The Speedvagen Part 2. The Race of Truth.

Since this blog is already a freakin Sacha White love fest, I'll dispense w/ my drivellings about the application and love of all bikes Vanilla and just stick to what I know/believe. So here goes.

The Geometry:
As I mentioned In Part 1, I've been riding a Steelman Eurocross for some time (it's not the only thing I've ridden in that time though, just the nicest). It's a "55cm". A 57cm tt, 72.5/73 head/seat w/ about 58mm-60mm of bb drop. Yep, that make for a high bb. The bike as built runs just shy of 19lbs with dura-ace/reflex wheels. The front end is quick and due to the bb height, the chain stays are short so it climbs well. I've never caught a pedal w/ my 175s....ever. Now, as luck would have it, I had the opportunity to ride w/ Sacha. I have my fit pretty well dialed on the Eurocross so it was just a matter of translating this to the Speedvagen geometry template. I wasn't exactly sure what that was (Sacha is a man of few words) but I knew the bb would be lower. I rode his Vanilla SS and while a teenie bit small, felt natural. I'm game. The high bb, while great on bumpy courses, required a bit a finessing at times, so lower felt like a good direction to go. When I finally got the SV built up, I took it, my sniffles, and all my expectations to my local cross course. I managed to get in 3 hot laps before my energy bottomed but it was enough. The bike felt glued to the ground, but very nimble up front. With out knowing the exact geometry, I was guessing 73/71.5 head/seat because it felt like an old Lemond I had w/ similar angles. Sacha emailed that the bike was in fact a 72.7 square w/70mm of bb drop. Ever so slightly quicker up front than the Steelman, a smidge more stable in the butt, and A LOT lower in the BB. I doubt I could have discerned a 0.2 angle difference on it's own, but the change in opposite directions of both the head and seat angles and the significant change in the bb made for a ride that felt both quick and smooth. Cross bike Feng-shui maybe? Hey, but that was only 3 laps on a course I knew well. What about a Race. Well, I raced it. What did I think? I didn't have to. That really sums it up best. I thought about the race, not about the bike. I did catch a pedal twice. I'm use to taking pedal strokes soon after exiting. High bb's will do that to you. Most other turns I was able to rail through, pushing it each lap until I would break lose a tire. Dismounts at speed were smooth and stable. I'm sold.

The Craft:
I'm one of those guys who appreciates craft, but is not big on ornamentation. While I love wiling away work hours drooling over cut and polished lugs, It's not what I buy. A very FX4M kinda guy (1st one to guess that license plate in the comments wins a Snickers). The Vagen has that in spades. Everything that Sacha could think of appears to have been tried and applied. I'm sure everyone who gives a shit is aware of the seatmast and the Paul brake sleeves brazed directly into the stays, but the reason for the madness is a rear brake that's as responsive as the front. Perfect, just perfect. The seatmast-thompsonfrankenpost itself is a beautiful, all stainless piece of work. Very oomph! The dropouts are very trick w/ replaceable stainless plates. I've also never owned a bike w/ so much sweet steel swaging. The top tube appears to be a Life or Zona teardrop which flattens on the bottom as you move toward the saddle thus making for a much more comfortable portage. The downtube is swaged longitudinally along the headtube and laterally (are those actual words?) along the BB. Not new, but it still takes work. Nice and stiff. No need for gussets. The stays are swaged beyond belief. So much swoopy goodness. It gives the rear suspension characteristic I've never experienced on a cross bike. To cap it off, the seat stays are swaged again below the brake bosses into almost a rectangular section. Vertically compliant, yet laterally stiff. Sunday's race was lumpy, but the behind of the beast stayed in contact. My lower back is sending flowers. Thank you Sacha.

The Paint:
This was quite a suprise. After seeing the SV at NAHMBS, I figured the frame to arrive w/ a purposeful powdercoat. I love powedercoat. Not paint sexy, but so midwestern practical. What arrived was a beauty of a frame w/ paint and custom graphics care of COAT. The graphics are especially sweet. The alpha Q fork graphics are painted on the inside to match those on the top tube! The toptube and seatstay graphics are more than just icing, punching way above their wieght. She got hit on a lot at the races. K-murder, you own! As the girls would say, "Truffles!"

