fatvegan

I got my new Raven Tour from Thorn UK, and I've been riding it for a few weeks now. It is really pretty great. Still working out if it is $5000 great, but I suppose I won't really know that for sure for another 30 years. It's not really a fancy bike in any sense, except for possibly being black. Black is fancy. And the Rohloff hub is fancy. But everything just feels like any other bike. Except more solid. It doesn't make funny noises or rattles. It doesn't creak or complain when you go over bumps. It feels totally happy with a 65kg friend sitting on the rack (even though I know that is not good respect for the engineering).

So far I like the hub gears. I like the wheels, although I'm nostalgic for the traction on my last set of hybrids. I really like the racks. It has a really sweet tyre pump. The seat is comfortable. Not sure about the Deore V-brakes. I'm missing my old disk brakes on my cheap Progear. The frame is really very solid. So solid. I can't stress just how solid it is. I like the black. Although the paint is pretty crappy and is already peeling off a bit. It got a bit clunked around in the shipping box and arrived a bit paint chipped.

It is heavy. But not that heavy. Full steel frame and heavy-duty steel pannier racks on the front and back. I'm guessing without a load it would come in around 18kg. It's probably not as well suited as I'd hoped for just riding around town. It feels like it's just waiting to have a bunch of bags loaded onto it so it can ride off somewhere far away. It's still a pleasure to ride though.

I can't say I would recommend doing the same thing again. Not unless you're super keen for a Thorn. For another $700 (now $1200 more) I could have got a Velosmith Jota custom built with a Rohloff. That probably wouldn't have been quite as tough, but it'd probably be a nicer bike. I don't feel like the parts on this bike are anything amazing, but I'll have to wait and see. And I wouldn't have to do all this stressing about postage and customs and what I'm going to do about warranty if something ever goes wrong. And it would also have been supporting the Australian bike-building industry instead of the Taiwanese one and I think the Australian one definitely needs the support more.

This bike was meant to be my attempt to spend an extra $2000 and avoid having to get to know everything about bikes. I wanted something that would last forever, and I wanted it to be like buying a long-term car instead of a bike. I think the experiment was not that successful. The world of bikes and bike repairs is just so soaked in the culture of geekery that it's hard to navigate without knowing exactly what every little thing is. I went into a couple of bike shops to get a kick stand. I got bad advice at both places and ended up with a $35 kick stand that is bending and probably doing all sorts of horrors to the chain stay.

But perhaps it wasn't a total failure either. I worked for a while to save money. I got a bike. It's a good one. It probably will last forever.

Cost

$3157 bike (GBP 1804.75 x 1.75) +
$ 700 postage +
$ 843 customs +
$  83 credit card processing =
$4783