Back in the 1990s, traveling with a bike seemed to be pretty easy. A cursory bit of packing in a cardboard box and your bike would arrive at its destination ready for reassembly. But something happened along the way; whether the luggage handlers were gene-spliced with apes, we’re not sure, but it became harder to get a bike to its destination intact.

These days, with the way airlines are charging outrageous fees for transporting bikes, we’ve come to prefer travel bikes, like the ones Seven Cycles offers with S&S couplers. But if you’re not in the market for a travel bike, we have a few tips that will help your bike arrive no worse for wear.

There is nothing mundane about travel. Done well, it is one of life’s most consequential acts. And doing it well…is an art we can all aspire to. There is indeed plenty of heaven to be found on this earth.

—Klara Glowczewksa, Editor in Chief
Condé Naste Traveler, New York City, 2007

Top 12 Bike Travel Tips:

1. Invest in a good travel case, such as the ones from BikePro. Our experience is that the soft-sided cases are helpful because baggage handlers can’t stack anything on them.
2. In disassembling your bike, take each pedal and wrap it in a rag before putting it in a zip-lock bag. Same goes for your stem and quick releases.
3. Tape your levers to the bar. A little Scotch tape will do. This makes the bar a little less cumbersome when it comes time to pack it and decreases the likelihood of an impact breaking a carbon fiber lever.
4. Wrap the entire bar in a clean rag to prevent your bar tape from rubbing up against something dirty and greasy. We’re fond of old race T-shirts for rag duty.
5. Remove the rear derailleur from the derailleur hanger. The post-travel damage we see most often relates to the rear derailleur, be it a bent derailleur hanger or a broken derailleur. Do not remove the cable unless you know how to dial in the proper cable tension for shifting. Wrap the derailleur in a rag and then put it in a zip-lock baggie with the chain running out.
6. Wrap the drive-side chainstay in a rag and then tape the chain to it.
7. Wrap a rag around the cassette on your rear wheel and tape it into place.
8. You needn’t let the air out of your tires. Though cargo holds are unpressurized, the air pressure doesn’t decrease so much as to pose a blow-off problem. Leaving air in your tires will help protect the rims from impact damage.
9. Go to a hardware store and buy a dozen feet of foam pipe insulation. Cut these to length for each tube on your bike’s frame and then label each section for easy use next time.
10. The final step of putting the bike and wheels into the box or case will vary from box to box (or carrier to carrier) and according to the frame size. Smaller bikes are always easier to pack. The big thing to check for is that there is no metal-to-metal or metal-to-carbon contact. Also check to make sure that the cables have a relatively smooth flow from the bar to the frame. Any kinks in the cable could cause shifting problems at your destination.
11. Ditch your C02 and pack a frame pump and tire gauge. Make sure your tools are wrapped in rags before going into a durable bag. Tape the container for your tools to the box or the frame to keep it from banging into the bike during travel.
12. If you’re running a carbon bar or stem, make sure you have a torque wrench among your tools. An ear-splitting “crack” as you assemble your bike would be an epic bummer.

Leave yourself plenty of time for the reassembly. Getting in a rush to get in a ride before the sun goes down the day of your arrival is a good way to find out mid-ride that you forgot to tighten the stem.

Don’t forget the most important part of all: Have fun!

Wine Tasting + Pro Cycling Event
Saturday, May 4, 2013
7:00PM – 8:30PM

Stop #2 on our wine tasting journey takes us to Italy and California in lock step with the Tour of California and Giro D’Italia.  On deck for the May 4th tasting will be delicious regional wines from California and Italy from Terlato Wines.

Also joining us will be folks from Shimano, Mavic, and Cervelo. Don’t miss Shimano’s newest 11-speed Dura-Ace 9070 Di2 group, Mavic’s Cosmic Carbone 40 C and, from our friends at Cervelo, Ryder Hesjedal’s Giro winning bike!

Join us for an exciting evening!
Please R.S.V.P.  by May 1. Email hello@velosmith.com or call (847) 920-9360.

