If you missed the January NCBC meeting, then you missed something very special. As part of their fifth anniversary, The Spin Cycle hosted the club's meeting and brought in Ben Serotta, founder of Serotta cycles, to talk about his interest in bicycle fit and how he came to develop the Serotta size-cycle. This was the club's best-attended meeting in recent times, with 40-50 people present (many of whom were admittedly not club members but had come to hear Ben Serotta). Afterwards Kevin and Phoebe Coggins provided a generous spread of food and drink, and folks had a chance to mingle.
These are some notes from Ben's talk:
Ben started riding bikes in upstate NY, and then lapsed into building bikes after high school, around 1972. He didn't plan to build bicycles as a career but discovered that he enjoyed it. The enjoyment was important; while building frames is a technically demanding craft, it doesn't pay as well as, say, plumbing.
Around 1975 he started selling custom frames to retail stores. This led to supplying bikes to the racing team at West Point, one of the premier teams at the time. It was a popular notion that the equipment was more important than the rider, and Bill Watkin's success on Serotta frames propelled sales.
Serotta has made all types of custom bikes, from racing bikes to expedition bikes to tandems to bikes for the disabled, such as hand-cranked bikes. They made bikes that looked like mountain bikes back in the 70's but didn't take the idea very seriously, even when the idea became popular in California a few years later.
Interestingly, when Eric Heiden won the first US Pro championship he was riding a Serotta-built, Huffy-logo'ed bike. It seems that when Huffy agreed to sponsor the premier 7-11 racing team, 7-11 turned around and said, "by the way, we'll need something better that Huffy bikes to actually race on." This lead to Serotta supplying the 7-11 team, which began a long-term relationship between Serotta and the racers, enabling Serotta to evaluate new innovations in the extremely demanding racing environment.
Eventually, Ben Serotta was looking for something that would continue to challenge him. While successful, building bikes had become routine. He believed they were coming to understand bicycle fit better than their competitors. Could they make an even better bike? One that's lighter, more responsive, and more comfortable?
About this time Ben was in his farmhouse-like office looking out the window during particularly strong winds. He noticed the pine trees, and how they were compliant with the wind and flexible at the top, but very stable and sturdy at the base. This observation was the flash of inspiration that lead to the Colorado Concept tube sets, which are skinny at the top and big at the bottom (like trees!). This innovation yielded a frame that was very lightweight (the tubes are tripple-butted) and exceptionally rigid in the bottom bracket. Another innovation was the S-shaped, curved chain stays, which are now commonly "copied" by other manufacturers.
To this point in time Serotta had been using established sizing charts to measure riders and calculate dimensions for custom frames. This only worked about two-thirds of the time, and sometimes resulted in a downright poor fit. Ben was wrestling with this issue when he was out with a physician friend at a bar. After some discussion the friend said the words that turned on the light bulb, "you're not going to solve your problems with formulas - we all grow differently!" This Ah-ha!" led to the development of the size-cycle, an infinitely adjustable stationary bike that allows you to examine first-hand every aspect of bike fit.
Ben went on to describe Serotta's current product line. The CSI and Atlanta are steel lugged frames. The CSI is the flagship model; the Atlanta is similar but less expensive due to economies in production. The CTI is the corresponding titanium frame.
Serotta developed their carbon fork to be consistent with their frames. Most carbon forks have an aluminum crown - Serotta's have a steel crown with a foam core. Ben stated that aluminum and carbon fiber are bad to be used together since they can react with one another. Ben also expressed a strong preference for curved forks, claiming that the curve offers a certain amount of suspension and yields faster cornering and a more comfortable ride. Straight forks are easier to manufacture and "look cool" by current mountain bike standards, but can transmit a lot of road shock.
We broke at this point in the meeting to enjoy the good food and mingle and talk. Prior to Ben's presentation we had discussed other club agenda items, noted below.
The next NCBC meeting will be Monday, February 2nd at REI. The feature presentation will be a panel discussion on popular century rides, such as the Assault on Mt. Mitchell and the Great Peanut Tour.