Ride Lugged

Portugese made wooden frames from Xylon Bikes. I emailed them for more info on availability, sizing, and pricing. Will update the post when I hear back.

UPDATE: Here is the email I got back from Xylon:

Dear Nicholas,

Thank you for your interest and positive comments about Xylon Bikes
Currently, Xylon Bike frames are hand crafted and individually built to order.
Depending on the model, and availability of components and equipment, delivery time is between 6 – 8 weeks from receipt of order. Prices range from 1500 – 2000 euros.
At the moment there are no plans to sell frames only (ready to install customer’s components) but to reduce shipping costs Xylon Bikes could ship frames if the customer underwrites the security of the bicycle. Xylon Bikes are supplied with single speed (ratio specified by client) and 3, 5, or 7 speed internally geared hub with roller or coaster brake. (Xylon Bikes does not recommend the use of rear or front derailleurs)

Presently Xylon does not produce “Radical Sports Bikes” but rather “Lifestyle Cruisers”, however Xylon prototypes have been tested for 100s of kilometers with no changes to the overall structure of the frame. Prototype Xylon #0 was exhibited at the 2nd International Bike Show in Santarem, Portugal and was subjected to jumps and stunts at the hands of a well known BMXer, the only resulting damage was a broken chain!

Due to the shock absorbing capabilities of the wooden frame and the recommended use of semi ballon tyres the use of suspension forks on Xylon Bikes is not recommended.
Custom built frames can be made to individual customer’s requirements on receipt of relevant data related to the customer’s dimensions etc. Custom frames are liable to a surcharge depending on the extent of modification reqired. A range of juvenile bicycles is programmed for release in October or November this year. If you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact me

Nick Taylor
Technical Director

I can’t quite figure out if this is just stupid or really cool. Looks like it might be a good idea if you have a city beater bike that you wouldn’t mind drilling holes into. I guess it might minimize the gear you would have to carry around for a single speed beater with a bolt on hub. Maybe it would be good if you were setting up a bike for someone with an aversion to changing tires.

Is this guy (answers in the comments):

A. A hard-core, ride-some-more, do it till you die, all Euro, all the time, brakeless beastmaster.

B. A douchey hipster trustafarian twat, whose body art and gold anodized cranks are funded by his parents adherence to Americanized protestant values of hard work and stability.

C. Secretly yearning for acceptance among the ever-shrinking messenger community of which he would be a part were winters not so cold and icky.

D. Pissed that he’s now stuck with those Campy cranks, since the Italian fad is so over, and there’s no way he’s gonna find any keirin NJS cranks that match his tat just right.

So when I’m not mucking about riding bikes, reading old books, or setting up my studio for the upcoming year, or sneaking slices of cake out the fridge or driving around on my lawn cause I can, or cursing those round weeds that my rotary mower wont cut, or drinking beer downtown, or squishing earwigs in my helmet, I’m thinking about bikes, and about traditions, and how those old frenchies got their bikes so damn light without titanium, or plastic, or computers. 15 lbs for a bike with lights, fenders, clips and straps, normal spokes, leather saddles, ect, is just nutso. My XO-1 weighs maybe 26lbs with a rear aluminum nitto rack, no lights, two cages, and a brooks professional, sans ti rails and lightweight fenders.

I don’t have anything overtly heavy, a light cassette, a lightish bb… nothing stands out as a culprit of weight. I mean, I know those really lite French bikes had all aluminum bolts, but that adds up to under a quarter pound savings, I know cause I looked it up, and its fucking pricey, over 80 bucks for every bolt to be ti or aluminum, which is a lot of money for a little savings. All I can really think of is a Ti bb, an Action Tec one, not too pricey, with sks bearings, would save a quarter pound, and would outlast the Shimano unit by years…

But that still doesn’t account for that ten pound discrepancy… ok a lighter frame, yeah they had that, a lighter saddle, they had that too, with aluminum railed ideal saddles saving maybe a quarter pound. Ok so that’s maybe 2 lbs savings, max, and they didn’t have ti bbs… lighter cranks ok, but not by too much, lets say 200 grams… tires no lighter, tubes definitely not, spokes not, hubs maybe, but freewheels not. Rims maybe, but I have 390 gram Valiants… that’s light. I just don’t get it. I don’t get how they did it, and I don’t get how Shimano or Sugino or whoever cant fucking get on the ball and do it again, but for less money. Maybe we’re lucky they don’t try, it would probally all look shitty if they did. It would have to look contemporary, read ugly, and would look old before the year was out…look at Shimano Saint, whose ascetics have tragically descended to the whole Shimano lineup, making everything look like Honda designed it. No, scratch that, a Honda intern designed it.

