With the arrival of a late and very cool spring, and after an incubation lasting through an old-time winter and then some, my New Raven has finally hatched!
A week ago I picked up my bike from Tall Tree Cycles, my excellent LBS in west-central Ottawa, and rode it home. I had deliberately left a few details to be added/finalized in my workshop—mounting my handlebar bag, the rear rack and tail light, and finding a suitable seat-bag for my toolkit; hooking up my headlight to the SON28 dynahub; wrapping the bars with tape and gel pads; und so weiter.
The bike and I were confined to barracks by a long list of domestic chores (the product of a month away in southern Africa and the UK) and several days of cold spring rains, which the tulips liked but I did not. So the Raven sat quietly in my basement workshop, patiently awaiting the arrival of Shiny Bits so beloved by its kind. Over several evenings I installed the headlamp using a linkage made from mounting hardware from another front rack; hooked up the wiring (having made the various in-line connections during the winter) and was
delighted to see a bright beam when I spun the front wheel; mounted the rear rack & tail light, padded and wrapped the bars, and added a nice shiny VO brass bell.
Then, this past Saturday, the rain eased in late afternoon, so I took the bike on a short ride along the Ottawa River, just 10 minutes or so from our house. A chance for me to check the sizing and placement of bars and saddle, and to try out the Rohloff in gentle conditions, unloaded, and far from headwinds and 14% gradients.
First, a few photos from my non-expedition:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/czakdxf6x77mtpp/Westboro%20Beach%2C%20rt%20front%20qtr.JPG https://www.dropbox.com/s/egxpqs7d3y7cnjc/Bars%20profile%20fm%20left%20rear%20qtr.JPG https://www.dropbox.com/s/vhapk45wel2g051/Bars%2C%20shifter%2C%20bell%20closeup%20fr%20rt%20rear%20qtr.jpghttps://www.dropbox.com/s/egxpqs7d3y7cnjc/Bars%20profile%20fm%20left%20rear%20qtr.JPGOther people find other ways to enjoy the river:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ektl7bb4ry86enf/River%20surfer%20in%20standing%20waves%2C%20N%20to%20Qc%20shore.JPG Some riding impressions:
• I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how light the bike is – maybe a half-kilo more than my ti-framed Eclipse, with comparable equipment, around 31 – 32 lbs (our ancient scale is calibrated in lbs.)
• The sizing seems just right, especially the placement of the handlebars, which is where I’ve made the major change from past practice. The bars are VO’s Grand Cru rando bars, the widest available at 50 cms c-to-c across the ends of the flared drops. They’re just less than 46 cms (padded and taped) behind the hoods – that width in turn is slightly less than my shoulders, so—lo!—I don’t feel cramped at all. Combined with the lack of stuff on my bars, the feeling is one of spaciousness. In addition, the bars are now about 20-25 mm above my saddle, and with the saddle-to-stem-clamp distance unchanged, I sit slightly more upright, when my hands are in my default position on the outside of the upper curves, just aft of the hoods. That higher placement of the bars means that, when I’m on the drops, I’m also slightly more upright, but I can choose to bend further down if the headwinds require that. Otherwise, the drops are quite comfy to use as a secondary position, and I think I’ll use them more frequently than I have done on my Eclipse. With these changes in the height of the bars and their greater width, my knees are now inside my elbows and well below them too. And, when I’m on the hoods, I can bend my elbows more.
The height of the bars relative to the saddle is evident here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kgy57d7154nn316/Bate%20Isl%20twds%20downtown%20-%202.JPG• The Rohloff shifts nicely—cleanly, with a soft click, and easily, whether I turn the shifter “door-knob” style or with my wrist at 90 deg to the shifter and T-bar. The ratios seems as I expected – around town, with Ottawa’s combination of hills and flats, I expect I’ll use 8-9-10-11 most of the time. (I’m running a 38 x 17 chainring & sprocket.) Will see what the Gatineau Hills across the river require, when I make some time to go there—next weekend, perhaps? The Rohloff isn’t especially noisy—the freewheel clicks audibly in the upper range, but I’ve heard expensive trick plastic bikes with louder ones.
A summary of the specs, then. You’ll see that much of this is standard Thorn spec:
Frameset and forks: Thorn Raven 565S with ST1 forks, matte black, seat post & FSA headset; and short- and long-reach T-bars.
Saddle: My Brooks B 17 Premium dark brown, with copper rivets, now three years old & nicely broken it.
Rims: Velocity Cliffhanger 26”, 32h black, machined sidewalls, silver stainless spokes
Hubs: SON28 front, Rolhoff 500 OEM1 rear
Tires: Currently, Schwalbe Marathon 26 x 1.75 – to be replaced by 26 x 1.6 Supremes, on order & due this week.