The Nitpick:
No one's perfect, but Sacha and the Speedvagen come as close as anything or anyone out there. In order to deliver 30 Speedvagens by early October, production was streamlined by having help, namely Mike Desalvo. I'm not sure what he was responsible for, but I'm assuming he at least TIG'ed the main triangle. I've seen Mike's work at various shows, and well, quite frankly, it's not his best and looks a bit rushed. It's perfectly functional and clean, just not the beautiful, single pass beads that I've seen him do. Again, I'm nitpicking, but hey, this was not cheap frame. The dropouts, while tres qule, need a bit of refinement. I needed to file them a bit so the r. wheel would slide in. I also needed to file a bit off where the seatstay brazes on so I could run my 14-25 junior cassettes. Granted, that's non-standard, but it's a super easy fix for '08 models. The swaged chainstay+dropout combo make for slightly awkward rear wheel changes. The chain gets hung up easily. It's nothing as nerve racking as those moronic KLIEN rear-facing dropouts, but it takes some getting use to none the less. Lastly, the bolts on my seatmast keep loosening. Thanks to the design, there's little adverse effect. The seat height doesn't change because there are shims underneath. The seat itself doesn't move fore or aft because it's still clamped, but it rattles towards the end of a ride/race. It's happened more than once, even thread-locked. Sacha is working with me on it so I'll keep y'all posted. I'm not the least bit concerned.

The Verdict:
A bargain. Not just a good deal, a bargain. Don't believe me? Look around, ask questions, ride lots of bikes, do the math. If you love racing cross and aren't sponsored by Ridley so you can score a new frame every two years, do you're damnedest to get one. I sold a bike, several wheelsets, a vintage coke machine that took me months to restore, and countless other crap to finance it...it was that or the kids went to JCC. I don't miss any of it.

The sickly sweet maraschino cherry:
17.5lbs w/ Dura-ace+reflex+Flexus! 16.9lbs w/ Hugi+ZIPP+FMB! Schwing!

Epilogue:
In talking w/ Sacha, It was clear the Speedvagen project was a labor of love. A love of cross and a love for cross racers. It was a lot of work. Thanks to Sacha, Scott, Kmurder, Mike and anyone else (Molly?) who burned the oil to pull off the charrette! I may be having my worst season in years, but at least I'm enjoying it. Does that make sense?

The Face of "11" a.k.a. Race Report #5

Today was the 2nd race of the Pilarcitos series. Candlestick Park. Ugh. The two worst venues are out of the way. Candlestick is my least favorite course. I usually hope for an excuse to skip it...baby shower, root canal, almost anything really, but I was jonesing to race the new bike. I've been battling a cold all week and losing, but just couldn't wait another week. Crap course. Crap cold. Crap fitness. Let's race! Truth be told, the course was as good as one could expect thanks to a week of sporadic rain. The dry, bumpy, flat dustbowl, was now a slow bumpy, flat not-so-dustbowl. The rains made for slower laps as the grass had softened considerably. If you weren't pedaling, you weren't moving. There's really not that much exiting to talk about on the course. Lots of grassy turns, a few barriers, and along road section that flew you into the start/finish. whooppee. The 'run-ups' were all big-ringable on all but the first lap of mayhem and the road section had me spun out in my 44-14. It was a good course for Flexus. Ran mine at about 37psi. Could have run 35. My legs actually felt decent for the first time in weeks, I just didn't have the lungs this week to go with it. Ave HR was 166 w/ 25 minutes in Z4 and 28 minutes in Z5. I need to shift that to 15/35. Lost the sprint for something-ith place to TooTallJones. We played Cat-n-Mouse the whole race. He would dump me on the road, I would get him at the first set of barrier. Bell lap. I knew he was going to jump me as soon as we exited the dirt and he did. He got a gap so I played dead, then tried to stealth him w/ about 100 meters to go. Unfortunately, it's nigh impossible to stealth someone w/ Flexus on pavement. Loud enough to wake the dead. He heard my wind up and jumped, holding me off by 1/2 a bike. Next week, TooTall, next week, you single, kidless bastard. It was also a race of several 1sts. First race on Sram, and first race on the vagen. Sram has a few quirks which I'm still getting use to but I can't blame my suckness on missed shifts or anything of the sort. So far so good. As for the vagen, well you'll have to start here. Thanks for the photo Brian!

Speedvagen Part 1. The Backstory

Everyone who reads this blog, everyone who knows me, hell even a lot of people I'll never meet know I've got a Speedvagen. I've raved about it's potential, it's aesthetic, it's father, but now it's time to fess up. Does it live up to all the hype, expectations, exaltations? Bear with dear readers for 1st a little background.

