I suppose this is a ride(s) report. A few weeks ago I was escorted across state lines to procure my first Rivendell road frame, my partner in this heist (a great deal) got himself a super rad hubbuhubbuh tandem. Upon arriving in Nashville we discovered that a first gen Quickbeam frame, that for some reason or another I believed had been previously sold and not available, was very much available. The owner being the rad guy that he is, let me ride his identical orange QB around the block to see if I immediately fell in love with what he described as his #1 favorite bike...of course I did. I bought it and the set of OG QB wheels along with the Road frame w/ Phil Wood wheels that we had traveled all that way to get. Elated, we rushed back home with our take and by Tuesday at lunchtime I had the Quickbeam fully built and before a storm rolled in I got around the block twice with a massive smile across my face. Just can not believe how great the potential is for fun on this bike...man.
So, as I waited to get my hands on the last few remaining parts for the Road bike, I struck up conversations with a number of wonderful people on and off this list to include Will over at Rivendell about the history of this bike (the road, not the quickbeam, keep up, we'll be switching back and forth a lot...I'm sure) which it turns out was not a road standard but a road custom made by Joe Starck and painted by Joe Bell. This was all covered in Patrick's thread about the wonderfulness of his custom frame. So. The Quickbeam. After that storm, I rode that bike every single day between 5 and 30 miles a day all over NW Arkansas, running errands, just riding, holy shit with a massive grin and emotions bordering on euphoria. Never have I felt this good on any bike. I love this thing. I love it. Goddamnit this was and is an outstanding frame. OK so that's settled I don't ever care about riding anything else again ever. Last few parts came in for the Road. As I finished putting it together my excitement naturally grew, but I must say I was kinda nervous that the Road was going to steal something away from my new found love for the QB. Lets be honest my QB looks like someone kicked it down a few flights of stairs, and while it is cool it never was amongst Rivendell's prettiest line of frames. The Road, however... the lugs and the paint and the head badge and font makes this absolutely the prettiest bike I have ever touched, much less ridden, much much less owned. There may be objectively more attractive bikes out there, somewhere, maybe. Almost identical situation occurred as the week before only this time torrential rain instead of snow came with this storm. I waited it out having only done the ride around the block a few times with my kid on the brand new bike because I was short on time routine... This couple of 'round the blocks' was just enough to let me know that there was the potential for magic. Storm lasted for approx. 36hrs… Two days later I'm off on my first shake down ride, my favorite 20mi out and back to a local spring. Best tasting water around. Fill up and head back. Well, there was a 17mph headwind nearly the entire way there. And I just couldn't get my pedal stroke comfortably where I wanted it, nor can I even fully tell you what I mean by that. I did regularly think that it was bizarre that I felt so fast and so uncomfortable, even in the wind. And it was, as I later learned, strangely fast no matter how uncomfortable. The pictures of evergreen and mini waterfall are the aforementioned spring area. So then I simply turned around and rode an uncomfortable 10+ miles back home on a phenomenal bike with a great tailwind. I knew the uncomfortableness was do to my form, I just couldn’t figure out why it was so bad and I couldn’t seem to fix it…also my ass my have never hurt this bad from a c17 ever. I got home and all of the gps data from my phone said that it was the fastest I had ever done that out and back route. Not sure I believe this at all. I am blown away, I don’t feel like I was pushing myself hard, mostly due to just feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Other than how you would expect to feel in any normal headwind, although, I averaged over 1mph faster than normal. So I got out the tape and started measuring every. single. Thing. Apparently my saddle was 1.5cm too low and my bars were about 2 cm too low. Whatcha wanna bet that solved my comfort issues? Next day I did another 20mi out and back to a state park with a lake near our house. Last photos are of the overlook above the lake. Its one of my favorite routes with well over 2000’ of climbing. Once I fixed my contact points, and what a crazy simple fix it turned out to be... I was crazy fast and I was crazy comfortable. Again, this was the fastest I had ever ridden this route, which felt extra wild when I honestly didn’t feel as though I had overly exerted myself for the day. I did have a lot of shifting issues brought about by desire to use a 45 year old deraileur just because it was pretty. It’s back as wall art now and I have a massive ugly Deore mounted back there, which is fine because I can only see it when I’m not riding it and the frame makes up Shimano’s gross deformity. All this to say thanks. Thanks to everyone that has ever had a hand in the creation of these bicycles. Fantastic. I’m going now to go climb some hills on the QB now. Photos in link. Please don’t hesitate to tell me how I can get photos to these posts more efficiently, btw… ~Rob in NW Ar https://photos.app.goo.gl/DziWe6QkpcWdKwNWA -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/352f120d-62cb-4b83-ae45-bd51ea2c0e3dn%40googlegroups.com.
