NAHBS!!

Well, the North American Hand built Bike Show was FREAKING AWESOME!!!

Let me start out with my favorite bikes, the road and track bikes from Zullo:



My first (and current) road bike is an Italvega Super Light which is also a hand built Italian bike. The look so similar that I automatically had an affection towards Zullo's bikes. The green track bike is freaking awesome. Too bad I'm not made out of money :/

My second favorite was the Bad Penny bike from Groovey Peacock:

I have a particular draw towards this bike because, again, it reminds me of my Motobecane Le Champion, Matilda. She is another one of my bikes. The bad penny looks like the copper counterpart to my chrome matilda.

I think more than just nostalgia, I like these bikes best because I like the thin frames. I know that you can get bikes that are much lighter with large carbon fiber tubes, but small steal tubes just look more aesthetically pleasing to me personally.

Groovy Peacock also had a couple of other really cool bikes:

I really like the guy's personal bike. He said that he built it as a reminder of his childhood when he would ride down the street to get fruit stripes gum:

I'm not really into the flat handlebars on track frames, but this one looks great. That peacock cutout in the drops alone makes this bike amazing!

Naked bikes had a really really cool bike at the show:
This bike costs over $16,000 dollars! 16,000!!!!! JFC, if I bought a bike like this I would never want to ride it! It sure is beautiful though.






There were plenty of examples of nice lug work:



Lugs always look a lot nicer then weld marks.

There were also some odd looking bikes like the bamboo bike from *coughcoughcan'trememberthenameofthebuilderanddon'tfeellikelookingitup*


And the space age dildo looking bike from another bike builder that I don't remember the name of:
Seriously, I assume its supposed to be a unicorn looking bike maybe, but when you see this:
it doesn't exactly scream mythical beast, it just screams.


Again, I'm not wild about straight bars on track frames, but this track bike does look pretty awesome
This bike was pretty awesome. The picture doesn't really do it justice. The wheels on this bike were massive:
Pretty cool.

I really liked this track bike as well (if you can't tell I love green bikes).
This particular bike is really cool because the stem and handlebars are one whole piece:It also had a mast stem. The seat post is actually really small and at the top of the mast, which allows the builder to run the break cable straight through the mast:

Here's a weird looking bike. I wish they had it on the floor so that we could take a closer look at it. At first I thought it was just a tandem bike with one seat facing backwards, then I noticed that there is a normal bike seat in the middle:
Out of all the bikes at the show, that one is the one that I'd most like to ride around.

Signal have a really nice commuter bike that caught my eye. I think the more my friend Eric talks up commuters with fenders and packs, the more I want one. Plus an endorsement from Simon and Garfunkel is always a plus:
Zullo also had a cool commuter bike:
If you look close you can see that the top tube is actually two separate tubes with the break cable running in between.

I took a lot more pictures that I don't really feel like pasting into the blog. You can check them out here.

-Chris

Wheels of Glory III

The final Wheels of Glory race!!This is your last chance to get some good indoor computrainer racing in before we move on to other events. The charity for this race is St. Louis City Open Studio and Gallery (SCOSAG). Hop over to the Will Cycle for Charity site for more information on SCOSAG and the link to their website.

Matilda is Famous!

Yeah, that's my baby.

The guy(s(girl(s))) over at MyFixedGear.net posted pictures of my bike up on their site. The site is really cool. It's all pictures of fixed geared bikes from around the country (world??).

The site is really really easy to browse through which is one of the features that drew me to the site in the first place. I like sites like FixedGearGallery.com, but unless you like to click back and forth through pages they're kind of cumbersome to browse through. Also, I like the next bike button, which pulls up a random next bike to look at instead of just going to the next one down the list.

There's a pretty good mix of track bikes, road bike conversions, trick bikes, commuters, etc. Lots of stuff to look through. They get new bikes pretty regularly so its cool seeing all of the new stuff coming through. I like seeing the amount of character that come through on all of the bikes.

Anyway, its worth checking out. Thanks MyFixedGear.net for posting the pictures of Matilda.

-Chris

Custom retro single speed cruiser

So normally I just post about the races that we at Will Cycle for Charity put on, but I think this bike is really worth a posting.

I was browsing through the STL craigslist bike section wishing I had tons of extra money for bikes and I came across this:


The post has more detailed pictures of the bike.

Custom retro single speed cruiser, aluminum (Page & Midland)

Well, I need money to help replace a vehicle so I'm selling my cruiser. I'm asking $185 or Best Offer.

