Niece Erin and I crossed paths with this amazing fellow at the end of a nice walk along the Sammamish River Trail.
He had broken his collar bone in four places in mid January while riding into an area of possible ice and remembers nothing of his accident wherein a bystander stood over him so he would not be run over while awaiting the ambulance. He was next conscious and aware in the hospital. He has a titanium plate holding his collar bone together and is riding today only six weeks after his accident.
Today he had ridden down to the Bainbridge Island Ferry in the early AM to ferry over to the Cascade Bicycle Club’s Chilly Hilly 33 mile ride then back to Seattle and on back to Woodinville where we met him at his mile 80 for the day. He rode over 10,000 miles last year that included 30 century rides.
He’s riding his brand new Rodriguez cycle that he has set up as his dream machine. It includes a Rohloff rear hub with 14 ratios (which can shift while stopped) thereby needing no multiple chainrings in front allowing for a very cool belt drive system, S & S couplers, a Son generator front hub that not only feeds his lighting system but also powers a USB port inside his handlebar bag, a Pletscher double leg kickstand, a new high tech Brooks C17 Cambium saddle, Marathon Plus tires, and an array of electronics. Quite the dream,
After I inserted all the above I went browsing on the Rodriguez site and found that he had posted these ten shots of our fellow’s cycle. Lots of interesting closeups of the many fascinating parts he chose. One question I wished I’d asked him was why he chose cantilevers instead of disc brakes. Click on any of the images for a larger version.