Why, when Sugino is making the halfway decent TA copy the PX, does Shimano insist on making everything look like a car door handle? Their cranks are so thick, so boxy, so antiBIKE that they seem to insist on being installed on a carbon crap pile with fat tubes and big shitty graphics that some high schooler couldn’t pass off as a graphic design project. The goddamn cranks wouldn’t, couldn’t look good in a steel bike. Shimano might as well be an American company. They should design suvs. Maybe they do. All the other Japanese companies love beautiful and functional products, and many go out of their way to make contempory, nice copies of old parts, see Nitto’s racks, stems, posts, ect, Sugino’s XD and PX cranks, MKS’s pedals,
Diacompes brakes and shifters, panasonic’s alex singer copy commuters that cost 700 bucks with hammered fenders and lugs…

Shimano acts more like a Taiwanese company, not making what makes sense, but making products that Americans gobble up, but only because shimano lets them. Shimano could make a touring grouppo and pass it off as the next big thing, use skinny cranks and normal bottom brackets, and a nice brushed finish, but they don’t. It must be too easy to dupe the American customer into making that other shit. Sugino used to make derailluers, they should get back on the bus.

I am thinking about making a 4 speed rear cluster. Using action-tec cogs.
It would be light as fuck, never wear out, and be super fuctional with my new gearing set up. I just worry about how it will look with an 8 spd rear cassette hub… I also wonder if I can score a fatter bushing chain from mel pinto, in silver… did they even make silver chains 20 years ago? Ok here’s the gearing plan, its straight old school cyclotouriste, 46/26 up front, 14, 18, 22, 26 out back.

I tried it out on a recent ride, just skipping over the gears in back that weren’t part of the program, and it was fine, the jumps took a bit of getting used to, but it wasn’t lumpy feeling or anything. With only 4 gears out back, I can custom tune the chain-line like all get out, and make the 46t front shift perfectly over all the gears in back.

I wanna get a TA pro 5 vis crank:

But they are spendy. Good news is they work with English bbs, which means I can rock them with an action tec bb… they cut out the weight of a traditional spider…I guess traditional spider isn’t the word cause the ta style crank predates contemporary spiders…
They arms are skinny as hell so I imagine they arnt heavy at all…

I have an old campy 90s ft mech that’s a total turd, ie its powder coated and ugly and its just a front mech, not something special, so I’m gunna carve it up some. Old French derailluers never had the connecting bolt on the tail of the mech. Also, their outer cage plates were very minimal. So its off to the hacksaw for it…

That’s about it for now. Keep up the postings, I like this better now.

This is pretty sad. These guys show how easy it is to steal a bike in New York. Got it from here.

I found these single speed city bikes here (clever ads):

The bikes seem decent. I’d like to try those the handle bars. The idea of a bunch of different design companies coming together to create a bike company seems like the most interesting part of the bikes.

-Starmer

Cycling in Miami Beach is a combination of chilled out on-vacation-time cruising and urban busses-cars-red-lights biking. On trip to South Beach over 4th of July weekend, Nora (pictured) and I rented some bikes from a shop called Miami Beach Bicycle Center. Not the most creative name, but a decent shop nonetheless, and they had exactly what we wanted: beach cruisers. For $8 bucks an hour or $20 a day, what we got was basically this, with a lock and a basket. A heavy ass one speed bike (gear ratio unknown (chainring had a guard over it, and I didn’t care to count)) with one-piece cranks and at least 3” tires.

If I saw someone riding one of these in D.C. I’d laugh a little laugh inside at their naiveté. In South Beach it’s a completely different story. These bikes are completely standard issue – everyone rides them. Even the more style conscious, and or cycling enthusiasts, ride cruiser style bikes – like the one pictured with dual-crown fork and radially-laced wheels. South Beach is small enough and with enough “beach lifestyle mentality” that having a geared bike is ridiculous overkill. You’re only headed to catch some rays, so why go faster? It’s completely flat and you’ve only got one easy gear, and so a coaster brake is all you ever need. Additionally, two of the main restaurant/shopping/nightlife streets are Lincoln Rd and Espanola Way, both closed to motor vehicle traffic. Interestingly, South Beach may also be one of the only places in America where a skateboard is a legitimate means of transportation.

The beach there is wide enough that between the small dunes and where most people lay out, a concrete base has been placed beneath the sand so police and emergency vehicles can drive more easily – and so can bikes. My last day there I rode from the very southern tip of South Beach all along the beach up to 16th street where we were staying. Cathartic. I saw loads of bikes laid down in the sand next to topless sunbathing beauties all along the beach.

