Like many here, I was a fan of Riv and used their parts and philosophy for a long time before I took the plunge (this year) on a Quickbeam, which is recently built up and awesome! (Pics once I get my grubby hands on a Titanico X).
Basically, i started riding seriously in high school, around 2001-2002. I bought a trek 520 touring bike for a cross-country bike tour summer-camp type thing i did between junior and senior years (great fodder for college application essays!), so from the start I was sold on the idea of steel and go-anywhere "road" bikes. Moved to Berkeley, CA for college, rode a bit with the Cal Cycling team to learn the local routes but didn't really appreciate the racing attitude. Around the same time, I was discovering fixed gears as a way of getting around town and was teaching myself to wrench by reading Sheldon's site and doing fixed gear conversions, so my first exposure to Rivendell was seeing Sheldon's fixed-gear Rambouillet; I loved the classic aesthetics and modern functionality. Knew of them and followed them off and on, watched with interest the re-introduction of 650B with the Saluki, and the Quickbeam, which was well-received in the fixed gear circles I ran in. Then, in 2007, I tried some moustache bars, and although they didn't really work for me, Riv sent a reader and one of the old print catalogs along with my order, and with that stuff, I was hooked as a Rivendell die-hard. It was the same Reader where they introduced the Homer. Still, I was of limited enough means in the college and immediate post college years that I didn't really feel like one was affordable, so I ended up buying a Salsa Casseroll frame to be my own budget Quickbeam/Rambouillet mashup. I've struggled with the fit on it for a while, and tried a couple of other bikes to see if I could come closer to a Rivendell type fit. The most recent was a giant 66cm Takara touring bike, but even that didn't feel right--I've now realized it was because its frame angles were all wrong (who builds a touring bike with a parallel 73/73 frame?). After that, around christmas last year, I had a conversation with my then-fiance-now-wife: "So what do you really want?" "I want a comfy fixed gear I can ride as an everyday bike." "It sounds like you want a Rivendell." "Yeah, that's basically it." So a couple of weeks later we visited Walnut creek, hoping to take advantage of the SO closeout special. Vince wasn't convinced that I would fit well on a 62cm SO, even with upright bars. He said, "Let me see what I have lying around," disappeared for a while, and came back with a 64cm Orange Quickbeam, a bike I had coveted since they first came out! I put down a layaway deposit on the spot, and four months later, it was mine! Four months after that (and after a move, job change, marriage, and honeymoon), it's finally built up, and even though I'm still dialing it in, I can tell that there is really something unique and wonderful about the Riv geometry and tubing spec, and this is going to be a bike that I keep for a long, long time. On Tuesday, August 21, 2012 8:06:10 AM UTC-7, lungimsam wrote: > > So how did you originally find out about them, and why/where/how did you > get your first Rivendell bike? > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rbw-owners-bunch/-/C4SL2eU7NqkJ. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
