It feels like hardly any time has passed at all, yet today it’s been exactly one year since, for unhappy reasons, this bicycle came into my possession:
So I marked the occasion by taking it for a ride yesterday, and purists may be pleased to see that I’ve put cyclocross tires on it:
I mean you may not be pleased that I put these particular cyclocross tires on it, since this color combination isn’t for everybody, but what’s the point of riding a Richard Sachs if you don’t draw a little attention to yourself?
And yes, more than one person has commented that the bike looks like Christmas.
Also, in case you were wondering, which you probably weren’t, I store most of my bikes in the cellar like wine bottles, and I generally only keep one or two inside my actual domicile at a time. (Which bikes I’m keeping close at hand at any given moment depends on a number of factors including but not limited to time of year, weather conditions, current mood, phases of the moon, and whether or not I’ve read an article about gravel bikes that made me angry and compelled me to ride a bike with 23mm tires entirely out of spite.) Right now the two bikes in my actual apartment are the Richard Sachs and the Faggin, which I only mention because the sight of them side by side is a sight to behold:
Even the cat’s afraid.
Part of the reason I’d been using fattish road tires instead of cyclocross tires on the Sachs is that I’m on the road with this bike at least half the time, and I can’t stand the idea of wearing down knobby tires for no reason. (It triggers the same part of my brain that gets activated when the kids leave the lights on.) But then I realized the chances of my ever doing a cyclocross race ever again are extraordinarily slim, so what the hell am I even saving them for, anyway? In fact I’ve got plenty more cyclocross tires where these came from, so I might as well just use them, since they work well on Very Small Rocks:
Plus they’re better than the fattish road tires for the odd singletrack detour, or for when I have to reroute around a fallen tree:
Though in that particular instance I just climbed over it.
The 30mm tires I had on there were great though:
I did want to move them to the Faggin, but they they wouldn’t quite fit, so in the meantime I’m saving them.
But even without the toothpaste-colored tires, there’s a lot going on with this bike:
It’s blood red, it’s made by a living legend (Richard Sachs, a.k.a. the Karl Farbman of Bicycles), it belonged to a friend, riding partner, and cycling mentor who improbably won it in a raffle, and I then watched that friend die. I keep it with my other bikes, but it doesn’t seem like one of them; instead it’s like something out of “Game of Thrones.” At first I was scared of it, I’m not sure I’ll ever feel quite like it’s mine, and I still have weird dreams about it. It doesn’t even have water bottle bosses, yet it carries more baggage than any bike I own.
None of this is to say I don’t ride it, because of course I do, and often, too–though in this case it had been a few weeks since I’d been on it, since I think I rotated it into the wine cellar while I was rehabilitating the Craigslist bike:
Also, none of the aforementioned emotions and associations detract in any way from riding the bike, nor to they translate into my being afraid of getting it dirty or scratched or anything like that. When I’m on it I treat it like a bike, and riding it is always a pleasure. It’s impossible to ride the thing and not believe The Farman is some kind of wizard, and whether it’s actually the bike or I’m just under the spell of his rarefied marketing and artisanal chapbooks, the effect is a heady one indeed. Also, as someone who has been writing a cycling blog for going on 19 years I have a great deal of respect for his dedication. (That’s not to suggest my own “dedication” is similarly laudable, since in my case it’s not so much dedication as compulsion and basically amounts to an extended Duolingo streak, but if anything my own lack of actual dedication and craftsmanship puts me in an ideal position to admire the real thing in other people.)
I mean the guy has probably had to answer the question “Why won’t you use disc brakes?” even more than Grant Petersen has, and he still hasn’t killed anybody (at least to my knowledge), which is an accomplishment in itself.
Though I suppose there’s still time.
Also, Grant Petersen hasn’t killed anybody either…at least as far as I know. But a cycling-themed version of Clue featuring Richard Sachs, Grant Petersen, Jobst Brandt, and other luminaries past and present would be a surefire hit:
[Old Man Petersen, in the drawing room, with the hemp twine.]
Speaking of cyclocross bikes, after yesterday’s ride it occurred to me I have no idea what a cyclocross bike even loos like today, so I checked it out:
Same idea, different execution, I guess. And did you know this has a name?
It’s called a “seat kink:”
The Inflite’s seat kink balances the bike’s weight when it’s on your shoulder. This saves you valuable time and energy and stops the wheels getting caught on obstacles.
I thought a seat kink was when you have a thing for smelling Brooks saddles.