There are three things that will lure me out of bed before dawn on a Sunday morning: the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, and a first ride on a new bike.  This year I’ll be getting all three out of the way on consecutive Sundays.  For the first ride on the new-to-me Colnago Tecnos, (you can catch up on its journey here, here, and here) I took it out for an early morning spin on what's become my go-to loop.  With the specialness of New Bike Day, I came to a new appreciation of how fortunate I am to have a perfect 22 mile ride that starts out the front door of swrve HQ.  Here’s how it shakes down.  It starts...

There is a profound difference between assembling a bike and building a bike. It is a level of nuance and perfection that goes completely unnoticed by the untrained eye but is deeply appreciated by those who know. To handle the rebirth of his new Colnago (parts 1 and 2 are here and here), Matt turned to Mike Kalenda of Golden Saddle Cyclery, located just across the Los Angeles River from swrve’s World Headquarters. If you ride a bike and have an Instagram account, there’s a good chance Golden Saddle Cyclery has appeared on your radar at one time or another. In only a few short years, Kyle and the gang have established GSC as a vital hub for the Los...

(See part one here.) The bicycle wheel and the pizza are two of the greatest round things ever invented. To break them down into simple terms, they both start with common ingredients and how they end up all depends on the wheelbuilder or chef.   After mulling enough wheel options to fill an Excel spreadsheet, Matt decided to stick to the familiar and try the new, while entering a deeper realm of bike geekery. “I enjoy comparative research, apparently,” says Matt. “I generally start with products (or companies) I’ve heard good things about, something I think looks really good, or someone that’s maybe pushing a new direction while leaning towards smaller companies. In the end, I try to strike the best...

Matt has a new bike project and it is going to be awesome. In an age when road bikes are all about light weight carbon fiber frames with thru-axles and hydraulic disc brakes, Matt decided to kick it old-school with a vintage steel Colnago Tecnos frameset manufactured in the mid-to-late 90s. (If you need to pause for a moment to come to terms with the fact that something from the 1990s is now considered vintage, take all the time you need. We went through the grieving process ourselves. The Pixies really helped.) We cornered Matt for some details about why he went for the Tencos, one of the rarer frames in Colnago’s storied history. Here’s what he had to say:“I think bike...