STEEL BIKES HANDMADE IN SPOKANE, WA

A couple coupled bikes and a whole bike

posted on September 02, 2014 by John

Glen and his wife, Christa, are going on cycling trip to Italy. These are the bikes they’re taking. On left: Glen’s bike with a chromtastic powdercoat. To stay chromey, it must be wet clear-coated. Glen didn’t do that, so we’ll see how it degrades. I was thinking a cool a patina sort of process. Glen says it’s more of a scuffed grey crap look. Look closely and you’ll also notice that Glen’s bike has a Ritchey BreakAway collar at the top of the seat tube and a S&S coupler on the downtube. This combo likely voids all warranties. But he had this extra hardware laying around and wanted to give it a shot.

Christa’s bike is on the right. It just happens to fit me perfectly. Dammit. The color is Signal Grey – goes on well and I think looks sweet with the white decals. It’s all Ritchey BreakAway.

I used to be pretty sold on S&S as the best option for coupling a bike. And when the airlines were more discriminate about what and how they charged for extra luggage, the S&S made a lot of sense. But now airlines charge for everything, so you’re paying for all luggage most of the time. I do wonder though, if S&S still scoots by anonymously a bit more often as just “normal” luggage with a “normal” baggage charge, whereas a bike box that Ritchey couplers require is always charged as a bike.

This beauty is for a customer in Portland. He’s got a bunch of really good pictures and a writeup of this bike on his site, The Wolf’s Mouth.

This entry is tagged: touring



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