The Vanilla Journal - November, 2007



It's November. Please enjoy our third issue of the Vanilla Journal. One of Vanilla's favorite disciplines, OK, it's our favorite, is cyclo-cross racing. Cross for '07 is Speedvagen. As most of you know Speedvagen is a limited edition run of racing machines. Next year Speedvagen will be more(including road racing), but this year it's dedicated entirely to mud, and sweat and blood, and cow-belling. In honor of the season, this issue is all cross, and all Speedvagen. Our featured bikes this month are both cross machines; one is a euro-classy Vanilla original and the other is the '07 'Vagen. We dive a little deeper into the design and fabrication of the Speedvagen proprietary drop-outs. We have some Vanilla Team Campaign updates. We dive kinda deep, actually really deep in some cases, into the heads and personalities of a few of our favorite Speedvagen customers. We are happy to introduce and offer up a limited run of Speedvagen hats and tee-shirts, both of which feature the magically tough-as-shit-but-fancy-too Unicorn crest and shield. Which definitely makes you ride faster. Lastly, Chris Destafano, marketing director at Chris King, shares some insight into the Vanilla Team edition wheel sets. We also want to announce a special evening at the Vanilla workshop. On November 30th, the Friday night before the USGP weekend, from six to midnight we're hosting Brian Vernor and his Washed in Mud series of photographs. So please, if you're in town, join us for some art, friends and delicious beverages.		Featured Bikes: Speevagen and White Bike Drop-outs Vanilla Cross Team Speedvagen Application and Quotes Chris King Speedvagen Kit Washed in the Mud

Featured Bikes a personal accounting by Sacha. '07 Speedvagen The color palette for the 2007 run of Speedvagen is Army Green, Race Car Red, Robins Egg Blue and "Surprise Me" which looks like a shade of hot pink brighter than the sun. The team bikes are our traditional creamy white, but we brought in two tones of turquoise inspired by the team issue King hubs. Starting from scratch with a brand like Speedvagen is really exciting. We tried things with the paint and graphic layout that we have never done before. It reminds me of when I moved to Portland from Colorado. I had an opportunity to be who I wanted to become, rather than live up to other's expectations of who I was. On an aesthetic note, I especially like the combination of the almost abstract graphic-on-graphic art with the Unicorn focal point. The Unicorn Crest (or shield), was simultaneously inspired by my love and respect for European race cars and for the Gentle Lovers, a team famous for their "you don't have to be a jerk to be fast" attitude. I love looking at the bikes all together, the colors and lines look so right next to each other. They truly look like a happy family of bikes. Click here to see full bike. White Bike This bike represents a pivotal moment that happened in the Vanilla workshop. The design borrows heavily from the original Vanilla cross bikes (2000/2001 season). It features classic lines, unfussy lug-work, and straight blade forks. I am proud to report that most of the original cross machines are still being raced today. I built this bike for myself and raced it all last season. Here are some shots of the two of us in action . I passed it on at the beginning of this season to a friend of the shop, who has been rocking it ever since. What makes this bike "right" for me is the combination of it's modern super light steel, our newest generation SS drops, and a tone-on-tone paint scheme (a subtle and refined signature of Vanilla). Overall, I love how current and photogenic this bike feels even after two seasons of hard racing. It is pictured with King/Zipp wheels (hot!), a Bontrager carbon cockpit, Tufo Flexus tires, and Brooks leather bar wrap. The whole bike weighs in at about 16.5 lbs. If I had the time I would build a hundred just like this one, and give them to all of my friends. That's how much I love this bike. Click here to see full bike.

