I really enjoy reparing and building bikes from scratch. Building up a bike that fits and rides just right is insanely satisfying. This is doubly true when you build one as a gift for someone else. I have an affinity for steel frames with classic-looking geometry. I live in Pittsburgh, PA, which is very hilly, and I don’t care much about going fast. So, the bikes here are generally optimized for comfort, the ability to carry things, and are geared fairly low. Below you’ll find pictures of some of bikes I’ve built and/or kept up along with some specs.
This page conatins a good amount of jargon. The following resources will prove very helpful to the uninitiated:
You may also find the following bike-related YouTube channels entertaining:
If you live in the Pittsburgh area and are looking for a bike shop, I highly recommend you check out Thick Bikes in South Side and Kindred Cycles in the Strip District. The staff at both shops are super helpful and they will almost certainly have whatever parts or gear you need (and can order them for you if they don’t).
Surly Cross-Check (2023)
This is my current day-to-day bike. The Cross-Check frameset from Surly is famous for being very reasonably-suited for most uses, but not necessarilly excellent at anything, making it more than capable for anything I could possibly throw at it. I bought the frame for this bike several days before Surly discontinued it. It is 58cm tall and supports cantilever rim brakes and down-tube shifters. It has cheap 700c wheels with 42mm tires, which I have found to work very well year-round in Pittsburgh.
It has an 18-speed drivetrain comprised of 38/24T chain rings on Rivendell Silver Cranks and a simple 9-speed 11-34T casette from Shimano. It has a Rivendell Stubby Skeleton Key derailleur in the front and a Shimano Acera M3020 in the rear. I’m able to get away with such a goofy drivetrain because I set the bike up with friction shifters, removing the need for tedious indexing and having to commit to a groupset from a single manufacturer. The low range of gears makes light work of most hills. It also has Velo Orange Sabot Pedals, which makes the bike super comfortable to ride in just about any kind of footwear.
It has a Velo Orange Porteur Rack with the Surly Porteur House bag in the front. If I remove the bag, I can strap awkwardly shaped cargo to the rack, which makes this setup perfect for carrying 95% of the things I need to move around the city. The Velo Orange Postino Handlebar and Velo Orange Happy Stem make for a fairly relaxed riding position and make it trivial to keep the bike stable when the rack is fully loaded.
I hope to ride this bike until I die or it does, whichever comes first.
Update September 2024: I replaced the front rack on this with the Soma PortFolder Rack. Being able to fold the front rack up when I don’t need the full platform (most of the time I’m riding) makes the bike feel more compact and makes squeezing through gaps in traffic feel less fraught. It also makes negotiating crowded bike racks easier. I also added a Soma Rakku 2 as a rear rack. This makes carrying heavier cargo much less sketchy than it was on the front rack. It also allows me to carry more stuff. Similar to the Rachel , I replaced the Postino handlebars on this build with the Velo Orange Granola Bars. This has made the this bike into such a comfy ride.
Update November 2024: In preparation for a wet winter I installed a proper set of fenders. I used the 52mm Zeppelin fenders from Velo Orange. The skeleton key front derailleur was too bulky and got in the way of fenders. So, I replaced it with a Sensah Empire, which has slimmer mounting hardware. I also fell out of love with the racks I installed in September. They were too bulky and I really missed the silver-on-black look. So, I put the Porteur rack back on the front and ordered a Velo Orange Constructeur Rack for the rear.
Soma Rush (2024)
This rust-colored Soma Rush frameset looks really slick. I’m super happy I was able to order one in my size before this year’s model sold out. I built this up into a signle-speed using the parts from the purple Raleigh (see below). At the time of writing this is set up with a 36T chainring and a 20T freewheel. This ratio makes the hills in my neighborhood bearable without requiring me to spin too-too hard to avoid angering motorists when I’m sharing the road.
