Friends of Seven – Page 2

Colby’s Evergreen SLX

detail of the custom camoflaged paint scheme on and Evergreen SLX

Colby Pearce is a bit special, not because he won 14 National Championships on the track, in fact, not because of anything he’s done on the bike. When we first met him, he didn’t even mention his racing career. He didn’t feel he needed to, and that, we think, is what makes him different. He brings a quiet passion to his work as a fitter and coach. The past is less important than the future for him, and that’s a view we share.

He asked us to build him a Evergreen SLX, a real all-road killer, and he gave us the freedom (just a suggestion about the paint design) to build what we wanted.

Now he’s written something nice about the bike we made him , and shared some good photos. We’re pretty proud of how this one came out. If you’re in Boulder and need a fit, a new bike, or just want to ogle this one, get in touch with Colby. He’s well worth working with.

An Evergreem SLX with a stunning camoflagued paint job in agrassy field

Rarely of What They Had Seen – Bob W

Tim and Bob pose with Bob's fullt loaded Expat SL

Bob came to visit us last week, as many of our riders do. But he didn’t drive up in a car, fresh from the airport. Instead, he rode his bike here, a heavily loaded Expat SL he got from our friends at Sabino Cycles in Tuscon.

He came, indirectly, from Santa Monica. Setting out from California, the Pacific Ocean swelling and rising behind him, he took Route 66 through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois. Moving forward about 50 miles a day, he commented to us that he could have come faster, but he prefers to eat at all the diners, to talk to all the people.

Eight 'route66' decals on Bob's top tube

From the end of 66, he rode north along the shore of Lake Erie to Niagra Falls, then the Erie Canal Path to Albany. He rolled through Western Mass, and on into Boston, where he stopped in to have his picture take with Tim, who welded his bike. He left us after a few photos and a good chat, and continued on to the Atlantic Ocean.

We got a thank you note from him a day later, which closed with a quote from the iconic writer of Western novels Louis L’Amour: “Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.”

Thanks for coming, Bob, and thanks for stopping to talk.

TransAt Project Update – WE WIN!!!

They rolled out in the most perfect weather Ireland could offer, made it through a wild coastal storm that nearly blew them off their bikes, and finished in the middle of the night. We are super proud of Brad and Matt and what they’ve accomplished over the last week in Ireland. When you set out on a race/adventure like this one, you hope it all comes together, the training, the equipment, the performance, and it did.

Their winning team time was 7d16h19m over a total distance of 2251.6km.

We have already talked with a number of riders who have been following along and are interested in the special edition bikes we put together. The deadline to place a deposit for a TransAt bike was Monday, the 18th, but Brad and Matt’s big victory inspired us to extend it to the end of June.

These are incredible bikes for riders who want to take on any style of endurance event, from ultra-endurance races like the TransAt to local bikepacking and touring. It is the thoughtful details that make the ride. This win feels good for all of us here, not only because we’re happy for our friends, but also because it bears out our experience designing and building high-performance bikes for our distance-minded riders.

Wheat Ridge Cyclery and the Evergreen S

Our friends at Wheat Ridge Cyclery in Colorado did a nice write up on the Evergreen S, and took these photos of the bike with some Rocky Mountain back drop for dramatic effect.

closeup of Evergree S head badge

evergreen S closeup of top tube graphic

They say:

The Seven Evergreen has definitely won us over, it borrows from the performance and passion behind their storied 622SLX titanium lugged carbon bikes and firmly plants itself at the top of the burgeoning gravel bike segment while looking ahead towards the future.

Seven Evergreen S in a wide open space with cirrus clouds in the sky

Lands of Lost Borders – A Journey on the Silk Road

A book enititled

We are lucky. We know it. All day, every day, we work with people on bikes they will do amazing things with, and sometimes, as we found out recently, they’ll even write books about those things.

Longtime followers of this 7 will possibly remember the Cycling Silk Project, undertaken by Kate Harris and Melissa Yule in 2011, when, in their own words they, “lurched off the European shore of Istanbul, Turkey with overburdened bikes and quaking legs. Just a few days ago, in late October, we pedaled into Leh, a small city barnacled onto the Himalayan mountains in northern India. In the months between, we consumed roughly 10,000 packs of instant noodles to fuel nearly 10,000 km of riding, polishing our souls on roads rough as pumice on this pilgrimage to the Silk Road’s wildest mountains and deserts.”

We got a copy of the book in the mail recently, and it was nice to walk back down memory lane and hear an expanded version of a story we followed closely as it was going on. We were enormously proud to build the bikes Kate and Mel rode, a pair of Expat S off-road touring machines. These bikes played into our thinking as we evolved designs of the early Evergreens, so they, and this project, were highly inspiring and influential for us.

The book is available now. We recommend it highly.