Not so long ago, my customer Tyler walked in with his new bike – and a problem. His bike, a 2017 Specialized disc brake Roubaix is a well thought-out production bike. It does most things pretty well -- so long as you weigh in the vicinity of 200lbs. At 275lbs, Tyler is way to the north and hence his dilemma. The bike only comes with 24 spoke wheels front and rear. The front wheel is radial laced on the non-disc (drive side), 2 cross on the disc (non-drive side) and laced 2 cross both sides on the rear. He broke four spokes in the first month of ownership and came to me for relief. I opined to him that 24 spokes (typical for production machines) struggle to get the job done for a 275lb pilot.

A little history.

Before the advent of disc brakes, bicycle spokes led an uncomplicated life. On the front, they held the rider off the ground and transmitted his/her input to the tire patch. The spoke lacing pattern was often decided by the fashion of the day. The rear wheel, as now, had at least one flange’s worth of spokes laced in a two or more cross pattern in order to transmit power to the rear tire. And now? Disc brakes are everywhere and spokes consequently have much more work to do. The spoke is now part of the braking system in both wheels, transmitting the braking force generated at the disc/hub to the rim and tire contact patch. It’s become a hard life for a spoke, especially if the owner is outside the bell curve regarding weight. I reckon the Roubaix is a fine production bike and I think most riders would agree. Production bikes, however, are built for the average rider: average in weight and average in the crap he’ll put the bike through (that’s not a hard and fast rule). When you are outside the average, the bike’s shortcomings begin to show and it’s often the wheels that cry for mercy first. I shake my head with wonder at the variety of smart, clever designs that we are graced with today; designs that make the most use of the least amount of material. We have components that are lighter and stronger than ever, partly due to good CAD, but the laws of physics still apply; heavier riders need sturdier stuff.

My customer Tyler needed more spokes.

We decided that this was the time to upgrade to carbon rims and decided on a set of 50mm deep, 32 spoke rims. The rim has an effective rim diameter (erd) of around 568mm which means that our spoke length would be no more than 280mm, even with a three cross pattern. This is a short spoke for a 700c wheel. I used White Industries CLD hubs, which have 45mm flanges and a 55mm wide drive side rear wheel flange. Lots of support here. The result was wonderful; for an additional 70 grams of spoke weight, we created a wheel that was capable of both transmitting his power to the rear tire AND transmitting enough braking power to halt a 275lb pilot. It also steers better. I have a rider who has fallen back in love with his bike and looks forward to his next ride.

These are no small achievements. 

One of my favorite short reads, when I have a moment, is “The Cowboys Guide to Life”. Along with such gems as “never miss a chance to shut up’ and “don’t ever ask a barber if you need a haircut”, there’s one that says “Life is not about how fast you run, or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.” It’s important to find a way to recover and learn from mistakes. It’s probably all coincidence, but I recently built a wheelset with the new improved Velocity Quill road rim. Velocity USA originally introduced the Quill back in late 2015, if memory serves me well, but removed it from the marketplace a short while after. It was on the market for such a short time that even I, a professional wheel builder, didn’t get a chance to build with the original version. In its original form, the Quill weighed 415 grams and was a direct competitor to the Pacenti SL23, which weighed 409 grams on my scales. Like the SL23, the original Quill lay on the wrong side of that magic line where light weight and durability blend perfectly.

Here’s the deal with the new Quill; weight on my scales is 461 grams; compare that to the Hed Belgium Plus at 467 grams or the Easton R90SL at 455 grams. That places it in the ballpark on weight. It is 24.5mm wide, just like the Easton rim (and half a millimeter narrower than the Hed Belgium Plus); deeper than the Belgium Plus and shallower than the R90SL, it sits in the middle ground of the most competitive rim category there is. So, on to the build..

Like many Velocity rims I’ve built in the past, the Quill is less round in its natural state that some of its competitors. I hasten to add, this is not a problem for the consumer but rather a characteristic that many pro wheel builders have remarked on. Once I laced it up to a set of DT350 hubs (one of my favorite no-bullshit choices) with Wheelsmith 14 gauge double butted spokes, it smoothed right out into a solidly built wheel that never gave up on me during the whole build process. I just plain DIG this wheel set. Owing to the generously thick spoke bed, spoke tension turned out extremely even and uniformly high at around 120kgf for the wheel set. Is it a gravel rim? Yes. Is it a road rim? Undoubtedly. Will it work for a variety of rider weights? Sure; just choose the appropriate spoke drilling for the weight of the jockey.

With the original Quill, Velocity tripped and fell; but they got up, dusted themselves off and got it right this time.

The new Quill; ready for PrimeTime, I would say.

A couple weekends ago, I traveled to Salt Lake City to exhibit a few of my wheels in the North American Handmade Bike Show. I was there with Stinner Frameworks, ostensibly to show the variety of wheels that could be ordered with Aaron Stinner’s fine machines. In addition to going as his wheel supplier, I was representing my own business; that of selling custom hand built wheels to enthusiasts and racers. I brought a bunch of wheels to the show; half were wheel sets with carbon fiber rims and the others were constructed with alloy rims from a variety of manufacturers. Without doubt, the most interesting wheelset featured the brand new Mavic Open Pro rims, which were air shipped from Paris to Santa Barbara and arrived four hours before we were due to pile into a minivan and go to NAHBS. I wasted no time in mounting these babies onto a pair of red White Industries T11 hubs using black spokes and red alloy nipples. They looked fantastic!

