Can a single bike be capable of performing everywhere, across varied terrain? American company Ritchey, founded by legendary framebuilder and designer Tom Ritchey, thinks so. The Ritchey Septimer was designed to be a bike collection in a single frame. It’s a bike that is comfortable on road and gravel, and, as a bonus, can be disassembled for travel, utilising Ritchey’s relatively user-friendly Breakaway system. Tom Ritchey was one of the early innovators of mountain biking, and the Septimer was created to match his vision of an everyday, go anywhere bicycle. In his own words, it’s “basically a big tyre road bike.”
One single, do-everything bike may seem like anathema to the N+1 culture that so many cyclists embrace, but depending on where you live, a single capable bike with multiple wheel and tyre options can provide a compelling alternative. Does anyone really need multiple bikes?
