Autumn Bicycle Quarterly
If Bicycle Quarterly was a ‘normal’ magazine, the Autumn edition would look quite different. Which ‘normal’ publisher would add 25% more pages just because there are so many great stories? We simply felt that we had no choice…
When OPEN told us that they had a new bike for ultra-wide tires coming, we took all our courage and asked them: How about sending us not only one of their much-in-demand test bikes, but two? We wanted to ride the brand-new WI.DE., but we also wanted to try the superlight U.P.P.E.R., so we could compare the two. And we’d like to ride them for more than 1000 miles, so we could really take them to the limit and beyond. We figured that it couldn’t hurt to ask…
To our surprise, two of these amazing machines arrived in the BQ office before the new bike even had been launched! We enjoyed them on a incredible ride in the Oregon Cascades, plus we performance-tested them in a controlled setting to find out what you give up when you go really wide…
When we looked through the photos and stories, we had so much fascinating material that we decided to expand the article to 26 pages. It’s not your average bike test, but an adventure that you’ll enjoy even if you aren’t looking to buy a bike.
The Trek Checkpoint really got us excited: Here is a mainstream production bike with a high-performance carbon frame that can run really wide tires (up to 55 mm). It even has eyelets for fenders and racks. We take this on the paved and gravel roads of Marin County – and we don’t just ride one, but three Checkpoints: Natsuko reports on the Checkpoint’s smallest models and compares the women’s version with the men’s. How are they different, and which works best for a smaller female rider?
The report from last month’s epic 1200 km Paris-Brest-Paris randonnée also expanded far beyond our plan. We had allotted space for a story about this amazing ride, but so many people asked about our small team’s bikes that we decided to add a second article that shows them in beautiful studio photos.
When we visited Cherubim, one of the most respected framebuilders in Japan, we expected to show photos of how they file lugs and braze their iconic frames. We got those (above), but we also spent hours with Cherubim’s Shinichi Konno discussing frame stiffness and how it’s optimized for Japan’s professional Keirin racers. His insights were so interesting that this article, too, expanded far beyond what we’d planned.
Before Ted King became the ‘King of Gravel,’ he raced as a professional in Europe. We asked him what it was like to lead the Tour de France on the road and help Peter Sagan win the Tour‘s green jersey. Ted talks about what it’s really like to race in the world’s biggest races, about the differences between racing for a North American and an Italian team, and how he decided to race gravel upon ‘retiring.’ It’s a fascinating conversation that – you guessed it! – required much more space than we had allocated for it.
As a counterpoint to all this talk about steel bikes and wide tires, we feature Christopher Shand’s trip across Europe and the Balkans on carbon racing bikes and 25 mm tires. As you can imagine, theirs was a real adventure, and they brought back so many great photos that we expanded this article, too.
Those are just six of the fascinating stories in the Autumn Bicycle Quarterly. The result is our biggest edition yet, with 128 pages (plus cover). It’s really more of a book than just a magazine, not just in size, but also in production values. But then, cycling is our passion…
Subscribe today to be among the first to get the Autumn Bicycle Quarterly when the magazine/book comes off the press in a few days.
