2018 Speedvagen Surprise Me 1x Road

Listen, im a Sram guy. I don’t hide it. It’s easy to work on, easy to set up and everything just makes sense. It also tends to stay tuned longer in my opinion. Leaving you with flawless ride time. Im not one of those people who will try and take some glory in loving to work on my bikes. I don’t mind it, but I will always rather be riding than working on a bike. Back to the point, Ive had 3 force bikes and I love it. I always just used something else for road. Knowing that these 1x road bikes were pushed as a “thing” a few years back that never caught on. When it was time to build up this bike I did’nt hesitate I just went for it and im glad I did.

Portland isnt overtly hilly, but by no means is it flat. This is where the gearing shines. While most would consider 1x road bikes “crit bike” I haven’t ran into the scenario where this combo hasn’t worked. Here’s the thing, cycling is a lot like life. You settle into your rhythms and patters and most people are afraid to do what isn’t natural, or familiar. My journey in cycling started with a cheap trek road bike and by year two I was on a gravel 1x system and have been riding force pretty much ever since. To me Force is natural, the bigger jumps in gearing are what im used to. While most serious cyclist complain about those gear jumps, to me, they are home it is simple and it works.

With a pretty average drivetrain I really wanted the rest of this bike to shine. I cant really talk about this bike without first mentioning the paint. 2018 Speedvagen Surprise Me is all about surf. More so it’s an homage to the glassed style of surf boards. Multiple tones of a color are stacked up with lose edges that bleed. Impossible to take in all at once you really need to get up close and personal with this bike to take in all the detail. With such a surf inspired scheme I really wanted to go the opposite route with color. 3 shades of gold and 2 shades of a hyper lemon yellow (not quite high vis), it’s anything but subtle.

Next for the build, I really wanted to try out a set of EE brakes. With a flawless reputation for being some of the best rim brakes on the market in terms of modulation and power. They were the number one thing on my list to get. So far I can say the results are by far better than the Campy Potenza brakes I was running previously.

The final pieces of the puzzle are the complete Enve parts kit, including the brand spanking new Enve SES 5.6s with their new carbon hubs. Im also running their aero bars, aero stem and the Speedvagen carbon seat post head (which is made for SV by enve).