Travel Bikes – Page 3

RedSky – The Ultimate in Versatile Performance

Yesterday, we introduced Project RedSky. Today we want to look at this bike’s incredible versatility. To demonstrate, we offer photos of an eTap equipped RedSky wearing a wide range of tires.

With 23c tires, RedSky looks like any road bike. What you will notice, as we step up from 28c, to 32c, 33c, and finally to 30c studded, is that the bike always looks proportional, always looks purpose-built.

RedSky can very literally be your go-to fast, group ride bike, and also your winter time commuter (with 32c tires and fenders). You can ride mixed-terrain on it with an array of file treaded tires, or you can tour on it. It has hidden rack mounts at the dropouts.

We know a lot of our riders are hesitant to move to disc brakes, because they have already invested in quality rim brake wheels. RedSky solves this problem by giving those riders access to the same tires as they might run on a mixed-terrain or cyclocross bike.

Mavic 23c tire

RedSky with caliper brakes amply clearing a Mavic 23c tires

Rivendell Ruffy Tuffy 28c

RedSky with caliper brakes amply clearing Rivendell Jack Brown 33c tires

Caliper brakes amply clearing a Rivendell Jack Brown 33c tire

Clement X’Plor MSO 32c

RedSky with caliper brakes amply clearing Clement X'Plor MSO 32c tires

Caliper brakes amply clearing a Clement X'Plor MSO 32c

Rivendell Jack Brown 33c

RedSky with caliper brakes amply clearing Rivendell Jack Brown 33c tires

Caliper brakes amply clearing a Rivendell Jack Brown 33c tire

Clement LAS 33c

RedSky with caliper brakes amply clearing Clement LAS 33c tires

Caliper brakes amply clearing a Clement LAS 33c tire

45 North Xerxes 30c studded

Axiom SL with caliper brakes clearing 45 North Xerxes 30c studded tires

Caliper brake clearing a 45 North Xerxes 30c studded tire

The Future of Clean

One of the best compliments we get about our bikes is that they look clean, which is not to say “not dirty” but that their lines are clean and true and simple. The recent release of SRAM’s eTap components suggests builds are going to get even cleaner. Check out these two very different builds from our friends at Cascade Bicycle Studio, the first an Axiom SL, a straight-ahead road bike with a little bit of Chris King bling to set off the single-color paint job.

Axiom SL painted white with SRAM eTap

Seven Airheart SL with SRAM eTap

Rear fender detail

The second one is a refined 650b Airheart SL travel bike. Matching Brooks leather saddle and bar tape are classy finishing touches, and the travel readiness only begins with the S&S couplers. Check out the split, hammered fender, too. This is a high example of the intersection of form and function. eTap only makes this one easier to pack.

Guaranteed Adventure

Here we are with Joe Cruz (the one in the blazer), the night he picked up his new Treeline SL from the shop. A philosophy professor during daylight hours, at all other times of year Joe is compulsive traveler and a committed back country cyclist. We wrapped this bike Tuesday night, and tomorrow Joe leaves for Alaska, where he’ll swap over to studded tires for a week of glacier exploration outside of Anchorage.

Joe Cruz poses with his new Treeline SL and the team at Seven

We count ourselves lucky to be able to work with riders like Joe and Jeff Curtes and Daniel Sharp and Matt and Mo Bruno Roy, and of course countless others who use our bikes to find and share big adventures.

As kids, we remember pedaling away from home, disappearing for hours at a time, going wherever our wheels would take us, and the chance to recapture that sense of exploration and adventure now is really priceless.

Watch this space for more from Joe as well as the rest of Seven’s sponsored, encouraged, and inspired riders. The adventure is guaranteed.

Evergreening Georgia

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 .

The Places We Go

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