Thursday, June 7, 2012

Past Bikes - bike #11

By Spring 2004, we had moved back to Spokane. I had spent about a year on the iBOB list and was pretty into the idea of an XO1. About the same time I connected (virtually) with a guy named Alex Wetmore through the iBOB list. I can't remember how we discovered this, but it turned out that this Wetmore guy and I had worked on the same team at "a large software company in Redmond" for the past few years.

Weird.

Anyway. He had an XO1 that had been crushed and repaired, coupled, and repainted that he wanted to sell. I bought it. And it was too small.

I built it up with moustache bars and really wanted it to work. I took my first long ride on this bike. I rode to Colville on it.
Specialized Armadillo tires. WORST TIRES EVER. I rode them for one ride.
This is actually when the bike was built up as a single speed with an ENO hub. It was the second wheel I built. I didn't have a tensionometer. I bombed down Bernard/Grove for my first ride. By the time I got to Sprague and Washington, the rear wheel was wobbling all over the place. All the spokes had loosened up.

Eventually, Liza ended up riding it and it fit her well. Then she started riding something else and we ended up selling it. I regret that. It's ironic, since Liza's current bike, which she loves, is an XO1.


An interesting, but typical thing happened at about this time in my bike life. The iBOB/Riv thing really sucked me into an online world that was fascinating to me. I learned a bunch quickly -- a lot of it, in retrospect, turned out to be dogmatic belief, as so much bike stuff is. But what I found myself doing was getting into fetish mode. You see this all the time with online communities and with bike stuff, it gets crazy quickly. I began to seek out the next perfect bike. Over the next handful of "Past Bikes" you'll see a bunch of bikes -- all basically the same, with slight variations. It's sort of embarrassing. But I was at a point where I spent more time thinking, seeking, onlining, and building bikes than I did riding them.

Here's the pre-blog post on the XO1.

I still love the idea of the XO1 (a true road bike with 26" tires)  and if I found a 55cm one for cheap, I'd have a hard time not buying it.

space

4 comments:

rory said...

i wonder if the xo-1 would have had 650b tires if they were more readily available at that time.

for me, i started following grant peterson after the mountain bike magazine that did the comparison of the rivendell all rounder to the cannondale bouncy bike. i couldnt help but want that bike, whether it was the color, the cool downhill shot of the guy in an obvious under bike situation, or what, but i just really dug that bike. i still want it. and i currently dont have a rivendell in stable.

if i found a waterford built rivendell all-rounder, i'd have a hard time not getting it.

Bart_Mihailovich said...

This makes me miss my Bridgestone even more...

Dan O said...

I was the full on Bridgestone fan in the '90s. Bought a '91 MB-Zip and RB-1 new. Plus a MB-3 for my wife.

Also a pile of BOB newsletters, t-shirts, and other assorted stuff. I still have it all, except for the MB-Zip that I sold about two years ago.

FYI: These folks are putting out a XO-1 replica frame:
http://handsomecycles.com/bicycles/xoxo_classic.php

John Speare said...

Dan -- I pondered the XOXO for a while. And if it had 1 1/8th steerer, I probably would've bitten. The grand deal should be 1994 xo-3s: functionally identicals to the 93 xo1, but w/out the mystical aura -- so cheaper.