Against reason, I retain a soft spot in my heart for Mavic; since 1986, I’ve pretty much used most of their models. In 1990, Kurt Stockton rode to victory in the US Pro Road Championships on wheels I had constructed for him. The rims were Mavic Mach2 CD tubular models; in over thirty years, I have not seen a better rim for competition. Back then, I would tip my hat to this French company every time I used their rims.

Then, around 15–20 years ago, Mavic decided, as other component makers did, to offer prebuilt wheels to shops. The wheels featured dedicated spokes, hub and rim that were particular to that wheel set. Wheels became wheel “systems”. Companies make more money by selling whole wheels instead of simply a pair of rims, so it was inevitable, I suppose. Mavic continued to sell rims to wheel builders, but the rims were no longer on the cutting edge of design. Their creative juices were spent on their wheel systems rather than their rims.

Fast forward to 2017.

A few months ago, I had a transatlantic phone conversation with a Mavic engineer in Annecy, France. He was reaching out to living, breathing wheel builders to get their take on various tubeless-ready alloy rims already on the market. All this activity was spurred by the introduction of Mavic’s re-designed Open Pro tubeless ready rim. At the end of our chat, I asked Maxime for a pair of these rims as soon as they were available. I wanted to see if they had “The Mavic Feel”.

I will not go into the technical details to any extent; suffice to say that they are acceptably wide, though not as wide as some of the competitors. The rims have the super hard Exalith coating and the brake surfaces are grooved to enhance braking power. It’s still an eyeleted rim, but it weighs only 435 grams. It hits the numbers, in my opinion.

It’s the unseeable that I’m interested in; the feel and the character a rim exhibits as it becomes a wheel. Does it cooperate with the builder? Is it a reluctant partner? I’m happy to say, in this case, building this wheel felt like a homecoming. The rim neither surrendered to its fate, nor did it resist input from the spoke wrench. From the start to the finished product, it never lost its dignity.

Enough of my nonsense; I opine that wheel builders and riders will consider this new Open Pro a solid advancement of Mavic back to the top ranks.

Welcome back!

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been'."
 John Greenleaf Whittier

Back in 1995, I was team manager and mechanic for the professional Outland VPP mountain bike racing team. This is where Virtual Pivot Point technology originated -- the same technology used to this day by Santa Cruz Bicycles and Intense Cycles. I had four riders to care for; Kathy, Jimi, Jeremy and Lynn.

From a fan’s viewpoint, these professional riders lived an enviable life; paid to travel around the world and race in a sponsor’s kit, having someone wash their bike while they signed autographs. Actually, that’s not the reality. A professional’s livelihood is largely at the mercy of Fate; health, race results, accidents and capricious sponsors are just a few factors that can elevate or annihilate a career in the saddle. Additionally, the nobility of athletic competition is subordinate to commercial interests at the Pro level. Whereas they shoot lame racehorses, cyclists get an e-mail demanding the bike be returned in September. It’s a small but no less cruel mercy.

Juxtaposed with this pragmatic results-driven existence is the relationship between rider and support crew; the mechanic who works till 2am and is ready for the 6.30 start; the soigneur who wraps arms and heart around a rider to help them make it through. Knowing that a good result can equal a contract for the following year -- another year for the rider to do something they love – they cherish, nurture and elevate that rider in a way that a mother would understand. And so it was for me with Kathy, Jimi, Jeremy and Lynn back in ‘95.

Looking back, it was a good season for the team. Jeremy would take First Place, Pro Men in the Reebok Eliminator at Mammoth. Kathy would take gold in Womens Veteran Downhill at World’s that year; Jimi would ride a five inch rear suspension machine to podium finishes in the Pro Mens Cross-country – a thing never before achieved.

Lynn’s story was to end differently.

At eighteen years of age, she had come from South Africa to California to chase her dream of being a professional cyclist. Signed on to ride NORBA Downhill and Cross-country, her results had been middling. Not owing to a lack of fire or skill, but due to impatience. Patience is supposed to be a virtue, but not when you are eighteen. Amped up and ready to get it on, Lynn had taken a couple nasty crashes early in the season. Mid way through the season, we travelled to the event at Mt Snow, Vermont where the team was to receive the delayed shipment of Dainese armored suits. Leo, our contact for Dainese was scheduled to meet me at the trailer at 8am to hand off the suits, but Lynn requested if she could take a trial run, without waiting for her suit, to check out the bumps. Knowing she would do it anyway, I told her to make sure it was a slow run. We checked shock and tire pressure; off she went. Leo turned up ten minutes later with suits, coffee and jokes.

It was about an hour later that the race organizer came over, with a grim expression; Lynn had crashed on the course. She’d been taken off to hospital in Bennington. What had happened? How badly was she hurt, I asked. Not sure about the injuries, he replied; but bad enough that she could not walk. A fellow rider saw her tumble when taking a line through the grass at the course edge in order to pass a slower rider. So much for taking a slow run. I ran to the team truck and headed to Bennington.

The doctor on duty told me that she was fine, but under heavy sedation. It appeared that she had collided with something that had scooped out a piece of her tibia, or shinbone. “As clean as if you had used a melon ball scooper”, he told me. I went in to see her. Her leg was elevated and bandaged, but she was lucid. I sat down and held her hand. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I can stand much more of this”, I attempted to joke, but there was nothing, no way we could ignore that the brass ring was slipping from her grasp, probably for good. The tears flowed.

She recovered sufficiently to ride the last quarter of the season, but it was over. The team dissolved at the end of the year, as they always do, and we went our separate ways to other teams or futures. Eight thousand suns have risen and fallen since then, but there are days even now, when my mind wanders back to that hospital room.