Cherubim Pista

So the bike was built up in last August and ridden for a couple of months. I went road tripping around Texas during the American election and on returning to London, things were wetter, greyer and colder than ever. `the last thing I felt like doing was riding it and the Cherubim was put away for winter. Free from that new bike honeymoon euphoria, I had time to reflect on what really worked and didn’t.

I never really got on with the original cockpit: Nitto M106 Chinook bars and those Shimano levers. I guess I’m used to the more modern flat bar-to-lever transitions and anything that was ‘period/locale’ correct just didn’t feel right. Plus I couldn’t quite get to the levers while riding in the drops. And I just never got on with the Kashimax and Concor saddles that I tried for the position that i needed.

I couldn’t find decently priced Campy Record single speed levers and I guess the ‘purity’ of the build had already been compromised by the Ultra 6800 front brake and the Royce wheel set (yeah, but what a compromise), so last week, I broke down and went with what I knew: TRP RRL levers and a flatter Regal-E Urban Performance saddle.

Several observations about the frame. Some of the little ornamental decorative details are probably quite marmite, but I’m firmly in the love camp. If chromed lugs and hearts and Cherubim angels aren’t your thing, well it’s not my problem. More so than any of my bikes, this feels more of an elaborate object; I normally don’t give a shit but this is the one bike that doesn’t get locked up or ridden when wet. Fortunately, there are already a couple of tiny scratches from when I did lock it up and ride it in the rain, so I’m over it. The paint is rich and lustrous but not super durable I think. I like the black hex/crossthatch fade a lot.

I rebuilt the cockpit today, put on the new saddle, tweaked the fit positioning and took it for a shakedown ride this afternoon. The sun was out, finally!.

So even though it’s made out of Kaisei 8630, the bike is heavier than most of my stable, probably missing the benefit of a carbon fork. And because I’m riding with clips, straps and sneakers, as opposed to my usual Look pedals and stiff-soled cycling shoes, the power transfer and acceleration is more muted and restrained. But once the bike is up to speed, especially with the updated components, it is basically the smoothest ride in my stable. It’s hard to describe in words, it doesn’t glide over the road but it seems to flow through it. The boys at SBC Cycles seem to pick up on this when they build it up, the first thing they asked me after my first ride was something like “it was really smooth right?”.

I can ride and brake in the drops quite comfortably now. It’s plenty responsive (I have other bikes with steeper angles) and I think I can safely say after the equipment change, I’m liking the experience a lot more. I always forget that it usually takes me many months, if not years, to finally tweak everything to my satisfaction on a particular frame. My favourite ride is my Donhou road bike and I’ve been fiddling away on that thing for almost 5 years now. I guess the Cherubim is only at the start of that process. If there is a question now, it is how much more ‘aggressive’ I get with my positioning on the frame and whether I want to switch to clipless pedals.

Probably the most fun I had was on the shakedown ride, going through Old Street roundabout when a fellow bike nerd called David pulled up next to me and we got into a wide-ranging conversation all the way down to Holborn. We talked about keirin racing, the frame building course he took with Mark Reilly, London builders and cycling across the length of Japan. The sun was shining, the days are getting longer and warmer, the Cherubim felt a lot better and I was having a discussion about fillet brazing, lugged bottom brackets and Japanese vending machines with an enthusiastic stranger while we glided through the traffic. Things were definitely looking up.