loves the type of riding his Evergreen SL is helping him discover. His photos and letter, below.

Hey guys,

The Evergreen worked out great. Since I got it in March, I’ve taken it to CA and cycled down Rt. 1 from Carmel to Cambria. This was a 10 day trip full of camping and kayak surfing with the family (my wife and 2 yr. were driving with the gear). I have never had such an amazing cycling adventure – the handling, speed, and ride quality of the Evergreen exceeded my expectations. Putting it together in a hotel room in Monterey was a trip! So great. Now I’m looking for routes for Evergreening my commute in Houston, TX. I’m surprised at what pops out once I start looking!

All the best and more to come,

Chris

Wheel Test – Paris-Roubaix Pacenti Luxe Disc Wheels

We’ve been looking for good go-to disc wheel for mixed-terrain riding. It’s a category with a number of entrants, but few products that really hit the mark. So we connected with Justin Spinelli at Luxe Wheelworks and Kirk Pacenti at Pacenti Cycle Design for a set of Pacenti’s own rims laced to White Industries hubs with Sapim bladed spokes.

They proved very durable and, at 24 hole front and rear, they manage to strike the right balance between weight and strength for us. Certainly we were impressed with them over the 54km of cobblestones at the Paris-Roubaix Challenge last weekend, not to mention the 14 hour mixed-terrain odyssey we did around Paris a few days before. We did both these rides without a broken spoke, dent or even a flat tire.

We rode them with Challenge Paris-Roubaix 27mm tires, similar to what the pros ride, to really put them through their paces. Justin had promised us that we’d have no problems, that they’d be bulletproof, but the cobbles of northern France have crushed all sorts of wheels (and spirits). We were impressed enough with them that they’ll become the default wheel for our Evergreen line in the coming months.

On the Road – The Paris-Roubaix Challenge

We packed our travel cases in a low-level frenzy, trying to get designs done and customers taken care of before getting on the flight to Paris. By the time we landed, our heads were full of cobbled dreams. And doubts. Were we fit enough? Did we bring the right clothing? We looked around at the others in our group and got quietly into the van.

We’re not like most of the people who take on the Paris-Roubaix Challenge, either die-hard amateur racers who want to test themselves against the famed pavÃ© of northern France or die-hard race fans who have memorized the route, can talk at length about each edition of the Hell of the North, and who want only to ride in the tire tracks of their heroes. We are fans, but bike-building precludes us from taking much else very seriously. We love to ride, but going fast is more something we measure against ourselves than against the pros.

We came to the Paris-Roubaix Challenge as a way of breaking out of our daily context, to see a part of cycling culture that exists in a parallel universe, and to test ourselves (and our bikes) in a way we hadn’t tried before. Oh, and we wanted to see the race, arguably the most storied event in pro cycling.

At dinner the night before our own ride, war stories crossed the table like a full salt shaker. Many of our table mates had ridden it before. Some were planning to wear two pairs of bibs. Most had their bars double-wrapped. As first-timers, all we could do wassecond guess our own choices, our bikes set up more or less as they always are for travel.

Fortunately, the Paris-Roubaix Challenge does not take in the 100+km of pavement the pros ride before the first sector of cobbles at Troisvilles, so we were fresh, if a little nervous, when we got there. Our first impressions, in all honesty, were that the cobbles were fun to ride. We are avid trail and gravel riders, and the cobbles, though each sector has its own unique character, present the same sort of bike handling challenges. The dead flat terrain let us focus on keeping our front wheel moving forward.

We rolled out in a cool, light rain, the sort of grim, gray day that part of the world, and certainly the race, is known for. The rest of the day would bring everything from cold showers to bright sunshine, and rather than struggling with the constant changes, we found they really just set off the different phases of our adventure.

We had fun trying to figure out the best place to ride through each sector of pavÃ©. Sometimes it was the smooth gutter. Other times it was right on the crown, down the middle of the road, although rain slick as they were, you could feel your tires sliding off those tallest stones. In some places the road was so bowed upward, so concave, that the following cars would scrape loudly over the crown, a horrible sound, especially for their drivers.