Drop-outs Speedvagen is a limited run of thirty cross machines featuring proprietary tube-sets, various race features, and innovations like the Berserker Drops. We're not sure if we're really calling them that, but regardless these drops represent five generations of drop-out evolution and proprietary design. For Speedvagen, we wanted to address a number of design and aesthetic improvements, limit wasted materials, reduce weight, improve strength, take-it-to-eleven, and make you go faster. Sacha began the design process in collaboration with Geoff Raynak. Geoff and Sacha have been working together on similar industrial design projects since the beginning of Vanilla. Geoff is an amazing guy. The story of how the dropouts came to be, how they've evolved, and what the process has been like is best told by Geoff, so we interviewed him. We also interviewed Ian Burk, the head machinist at Tice Industries where the drops were made. Geoff Raynak For some background, Geoff works for Nike on statement and elite level projects/products - all things that aren't footwear, clothes, electronics or sunglasses. He is industrial designer, project manager and mechanical engineer. Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Design. My biggest challenge is refining and further refining products that have years and years of history being made one way or another. Industrial design sits on the edge between making something look good and figuring out what materials to use. There's that gray area, a good industrial designer can take their design and really figure out what materials to use. The mechanical engineering half of it, is interpreting the designers original intent and figuring out how to get it made - injection molded, cast, blow molded, forged, machined. First figuring out how to make one and then, depending on the scale, figuring out how to make a hundred or a thousand or a million identical whatever. A bike I wanted. In 2000 I started racing cross and one day, I think it was at Barlow, I saw this bike, I saw this Vanilla propped up against a car with nobody near it. And then a weekend or two later I saw it again, this time at Estacada. This guy was walking the bike along. I walked up to him and I told him it was a pretty cool bike and I asked where he got it made. The guy of course was Sacha, so he tells me that he made it. I'm a mechanical engineer and at the time I had had this idea for a bike I wanted made, so I asked him if he would build it and help me to make it work. He gave me his number and that's how it all began. Plate-shaped hunk of metal. I wanted to use an eccentric bottom bracket and a Rolhoff hub so I could have a 14 speed geared cross bike with really clean horizontal dropouts. I knew at the time, keep in mind this is pre single-speed, that you could sort of do it with a conventional bike. But that called for an ugly torque arm attachment and all sorts of other stuff that didn't really appeal to me visually. And I knew that if I got the drop-out laser cut I could basically do whatever I wanted, so I proposed the idea to Sacha. I asked him if he could/would incorporate my drops into an otherwise normal cross frame. He said yes, and told me they needed to be this angle and they needed to hold an axle of a certain length and diameter and so on. I settled on this design which worked but looked like a big ugly plate-shaped hunk of metal. We both agreed that it needed something to break up the space, and lighten the dropout visually. We decided to incorporate the V from the Vanilla head badge, I had the drops made, and he me made me a custom cross bike.* I don't think either of us realized at the time that we were creating the first of what would become a Vanilla icon. Vicariously. And that's how I sort of vicariously became Sacha's CAD designer. Next thing you know it's 68 degrees for this, 64 degrees for this and we started making all these variations, and creating a library of all the iterations. And then Sacha started to really run with the concept, he started giving me design direction with regards the engineering half of it. Over time this one-off project evolved into anything from full CNC machining to various bobbles and details like stainless steel medallions and fork tabs, and you name it. Over the years there's been twenty different versions or iterations and maybe five or six generations of drop-outs; 1. The original. 2. Road, Cross, and MTB versions of the same flat-plate. 3. Light-weight versions of all of the above, 4. The full CNC machined drop made by Anvil, the first time we were able to achieve real 3-D shape and profile. Speedvagen is 5, and we have designs and prototypes for 6 already in development. Speedvagen. A year ago Sacha came to me with this high-end racing project called Speedvagen. He wanted to redirect our energy and focus back to racing and performance, stripping away everything that's not essential and improving what was left. We worked on two separate projects; the drop-out redesign and the seatmast. He didn't want the whole drop to be stainless anymore, but in order to keep the Vanilla feel, he wanted to engineer direct customization, and that's how we arrived at the removable faceplate, which can be stainless in addition to any number of materials. He also wanted the drop to be slightly smaller, and therefore stiffer and lighter. He also wanted the drops to be designed for easier assembly. This criteria led to a number of indirect benefits, for example - using rounded connection points on the drops makes them easier to fabricate into the bike, saving time and cost, and it provides an increased welding surface for a stronger overall build. Sacha also wanted an extended seatmast, it's lighter looks hot, and allows the rear brake cable to run straight through the base of the post, helping to refine the braking system. We ended up with a three-part design. The shim and the sleeve plus head, which, even though they move together and look like a single piece, are manufactured separately in the current design. Process Sacha and I start by sitting together and doing napkin sketches. I'll bring my library of line art, of previous drops. Eventually we start working on vellum, using the library to inform the process. Then we'll apply some constraints and measurements. I'll research the raw materials that we're likely to use and look at the practicality side of it all, and then we move to CAD. With CAD we bring computational modeling into the process, so we can look at deflection and failure rates. When I'm done with the first round I send him a file which he can look at on his computer and/or print, full size, and hold up to a bike. But ultimately, even now, no matter what, you need to actually make the object before you really know how it's going to work. While Sacha's frame building craft is steeped in tradition and history, and the materials and process used in many cases changes only subtly if at all, what we do together ensures that Vanilla is as state-of-art as it is traditional. Hopefully the best possible balance. We are always looking for new alloys and manufacturing tools to work with, we're even in the process of looking at investment castings and proprietary lugs and castings. *Still going strong. I should note that my bike, the blue beast, is still going strong, I race it at least twice a week and ride it all the time. Ian Burk Once the drop designs were completed the CAD files were sent to Tice Industries, a three generation old Portland Oregon machine shop, where owner, Scott Tice and head machinist, Ian Burk, built a prototype to spec. For a little bit of what happens at the machine shop we spoke for a few minutes with Ian. I start by programming the machine to the specifications called out in Geoff's CAD drawings. This takes about four or five hours. For this project I can't use a laser cutting machine because the dropout's "features", all the contours and pockets, aren't limited to an X and Y axis, they're three dimensional. So instead I'm using a water-jet Takisawa MAC-V1E, which shoots out a super fine stream of high pressure water containing a fine plastic media, that can cut through metal multiple inches thick. The first thing we make are the dropout's fixtures - a reverse impression of the dropouts, this is what holds them in place while they're being milled. The process will likely take about fifteen to twenty iterations so we use aluminum (softer, cheaper and easier to tool and mill) to dial-in the final sample/prototype. Click here to see more images.

