My first adult bike a Specialized Rockhopper circa 1996
Buying this bike was the first time I ever put myself into debt, interest free but still debt and it cost more than my first car! This is the only picture I have of the bike, during a lunch break in France before some bastard stole my saddle and saddle-post necessitating cycling the Loire from Nantes to Paris standing.
Countries it Visited: Scotland, France, Germany, Italy.
Theft and bastardliness was sadly to play a further role as it was stolen in 2004 from my flat in Glasgow.
My Millennium Falcon
This was the original form of my second bike, this is it not long after purchase being prepared for my first cycle along the Camino to Santiago De Compostelle.
Even then it had “a number of special modifications” and over the intervening years was rebuilt time and time again always with avid brakes and always XT hubs and drive. I used XT brakes on the last build and although I do think that there is something too them they are too bloody fiddly to get setup and I have retreated to trusty Avid 7`s which work well without the need for a degree in mechanical engineering.
The bike is a downhill bike and so had no pannier mounts, but with the help of the guys at Rad und Service in Söflingen/ Ulm I got around this. The bracket & rubber solution worked for well over 25,000km and would probably have continued to work, but on the last build I changed the rear rack and more importantly the rack mounting to a through hub solution which was a big mistake. This solution gives plenty of heel clearance but with luggage the bike has a big arse and handling not unlike a Mercedes estate circa 1998, so I changed it.
- Admiral Bridge Berlin 5am, 18/07/2008 after 27hrs on a bus from Kiev
Countries it Visited:
Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Morocco, Austria, Italy, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, India.
The bike and I returned to Berlin by bus from Kiev as the RadSpannerei is there and I wanted to see what steel frames they had. I instantly fell in love with the Surly 1×1 but was unhappy with the distance between the bottom bracket and the rear hub, so after visiting all the other bike shops in Berlin, (yes really all of them) I took a cheap flight to England and visited Thorn with the intention of being measured for an eXXp, a dream bike.
The Panzer/ èarr-gheal “Gazelle”
While there I tried the eXXp and a Nomad S&S, they were both great bikes, but the Nomad just sang to me. I terrorised Bridgewater for a good half hour unable to believe the handling and so ordered a frame to be shipped back to Berlin, where with the guidance and help of all the guys @ RadSpannerei I built what became known to them as the Panzer.
- This is it looking like a bike for the first time 13/08/2009
Countries it Visited so far:
Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain