birthday gift for his 8 year-old daughter.
(Photos © J. Maus)
Everyone in the handmade bike industry must wonder where framebuilding phenom Sacha White gets the inspiration for his always impressive bicycles.
Judging from his famous tricycle that won Best of Show at the 2006 NAHBS (and is currently in a museum exhibit in San Francisco), and the poster he unveiled last year, my guess is that the answer lies very close to home — his two young daugthers Cybelle and Delilah.
Sacha told me he she had outgrown sitting on the back of her mom’s Xtracycle and that it was time “to make her a piece of real transportation.”
For a Vanilla, the bike seems pretty basic. Sacha says he was tempted to “really pour a lot of ideas into it” but he held back. “I wanted to keep it simple” he said, “not only so she could feel secure locking it up every day at school, but so she could work on it herself.”
A carfree family, Sacha and his girls ride everywhere in their Southeast Portland neighborhood. “Cybelle’s awesome,” he said with a daddy’s smile, “my favorite times with her are when we’re riding. Sometimes I’ll look over and she’ll be racing me up the hill.”
Is that really a mixte, technically-speaking? It doesn\’t have any seat stays, although it does have the lateral stays that are the hallmark of a mixte. In design, it seems to be a cross between a small mountain bike and a mixte.
Thoughts?
Whatever it is, Cybelle is a very lucky girl. What a beautiful bike!
Is it just my imagination or do those cranks look a bit long for an eight year old ?
🙂
LOL
And in search of an answer to my question, I turned to– where else– Sheldon\’s website:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gloss_m.html#mixte
Burr,
It must be the camera angle. The cranks are 140mm. The plan is to bump up the crank length as Cybelle grows.
Cheers,
Sacha
maybe the pedals make them look longer, or the proportions, are those 26\” wheels?
🙂
Who sells 140mm crank arms?
Enquiring minds with vertically-challenged girlfriends would like to know…
I love to see that bike on the rack at school!! Reminds me every day how how special our city is. Great for families, great for bikes and so much more. Looking forward to checking out the show.
I saw it locked up at a neighborhood school 2 days ago. I had to take a double take when I saw the vanilla headtube badge. Very cool.