Back in the 1970s, when young American frame builders were perfecting their craft, I was perfecting my own. We were all serious riders back in the day, but unlike these dudes, my first love was riding waves, not roads.

Oh, I had a road bike, and a nice one, too. I rode it every day from my apartment in Cardiff-by-the-Sea to UCSD in La Jolla. And, when the ocean was flat, I would get on that bike, point it east, and just ride. That Peugeot was everything I needed in a bicycle. If I needed more, I wouldn’t have had the words to explain it.

Fast-forward 30 years. The roles surfing and cycling play in my life are reversed. To put it in terms my old surfing buddies would understand, the Cascade Range is to cycling what the north shore of Oahu is to surfing.

I have been riding the roads of Oregon and Washington for close to 20 years now. But it wasn’t until I started riding brevets that I discovered the short-comings in my bicycles. Randonneuring requires a bike that is comfortable, durable, and serviceable on the road – by the rider.

Like a lot of new randos, I came to the sport with a production frame, and optimized it one component at a time, as my understanding grew and my budget would allow. Some would consider my Rivendell Atlantis a bike well suited to randonneuring. In fact, it is, as long as it is ridden within the bounds that its designer intended. Push any bike beyond its limits as I did on the Glacier 1000 and you can expect problems.

In the months that followed the Glacier, I thought about the performance characteristics that I was looking for in a rig that is ready for randonneuring. I thought back to the days when I was riding waves as intensely as I now ride the road. There were two tenets that I lived by. First, I knew that it was unlikely that an off-the-shelf design would suit my needs. Second, I believed it was imperative to have my boards designed by a shaper who was active in the sport, doing the kind of surfing that I did. I figured those same tenets apply equally to cycling.

I have been a student of bicycle design for the past few years. In addition to all the reading I have done, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel discussion on the subject of long distance bicycles in 2006. It was through that panel that I met the Steve Rex.

Steve is well-known as an accomplished ultracyclist and randonneur. He is a frame designer and builder who understands the challenges of riding unsupported on rough, wet, mountain roads. We spent a month talking about what I wanted the bike to do. In the course of those conversations, I gained a deep appreciation for his points of view on the aspects of bicycle design that yield a stable ride with a front-end load, without sacrificing responsiveness when you need it.

Steve has designed a new custom bicycle that has been optimized for randonneuring in every way. Even more important, it has been tailored to reflect my skills and ability and the way that I want to approach the sport. Without a doubt, this is the ultimate randonneuring bicycle for me, but it may not be so for you or for anyone else. But that is the singular beauty of a custom bicycle. There won’t be another one exactly like it.

Certainly, there are aspects of frame design and component selection that make a long distance bicycle different than a road racing bike, and these should be integrated into every rando design. But, as riders, we need to know enough about our sport and how we want to approach it to be able to explain it in terms a designer can understand and interpret with tubing and geometries and components.

The rest is just turnin’ the pedals.

Tags: Bicycle design, Randonneuring, Rivendell Atlantis, Steve Rex

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