SHIFTING RECOVERY

 

There were three very important features, the new bike needed to have. I didn't even know about those features until I dove real deep into bicycle tech and compared bikes and components all night long. And the first feature was more important from an aesthetical standpoint of view.

It was the fact, that the frame material had to be steel. No second thought about that. There's just so much beauty in simplicity and this small diameter tubing is just something that is really standing out in todays bicycledesign, where even a kids bike looks like an e-bike when looking at the frameproportions. So that was that, it had to be a filigree steel frame, in the best case... lugged. Again, it's all about the looks.

Continuing with braking solution aka brakes. At first I was only focused on mechanical disc brakes, I simply wanted to get rid of hydraulics and leave this to the chicanos with their lowriders. Gaining more and more experience, I realized very quickly, that mech disc brakes don't brake. You know, they break, but they work so horrible compared to the hydraulic disc brakes. So the easy option was... rim brakes. As I've seen them working so well on my single speed mash steel conversion, I knew, rim brakes would be the way to go and would provide perfect stopping power. To me, the only ocassion where some would need a disc brake is when going for the downhill world championships... wich I won't. So rimbrakes are fine. Bigger problem here was to find a frame that was made for rimbrakes!

that one time I dialed in and fine tuned cantilever brakes and they worked awesome.

Next case was way tougher then the choice of a frame material or braking solution... I'm talking about shifting. With a steel bike, equipped with rim brakes in my mind, to thinking about going friction shifting wasn't that far of a thought process. At least it seemed to me, as the only option that would make sense. The way to go to recover from excessive shifting problems... cause, this is what I did.

It all started with my first bike that had road style brakelever shifters, the topstone aluminum. It was equipped with a 2x9 sora drivetrain and with the shifting readily available at the tip of my fingers at any given time, I was shifting, all the time. With this setup, I was seriously shifting all of the time, trying to find the perfect cadence at any second. There could only be one solution in search of pedaling more and shifting less and that was going one-by. So I changed the whole setup to a 1x11 I guess sram gx with a straight bar. It turned out that this wasn't the solution. I kept shifting like crazy. When years later building up the topstone carbon, I didn't even think twice... of course it had to be a one-by system. Why even fuss with a front derailleur, when shifting can be so easy and simple. I did go for full sram force drivetrain with garbaruk parts to make it more shiny, but that's for another story.

the first bike with road style shifters, stepping into a new realm.

So that's the case. Me, when I'm not sitting on a fixed gear bicycle, enjoying every pedalstroke, thinking about nothing while slowly moving towards the horizon (there's something very calming, when knowing your not able to shift) I was shifting all of the time. Sometimes I wondered how I even managed to pedal, with that much shifting going on.

Case closed... It was time for a recovery. And what better way to do so, then going for friction shifting, and to make it even worse and less acessible, I don't even wanted to have bar-end shifters to be readily available for my gear of choice, no, I wanted to have them on the down tubes. Far away from my hands to reach and touch whenever my cadence would loose 0.5 revolutions per minute (rpm). Far away from my head and my thoughts. Basically a single speed bike with the option to shift. And what's even better... the option to learn how to shift! Friction shifting is not about hitting a button to alter the gearing, it is about fine tuning an analog apparatus to find a sweet spot between a bigger and a smaller cog. It's about feeling where and how the chain moves in time and space while operating a lever that can't be simpler from a technological standpoint.

If this is not speaking to you, then I don't know what will. For me, this all sounds a lot like bicycle poetry in it's highest and truest form. Just the right thing to choose for somebody that did undergo a relentless shifting addiction and is now ready for recovering and healing from those years, stuck on a trigger (LOL).

Now, it was an easy task to find the perfect frame for my needs (no, it won't get revealed now).

And with my newly gained wisdom about shifting and my recovery in full effect, I had already chosen a rear derailleur that would meet my needs. It should be the cheapest, lowest in tech that I could find (I also had to recover from always buying the best product possible) and with my research going on, I now knew that when friction shifting in mind, it doesn't even matter, what derailleur you use, cause your shifting by yourself anyway... so if there's one thing that makes or brakes a good setup, then it is using a good shifter lever.

I found this gem for 11 Euro. New. Now, it doesn't look that new anymore, maybe it's cause it's already having a little history. Inspired from all of the footage from Rivendell's Blog (https://www.rivbike.com/blogs/news) I went completely crazy on this thing and painted it with wild nailpolish. Made up my mind, scratched it all of again and covered the scratched spots with Sharpie... some different approach to going full custom. For now, I really like the look that reminds me a lot on the matchbox cars I had when I was a kid, that all got the same sharpie restoration treatment.

Pictures of the frame will follow, as soon as it arrives!

The irritations, hassle, joy and fun of building a full custom bicycle from scratch with one billion industry standards to keep in mind.

That's it for now.

Love xoxo,

Alex