Sea levels are rising, the polar ice caps are melting. Climate change is just one more reason for Henri Lesewitz to ride a mountain bike instead of a car whenever possible. But do you really need a special bike to scrub up the kilometres? A custom-made report.
Trends wither like primroses. First they blossom into fashion. Then the next trend consigns them to the afterlife, where they rot on the compost heap of history. It's the same with clothing styles. With music styles. With technology anyway. Time kills everything. Just not real passion.
As far as I'm concerned, three things in my life have proved to be indestructible. The love of punk rock. The love of biking. And love as such.
It was exactly thirty years ago that I stood in "Radsport Paul" in the small town of Eilenburg near Leipzig and bought a mountain bike. It was the first possible time in my life that I was able to do so. The country I had grown up in, the German Democratic Republic, lay gasping on the ground. The new country, the reunified Federal Republic, had already been decided, but was still a future. A sweet mixture of Wild West and new beginnings lay over the grey, crumbling East. During the night, the GDR mark had already been exchanged for Deutschmarks. And now I was standing in this little cubbyhole of a shop at 9 a.m. sharp and bought the only mountain bike in the shop for a then unimaginable 1059 West German marks: a Winora Power Pro.
I was eighteen, a former squad cyclist, a punk. I had no idea what exactly you did on a mountain bike. But the bike looked radical as hell. And I sensed that it was the key to what I dreamed of after my childhood in the GDR's human enclosure at least as much as I dreamed of great love: freedom! Boundless, great, romantic freedom. Just like in the adventure books. The Winora with its all-terrain tyres and 21 gears seemed perfect. I'll never forget the moment when, minutes after buying it, I turned off the road onto a forest path for a test ride and the gravel crunched softly under the tyres.
Today I am forty-eight, a father of two, married, working full-time and have supplementary dental insurance. A lot has changed. The world. The fashion. Even biking. The evolution over the last 30 years has been so rapid that even the simple question is almost impossible to answer: What exactly is mountain biking? You could just as easily ask what music is. In view of all the different branches and subtypes, a clear definition is virtually impossible.
Nevertheless, for me I could characterise the essence of biking with a single word: Freedom. You ride from A to B with the power of a banana. Gravel track, single trail, dirt track? Mountains, heathland, desert? It doesn't matter at all. A bike should do everything and never be a pain, which is why I still prefer hardtails despite all the proud, beautiful, comfortable enduro fullys. The more complicated technology is, the more diva it usually is.
I met Michael Manck in the Czech Republic Single trail paradise Nové Město pod Smrkem. I had noticed his bright pink painted steel bike with the name Patria stood. "Patria, wasn't that the brand that suburban bikers like to ride?" I thought to myself. As it turned out, Michael was a developer at Patria. He had welded the fully himself. Freestyle, just for himself. We got talking. He told us about Patria's customised frames, which are created on the basis of elaborate customer measurements; about the possibility of counteracting complaints such as knee problems with a special geometry.
I listened spellbound, because for years I had occasionally been plagued by knee pain on long journeys. Not on short long distances of less than 100 kilometres. But on real, tough endurance tests like the infamous Salzkammer Trophywhere you push 211 kilometres and more than 7000 metres of altitude in one go into your legs. What Michael told me sounded exciting. Because the idea of building an uncompromising, maximum-duty kilometre racer had been nested in my head for some time. A bike for everyday tours and bikepacking adventures. No frills, no bells and whistles. A bike like a punk rock song. Forged from pure, unbridled passion, no matter what fashion the market dictates. The only question was: A Patria? Lugged steel, trekking biker image. Really now?
I'm pretty familiar with custom forges. The stars of the frame building scene are Wiesmann, Firefly, SingleBe, DeKerf and Co. The Bielefeld-based manufacturer Patria works completely under the radar as far as mountain bikes are concerned. It specialises in touring bikes. The main clientele are well-heeled leisure cyclists with an eco-touch. The forge has existed since 1898 and the family business is now run by the third generation. To ensure that the bikes fit perfectly, customers who are interested in a customised frame are measured for almost an hour on the specially designed "Velochecker". After I had tried out various geometry variants under interval conditions, Michael noted down the values. He asked me several times in the following weeks to get involved with the geometry. It would be completely different from any I had ridden before, he announced.
"You tend to be a sitting giant. Your thighs are quite short in relation to your upper body. You need very long frames with steep seat tube angles and short cranks," he summarises. Giant seat? I felt queasy.
After months of waiting, finally. First photos by e-mail, showing the unfinished soldered frame. Including Michael's question about the desired colour for the powder coating. All RAL colours were possible, but not multi-coloured designs. I tried it anyway. I wrote to Michael asking whether it might be possible to achieve a wilder look. His reply: "OK, I can try something. But this is really only for you. You can't order it like this. A bit dirty, nothing neatly masked, a lot left to chance, Pegoretti style."
Dario Pegoretti! The frame-building artist, who sadly passed away far too soon, who made each of his racing frames unique with a paintbrush! I could feel the flames of enthusiasm crackling under my skull.
Weeks went by. Then the frame finally arrived. I was thrilled, but couldn't shake off a certain scepticism. The paintwork was great. Fresh slate grey, stripes on it and the lettering: "Call it Punk!" Which is a great fit for the project, because punk essentially means breaking established structures and rules. I also found the sockets, which seemed to come from another century and seem like sheer irony of the carbon age, cool precisely because of this rejection of fashion. The frame was relatively heavy, weighing two and a half kilos. But above all, it seemed extremely long. Too long somehow. I decided to try it out first with parts from my marathon bike.
I cranked off. Amazing. The Patria fitted like a glove. The power transmission was perfect. In combination with the 170 mm cranks, the riding position took noticeable pressure off my knees. And although the frame was almost five centimetres longer than my usual marathon bike, I sat comfortably. How could that be? The answer: the steep seat angle, which allows for more efficient pedalling, meant that I was sitting further forward above the bottom bracket. The longer top tube didn't make the riding position more stretched out, but compensated for the forward lean.
Just a few days later, I was already cranking out a 140-kilometre mountain bike tour. Knee pain, shoulder tension: none. Then it was time to optimise the equipment. Weeks later, the gravel racer was ready. My interpretation of a punk-rock, fashion-resistant Gavel mountain bike. A bike made for discovering the world. There are so many beautiful kilometres on this planet. It would be a shame to miss even one of them just because you were pointlessly chasing a trend or a fashion.
Gravel mountain biking in BIKE 11/2020 - available now
Are you interested? In our gravel special "On the gentle tour" in BIKE 11/2020 you can read, among other things, what Henri Lesewitz experienced with the Patria at the Orbit 360 gravel challenge. There are also tips on technique and tours and - particularly exciting - a gravel concept comparison between a lightweight race hardtail, a classic gravel bike and two very exotic approaches. You'll be amazed!
Picture gallery: "Call it Punk!" patria by Henri Lesewitz
