Bear with me for some background:
I'll turn 60 in October. I've been riding bikes much of my life. While bike riding slowed down when I started driving and riding motorcycles, I still rode some through my college years. Not much riding from 25 to 35, but I've been riding a lot since 1990.
I've gone through several bikes, mostly road bikes, but others as well. My Sears 10 speed from my mid teens was the one that really set my ideal of how a bike should look (lugged steel). I rode and loved a Bridgestone RB-1 from 1992 until it was broken (along with my leg) by a distracted driver in 2010. I was a not too dedicated follower of that bike's designer, Grant Petersen (lately of Rivendell fame).
Since then I've ridden a carbon road bike, a few rigid steel and hardtail and full suspension aluminum mountain bikes, a steel road bike that sometimes is configured as a geared commuter and sometimes as a fixed gear bike and one steel with cantis and one carbon with hydro discs cyclocross bikes that are mostly ridden on dirt and gravel roads. Given an option, I strongly prefer drop bars to flat bars, even on milder singletrack, but I do concede that flat bars give better control on technical steep and rugged singletrack.
I retired from a brain sucking corporate job in 2012 and went to working part time at the one local bike shop where I sell and work on all kinds of bikes.
I like to ride longish road rides on all kinds of roads, whether paved or not. I have very limited neck mobility which dictates a relatively high handlebar position, basically level with my saddle. I could be comfortable a couple inches lower, but I would not be able to see the road more than a few feet in front of my bike, even while riding the hoods. This has resulted in my generally choosing to ride a larger size frame with a shortish stem, often with more spacers and rise angle than I would prefer aesthetically. The best fitting bike I have ridden is my Specialized Roubaix, size 58 with a shorter and flipped up stem.
I saw some Facebook posts of bike frames being built by
Nate Zukas in Augusta, GA, about 100 miles from me. I was impressed by his sense of style and the reports of the ride and handling qualities of his road and cyclocross bikes. I met him and saw some of his bikes at the Southeast Bike Expo in 2012. I followed his
Flickr posts and talked to friends and friends of friends who had bought his frames. I decided I wanted him to build a frame for me, so I paid a deposit in June last year to get in his cue.
At first I wanted him to build my idea of the ultimate gravel road bike with disc brakes and room for very wide tires, like over 2". But the more I thought about it, I grew to want instead my idea of the ultimate all around road bike. Designed to fit me like a glove and to work well on all kinds of road rides; centuries, commuting, smooth roads, rough roads, dirt roads. It should be lugged steel construction. It should be able to run at least 32mm tires with fenders. Knowing that mid reach caliper brakes would handle that tire and fender requirement without the (imho) complications of disc brakes, I decided to go with Paul's lovely Racer Medium centerpull brakes and to have the frame and fork designed with the braze on posts to mount them the ideal way. Since the frame was being made close by, I decided to choose as much US made content as practical, and to opt for Georgia and Southeast made components if I could. There being no US made main drivetrain options, I chose to go with Campagnolo because I like their components and because they are extremely rare locally. I like being different.
After a few discussions, Nate established the ideal contact points and used autocad to design the frame dimensions. There were several email discussions to iron out the details. Once he began making the frame, I was able to see his progress on his Flickr page. I took the Paul brakes to him so he could use them to ideally locate the mounting posts. This gave me a chance to see the frame in a raw state. Color selection was one of the last decisions. I chose a shade of greenish blue similar to Yeti MTBs with charcoal gray as the secondary color. Nate found the particular colors and chose how to use them.
Here are a few of Nates photos during the manufacturing:
[IMG]ttps://farm8.staticflickr.com/7492/16290010732_6eda9bb55b_b.jpg[/IMG]
Once I got it home, I laced the wheels and built the bike, partly at home and finally at the bike shop.