About the Wine Tasting + Pro Cycling Events

Tasting Dates:
February 9, 2013 – Featured wines from Australia* to celebrate Santos Tour Down Under
May 4, 2013 - Selections from Italy & California as a toast to Giro D’Italia & Tour of California
July 18, 2013 – Wines of France to honor none other than the Tour De France
October 5, 2013 – Tastes of Northern Italy with an ode to Lombardia

Time: 7:00 – 8:30PM

Embro is famous for helping keep your legs warm on a cold day and for that reason, we always keep a few different varieties around so we have something ready no matter how cool the day may start.

A few tips for happy (and comfortable) usage:

• Put your bibs on first.
• Latex gloves can help prevent you from applying embro to things that shouldn’t be embrocated.
• Roll up your shorts slightly to make sure you get all of your thigh.
• Dab some embro at various points on your legs. Start massaging at your ankle and massage your way up, blending those spots together.
• Be aware that consistent usage of a warming embro will cause you to build up a resistance to it; don’t be surprised if you need to graduate to a medium to get the effect you once experienced with a mellow.
• Post-ride, wipe your legs off with paper towels or baby wipes to prevent the grime and embro from sliming your kit.
• Use some Dawn dishwashing liquid to wash the remaining embro off your legs when showering.
• Enjoy the afterglow.

With so many great bikes on the market, we occasionally are asked why so many of bicycles Velosmith sells its customers are made from titanium. The question is simple enough: What makes titanium so special? Our love of titanium is multifaceted and it is because we have so many reasons to love ti that we continue to support it as one of our preferred materials for high-end bikes.

Titanium, as perhaps no other frame material has been able, captures the imagination when it comes to embodying the ideal custom frame. But how does it do that? Here are our reasons why:

1. Look. The deep luster of a satin-finished titanium frame is at once beautiful and suggests just how strong and durable a material it is. Because it rewards careful work and punishes sloppy welding, the welds on a titanium frame show off the skill of the builder responsible.
2. Longevity. Justifying the investment in a new bike isn’t easy, but that cost becomes easier to rationalize if you can tell yourself (and your spouse) that this bike could, conceivably, be the last bike you’ll ever need to purchase. A titanium frame will never corrode or break due to work hardening. Unless you run it into something, it’ll still be serviceable long after you retire.
3. Fit. Thanks to companies like Seven Cycles, a custom titanium frame is no more expensive to purchase than a stock frame. For the same investment as an off-the-shelf model, you can have a frame that is made to your measure, a bike meant for no one other than you.
4. Price. Compared to what you can spend on a carbon fiber bike, titanium can be as much as half as expensive while also possessing twice the life span. On a per-ride basis, titanium can be as little as one-quarter the total cost of some of carbon fiber rigs.
5. Weight. No one wants to pedal a cast-iron stove on the group ride. And while you can find aluminum frames that are stiffer and lighter than ti, they won’t last as long, while steel frames will always come in heavier.
6. Ease of Care. A satin-finished ti bike has no paint to chip and the chances of a tube being dented or cracked is insanely low. Take one out on a nasty spring ride that leaves you coated in stuff you’d rather not inventory and all your ti bike needs to restore it to its pre-ride glory is a quick wash followed by a wipe-down with some Pledge and a clean rag. We wish cleaning up for date night was so easy.
7. Ride. Bike reviewers going all the way back into the 1970s have sung ti’s praise for its ride quality. Uniformly, the material is praised for a lively feel on the road while offering a unique blend of stiffness and comfort.

So which model is best for which rider? The good news is, it’s up to you and your answer really depends on just how much speed or comfort you need.

Cervelo made a name for themselves with their R-series bikes. The R3 and R5 pioneered the pencil-thin seatstays common to so many road bikes today. They did this to increase a rider’s comfort on long rides over rough roads without sacrificing pedaling efficiency or handling. That’s part of why Cervelo’s R-series bikes have won Paris-Roubaix numerous times.

