The wannabe legendary JOE APPALOOSA
Appaloosa is a breed of horse, and you shouldn’t ever put a bike before a horse, so read this quickly and learn something about this ultra-fantastic breed:
http://www.appaloosa.com/association/history.htm
When you’re a bona fide, professional, certified, representated, famous or budding-famous artist, you’re not supposed to draw from a photo unless you took the photo or have the photog’s permission. Several years ago that Obama-poster artist got in trouble with the photographer for doing like a poster of the other guy’s photo. They frown on that, and stick it to you when they catch you. We’ve had several badge-animals drawn by 33-year old artist Andrew Denman, whose work I discovered 17 years ago when he was 16 and his art was in the dentist’s office I attended. I traced him down from that. He had to find some real Appaloosas, so did, here in northern California. Andrew went there, a few hours drive, took the pix, and drew from them. All Appaloosas have spotted lips. Many have spotted rumps and backs and sides too, but all have spotted lips.
OUR JOE APPALOOSA is half-Sam Hillborne, half-Hunqapillar that’s bullseyed for loaded road touring. Once you can do that with a bike you can do a whole lot underneath it, too: Commute, day ride, shop, explore fire trails. The Joe is an allarounder bike.
It’s not for stunts, boulder-bouncing, or loaded expeditionary off-road touring, but as a trail bike for sober non-yahoos who weigh less than 215lb, it’s ideal, perfect.. That 215lb isn’t a scientifically-derived number, just a hipshot suggestion based on the Joe having a heavier fork than Sam’s and lighter one than Hunqapillar’s.
The Joe is a killer touring bike that easily handles fire trails, though.
It fits a 50mm tire with fenders, which is a bigger tire than most mid-‘80s mountain bikes fit. In those days a 50mm tire (2-inches) defined mountain bikes. But in those days most bikes were purpose-built one-trick ponies. Our bikes have always been crossed boundary lines, and the Joe Appaloosa is one of those. It comes with tires marked 45mm (measure around 40mm). It’s good with tires as small as 35mm and as fat as 50mm (with a fender). A fender Whisperer can make it work with a 53mm tire, but if you need to ride fatter than 50mm, you must be riding in dirt, and if you’re riding dirt in the rain, fenders will just jam up with mud, anyway, so … what's going on upstairs, there?
Proof of long chainstays. Even with a 71.5 seat tube angle and fenders on this 53mm tire, a squozen fist fits.
HANDLEBAR. The Choco-Moose is a lot like the Albatross bar, but flatter, upside down (they drop an inch instead of rising two inches), and the grip comes back more. The rise of the extension makes up for the fact that the bar itself drops, and the slight drop gives it an ergonomic edge. The long grip lets you put your hands behind or in front of the brake levers, and there’s also a fists-together position front-and-middle, adding up to a handlebar that has as many hand-positions as a drop bar, with all of them comfortable & usable.
Attn: The bar on this bike is the regular Choco, not the Moosey.
The long wheelbase makes any downhill better, because setting the wheels farther apart by a few inches makes it less resistant to wiggling with the bumps. Cornering depends so much on technique, tires, and judgement. Riding on smooth pavement, it’s as nimble and maneuverable as you could ever want. High-trail, low-trail, medium trail—all those theoretical, intellectual, hand-wringing concerns fly out the door when you get off the laptop and ride this bike. The Joe Appaloosa rides like a Rivendell.
Olivier did the decals. The joe is my daughter’s handwriting last year, when she was only 26. The things down the middle are horse shoes.
Compared to mainstream bikes, the whole Joe is a quirk, but here are some bulleted ones—
• The frame is CrMo steel, with SILVER brand tubes—our own. It is fully lugged, again, with our own lugs.
• The crown is a new beaut, internally known as No. 6, and it’s a new look for us. I’ve always liked the old Raleigh crowns, probably made from factory floor scrap (but in a good way), and new No. 6 has a vague nod to those, plus influences from more modern mountain bike crowns also made from tubular steel, likely also scrap from the floor but no worse for it. This one’s more expensive to make than those, since it’s investment-cast, then brazed. According to our caster, it’s the hardest-to-cast crown they’ve ever made, which should NOT add to its appeal, but at least proves that we didn’t de-detail it to save money or to make anybody happy, if that counts, which it shouldn’t.
The crown is the new RC-06. The bolts on top fit a Tubus rear rack and some of the NITTO racks (a new one coming in Spring ‘16), and even without a rack, no problem, still looks good.
• Although there’d be no way of telling this by looking, the Joe Appaloosa blades are a new dimension, made for us, and simultaneously both dreadfully bland, normal, non-experimental…and unique in all the world. Specifically, the upper portion’s walls are 1.1mm thick, which you won’t notice, but it may be the only bike in America with those blades. The lower fork blades taper to 12.5mm, skinny by any standards. It would be easy to say curved skinny fork blades increase shock absorption, because we know they’d do that if they were rubber or thin, springy wood. BUT they are steel, and steel doesn’t flex that much, does it? There’s disagreement in the ranks here about that. I can see how it might, but I’m not convinced, so I’ll err on the side of Hurting Sales and say: Nope. (You should rely on technique and big soft tires for shock absorption.)