When we reached the Arenberg Forest, we found complete mayhem. This is the sector that claims the most pros every year, and the same was true for the amateurs. An ambulance was parked 50 meters in, already attending to someone with a day-ending problem. The cobbles there are larger than the other sectors and more irregular. The gaps in between seem to fit a tire perfectly, and the whole thing was covered in black mud. We felt fortunate to make it through unscathed.

The hardest section, though, came later at the Carrefour de l’Arbre. This sector is long, and there is no where to ride. The gutter is uneven and unpredictable. All the cobbles had rounded tops that rattled our teeth for more than 2km.

For all this, we felt surprisingly good at the end. All day we had been careful to keep the right pace, often slowing down on the pavement between sectors to save our legs. Over most of the cobbles, it actually seemed to help to ride faster, to try to ride across the tops of the stones.

Rolling finally into the famed velodrome at Roubaix, the transition from the day’s rumbling and bouncing to the smooth, curved bank of the track was jarring. We didn’t feel elated or relieved or victorious, so much as overwhelmed, trying to build a little speed to keep from sliding down the steep embankment just short of the finish line.

We’d come through. Our bikes had come through, performing flawlessly, not a dropped chain, not a flat to change, and given a little time to think on it, we saw it for what it was, one of the most extraordinary days we might ever spend on a bike.

On the Road – Bob Kruger Grinds Oregon Gravel

When you finish a bike, put it in a box, put that box on a truck and send it out into the world, you never know what kind of adventures it’s going to find. We built Bob Kruger a Mudhoney S last year with our good friends at Cascade Bicycle Studio in Seattle, and, like so many of the cyclists we admire, he put it to good use as a cyclocross race bike, a bad weather commuter and finally, as a mixed-terrain explorer.

Bob’s gorgeous photos and prose from the Gorge Roubaix Gravel Grinder below:

Last spring I was looking for a new bike. I had a number of intended uses for this bike: commuter, cross racer, gran fondo and all around performer. I wasn’t looking for a plastic race bike, nor a heavy city bike. This bicycle needed to look great, take a beating and come out the other end looking just as good. It needed to perform well 365 days a year for the next 30 years. That’s a big ask.

I found the perfect bike. It was a Seven Mudhoney S. Although I thought it was perfect throughout last autumn’s cross season and a winter of commuting, I verified it this weekend at the Gorge Roubaix Gravel Grinder.

Throughout the day I was continually reminded of how much I loved my Seven Mudhoney. The 28 mm Continental 4-Seasons performed spectacularly both on the treacherous gravel descents and fast paved sections. The CBS-built Hed Belgium + Chris King hubbed wheelset was bomber and rolled smoothly and perfectly throughout a day where many, many large rocks were hit. The Mudhoney S: titanium frame was solid with zero chatter or skittishness. The gravel and rocks we encountered didn’t even faze the polished titanium’s shine. The Avid BB7 disc brakes gave me a massive amount of confidence and between that and the solidity of the bike I had no fear descending rough gravel at 35 mph for extended periods of time. While others complained of numb hands and feet, I experienced none of that. I couldn’t have been happier with how my Mudhoney performed over those 85 miles.

That night I rinsed the dust off, lubed the chain, screwed on the fat PDX fenders and was ready for the rainy Seattle commute the next morning. In the fall I’ll pull my Contis, install my fat tubeless CX tires and try to win some old man Cat 3 races on this Mudhoney. I’m serious about riding this bike for the next 30 years. I’m sure it will look better than I do in 2045!

Bob Kruger is an Environmental Scientist who grew up in Skagit Valley, Washington and currently resides in Seattle. All of his energy is focused into family, friends, work, travel and being active outdoors, in that order and often together. His outdoor passions include cycling, skiing, golf and being on the water.

See more on this ride here. There is also a great video from the event here.