The heavy and retro
Surely the most elegant, no-holds-barred booth at the 2005 Interbike Trade Show in Las Vegas has to bethat of Brooks Saddles. The recreation of an English sitting room (exceptfor the fact that smoking is not allowed in the show) drove home the pointof how English this product remains since its purchase and re-vitalizationby an Italian saddle company, Selle Royal.The factory remains in Smethwick, on the outskirts of Birmingham, whichis where the gawdy red carpet with yellow flowers for the booth came from.All of thesaddles remain the same, made entirely out of thick leather with rivetsholding them to their steel frames. The production equipment remains thesame; many of the production dies and presses were built around the turnof the century (of the 20th century, not the 21st!). The booth, large asit is, smells strongly of leather, not only from the leather Brooks saddles,bags, handlebar tape and tool kits, but also from the big, deep leatherpoof chairs in the sitting room, placed below a portrait and photos ofbike riders in, and on, full retro gear. The Brooks catalog is like a littlebook and looks like it, too, could have been produced near the dawn ofbicycles.Where most booths have flimsy little doors leading to inner meetingrooms, the doors in this booth are huge, heavy, and solid wood, designedto either close off sections of the booth and look like continuous wall,or open the booth out to nearly double its size and latch seamlessly intoanother, previously-hidden wall. All of the walls are very tall and solidwood mounted to solid steel beams, not lightweight hollow-core mountedon an aluminum frame. The entire booth weighed 33,256 pounds, accordingto Dave Hostetter, who had to fill out the shipping documents to get itto Las Vegas from Italy, where it had been built.And for those who have a warm place in their hearts for leather saddlesthat required breaking in and responded glowingly to being rubbed withoil, these saddles inspire swooning. The models remain the same, even thehand-tooling of the surface details on the ornate saddles. And no self-respectingretro bike with a Brooks saddle should be without a Brooks leather saddlebagand leather tape wrapping the handlebars.The light and modern
On the opposite end of the weight spectrum, the ITM Visia Superlightstem, at 107 grams in 120mm length, may be the lightest aluminum stem inthe world. It is 3D cold-forged and later CNC machined to thin the walls and givena compacting surface treatment to strengthen it further, followed by ablack mirror-finish paint job and titanium bolts. It comes only in 31.8mmhandlebar diameter.Seven’s Diamas is its first all-carbon frame, and though it aerodynamicshaping to all of its tubes, it is a lightweight road bike that can bebuilt custom to any size, which is of course what Seven Cycles is knownfor. It is so smooth and seemingly seamless that it is hard to see howthey put it together, and the secret remains closely held, at least untilthe pending production-process patent is granted.Damiano Cunego will be riding a Wilier LeRoi painted in Lampre colorsrather than a Cannondale next year. This is the same carbon bike StuartO’Grady rode last year, and his former Cofidis teammates will continueto ride it next year as well.Gaerne’s Aurora ST women’s shoe is all silver, has a super-soft uppercut to a woman’s last, and sells for $170 a pair. The big and little wheels
Ultimate Support Systems, purveyors of bike repair stands, storagestands and digital scales, is displaying perhaps the widest array of 29-inch-wheelmountain bikes from different manufacturers ever brought together in oneplace. Allof them have unique features, whether it be in the suspension systems orin other details, but many people wondered aloud about the Fox Talas 36fork on the Lenz Sport Behemoth on display in the booth, since it is commonknowledge that Fox makes no forks for 29-inch wheels. The trick, however,is not in the fork but rather in the huge front hub, which has an enormous,oversized axle whose 20mm-diameter clamping ends are offset up from thehub centerline when installed. The hub makes it possible to install a 29-inchwheel with a big tire in a through-axle fork built for 26-inch wheels!Bianchi’sJunior 24 is a tiny, scaled-down full-on road racing bike, using narrowhandlebars, short Miche cranks and 24-inch wheels. Now little juniors canride on a bike that looks just like big Magnus Backstedt’s!Low spoke count
Rolf Prima has developed a new paired-spoke carbon wheel featuringjust five pairs of spokes. Despite our own hesitance – and that of the UCI – to see a ten-spokewheel in mass-start event, company founder, Rolf Dietrich, insists thenew Carbon TT is up to almost anything you throw at it. Given the regulatoryrestrictions, the wheel is limited to time trials and triathlons and ifyou want to try a similar approach in a road race, you’ll have to up thespoke count by 20 percent.We had a chance to speakwith Rolf about his approach to wheel making at his booth at Interbike.(Click for Audio File)Cutting-edge materials; Classic attention to detail
Good, bad or indifferent, the growth of carbon fiber as the materialof choice has generally limited one’s options when it comes to pickingthat custom-made dream bike produced by a dedicated craftsman laboringaway in a small family owned shop. Custom bikes were special in the 1970s,but then mitering a tube of Reynolds 531 was a heck of a lot easier andcheaper that designing one-off frames out of space-age materials.Thereare still a few craftsmen out there and some of them are even keeping pacewith the mega-factory-built carbon machines. First and foremost among Americanframebuilders who work in carbon is Bob Parlee, educated in the sailingindustry Parlee honed his skills before opening the doors of his own bikecompany in 2000. Parlee began by designing and producing his own tubing, before turning the resulting spec' over to a composites manufacturer. The results are often spectacular... not cheap, but then again it's a 100-percent hand built carbon bike. A new Z3 SL will set you back about $4200, the Z1 SL another$300 beyond that. Parlee, for one, is convinced that you really do getwhat you pay for.We had a chance to speak with the founder and owner of Parlee Cycles.(Click here for AudioFile)Davis Phinney Foundation
At the end of Interbike’s first day, Phil Liggett pulled out the winningraffle ticket for the custom carbon Serotta Meivici that will bear serialnumber 0001. The Foundation sold 891tickets for this bike at $100 apiece, raising a lot of money for theDavis Phinney Foundation (DPF), which is dedicated to finding a cure forParkinson’s, the disease with which Phinney has been afflicted for thepast five years. In its first year of existence, the DPF has raised overhalf a million dollars for research into Parkinson’s and other neurologicaldisorders.A combination of Latin words worked out by Phinney and Ben Serotta,Meivici means “my victory,” part of the motto of the DPF, in which Phinneyencourages everyone to celebrate each of the little victories one can findin every day. The ceremony began with the showing of a DVD celebratingPhinney’s cycling career and his current struggles with Parkinson’s andwas followed by brief words from Phinney, Serotta, Wayne Stetina of Shimano(which had contributed the parts that will adorn Meivici #0001), and Liggett.Amazingly, the holder of the winning ticket was even on hand in the smallconference room and was able to celebrate immediately not only with Phinney,with whom he had participated in Carpenter-Phinney bike camps in the past,but also with the builder of his future bicycle.