tigat

The frame is a Domane. The story behind the Bandit name (painted on the top tube) is as follows, part of a longer description of the paint and design:

A bit over a year ago [almost 2 now], my friends at Trek Bicycle Corporation and I embarked on the reimagining of the Bandit, a bicycle adapted to a one-handed rider. I am that one-handed rider. My left arm went missing at the shoulder many years ago, victim of a run in between the sailboat I was on and a high power line. I am also, at least to my brothers, the Bandit, taken from the nickname given to slot machines, and a reflection of my brothers’ belief that any money I win from them on the golf course is an act of larceny.

When Trek produced the original version of this bike five years ago, we passed the Bandit name along to it. It stuck.

Between the first Bandit and the start of Bandit 2.0, there were some changes in Trek's Project One, custom bike program. Now, in addition to choosing color schemes within a set group of designs (which was already pretty cool), riders can start with a clean slate and, working with Trek's artists and painters, they can create a bike that is uniquely theirs.

My first thought was that there is only so much that can be drawn upon the scant surface area and oddly shaped tubes of a road bike, that the canvas offered by a bicycle was too small to do much. In my limited imagination, every conceivable design and combination had already been tried. So, with no set image in mind, I accepted Trek's invitation to simply send along something to inspire the design-a name, a story, perhaps a picture or two.

The Bandit name was a given. I don't think the wonderful people at Trek, especially ..., the lead designer from the start, who have invested their creativity and passion in this project over the past six years, would have permitted anything different. On the occasions I brought the Bandit back for rides, the Trek workforce treated it like a lost child recently found. The bad things we have done may haunt us, but it is the good things that sustain us. To my friends at Trek, the Bandit was a good thing, a reminder of how their work makes a difference.

As further confirmation for the name, on a bicycling tour in Ireland I had listened to stories about the roving bands of Irish torai, bandits if you will, living in the forest and taking back from the English the possessions those foreign invaders had stolen from members of the clan. Like so many other things misappropriated by the English (the ability to cook a decent meal sadly not among them), the legend of Robin Hood certainly was one.

This new Bandit, I decided, would need more than just a touch of green. Riding it would make me feel like a man of danger, a rebel forever connected to his Irish roots, a Fenian crusader on the path to independence.