winter – Page 2 – Seven Cycles

Matt O’s Festive 500

On a more positive note than recent posts, we have just collected some of the photos Matt O’Keefe took during the Rapha Festive 500 at the end of the year.

When you ask Matt why he rides the Festive 500, he’ll laugh and say, “I don’t know,” but then all the reasons come tumbling out. And it’s pretty clear peer pressure got him out the door to begin with, at the end of 2012.

“I had just signed up for Strava,” he says, “and then Rapha put out the challenge, ride 500km in the week between Christmas and New Years, and I mentioned to John Bayley that it was a cool idea, but that I didn’t have a Garmin. So John gave me a Garmin, and I was out of excuses.”

Despite some untimely snow and a day off for family commitments, he managed to complete last year’s challenge and enjoyed it. This year, the weather was better. The snow held out (until just after the holiday), and Matt managed to get 7,000 miles in his legs over the 2013 season, so the kilometers piled up more easily.

“I don’t know why I do it, but it definitely ends the season with a bang,” he says.

Here are some more of his photos, and for even more of Matt’s cycling adventures, follow him on Instagram.

Nor’easter

We got a foot of snow last night and the afternoon high for the day will be 12F. That didn’t keep Rob from striking out at 8:30am to make the slippery trek into the shop. Our Expat S. Studded tires. Full fenders. A frozen water bottle. There is work to do, after all.

It’s a good thing there were so few cars out. Plow dodging will no doubt become an event in some future Winter Olympics. There is also valuable experience to be gleaned for work on future winter commuters.

And he wasn’t the only one who chose to ride. Cold puddles dot our bike parking lot today. We can’t recommend riding in these conditions, but it’s amazing how many times “go outside” turns out to be the right decision, and how often the bike is actually the best tool for the job.

Project Bike: Nella Neve – Winter Randonneur

Mid-winter, Rob built himself a unique rando bike. This was one in a long list of Seven project randonneuring bikes that we took on in 2012, an internal project to test a couple ideas. Due to the above-average snowfall here in New England, we did this as a speed project, one week from design to build.

This video was, in part, the inspiration for the design, hence the name Nella Neve.

Highlights of the project included:

Hot swappable between drop bar and Tiberius bar – actually a Stylerius™ bar
Accommodate tires from 23c up to 2.3″ 29er. Ideally designed around 33c tires.
Race-worthy geometry, handling, and performance.
Big fenders for optimized protection in the wettest and snowiest of days. No ice buildup on theses beauts.
Disc brakes for icy weather and easy wheel swap.
Hot swapping studded tires for 28c tires depending on the weather

: Hanging and waiting for assembly

: Stylerius bars straight and true

: Seven and Seven

: Stylerius bar close-up

: Bar quick connects

Motivations

In winter, you have to keep your eyes open. The reasons to ride can be hard to find, like forage for small animals. Mostly you operate on the faith that riding through the cold and snow, the slush and ice, the sand and salt, will have a real payoff, even if you’re not always sure, as you step out into another icy morning wind, exactly when that payoff will come.

What happens is that you suffer. The wind chaps your cheeks. You get wet in ways you never thought possible, and you arrive on the other side, sometimes unclear on whether what you just did was brave or stupid.

Of course, sometimes, somewhere out on the road or trail, you get one of those transcendent moments that repays your faith, that spurs you on to ride another wind swept winter day. Maybe it’s just the tranquility of finding yourself out in the woods, maybe on the edge of a frozen pond where the trees stir in the breeze and the world slows down, or else it’s on the road with friends and someone has a good joke and you ride fast on the laughter for a mile or two.

We usually find that, as on the bike so on the shop floor. It is impossible to maintain 100% motivation year-round. Where inspiration can vary, we create systems and redundancies to be sure we are bringing the maximum attention to detail. When one of us is lit up with inspiration, the others can catch it like a cold. We pass it around and thrive off it.

But also, you never know when you’re going to paint a bike that comes out better than you ever would have hoped just looking at the scheme on paper. You never know when someone is going to build up one of your bikes in the most thoroughly beautiful way and send you a stunning photo and thank you for what you’ve done for them.

You have to keep your eyes open for these things in wintertime, or really any time, even as you have great faith in the bike as a tool and as a way of expressing your craft. This is how we stay motivated.