I had the honor and pleasure of working on one of the coolest bikes I've ever seen in person. A new customer of my shop in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, bought Sheldon's Thorn Raven. I had seen it before on Sheldon's website and almost instantly recognized it, just took a second to register what I was looking at. I had seen the bike ride past the shop with it's new owner a few times and one day they decided to stop by to check out the shop. I should have taken a picture of the aftermath of that visit but it basically boiled down to a handlebar change and a small tuneup. The new owner decided to try out a different handlebar setup because he seemed to like the flat bar over the drop bar of the double handlebar setup, yet the flat bar was too narrow for him. So he opted for a black 4" rise MTB bar which put the handles at about the same height as the original flatbar but with the width he wanted. I thought the double bar setup was neat but with a new owner comes new opinions and new preferences. I had not seen a double pull brake setup like the one that was on there when he brought it in, and we needed to switch it to a single pull. The double pull was neat as it linked both the drop bar brake lever and the flat bar lever to the front brake. Due to the new routing of the front brake cable, a small spacer was also necessary between the fender and the fork crown to create a few millimeters of clearance between the brake cable and fender. Once the conversion was done I test rode it around for a few blocks and I have to say that Thorn is one of the best bikes I've ridden. The Rohloff was amazing. The entire bike rode smooth, shifted smooth, handled smooth, and felt like it wanted to keep rolling forever. It's a great setup and a great looking bike.



here's the bike I'm talking about...





-Jeremy