Vanilla Cross Team The team has been excellent this year. Super cohesive and full of goodwill, which is more important than speed. But speed is important too. This was Solomon Woras'(photo) first year with the team. He has been kind and earnest and quietly hard working. He has progressed steadily through the season consistently finishing top ten. This past weekend he stepped it up and won gold in the Oregon State Championships. Shannon Skerritt The veteran of the team won 5 races out of ten this season. He took silver at the Oregon State Champs right behind Solomon and won the overall in Cross Crusade series (the largest cross series in the world). Shannon was dukeing it out with Pro mountain biker Carl Dekker in nearly every race. It was pretty awesome watching such strong smooth riders pushing each other's limits week after week. Kevin Hulick was so solid this year. Leading up to cross season, he was putting in 16 hour days trying to stay on track. Kevin ended up coming in to help out many a late night, going way above and beyond what would be expected of a team rider. That's what life is all about. Oh, he was also wicked fast finishing fourth in the overall series, and leading out every race he entered with a blistering start. Unfortunately Kevin went down in the State champ race, and broke his thumb in two spots and tore a tendin. This puts the kaybash on the rest of his season including plans for nationals. You killed it this year, Kevin. Thanks! Molly has been the world traveler of the team this season, running all around the country with Danish National champ Joachim Parbo. She was able to grab a couple of top fives before crashing hard at the First GP race in Kentucky. A couple of broken ribs have delayed her plan for domination, but there is plenty of season left with the last two gp's coming up, Nationals, and a month and a half of cross in Europe after that. Look for the team at the last two races of the GP series Dec. 1 and 2 in Portland, as well as Nationals in Kansas.

Speedvagen Application and Quotes So the idea for Speedvagen has always been driven by Sacha's desire to make race bikes that are actually going to get raced. It doesn't matter how fast, or whether or not it's with any success, however you define it. It just matters that they slog some mud, make it fluidly or failingly over some six-pack barriers and go faster to the sounds of cowbelling, a couple-seven times, or hopefully more, every cross season. And 11. We think his desire is two-part: 1. Make super incredible innovative race bikes and components and builds. That's on him and his team of collaborators and everyone here at Vanilla to execute. 2. Family. Many cross racers and spectators, especially here in the northwest, are part of a big and awesome family, united in their love for speed and pleasure, united in their respect for performance and pain, united in their appreciation for exploding heart rates and costumes, and united in their willingness to get really fucking cold and wet in the ugliest of conditions, on a bike in the mud and race, or at least support those who do. It's the take-it-to-eleven spirit that's at the heart of it all . So part of the goal with project Speedvagen was to begin to document and communicate the people/racers, their personalities, dreams and whatever, taking it to eleven. And that's why we decided to create a Speedvagen "application." To design the best cross racing machines for racers to race, and to assemble a family of friends who race and have fun, at the same time. We scanned three of our favorite completed applications to share with you. They're pretty self-explanatory and definitely give some insight into the mood and point of it all. We had so much fun making and writing and designing these applications that we spent 48 times the budget and they took four months too long to finalize. Seriously. Please enjoy the questions, we did. But even more than that, please enjoy the answers from three of our favorite Speedvagen owners and family members. Click here to view 3 of the applications