Fenders: VO Zeppelin 650B x 52 mm fluted alloy. We couldn’t get the Honjo 650B items, nor any 26” alloy fenders in the 52 mm size. (I prefer alloy fenders to the chromoplastic items.) The Zeppelins provide a *lot* of coverage. Mudflaps are also VO items, dark brown. The one on the front has already been trimmed back, and I’ll cut it back some more to give a bit more ground clearance.
Handlebars: VO Grand Cru randonneur bars, 50 cms wide at drop ends; Cinelli cork gel tape, with Fizik gel pads beneath.
Stem: 100 mm, slight rise (deg to be checked.)
Brakes: Deore V-brakes, garden variety black, with Koolstop dual compound pads
Levers: Tektro RH520
BB: Shimano 118 mm square taper
Chainring: Surly stainless, 38 T 5-bolt pattern
Cranks and spider: Stronglight XD2 (from Spa Cycles), 170 mm arms, stainless bolts all round
Pedals: Keo Look road, the mid-range items, not the $170 ones…Mated to a pair of new Sidi Mega Genius shoes, suitably black-grey-silver, pricey but soooo comfortable.
Chain: XMC 8-99
Headlight: Trelock Duo 40
Tail light: Portland Design Works Radbot 1000 battery-powered.
Front Rack: Arkel low-rider (takes T-28 panniers, 14 ltrs each)
Handlebar bag/mounts: Arkel small (7.5 ltrs)
Rear rack: Topeak Tourist DX (takes T-42 panniers, 21 ltrs each)
Seat bag: Topeak Aero Wedge large
There are one or two items still to be added. I have a Hebie chainglider (hence the 38T Surly chainring) which I’ll fit before my Euro-trek in Denmark & Sweden in late summer—or earlier, if we have a wet summer here. My SON28 hub has piggyback lugs, so that I can power a Sinewave charger, and I have to figure out the best place to mount that—perhaps on the right-hand alloy mounting bracket for my Arkel h/bar bag. I’ll also check my headlamp beam & perhaps reposition the light a little higher—currently, the lowest part of the beam just touches the uppermost part of the brace between the two sides of my front rack. For security, I’ve upgraded my lock to an Abus folding item, and will ponder adding Atomic22 locking skewers for my precious hubs. (Happily, I’ve also just learned that my insurance company will upgrade my existing insurance for my bikes—part of our house insurance—to cover the replacement cost of my Raven for a little over $50/year.)
A lot of people have taken a part in getting this bike built and on the road. My thanks to so many contributors to the Thorn Forum – your advice, good humour and common courtesy—well, not so common these days—have been invaluable. I learned about lurking problems I had never even imagined; and solutions to them as well! SJSC staff members welcomed me when I visited in March 2013, and handled my partial order (frameset and forks) very well, even though I’m sure they’d have much rather sold me a complete bike. I received good service as well from online suppliers in the UK and Europe: Starbike in Germany; XXCycle in France; Spa Cycles in Yorkshire. The guys at Tall Tree Cycles in Ottawa were helpful and welcoming as always. And they offered a nice observation about the finished product: “Quite a special, quirky bike. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you wouldn’t give it a second look. If you did know what it was, you’d be really impressed.” Then, there is the collector of ex-comp big English singles near Hamilton, who bought my rebuilt mid-50’s AJS scrambler last year, for the price of a Raven. Marcia, my wife, bless her remains remarkably tolerant of my obsession with two-wheelers.
Oh yes, the name of da boid: Not so straightforward as one might think. Something to do with travelling, voyaging, etc.—channelling St Christopher, patron saint of travellers? (Or St Jude, ditto of lost causes?) (Or no saints at all, thank you very much, secular as I am.) Stan Rogers’ songs are full of wonderful images and and the poetry of everyday speech, but don’t lend themselves so well to one-word titles for bikes: “To find the hand of Franklin/reaching for the Beaufort Sea”; or “It’s at Portage and Main/You’ll see them again/On their way to the hills of Alberta.” Much the same is true of Ian Tyson’s “Summer Wages”. So, after some rummaging around in my stock of allusions, illusions & metaphors, with helpful feedback from Dan, I settled on “Osibisa”, the name of the Ghanaian/UK band whose song “Woyaya” was an anthem at a formative time in my life (in Southern Africa, some 30 years ago): “Now the road may be rocky and steep/But we will get there/Heaven knows how we will get there/We know we will!” Dan pointed out that “Osibisa” can be neatly shortened to “Osi”. (And a Brazilian might call it “Osinho”.) So, Osi it is. (And I can still sing my songs by Stan when riding, “Tracing one warm line/In a land so wide and savage...” or Ian Tyson’s, “Through those grey fogbound streets, where the cedars stand watching…”)