While there I only saw two “hard core” roadies: one on a Colnago Masterlight in full team Mapei kit, and another guy in plain jersey on a Felt with Ultegra-10. Both guys were spotted soft-pedaling on Lincoln Rd. looking a lot more interested in scoping ladies than maintaining optimum heart rates.

word. i’ve been trying to read a book a day. not a good book, just anything. i’m working now on longfellow’s favorite poems, a james cain book, the collected short stories of nabokov, and martin dugard’s account of james cook’s voyages… only 25% off all that is of any merit, but its vacationy feeling up here, cant i read crap? went to a drive in last nite, super dope. tons of people there. 5 bucks! per car! listen on your radio. felt very american and happy about that. its fucking 2 miles from our house. next time we’re riding bikes there… its over 56 years old… i got a slushie to feel extra american.

mel and i went on a fairly long ride the other day, to boalsburg, a small very victorian town with a tiny square and some chic shops, had a bad sandwich, and then went up tussey mtn, on a fairly deserted dirt road that climbed next a brook and gobs of blooming rhodidendron, (i know i cant spell) and all of these rad old cottages that persumably were for rent. they were all next to this brook, and all very cool 1920s style, but none were the same. the road climbed to a ridge, and we rode along the ridge until we came to a lake, ate some fig newtons and then pedaled down the mtn, thru some incredible farmland. mel stopped to talk to some sheep and a goat that was so excited he fell backwards into a stream… anyway, it was the longest ride i had taken mel on, and she just got faster as it got longer, so i think as long as i keep the rides fairly super big climb free, we can go pretty good distances…

rob rides a sketchy loose headset nishiki at a high rate of speed while i snap pictures without looking at the road for some time… we hadnt even started drinking yet…


it was a good, if shortish ride, weather perfect. i’ve since added fenders to the b-stone, the rain has been sporatic, and i hate on a wet ass crack. took mel on a 35 mile ride the other day, up a mtn road next to a gushing stream… crested at a lake, break there, then rolling farmland all the way home…

I just checked out “The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles” by Jean Heine from the library. An amazing book that embodies a cycling ideology and style of days gone by that makes me want to ride off to the mountains every free moment I get. Cyclotouring, or “riding for the enjoyment of riding”.
So I packed up the ol’ Peugeot yesterday and set out for the Columbia River Gorge. I decided I would do it minimalist style, no tarp, no sleeping bag. Just some extra clothes, water filter, tools, camera and food. I rode the Max train out of the city to the last stop with my bike. I have ridden from my house to the gorge before but I prefer to just bypass all of the urban/suburban wasteland and just get on the back roads as soon as possible.
I got off the train and on the road by 3:30 or so. The route I took descended to the Sandy River where I have been taking the same ride to go swimming this summer. From here I ascended out of the valley on the Historic Columbia River Highway. It was a bit busy until I made it past most of the yahoos on their way to swim at the Sandy. I climb, climb, climbed about 3,000 feet up to Larch Mt. It was gettin late though so I didn’t go the whole way to the top, which does have a splendid view indeed. I first turned off a logging road and gave my bike a workout over the rocky, unpaved surface through a clearcut. It handled it well. I thought maybe I would camp here but it didn’t feel good. The ground was dry as a desert and the surrounding stands of immature hemlocks were so dense they allowed no light through creating a dark, ominous wood that gave me the creeps. Not to mention all of the beer cans, shotgun shells and other debris left by hunters and backwoods street sign shooters. I decided to coast back down to some more inviting forest I passed on my way up the mountain.
I found a spot not far off the road. The swainson’s thrushes were cheerily making their spiraling call and all around were red huckleberries ripe for the pickin’! This area had obviously been clearcut at one time too but it felt more pleasant and my mood immediately changed. I remembered why I had ridden out here. I went to work picking huckleberries (and eating them). The simple debris shelter I planned to build for warmth was soon forgotten about as I filled up on berries.
As the sun set I found a spot to bed down in some moss under a baby hemlock and some huckleberry bushes. I always seem to think I will fall asleep easily in these situations but I never learn my lesson. Ants crawled up my pants and mosquitoes kept buzzin me. As the night went on my feet became cold and I curled up tighter. At some point I finally slept long enough to have an obscure dream about finding a cougar skull in a pond or somethin but was awoken by the sound of a mouse running around my head. Soon the thrushes were singing again and a new day was dawning. I stretched, ate a few more berries, and made my way back to the road, eyes burning from lack of sleep. The ride back was mostly downhill. I was back to the Max by 7:00 am and home in the comfort of my bed by
8:45. Here’s a picture of the Columbia River at sunrise and of my trusty Peugeot.