Seven Customers – Seven Cycles

The Connaught 600

First the photo, this one worth 2,000 words, we think.

Connaught 600

Even without any context, we found ourselves wondering, if you could ride a bike there (where?) why would you ever ride anywhere else? If you’re looking for the spot, it’sat the Ceide Fields a Neolithic field system in Mayo, Ireland.

We met Noel, the rider, through our friends at Cyclefit in London. Noel is an accomplished audax rider from Ireland, and we painted his Axiom SL to match his favorite place to ride, as well as to honor Audax Ireland. The photo was taken during the Connaught 600, a 600k event by the organiser of the Wild Atlantic Way Randonee.

It’s Not Art. Unless It Is.

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.

dyptich painting of Kevin's Sevin

Mike Bybee’s Sights of the Southwest

Start of the Deer Valley trails in Park City, Utah

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.

The Six Day Race: The Story of Major Taylor

Team Major Taylor in a pack

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.

Dan’s Expat S, or Bill the Pony, II

'Bill the Pony II' custom name graphic on the top tube

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.

Smiling Dan holds his bicycle frame during a shop tour

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.