Cervelo’s P-series bikes aren’t just time trial bikes. They are some of the most technologically advanced tools for achieving speed through pedal force ever devised. Wind tunnel testing has shown that the P5 is the fastest bike on the market. And unlike a Formula 1 car, you can buy a P5 as part of your quest for your fastest-ever time trial.

With the Soloist, the predecessor to today’s S-series bikes, Cervelo invented a whole new bike category—aero road. By combining the tube shapes of a time trial bike with the drop bar and handling of a traditional road bike, Cervelo showed cyclists that aerodynamics aren’t just the province of the time trialist. While they don’t offer as comfortable a ride as the popular R-series bikes, the S-series offers the same sort of gains as a set of deep-section carbon fiber wheels. Add those wheels and you’ll find you’ve never been faster in a road race, crit or the Judson ride.

Regarding the numbers Cervelo uses to differentiate between models, just keep in mind the bigger the number, the better the technology. That goes for the quality of the carbon fiber in the frame and fork as well as the components used to build up the complete bikes.

Stop by and see the Cervelos for yourself. What model works for you?

Practically speaking, what that means for you as a rider is that you can shift any time you want—while standing on a climb, when seated and overgeared, even while stopped at a stoplight. Both Shimano’s Di2 and Campagnolo’s EPS systems feature powerful motors that execute slight overshifts to make sure the chain always moves from one cog to the next. With electronic shifting you’ll never experience the occasional lag that can come from downshifting while pedaling under full power at a low cadence.

Initial concern about battery life has proven not to be a problem. Riders are reporting going months without needing to recharge. And with electronic shifting, you need never worry that road grime will foul your cables and degrade shifting performance. Those of you who race will notice a distinct competitive advantage thanks to near-silent shifts; often, your competitors will never hear you shift, giving you the opportunity to get a jump on them.

With Shimano’s Di2 riders can add additional shifters so that you can shift with your thumb while sprinting in the drops or while sitting up with your hands on the top of the handlebar. The advantages to electronic shifting are so compelling, many industry experts believe that all shifting systems will be electronic by the end of the decade.

We know you have questions! Please email your questions to ask@velosmith.com.

Back in 1997 when Seven Cycles was formed, the concept of building a custom, handmade bike on a short timeline without charging a significant, additional fee was revolutionary.

Why? Because a custom frame meant artisan builders had to step outside their normal production process, interrupting their manufacturing flow. They charged fees to cover the extra build-time and lost productivity of that interruption. Seven’s approach was questioned early on when naysayers assumed there wasn’t a way to do “custom” about in the same time others were building stock sizes. Seven’s approach was revolutionary in the bike world, an entire production system designed from the ground up to build custom bikes.

From raw materials to completed frame
So often folks walk into Velosmith and see frames or complete bikes, but they rarely get a chance to see what raw frames look like. In this series, we walk through Seven’s process picking up just after their proprietary coping (mitering) process and follow a steel Resolute frame from a box of tubes to a painted, completed frame.

In the photo above, tubing has already been selected based on the rider’s size and riding style. It is cut, mitered (coped) and assembled in the frame jig. At this point, the tubing fits together with tolerances less than a human hair. Visible are the breather holes in the bottom bracket shell. They will transfer argon gas through the frame providing an inert atmosphere for the welds. The oxygen-free environment keeps the welds clean and eliminates contamination when the weld wire is in a molten state.

Hoses outfitted with quick-disconnect fittings drape from the adjustable frame jig. The quick-connects are mated to Seven’s custom heat sink/argon couplers that work to reduce heat build-up in critical junctions while providing an outlet for the flow of argon. In Seven’s weld process, all the equipment is specially designed to handle the flow of argon and the prevention of contamination.

In the welder’s hands the torches, lenses and cups are paint brush and canvas. Seven is steadfastly committed to flawless welding.

Like the machining portion of the Seven build process, welding employs practices to maintain frame alignment. Each frame undergoes seventeen different alignment checks during welding. After all, a well-built frame must be straight to provide optimal handling characteristics and tracking. No one wants to experience a poorly aligned frame’s sketchiness at speed.

