Seven Customers – Page 19

The Ames’ Tandem

Every bike build is a challenge, a good one, and a tandem build is more than double the challenge. Add in custom front and rear racks, generator front and rear hubs, and clearance for fenders, and you have the sort of project we dream about. We built this very special Axiom SL 007 SL with our friends at Spin City Cycles in Decatur, IL. We had a nice note from the Ames’ after they picked it up:

Seven,

I thought I would write and let you know we picked up the bike yesterday, and it looks great! I’m looking forward to it. I’m including a few built up pictures for fun.

Thanks for everything,

Kevin

Pat McCann – From 0 to 20,000 in SEVEN

We are very fortunate to get a lot of email from happy Seven riders. Each one is humbling in its way. Each one is appreciated. But we got this photo and note from Pat McCann last week, and it left us all a little speechless:

In December of 2006 I took delivery of my custom built Seven Aerios. I was very proud and excited to own such a bike. At the age of 58 I had ridden over 6000 miles the summer before and was a decent enough rider to enter some races. I felt my new bike would be a real asset.

Living in upstate N.Y. and not wanting to wait until spring to ride, we went to visit my wife’s family in S.C.. We arrived Jan.16^th ’07 and on Jan. 17^th at 7 am I suffered a massive heart attack. It was the worst of the worst. Every inch of my body was racked with pain. My chest felt as if I had cinder blocks being pressed on me. Even the tips of my ears hurt, and I was suddenly sweating. My wife is a nurse and, although unable to believe what appeared to be happening, rushed me to the hospital 1 mile away.

How could I be having heart attack? Never smoked, never gets drunk, eats low fat, exercises like crazy…my cholesterol was 150. This just can’t be happening.

As I lay on the bed in the emergency room surrounded by nurses and technicians the heart monitor was faced away from me at the foot of my bed. Their eyes were bugging out as they looked at the monitor, but worst of all I looked across them all and I saw Brenda (my wife) standing back reading the monitor, tears running down her face. I knew it was bad. Later she would tell me that from across the room she could see my heart throwing PVCs off the chart.

I was then rushed to Carolinas Hospital’s cardiac unit in Florence SC. As they wheeled me in from the ambulance to the hospital I was in horrible pain and freezing cold (temp out side about 70 degrees). Suddenly, as I lay flat on my back, I looked past my feet and everything appeared to be backlit by a bright light. The noise of the hospital and noise from my gurney disappeared, the pain was gone, I was warm, and was looking down at my feet from a 45 degree angle. I knew I was dying and remember thinking, “oh this is going to be nice”.

Just then my wife put her hand on my arm as we were rushing through the hospital to the OR and said “don’t worry honey you’re going to be alright.” I must have looked at her face streaming with tears and said “no, I can’t go yet!” It was as if I was slammed back down on the gurney. The pain was back; the cold was back; the noise was back.

As they wheeled me into the OR I noticed on the beam holding the tv monitor (you can watch them catheterize you) the word MAVIC. It was actually MAVIG, but you know where I’m going. I said MAVIC? That’s the type of wheel I have on my brand new Seven that I came down here to ride. One of the cardiologists said “you have a Seven? I always wanted one.” My sarcastic wife who felt I spent too much money on the bike said, “Make us an offer. He’s not going to need it.”

Little did she know.

The doctor came out and told Brenda that I had a 100% blockage of the L.A.D.. She said, “That’s the Widow Maker. Why is he still alive?” The doctor said “Does he exercise a lot?”

“All the time” she said. The doctor said, “Because of that he has built up so much collateral circulation, that’s what saved him. However he was over 2.5 hours without blood to the apex of the heart, so he has lost about 1/3 of his heart.”

I remember trying to swing my leg over my new bike when I got out of the hospital and couldn’t do it. I remember looking at the computer mileage set at 0. I would lay on the couch and cry. I put the Seven on a trainer and watch old TdF videos. I could only ride 8 minutes, and I’d have to lay back on that couch.