I've been riding/racing a long time. Not as long as some, not as much as others, but I feel I've put in my time. I wrenched professionallyfor 12 years including some race support, messengered w/idiotic abandon, commuted diligently, raced poorly, blahblahblah and so on and so forth long enough to have given me the opportunity to ride/own lots of different bikes in varied situations. It's also taught me that while not everything new is better not everything new is evil either. Clipless is better, threadless headsets are better, disc brakes on cross bikes....um, er?. Carbon has a place (thought I'm not sure just where yet). I feel so extremely comfortable on a bike that it is an inseparable extension of me and who I am. For 30 years, my parents have asked me when am I going to stop racing. I'm 44 w/ two small children so I know what they're thinking. They still ask me. I finally told them "Never". *SIGH*. They are of a different generation. Anyway, for reasons which I've explained in the past, I LOVE cyclocross. I'm not great at it. I was always better at crits and track where a bit of smarts and luck can make up for a decided lack of genetics. I like it though because it's hard. Start to finish hard. I like it because it requires a perverse level of mental focus. I LOVE it because, well its cross. Part Circus Maximus (TM Monica), part self-mortification, part kid-friendly lollapalooza. Ahem,where was I? Oh yes, the Speedvagen, background...right. So my first cross bike was an Alan bought back in '91. I don't recall how I acquired it, but I had somehow gotten it in my head that driving 4 hours (each way!) to Chicago each weekend to race cross in the dead of winter would make for good cross training. Chicago cross is a blog unto itself but in a nutshell, that Alan was fine. Fast forward to 1999. I'm living in the bay area and haven't done a cross race since 1992. I find there are races right in my backyard, so I dust off the rig, toeclips and all, and proceed to scare the crap outta myself. The race has some crazy fast long bumpy descents and the forks on the ole aluminum death machine were no longer up to the task. Long story short, I find my way to Brent Steelman and treat myself to a real cross bike. It's been 7 years now and I'm on my 3rd Steelman. Brent is great and the bikes are a reflection. No nonsense, tough steel bikes, yet still light, responsive and clean. The man can torch. Brent, you will be missed. The latest incarnation is a Reynolds/Dedacciai mix w/ a nicely swagged downtube, thin-walled OS toptube and an alpha Q fork. I've been racing it for 5 year. I Love it. ............................It's now my pit bike.

All smiles.

Picture=lots of words. Lots more here. Bar ends idea nicked from the lads@Montano Velo!

My best side.

Just got forwarded this link. Yep, that's my butt alright, the butt w/ the blue Steelman and red tires. That butt is about to get it's butt kicked by Kammeyers jolly green giant butt.

Oh My!

More pics here.

My date with Sacha.

I recently found myself heading up to Portland at the last minute for OSCON so I thought I'd try and swing by Vanilla to see Sachas new workshop. His email reply caught me pleasantly off guard.

"Are you bringing a bike? he asked.

When I told him I'd only be in town for a few days and shipping a bike was impractical, He offered to find me one so I could join him on a ride. So with pedals/shoes/helmet in tow, I met Sacha and two of his friends, Scott and Tony, at the Stumptown Coffee a few blocks from the workshop. Sacha gave me the choice of riding his speedvagen, or his white SS vanilla. Since the SS had no pedals and an adjustable seatpost, it was the sensible option. In retrospect, I'm kicking myself for not trying out the speedvagen. I am, at times, a complete idiot. They led me on a nice loop across the river, through PDX, up along a ridgeline and back, then stopped for breakfast at a place called Gravy (more on that later) before heading back to the shop. Not once did they poke fun at my pedaling squares or lame jokes. Decent guys, everyone of them. Seriously. I truly felt welcome from the moment I met them all at Stumptown to the time a left. It could be that since they were all much younger and better looking, I posed no threat, but I'd like to believe that Sacha simply surrounds himself w/ like minded people. Creative, unassuming and passionate about what they do.
It took every fiber of my being to not ask how the project was progressing or when I could expect my frame. It's not my first custom frame. I've learned to be patient in my old age.
( my wife just fell on the floor laughing). Anyway, the trip made me realize just what a bargain the speedvagen really is... No other builder has thought about, tested and then implemented what Sacha has done for cross. Custom tubing from Columbus, custom brake posts from Paul, Custom rear drop-outs (Saw the CADD of these...Yumm), custom seat collar. It's all there. My initial guess is that the bike will build up to be between 16 and 17lbs depending on what wheel set I'm on. Oh, and that's w/out carbon bars/stem/cranks. Crazy light for a bike where the only thing I'll worry about thrashing are the carbon rims.
Thanks Sacha....(and Tony And Scott).