Fork blades were made to spec, and the numbers might not mean anything to you, but the all of our fork blades begin as 24mm diameter tubes. In Sam’s case, the thick-end walls are 1.0mm, and the thin-end walls are 0.6mm. The same numbers for the Hunqa are 1.2 and 0.9. For Joe here, 1.1 x 0,8…and then the blades are swaged down, and the 0.8 grows thicker. We specified a skinny 12.5mm outer diameter for the bottom end. Our two-eye dropouts make it easy to mount racks and fenders.
• (Last Quirk): Joe has a threaded headset and a quill stem—both of which make so much more sense for the rider, but are a hassle for manufacturers. Are they “quirky”? In 2016, yes.
Bringing it all back home—
The Joe Appaloosa is clearly our bike in every way, and reflects our historical, current, and future tastes, and our most recent revelations and fetishes. It has no fragility or fussiness, and no market-driven-but-unnecessary complication. Every part of the frame and every part is solid, proven, and trouble-free, ready for decades of loaded road touring, commuting, fire trail riding, and all-purpose unracing.
The photos show how the bike will look, basically. Lots of the parts are minorly different but visually about the same.
Frame: Our design, lugs, dropouts, and SILVER tubing.
Fork: Our design, crown, dropouts, and SILVER tubing with 12.5mm ends.
Headset: FSA sealed, threaded, we’ve used lots of ‘em.
Stem/Bars: NITTO-for-us CHOCO-MOOSE.
Shifters: Same as CLEM’s—SunRace non-indexed thumbies, work great, look great.
Brake lever: TEKTRO for V-brakes
Seat post: Taiwanese 26.8 aluminum, good one.
Saddle: Taiwanese, like CLEM’s. Good shape.
Front Der: Shimano Claris
Crank: Silver triple: 43 x 35 x 24
Wheels: SILVER hubs, Alex rims (excellent), and 45mm Kenda tires. They’re good.
Pedal: VP something or other, good.
Spokes: Butted stainless with colored nipples
Kickstand: Yes, some practical adjustable Taiwan model.
We are so happy with the Joe. It’s such a great bike, the perfect split between Sam road and Hunqa mountain. If you’re local and can fit a 55, come by and ride it.
Questions you might have—
If it’s “half Sam, half Hunqa,” howzit different than an Atlantis?
Boy, that’s a good, tough question and the only way to answer it is with facts, so here they are:
• Atlantis has a thicker/heavier duty fork. Even though we call the Atlantis a road-touring bike, too, the heavier fork make it a heavier duty bike. Good for an extra 60lbs or so.
Is Joe compatible with drop bars?
Of course! But the Choco-Moose is a multi-hand position bar that’s more comfortable for most people and it extra width gives you more control over a loaded bike.
And if you want the Joe with any other brake lever/shifter/handlebar rig, we can do that for the cost of parts plus $70 labor. We’ll ship you the original parts to you in a separate box, and you can certainly sell them on the Riv Forum or somewhere. But try the original bars first—they are spectacular.
Can I get it with fenders or racks or both?
Yes. We’ll install them for –$55 for fenders, and $25 per rack. Or you can put them on yourself—not hard–and we’ll ship them separately, because they won’t fit in the box. There’s an hourglass rack boss on the lower seat stays, a couple of inches above the rear dropout. Mount a Nitto Medium rear rack to that, and then the fender to either of the dropout eyelets. The upper eyelet is usually for racks, but it’s available for fenders when the rack mounts to this other boss. Non-NITTO racks may fit fine on the upper dropout eyelet. In any case, racks are easy, no matter which rack.
Assembly: Ordinarily we unbox the bike, reinstall the stuff the assembler had to take off to fit it into the box, check all tightenesses, etc, and give it a thorough going-over and test ride. It takes an hour and we do it for no charge. Then we rebox it (takes 90 minutes) in our own box, and off it goes to you.
Can I get a frameset only?
Yes, but not until mid-Spring (there’s no Pre-sale).. Anyway, with a complete bike price of $2400, you’d have to either be bad at math or already own lots of ideal part to want to build it from scratch.
Check again in April, when we’ll have a few in each size available; and again in late Summer, when our second mini-stampede of them arrives. But consider buying a complete Joe, then undoing what you want to change. With the money you save, you can get the other parts.
Can you switch any parts on it?
Yes, any…but since we buy it complete in Taiwan, we get better prices on the parts, and that’s why the price is so low. Once we start taking parts off, putting new ones on, the cost climbs. Since you’re already starting with a low price—at least $400 lower than it would cost you to build it from scratch—you’ve got that money to spend. Even if the Joe ends up at $3,200—take a look around and see what else that will buy you, and you’ll see what a deal the $2,400 Joe is.
We’re calling the color shown here, Dark Mustard, but it responds to brown, butterscotch, or Pantone 132C, too. The other color is a creamy blue with a hint of green. A really beautiful, soft, nice color as well.
Remember, this is the plain Choco bar. It’ll come with the triangulated, stem-bar integrated Choco-Moose (as in Bullmoose) version.
AVAILABILITY: We’re getting about 15 of each size & color—that’s all we can afford to get at one time. They’re being well-received….we will definitely run out of 55′s before they arrive, and maybe 58s and 51s, too. If you want one, reserve yours here. A $2400 (full price down) deposit reserves one for you.
Roman’s new at taking pictures here, and …. good job, Roman.
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