For the first riding season since 1980, my custom Assenmacher is not ready to ride. After 44 seasons and just over 50,000 miles, in late 2023, the 20 year-old combination of derailleurs, freewheels and bar end shifters that made up the drive train were all in need of replacement, and it was no longer fun to ride in it’s current state. I took it down to a bare frame, now hanging in my garage. It still needs a good clean up, but I don’t yet have plan for how it returns to rideable.
It has been an incredible bike. While the coast-to-coast ride I had envisioned when planing and purchasing my dream touring bike never materialized, it did dozens of shorter trips and overnights. At times it was stripped of fenders racks and was my only fast bike. I have ridden at almost every event distance, up to a double-century on Seattle to Portland. It even became my long commuter for a few years, fenders and racks perfect for that, when I had indoor parking. Once I had a regular sport bike, whenever I wanted to ride with my various SLR and later digital cameras, the Assenmacher, with an Eclipse handlebar bag, was was my goto bike for rides looking for the next Kodak moment.
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| Let's go find a sunset! |
I ordered the frame during the summer of 1979, talking directly to Matt Assenmacher at his first shop in Swartz Creek, Michigan. I first heard about Matt in 1975 on the DALMAC overnight in Mt. Pleasant where he was working out of a bike shop. His frames had already begun popping on rides around Michigan. With their classic British paint schemes and bold white lettering on the down tube, they were easy to spot. When I moved to Lansing in the fall of 1978, his frames were very popular there, and my new circle of riding friends soon included a handful of Assenmacher bikes.
By then I was going on 5 seasons on my current touring road frame, and I was getting the itch for a true touring bike. The idea of a custom bike was very appealing, especially for my future touring plans, up to and including crossing the U.S. One of the draws of a custom built touring bikes was the option of adding custom braze-ons or “bits”. On most of the production bike frames of the mid-70’s, almost every thing that that went on a bike frame: the shift levers, cable stops, housing guides, and water bottles, were mounted using wrap-around clamps. And no matter how well the clamp was made, or even if they were coated with rubber or plastic, the assortment of clamps were distracting to look at and eventually damaged the bike’s finish.
So along with a frame geometry intended for touring, you ordered a bike with all the bits you thought you needed. My Assenmacher started out with 3 sets of bottle cages on the down tube, top tube brake housing guides, and cable stops and guides for the front and rear derailleur cables. I also added rack mounts on the seat stays, and double eyelets on the front and rear for fenders and racks. So that was 20 “bits” brazed on to the frame, when I took delivery in January of 1980. I had the frame repainted 10 years later, and made few more changes based on what I had learned. I switched from side-pulls to cantilever brakes, and the new (late 80`s) low rider front racks. That added 7 more bits. And that is the bike I rode for the next 33 years.
With regard to the drive train, it was originally built with a Sun Tour 6-speed rear freewheel, and triple TA crankset. It was an arrangement called “half step and granny” with two the largest front chainrings just 6 teeth different, and dropping down to a 28 tooth inside ring, “the Granny”. The freewheeling was 14 to 28. A few years later, Sun Tour added a 7th cog, and largest (lowest gear) a 34. But without the frame being updated to allow wider, modern hubs, 7 was the most cogs that would fit. And for the last 20 years, that only worked with a 8-speed shifter that had one unused click. That was the arrangement I assembled in the early 2000’s, for use on my Assenmacher and our 1985 Santana tandem.
As fate would have it, the summer I planned the purchase of my dream touring bike, I met a girl. That girl became my wife, and after that, almost all of our touring was on a tandem. Linda and I had over 6,000 touring miles on our tandems during the `80’s, on trips throughout the midwest, Southern California, New England and the Canadian Rockies. As our two sons came along, tandems ruled the day for our riding with them. The Assenmacher was ridden during the week and a few weekend tours, but anything epic was on the tandem.
My last true tour on the Assenmacher was in 2014, riding from Columbia, Missouri to Covington, Indiana over 6 days, with the first 100 miles on the Katy Trail. While the Assenmacher was still great on the road, I knew that time was catching up with it. Its mid-70’s roots could not support more modern drivetrains. And while a sweet ride on pavement, the 700x28 based wheels weren’t suitable for any-surface, loaded touring, a point driven home by two flats in 10 miles on a rutted section of the crushed limestone Katy; and a few days later when had to choose a busy state highway over a more direct route with 8 miles of gravel.
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| Crossing into Indiana, 2014 |
By coincidence, Trek introduced their 920 Adventure touring bike that same summer, (I even read one of the first reviews on that trip on the Katy). With our boys now grown, and Linda’s interest more in weekend B&B rides rather than epic tandem tours, I was starting to have some time again for single bike touring. Since 2017, I’ve had a 920, now with over 1,500 miles of touring trips and thousand more of commuting and round town, and even as my camera bike.
Thought I didn’t realize it at the time, my last ride (for now?) on the Assenmacher was when a high school friend and I connected for a ride from my home. He was on a current carbon frame, while I kept pace on the steel frame of another era. We rolled back the years since we had last run cross country together to the buzz of Conti’s on pavement. And as always the Assenmacher was just an extension of me, following my lead without a thought. It was a good ride to end on.
Every time I talk about a new bike, Linda reminds me of a letter I wrote early in our relationship stating the Assenmacher was “the last bike I ever needed.” (I am sure I would have qualified that with “last hand-built, Columbus tubed, custom touring bike”!) Obviously, it wasn’t the last bike, but through all the bikes I’ve owned and ridden since, it was the one constant. Though my first dream bike won’t make the trip I imagined at the time, the hours and miles on that bike are an irreplaceable part of my ride so far.
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