After trying out a variety of styles, I've found that I like
minimal bikes. The Blue 69er Mountain Bike is an On-One 853 Inbred,
a classic single-speed mountain bike. My wife has the older
white Inbred as a geared hardtail. There's the newly built 69er Singlespeed hardtail and I
recently rebuilt the Commencale Full-sus for old time's sake.
So, I'm an On-One fan and when it came to choosing road bikes
there was an obvious choice - a fixed On-One Pompino and a
geared Planet-X Uncle John (Planet-X and On-One are the same
company).
So, why? What is it about Brant's stuff I like? Number 1 the
bikes ride beautifully. And number 2 they're really cheap -
that makes them accessible, for example the Inbred cost £400 -
that's the complete bike. The new Cotic Simple is about £500
for the frame alone. So, when I'd been riding a bodged
single-speed for a while and I wanted a 'proper' single-speed,
£400 got me a classic. And it's great.
Third, there's a consistency, a confidence and an honesty in
Brant's products that appeals to me. Building in steel, the
unique and thoroughly practical seatstay design, the logo on
everything, proud of fabrication in Taiwan, puts his mobile
number on the web site.
Most of these have a page on the sidebar. Cheers.
Aside 20050323: My ISIS bottom bracket on the Handsome Dog has
expired pretty spectacularly. Here is a picture of my exploded
Truvativ BB. I'm trying out an SKF needle-bearing ISIS BB
on the red bike as of Jan 2007, so we'll see if that works.
ISIS is basically rubbish.
