Speedvagen Fitting Tours are a chance for the Vanilla Workshop team to meet new friends, ride great roads, and share their bikes with those of you who have mostly seen them through the web. Most importantly, future Speedvagen owners get a full custom fit session with founder Sacha White.
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"For a race machine to ride right, it has to be weighted right."
There are a lot of fitting options out there and the trend is toward the upright and conservative fit. We feel strongly that for a Speedvagen to ride like a great race machine, our customers need to be properly balanced on the bike and in a position where back and stomach muscles are supporting the weight of their upper body, their arms are freed up to move with the bike/soak up shock and the muscles in the lower body are activated, firing and fast. These principles apply to a spry young racer as well as a any seasoned rider with lots of miles and years under their belt. Like with our frames, our fitting is different than anything else out there. That’s why we’re traveling the world to make it happen.
http://www.thevanillaworkshop.com/fitting-tours/
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For this scouting trip Sacha and Gordon are traveling in Europe to host a few events and showcase a few new Speedvagen custom bikes. They are planning to come back in August/September for the 2017 Europe Fitting Tour to host fittings, more events and demos. The itinerary:
For the first time ever, L'Eroica is opening its doors to modern bikes. As a featured builder, Sacha White will be speaking on Saturday afternoon and we will have several bikes on display in the gallery.
May 2 (8:00PM) “Built to be Ridden - an evening with founder Sacha White” Join us Tuesday night as founder Sacha White discuss what makes a Speedvagen different than any other bike out there. RSVP
May 3 (9:00AM) Group Ride Starting the day off with a non-drop 50km morning group from the Rapha Clubhouse. Sign up
(6:00PM) Speedvagen Q+A Curious about how lightweight steel really is? Or how many hours it takes to make a custom bike? Or how fit plays a role in the design? Join us Friday night as founder Sacha White fields any questions you may have about all things Speedvagen! RSVP
Join us Sunday afternoon for a two hour non-drop group from the Rapha Copehagen Clubhouse followed by a Speedvagen Fit Clinic with Sacha White. The Fit Clinic is our way of sharing Speedvagen fitting philosophies with the cycling communities that we visit.
Join Speedvagen owner/former pro Christian Meier and Sacha as they discuss custom steel race machines on Monday night
May 9 (9:00AM) Group Ride & Fit Clinic
Join us Tuesday morning for a non-drop group leaving from La Fabrica followed by a Speedvagen Fit Clinic with Sacha White. The Fit Clinic is our way of sharing Speedvagen fitting philosophies with the cycling communities that we visit.
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More about The Vanilla Workshop & Speedvagen
Sacha White started making frames in 1999 under the Vanilla name. By 2003, the bikes had gained a sort of cult following and White came up against two problems: 1) the waitlist for a Vanilla had grown to 5 years and 2) because of the long wait, many owners weren’t riding their bikes the way they were meant to be ridden.
Being a racer and ex-messenger himself White, while he loved to build something that was very fine, had no interest in building a bike that was going to hang on a wall. Born in 2006, Speedvagen was created as an answer to the stigma of long waitlist and perceived preciousness of Vanilla.
At it’s core, Speedvagen is a minimalist, modern race machine, built for each individual owner with a turn around time of 2 weeks to 2 months, depending on the details. All design, fabrication, paint and buildout is done in-house in the Portland, Oregon workshop.
