Owner's Gallery: Ron M

Before you make a judgment about a bike, I think you have to live with it awhile and spend time tweaking the parts and position. I also think that the highest compliment you can pay a bike is to ride it. Carl built the ti bike shown here in 2003 for me to take to France. Since that time, it has been tweaked and ridden–a lot. I ride this bike to work (parked next to my desk), on trips, on the weekends, and occasionally in competition. If I’m Roy, this is Trigger.

The operative word for the ride is smooooth. With 25c Conti 4000 tires I hardly notice frost heaves and chip seal. The bike is extremely stable on downhills, which I attribute to the geometry and to Carl’s selection of an oversize top tube to match the down tube. When I need to put down the hammer, as in climbing or closing a gap, the bike accelerates quickly and goes straight without undue bottom bracket flex.

The bike is on the extreme end of tall seat tube/short top tube designs, but I think it looks very good, considering the compromises that Carl needed to make to fit my body. That really long head tube avoids having to use high rise stems and big stacks of spacers. The workmanship is excellent–you can see the dirt on a close-up of the head tube/down tube junction, but you can barely see the weld.

You can send a lot more money for a ti frame, but I think Carl’s basic ti frame equals or surpasses most everything else out there.