Bassi Rachel (2020)
I built this bike for my partner, who uses it as her day-to-day bike. The drivetrain is identical to the Surly Cross-Check build above, but many other details differ of course. She prefers step-through frames, so this bike is built around and older version of the Bassi Rachel frameset. It is a mixte-style frame, the seat post measures 47cm, and like the Cross-Check it is made of steel. Unlike the Cross-Check, it has caliper rim breaks and it has ratcheting friction thumb shifters on the handle bars. It has cheap 26” wheels with 1.5” tires.
It has a Velo Orange Constructeur Rack with a Wald 137 Basket on the front. The Velo Orange Porteur Handlebars combined with the frame geometry make for a relaxed riding position without sacrificing the ability to handle the bike when the basket is loaded.
Update August 2024: To make the riding position on this bike more relaxed, I replaced the stem with a taller one and swapped out the porteur handle bars with the Velo Orange Granola Bars.
Update December 2024: Just like the Cross-Check did in November, this bike got fenders.
Montagna Six (~1990)
This is the first bike I ever owned. I bought it from the Missing Link Bike Coop in Berkeley, CA, which has since, sadly, closed for business. I haven’t been able to find much information about this bike other than it is an Italian-made 1990s mountain bike. It has cantilever rim brakes, 26” wheels with 1.75” tires, and a 3x5-speed drivetrain. I haven’t done much to this bike except for replacing the brake pads, installing a rear rack, and adding a hitch for a small trailer.
I rode this bike for several years while I lived in Berkeley and it made me realize that I don’t really need a car to do most of the things I care about doing. Breaking this bike down for shipping and reassembling it when I moved to Pittsburgh, PA demystified bicycle maintaince for me and can likely be blamed for the existence of this page. Lately this bike is only used when I have guests in town, but I think I will hang onto it for a while yet.
Raleigh USA R500 (~2000)
The Miyata Sport 10 sizing snafu left my drop bar road bike itch largely unscratched, since it wasn’t very comfortable to ride. It was fun enough to ride, though! So, I decided it was worth it to try one more time. This early 2000s Raleigh R500 frameset also came from ebay, but it was posted with very convincing evidence about its size (shout out to Shop Dog). Unlike my other bikes, this frame is made of alluminum. This makes it a bit lighter, but it has a somewhat chunky downtube. Overall, I really like the look of this bike, though.
It has the same 16-speed drive train from the Miyata build, using the Rivendell Clipper Cranks. It has a Shimano Altus derailleur in the rear and a Sensah Empire in the front. It also has 700c wheels with 25mm tires. I wanted to use 28mm tires, but they were a smidge too wide for the chainstays. I think the purple frame looks really sharp with all the silver components. I was originally bummed that the Velo Orange Grand Cru Brakes weren’t available in silver when I was building this up, but the black ones ended up looking really slick.
This bike is super fun to ride, and is so much more comfortable than the tiny Miyata was. I usually grab this bike if I’m going out and know I won’t need anything by my phone, keys, wallet, and maybe a book.
Update September 2024: This bike has been retired and many of its parts have been transplanted to the Soma Rush.
Miyata Sport 10 (1984)
This is the first bike I assembled from scratch. I built it because I always wanted to feel what it was like to ride a bike with drop bars, which I think look really cool. I was unemployed for a few months after I moved to Pittsburgh, so I had plenty of time to get the details right.
I found the cool vintage blue frameset and (luckily!) the original stem, shifters, handle bars, and derailleurs on ebay. I wanted to build a bike with more than 5 speeds in the rear, so I bought an 8-speed 11-32T casette for this build. Older frames like this one are usually too narrow to accommodate such a wide stack of cogs, though. Luckily the frame is made of steel and I was able to widen the the spacing between the rear dropouts using a technique called cold setting. It had 42/26T chain rings on Rivendell Clipper Cranks. It had cheap 27” wheels with 1.25” tires.
The ebay seller labeled the frame as having a 57cm tall seat post, but it was actually much smaller– around 49cmm, so, I replaced the original stem with an extra tall one and ordered a tall seat post (hence the awkward-looking proportions in the photo). The bike was mostly rideable, but I felt and looked a little too goofy while riding it and my knees would occasionally hit the shifters while pedalling. I eventually raided this bike for the parts and the frame is just collecting dust in the basement.