Seven’s method of choice for joining thin-walled steel tubing is TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) welding. Tungsten is used as a non-consumable electrode which produces the weld and at first glance the tungsten rod protruding from the tip of a welding gun looks much like the tip of a mechanical pencil; the big exception of course is it transfers enough electrical current to melt metals! We touched on the inert gas portion of the weld process in Part One.

One of Seven’s most notable features is the quality of their welds. TIG welding is an exceptionally neat, clean process and although it requires more patience then other methods in the hands of a skilled welder the results can be both suitable for the rigors of Aerospace applications and breathtaking to look at. Good quality TIG welding has a uniformed appearance, resembling a stack of dimes, each weld puddle consistent with the last and the spacing of each equal in distance throughout the length a the weld.

Properly executed welds bring together many variables that, when done properly insure optimal joint strength. Weld penetration, cleanliness, welder technique and heat are all aspects that must be in place for a weld to be strong and to go the distance. The shot below shows a welded steel frame fresh from the hands of a Seven welder. The discoloration or “bluing” from the heat of weld process still visible.

The heat required to weld steel or titanium is extreme, well above 1700°C. With this much heat, a secondary consideration is created: distortion caused by the welding process. Seven takes steps to minimize the effects of heat including the use of heat sinks in critical weld junctions and by alternating weld sequences. Thin walled tubing has a tendency to pull or lift toward the heat source so Seven’s welders essentially focus on welding different parts of the frame as required to minimize distortion. Using the weld’s heat in an opposing direction will assist in pulling the tubing back into alignment reducing the amount of required post-weld alignment.

Throughout the welding of a Seven multiple weld wire diameters are used. Weld wire serves as a filler and consists of a like material such as titanium or steel. Various weld wires are paired with technique will insure proper weld penetration and the minimization of heat. A great example of this can be seen when comparing the weld bead at the bottom bracket shell/down tube junction and the seat stay bridge. In the photos above and below a titanium frame shows the variation in bead diameter from seat stay bridge to BB/down tube junction. Note the insane consistency in bead spacing. In the words of Milton Bradley: “it takes a very steady hand…”

From any angle, at any distance the quality of the Seven welds are without fault and are literally the traits that cycling lore is built. To weld frames at Seven, one must pass though Seven’s in house training which takes more than a year to complete. Like all endeavors requiring skill and determination, not everyone who enters Seven’s apprenticeship program makes it through to go on and weld at Seven. If your travels ever bring you to Watertown, Massachusetts drop in at Seven and ask to meet Tim D. Tim Delaney is the guy who brought the puddle bead weld to titanium frames and literally sits atop the pyramid of titanium frame welders. Tim’s the guy Seven owners can thank for all the oohs and ahhs that come from admirers of Seven’s welds.

Join Velosmith, Terlato Wines International, and Schaefer’s Wines of Skokie for a season of great wines in lock step with the pro cycling calendar.  Terlato’s experts will hand select wines from Australia, Italy, California, and France and present a tasting at Velosmith.Pick up a Velosmith Wine Passport, sample some wines, and talk cycling!

Cost: $35 per person for a Velosmith Wine Passport for unlimited tastings at all four (4) events. Velosmith Wine Passports can be purchased at the door the evening of the event.

Tasting Dates:

February 9, 2013 – Featured wines from Australia* to celebrate Santos Tour Down Under
May 4, 2013 - Selections from Italy & California as a toast to Giro D’Italia & Tour of California
July 18, 2013 – Wines of France to honor none other than the Tour De France
October 5, 2013 – Tastes of Northern Italy with an ode to Lombardia

Time: 7:00 – 8:30PM

In the warmer months, it’s dry and dusty. Too much lubricant will attract grit and grime and accelerate the drivetrain’s wear process. We recommend a dry lubricant that goes on wet and evaporates quickly leaving only the lubricating properties. The result is a lubricated chain with less opportunity for dirt build-up.

At Velosmith we stock a full range of dry and wet chain lubes.  Drop in and stock up!