Climbing the Col de l'Aiguillon on August 2, 2015.
I got into cycling with mountain bikes. After several years of trail riding, I and a few friends decided to do some road cycling as well. In 1992 I bought a Trek 5200 from my local bike shop. I rode it through the Jura and through the Seeland a lot but left it at home during my language year in California in 94/95. It went with me to Sonoma County, when I moved there in 1997. For 4 more years it was the bike I used to climb Cavedale Road just outside Sonoma and Pine Flats after I moved to Santa Rosa. It became my daily commuter after I bought a Litespeed Ultimate until the drive-side chain stay broke in 2006. The bike had a lifetime warranty and Trek USA gave me a Trek Madone 5.2 as a replacement, even though I no longer had the purchase receipt from my Swiss LBS. The Madone 5.2 was built up with the components from the 5200 and took over as my commuter bike; first in Santa Rosa and later in Biel, Switzerland after we moved across the pond. In Switzerland, I upgraded it to a newer Ultegra groupset including Ultegra wheels, and sold it in 2010 to make room for another bike. The Litespeed Ultimate was the road bike I owned and rode the longest. It took me across every climb in Sonoma County and climbed across the Chasseral countless times. It served as a single-speed commuter after I built a Neilpryde Alize. In 2014 I bought a fairly inexpensive Volagi Viaje frameset, which forever changed road cycling for me. I went back to what I call a traditional road bike when I built a Ritte Snob Disc. Had I known back then where the Volagi would be taking me, I would have in all likelihood not purchased the Ritte. As gorgeous as this bike is, it was born under a somewhat unlucky star. After two rides, the Enve fork broke. A few weeks later, Enve actually had to recall that fork. Ritte was great though and sent me a replacement fork in the matching paint. I rode the bike for a couple of years and loved it, but ultimately the Volagi with room for much wider tires took over. When I bought my third Volagi and sold the first one, I decided to move the SRAM eTap HRD groupset from the first Volagi to the Ritte. But before doing so, I wanted a small paint damage on the steerer tube repaired. The fork replacement years earlier came with a lower headset change from 1 1/4" to 1 1/2". Extracting the lower cup and pressing in a new one caused the paint to come off. The paint shop I hired for the repair then realized that a small local paint repair would never be 100%, so we repainted the whole bike. A move in 2019 and the addition of a Nordest Albarda allroad bike halted the completion of the Ritte, but finally, in 2020 it was carefully put back together. So, there are currently three road bikes in my stable; the Ritte put together with old and new parts, the third Volagi Viaje built with an NOS frameset I had found online in 2018 and an inexpensive Nordest Albarda also built with a mix of old and new parts. Here's the list of the road bikes I've owned over the years.
Looking at the photos of all my road bikes since 1992, one very noticeable change is the handlebar, and in particular, the position of the hoods. On my early bikes, the hoods were extremely low on the bars. Thinking about wrist and arm alignment, particularly in that photo of my black Trek 5200, I wonder how it could have been comfortable. Well, I was a lot younger and rode just fine with that setup. The last couple of years, I’ve standardized my handlebar on all my drop bar bikes, and used a 44 cm wide Thomson KFC-One carbon handlebar. Before that, I ran 42 cm and even narrow 40 cm bars.
I started gravel grinding years before it became a thing in Switzerland. At the time gravel-specific bikes didn’t really exist so my first two gravel bikes were pure cyclo-cross bikes. I did a bunch of gravel riding for seven years and then moved on in…
An incomplete list of the bikes I've owned. Before the digital age I rode two different Muddy Fox mountain bikes, a Specialized Stumpjumper, a secondhand Litespeed and a tricked out Merlin Mountain, which I bought slightly too small. FortyFour Big Boy (sold) First ride Mar…
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