Bicycle Quarterly - #74 (Winter 2020)

Lael Wilcox takes you on a week’s worth of adventures in the Pacific Northwest, exploring some of the best roads of the Cascade and Olympic Mountains. The result is one of Lael’s beautiful stories, accompanied by Rugile Kaladyte’s expressive photos.

A new bike from OPEN is always exciting, because you know it’s going to be good. Just how good the OPEN MIN.D. racing bike is came a surprise, though: This may well be the fastest bike we’ve ever tested. As second tester Mark (above) put it: “Why wouldn’t we ride 32 mm tires when we’re riding on paved roads?”

Nicolas Joly and two of his friends went on an adventure that included only very little pavement: They explored their backyard – which happens to be one of the largest wild areas of Europe. They discovered ancient Roman roads and rode across the Parc Naturel du Vercors. It was one of those rides where “time passed more quickly than we anticipated.”

We look at one of the most amazing bikes ever made by René Herse: a very special track bike that won no fewer than five French championships. Beautiful workmanship, special features and an intriguing history – bikes rarely come more special than this one.

We’ve been working on a big feature about H. Hirose, the creative genius who didn’t just build frames and racks, but even his own derailleurs. Hirose-san left us before we could publish his story, so we’re looking back over more than three decades of building ever-more sophisticated bikes. As a bonus, we get to witness Hirose-san building a custom rear rack for Natsuko’s bike in just one hour – a feat made possible by the amazing fixtures that he built for each task in the rack-building process.