The bike was always there. It was my therapy, both physical and mental. I eventually got outside and rode a little more each week. There are lots more stories since 2007 until now, but I’ll spare you. I rode my Seven every day that I could. I love that bike. To say we’ve been through a lot together would be an understatement.

But this part I want to tell you. Last summer, 2014, I was riding up a very steep and long hill in upstate NY. I looked down at my computer to watch it turn over to 20,000 miles. This time they were tears of joy.

Seven at Syllamo’s Revenge

Syllamo’s Revenge is a 50 mile mountain bike race that takes place annually in the Ozark Mountains of northern Arkansas. 50 miles is a long way to go on a mountain bike, but it’s even longer (not technically, but certainly effort-wise) when you’re racing single-speed as our friends Hart and Boomer were. They were 1st and 2nd place in the single-speed division, left and center in the photo below. We built both their bikes with our friends at Outdoors, Inc in Memphis.

Hart’s picture and words below:

Seven team,

I just returned to Memphis from north central Arkansas having completed “Syllamo’s Revenge” for the 7th year in a row. This was the first year on a Seven as I took delivery in December from the good folks at Outdoors, Inc. Joel worked with you guys to get me setup on the perfect rig, and keeps it running smoothly and reliably. The conditions were great and I finished 2nd overall and 1st single-speed feeling tired but not nearly as beat up as in previous years. I credit the Custom Ti frame for the difference. I am very pleased. This is my third race on the bike and I am happy to report the Seven has put me on the top of the podium in each of the three.

Thank you guys for an awesome bike!!!

Picture attached. (I’m in the center. Boomer also rides a Seven and is standing to my right.)

Warmest Regards,

Hart

John’s 622 SLX

Here’s a 622 SLX we built with our friends at Bean’s Bikes in Berwyn, PA. This Ti/carbon machine is finished with our Lug Deluxe paint scheme with a special “rattlesnake” finish on the carbon that shows a different color depending on the light and the angle you’re looking from. The decals are a custom Glitter Gold outline.

Going Up

Greg LeMond said, “It doesn’t get any easier; You just go faster,” about gaining fitness on the bike, though it’s often construed as a succinct description of becoming a better climber. Up is always up. Our gravity is constant. So the challenges are all with the rider, to get stronger, to ride smarter and, on some level, to choose the right bike.

That’s where we come in.

A good climbing bike combines several basic characteristics, hopefully in perfect balance: lightness, stiffness and perfect fit. Each of these aspects of the bike have been fetishized in the past as stand-alone arbiters of quality, but we know from long experience that there is never one thing that makes a bike great. In good design, a subtle balance of features is key.

Lightness is perhaps the most obviously desirable trait of a climbing bike. The less weight the rider needs to carry up the hill, the easier it is to go fast. We can lighten a bike through tube butting, removing material from the tubeset strategically. We can also add in some carbon fiber, which isn’t necessarily lighter than a butted titanium tube, but can be light while also maintaining stiffness, making it strategically attractive.

That brings us, not coincidentally to stiffness, which is also desirable. Transferring maximum power from the pedals to the rear wheel will get you up faster, or at least more efficiently than losing power through an overcompliant drive train. Here, weight and performance work against each other a little. Stiffening usually adds weight. Again, we have to find a balance point.

Finally, fit. When you are climbing, you need to get oxygen to hard-working muscles. Getting oxygen is directly related to your ability to open your chest, to take in more air, and that is a function of fit. Finding optimal top tube length for comfort and performance is a key part of our process.

What we try to do with every bike is to understand what it wants to do, where it wants to go, and how it needs to feel, and to find the various balance points throughout the design to deliver the best ride for the person who will ride it. Every design goal is achieved through multiple aspects of frame design, and that is why getting a custom bike, rather than something off-the-shelf, is a collaboration between the rider and the builder, purpose built and personalized at a deeper level.