Chris King For a word on the '07/'08 Vanilla team wheels we went directly to Chris Distefano, Who put the project together. We'd been planning on making a high-flange hubset for a while but it wasn't until conversation over coffee last season with the Vanilla Bicycles -Stumptown Coffee squad one morning that we saw the perfect opportunity and the immediate need. The team had taken to running deep section carbon rims for performance in the muddy Northwest conditions and the talk that morning had turned to spoke length and tension. The Chris King Classic hubset had many of the attributes Vanilla demanded from components chief among them long-running durability. But the Classic hub had been designed for road bikes and the demands of cyclocross left an opportunity for improvement. The small,asymmetrical hub flanges combined with low-spoke count deep-section rims led to unbalanced spoke tension that we all agreed could be made better. We pushed our design for a performance high-flange hub pair to the front of our development schedule and delivered the Chris King Classic Cross hubset in time for the 2007 season. But this season was to be about more than just hubs. We'd come to know the crew from Edge Composites in Ogden, Utah over the summer and hatched a plan for cyclocross insanity. We saw the opportunity to provide the team with a complete wheel; a collaborative effort among Chris King, Edge, and Vanilla. The result is the Chris King Classic Cross Team Edition wheelset. Team rider Molly Cameron rolled up to Seattle's Star Crossed race in September of this year and lost a fair amount of warm-up time because of all the questions about the wheels. In the weeks to come, team bikes in the pit had a near constant crowd assembled to take a look. Imagine it - Speedvagen team issue frames, King hubs, and these sweet new Edge carbon tubular deep section rims. At car shows they're called fender lizards. Not sure what you'd call them at a cross race. Come up with something good and let me know. The wheels were well beyond any expectation we had. 68mm deep section rims with a wide track for better glue/base tape adherence, light weight and stiff. The new hubset brought the spoke lengths to near-even measurements and the build quality was smooth and balanced. Early reports through sand and mud are that nothing is faster. And to make it just that much better, we brought back a classic color for this special team edition -turquoise. Vanilla is careful about the companies and suppliers it brings in to support the team. We have been honored to be chosen by Sacha and this talented squad for 5 years now. Best of all, we are pleased that a company such as Edge Composites can work with us in such short time to produce such quality results. The small collection of team suppliers really is a mutual admiration society and we are looking forward to more team projects with Vanilla and the crew at Edge. Chris King serves coffee each weekend at the Cross Crusade Series races which gives us even more opportunity each week to dream up new ideas. In December, Portland hosts the domestic cross scene for the USGP finals and our friends Jason and Kevin from Edge will pay their first visit to our muddy race scene. No doubt, we'll down some coffee and ring some cowbells. We'll let you know what we come up with next. Click here to see more images.

Speedvagen Kit This month we have two new items of Speedvagen kit to out - tee-shirts and hats. Speedvagen short sleeve tees are made using Sport Science blanks and feature the Vagen totem animal and racing shield - the Unicorn, and are available in True Red, Sky Blue and Grass Green, in extra small through large (they run a little big). Sport Science tee-shirts are made with a fabric they call It's Not Cotton, it feels like cotton and wears like cotton but is in fact, a technical polyester that wicks and drys quickly and doesn't wrinkle or smell. The Unicorn Shield graphic, symbolic of Sacha's appreciation for 60's era sports car emblems and the Gentle Lovers, a Portland area race team-not-team, is printed front and center on the chest in classic Vanilla colors, taken to eleven. $25.00 Speedvagen racing caps are made by Pace in the Untied States of America - Lately we've been looking to produce finer, hand crafted and custom products made in Portland, Oregon when possible. But with this project, we recognized straight away that a cross racing cap is a different animal. It needs to be down and dirty and not break the bank, and if at all possible, ridiculous and inspiring. So here you go. A fifteen dollar fully functional racing cap with a Unicorn emanating flower power all over the top of it and a go-fast badge on the front of it. Art direction and graphic was inspired by Gentle Lover Tony Kic, aka T-bear. $15.00 Click here to see more images of the t-shirt and cap.

Washed in the Mud Washed in the Mud is a photo essay about cyclocross. Not just cross racing and racers, the whole scene - the community. From 2002 through 2004, Willie k. Bullion and I made a movie about cross racing called Pure Sweet Hell. Throughout the making of the film we regularly and consistently heard "Cross racing is a good scene, its fun but serious too, but what keeps me coming back are the people." Inspired, in part, by these comments, as well as by the previous photographic efforts of Irving Penn and Mike Disfarmer, Washed in the Mud documents the Cyclocross Community; pros, racers, mechanics, fans, innocent bystanders, anyone on the scene willing to have their photo taken. The project was shot using black and white film, a black backdrop to create an uncomplicated environment and a medium format Rolleiflex camera. Washed in the Mud was shot on location at all six races of the 2006 USGP of Cyclocross, from Massachusetts, to Colorado, Washington, and finally Oregon. The Vanilla Workshop will host Washed in the Mud from November 30 to December 31, 2007. Limited prints and show poster available starting opening night. Velo News Interview about Washed in the Mud, with Brian Vernor: http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/11340.0.html Click here to view full poster.

Vanilla Bicycles 717 SE 35th Avenue, Portland OR Phone: 503.233.2453 Email: sacha@vanillabicycles.com

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