First off, I have absolutely no idea who made this frame/fork. I bought this bike used from someone locally who said it was perhaps a custom build show bike for the SRAM Corporation (since it originally had a SRAM internal gear system). But I never found out for sure. It does have a serial number which would suggest that it is NOT a one-off bike. The frame is a medium to large size. I am 5'11" and it fits me well. The bike's wheelbase is longer than most mountain bikes or SS bikes, so keep that in mind when considering it. The distance from the bottom bracket to the rear dropouts is a couple inches longer than average and requires buying a tandem chain or 2 standard chains!

Since I bought it, I primed and painted the aluminum cantilever style frame and chromoly 1-1/8" threaded fork in DupliColor "Ford engine block blue". The paint job is decent with only a few minor scrapes. I also replaced the stem and seatpost with black Kalloy parts and installed a 26" alloy Shimano wheelset with older HG freehub body and Parallax design hubs. The old 7spd cassette was removed and replaced with a custom single speed cog and spacers. The drivetrain still uses the Hyperglide chain and one of the original cassette cogs. However, this setup could easily be upgraded to a true single speed chain/cog system for less than $50 (including chain). The rear wheel is a bolt-on and the front is a quick release. Tires are in good shape but not matching. The short riser handlebar is painted black alloy and the black v-brakes, grips and saddle are no-name/nothing special (the saddle was taken off a vintage 70's Fuji racer).

This bike is in excellent shape, is light weight and definately unique. However, it does not have all high-end name brand parts. So if you want an light weight, eye-cathing SS cruiser but don't want to shell out big bucks, this might be for you. Please call Rick at (314) deleted or (314) deleted for more details or to set a time to come see it. Leave a message if no one answers - I will do my best to return all calls and e-mails!

When responding, please include the description of the item in the message.

I sell items on a first-arrive, first-serve basis. In other words, whoever sets and keeps a viewing appointment first gets priority over other verbal or e-mailed expressions of interest.

Thanks for looking.

I know I'm rocking the bikesnobNYC style of posting, but I figure if you're going to steal, steal from the best.

Anyway, I am not really into cruiser bikes all that much, but this one is absolutely beautiful. Some bikes look really great without labels plastered all over them. I'm not against labels, most of my bikes have the brand labels intact, but sometimes I feel like they distract from the overall feel of some bikes.

I especially feel this way about single speeds. I like the simplicity of a single speed bike and I think removing the labels kind of adds to the whole minimal look. I think that's one of the big reasons I love my single speed so much.

I also like the amount of detail and description this guy put into his post. He's very honest and open about the bike. There are a lot of very unique qualities about this bike and he does very well noting all of them. I feel like this is the sing of someone who really loves their bike and it makes me kind of sad to see that its up for sale.

I hope this bike gets picked up by someone who actually cares about bikes. I hate to think of a bike like this getting locked up and left outside to get torn up by weather and hooligans.

Anyway, its a bike worth looking at and I hope it finds a good home.

WOG 2 Race Videos

STLbikegeek.com posted videos of the first 7 races on their websites. Check them out here.

Thanks Naomi!!

Wheels of Glory II Results!

Thanks everyone for coming out to the races!

We definitely had a much much larger turn out as far as a crowd for this race.





In the end we generated $270 dollars for the Compton Drew Dolphin Bicycle Club which is almost double what we made for the charity in the January races. The bike club will now have more than enough money to get reflective cycling vests for all of the kids. Thank you everyone for donating the money. Helping these charities are really what these races are all about.

We had a hardware problem towards the end of the first round which took out one of the bikes. Basically, someone in the crowd stepped in an area that was blocked off and took out a necessary computer cable. We had to finish the rest of the rounds with only one bike. This caused us to cut more people each round than we wanted to in order to get through the races. One of our big goals in planning this second race was to keep more people in through all of the rounds, so loosing a bike part of the way through was a big disappointment for me and I'm sure for the crowd.

All in all I think the races went well. A lot of people got to ride, a good sized crowd got to watch, and hopefully everyone had fun.












Once again, there are a TON of pictures! You can find them both on Sara's flickr and on the Will Cycle for Charity picasa page. Thank you very much Sara and Carrie for the pictures. Also, a couple of friends came out to shoot some video of the event. Once they get the video over to me I'll be posting it online.






In the end, Seth Wahlman pulled off the win.



Followed closely by Richard Breininger in second


and Jason Zoll in third.

The final results were increadably close. All of the racers did an awesome job. I'll be posting the official results tomorrow.

Once again, thank you to everyone who came out. We had a lot of fun and did a lot of good for this month's charity. If you have any suggestions or feedback please feel free to email me or Will Cycle for Charity. I know we have some work to do as far as improving and perfecting our races so constructive feedback is always helpful. Check back to the blog and visit our website http://www.WillCycleforCharity.com for future updates. We will be posting our calendar of events for this coming year and the flier for the next race on March 11th on the site shortly.

-Chris