This is a repeat of a thread I started this morning on the 50+ as "N+1 Solution to Broken Promises ....", which itself was a continuation of "Broken Promises, Feeble Excuses," a thread that describes my crash and broken hip back on July 14, while riding the Triple Bypass here in Colorado.
My fellow old folks thought it would be of at least mild interest to the 41, enough so that I should htfu with regard to the scorn I am due for posting a picture taken before I had a chance to remove all offending guards, reflectors and stickers from a new bike, find a proper white garage, and reflip the stem that my fitter flipped to accommodate the flexibility restrictions on a 57 year old guy 10 weeks out from hip surgery. So here goes.
On Tuesday of this week, I traveled to the Trek factory in Waterloo, Wisconsin to test, get fitted upon and ultimately take home with me the bike pictured here. It is a six series Trek Domane frame, with a liquid red paint scheme in matte finish.
It has a name painted on the top tube--"Bandit", which is the name my brothers call me when we play golf together, and reflects the fact that my left arm has gone missing at the shoulder. They consider any winnings I receive to be an act of theft.
More significantly, the Bandit represents almost a year of research and development by some very wonderful and talented people at Trek and its vendors, SRAM in particular. After many years of doing my own adaptations on various pieces of sporting equipment, I had approached Trek with a challenge: let's see what people who know what they are doing can come up with to create a safer, cleaner, and better performing one hand controlled bicycle. The Bandit is the result.
I'll provide more technical details in response to questions, but in essence, the Trek engineers tweaked the climbing buttons from a Shimano di2 system to provide multiple control points, one on the hood and one on the top bar by the stem. They took apart a SRAM Red hydraulic rim brake lever, installed the di2 buttons they had fabricated, and then SRAM engineered and built a splitter so that the single lever fires both the front and rear hydraulic rim brakes.
The Bandit goes like...a bandit I guess, fleeing the scene of a crime. It shifts with the flick of a finger and without the need to take my hand off the bike. Best of all, it stops--boy does it stop. I lost my arm 39 years ago. This is the first time I have felt truly in control on fast descents.
Although I suspect this is the case for many in the industry, I can personally vouch for the passion Trek has for the bicycles they build and the people who ride them. Now that some major industry players are focused on the issue, I think we are only a few more spins of technology away from a solution that will not require the custom building and testing done here, and can go out to other riders in kit form. Next time someone wants to start a "why does the 41 hate Trek?" thread, I likely won't weigh in, but know that I am smiling and have completely different view.
As for the broken hip, I am healing well, limping only mildly, riding a big boy bike for several weeks now, and threatening to take the Bandit up to finish the Triple Bypass from the point of my crash onward, if the snow doesn't get there first. Since there is no official time limit, my ride report will just be something like this: Distance: 120 miles; Elapsed Time: 93 days, 8 hours, 24 minutes. I promise not to count the miles spent in an ambulance.