Today was new bike day for my wife, a Soma Buena Vista mixte. Well, we've had the bike for a week but today was the first day she had it off of our street.
We started thinking about this bike about four years ago. We contacted Roy Cervantes at Grace Bicycles and Rob Vandermark at Ride Studio Cafe. Rob didn't think he could build the bike. Roy gave us an estimate but we declined to pursue the project at that time for a variety of reasons. Then last winter all four of us took our bikes on the Arlington Jingle Bell ride. As part of our version of that ride we went through the woods and my wife ended up walking. Her bike, with its narrow wheels, just didn't give her confidence. Then in the spring we bought our older son his first mountain bike (also his first geared bike with hand brakes) and he is interested in riding off road on it. That made us think about the Buena Vista again, this time with 650B wheels that could accommodate a very wide tire that could roll on the dirt trails that my son was interested in. My wife is also changing her schedule, which might give her time to ride more, both for pleasure and for errands (errandonnee, here we come!). We got back to Roy, who designed and built up my IF and my Surly Cross Check, and this is what he built up for us. It's not all perfectly color coordinated but it's a very nice bike that fits my wife well.
Matt Roy was generous with his time and offered opinions on the SP hubs, which helped me pick SP over the Schmidt and Shimano dynamo hubs, which I have on my IF and Surly, respectively. Thanks Matt!
And thanks to Roy for accommodating several component changes during the process and for building the bike.
Overall the bike seems like a great bike and I'm even a little jealous. Well, I'm actually very jealous.
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