About the bike

As I get time I will be building this little story about building the bike.

My first long bicycling tour was down the west coast of the United States of America.  I started in Blaine, Washington and I rode along the Pacific Coast Highway to Tijuana, Mexico.  The bicycle I used was a Surly Disc Trucker.  The Surly is a very popular touring bicycle.  It has a steel frame and a long wheel base.  Very comfortable ride.  But a little on the heavy side.  While on the trip I asked most of the other touring cyclists what they really liked about their bike.  Everyone I met that had a Rohloff 14 speed rear hub said that they really liked it.

The thing I wanted to do was reduce the weight of the complete bicycle.  Bike and racks.  I worked with Steve Wetmore of Sabino Cycles in Tucson to build the bike. Steve was great to work with from measuring me for the frame to ordering lots of parts from many different distributors.  Steve fitted me for a Seven Cycles  frame. Seven Cycles is located in Watertown, Massachusetts. Shortly after being measured for the Seven Cycles frame I was in Massachusetts visiting family and I had the opportunity to visit the Seven Cycles facility.  I had the pleasure to meet with the frame design engineer Neil Doshi that was going to design the frame.  He asked me lots of questions on type of rider I am, the purpose of the the bike, stiffness I wanted and a few more.  I then got a tour of the facility.  A great experience.



Unfortunately I don't have lots of pictures of the builds process.  But to give you a little idea this is a picture of the front wheel... or the pieces necessary to build the front wheel.