Titanium takes in and reveals the phenomena of surface, atmosphere, and reflected light

Impulsively, just like I do in advance of every bike show, I began considering how I could gussy up this frame, which has become THE frame of my life and the one I’ll have at Bespoked. Anodizing, graphics, something to make it look like a show bike.

Then, after parking it the other day, I looked back at it as I entered the store, as I always do. It’s more than a show bike! I’m not sure I’ve ever had a bike quite like this one. Over four years, it has been right for just about anything I’ve asked it to do. If I built another bike for winter riding and bikepacking, I’d mostly be remaking this one, I bet.

I anodized the fork and handlebars, but I’ll simply clean the titanium frame with a gray Scotch-Brite pad. Titanium: it doesn’t need to be restored to some pristine version of itself. It is always visually what it’s made of.

Three weeks after returning from Iceland, it will be on display at Bespoked in Dresden. Cleaned up but no makeup. A bike that has been through two Iceland trips, Tuscobia, Arrowhead, and nearly 20,000 miles, is beautiful as is.

Titanium takes in and reveals the phenomena of surface, atmosphere, and reflected light. I love the color of titanium (and that titanium’s a life-long material that doesn’t rust). One thing people may not know about titanium is that through anodizing it takes on colors remarkably consistent with those found in nature. The blues of sky and water, the golds and bronzes of grass and earth, the purples of dusk. No paint or pigment is added. Electricity changes the thickness of the transparent oxide layer that naturally forms on titanium. Light moves through that layer, reflects from the metal beneath it, and returns as color. Different voltages produce different colors by changing how it interacts with light. The blue on the handlebars is 27 volts. The bronze on the fork is 20.5 volts. The color remains part of the metal, responding to light much as the landscape does.