Me after Meeting John Drake.

I realize I’m standing with a craftsman of the art. Discussing the structure of a masterpiece. It’s a bike that has been created for me. John’s now standing on the sidelines. All his intimidating stores of knowledge are subordinate to first-principles thinking. John whirls his hand around. “Get on the bike and ride,” he says. I turn the bike around, slip on my helmet, step over the bike, clip in, and start up the drive. At that moment, in that minute portion of time, I have not left John’s drive. It’s as if I were a pianist who until this point in time had been playing with one hand. I never could have imagined how profound, how astonishing a difference this bike could make. It’s as if I had changed a solid to a liquid. Every bike before this one was a placeholder—provisional. I go out and ride 35 miles. This is where the razzle-dazzle comes in.

With the frame and powertrain dials set to the heart of the sun.

On the road I warm up, riding a fast cadence, not laying down the power. The bike is super smooth. Later, doing a bunch of short climbs, it has excellent power transfer and quick accelerations. I bomb the crap out of the descents with on-the-rail handling. I mean like nothing I’ve ever ridden. In the drops on a 10 percent. Nose of the saddle seems a little high. Remembering John’s direction that the bike has been built around me and now it’s my job to adjust to the bike, I don’t touch the saddle.

I ride closer to flat (about 3 degrees above zero) as opposed to on my toes and for the most part pedal in circles (kids, ask your parents) with 360 degree of equal and “feathered” pressure

(old school, with too many hours of one-legged drills on the rollers). On the furthermost point of the stroke, there’s no movement of the pelvis. I’m riding fast with less effort. The bike is quick to respond, reacting to bends, agility, and frequent speed variations. I lower my face, pacing myself, and reach down, grab a bottle, and slip past a farmhouse and a water tower poised like a lookout over the fields.

Feel the force.

The bike’s geometry, rolling resistance, drivetrain efficiency, and on-the-rail control seem otherworldly. It’s fast to get going and easy to lift the pace, and on climbs I can stay in the saddle longer, with the saddle feeling perfect now. As I power down through the stroke, I can tell how much quicker this bike is to get going than my past bikes. John has bled the SRAM’s hydraulic brakes so they have a superb feel to them, on par with a top-notch set of road caliper brakes, but with more power and excellent modulation. All of this is allowing me to really enjoy what the bike has to offer. It has tons of velocity and a silky ride. No lateral torsion. It has an extra sturdiness, and I suspect this is helped by how quiet the bike is. It is like entering a library. All noise hushed. It’s consistently calming and quite unique, since the majority of bikes I’ve ridden have had real trouble achieving this kind of poise. The steering of the bike is neutral. Setting up for a corner, the bike is quick to lean over, and it’s easy to change direction. This bike just glides and swells with refinements. It’s biblical. It’s poetic. It’s amazing. “Amazing”—I say that last word over and over again, and it goes around in my head the way snatches of a song might.

Finally, an end to the dreaded bicycle consumerism that can drive one to the brink of madness.

John Drake rarely draws attention to himself, but his sense of structure, detail, and engineering is so refined that his presence is felt in every bike he crafts. He’s intense and often solitary. He speaks slowly and precisely, pausing to savor a word or term that he clearly enjoys. On each day of our conversation, he went out for a 20-mile ride (or longer) on one of his bikes—which he has taken an obsessive interest in for 40 years. You know someone’s an expert at something when you can watch them do their thing and they don’t give a damn about you, because they’re so absorbed. John Drake is so confident about what he does that he’s not at all consumed with self-consciousness. And over the years this preoccupation has created a parade of enviable bicycles. Getting a bike from John is typically an intense immersion in a subject. The subject being you. And he doesn’t take a gentle swing at the subject. He has zillions of thoughts about any one bicycle. They stream by like neutrons, and he plucks from this stream all the right stuff to meet a particular cyclist’s needs. And yes, he roasts his own beans. And don’t play backgammon with him for money, because he kills it.

Sure, some high-end heritage brands throw down hard against the custom-built bike, but really!?

A bike is an incredible array of stuff. Working with John, watching this bike grow slowly, I think, why wouldn’t I want the shoe made just for me? Why would I want a bike that’s pretty good when I can have a bike that’s very, very good? Buying a heritage brand, a bike already constructed, is looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope. John Drake’s history is interesting. It’s impossible not to get caught up with him. He could write 10,000 words not on a thru-axle, but on the bearings in a thru-axle. At the beginning you’re a blank slate. You’re the whole enterprise. With patience, absolute patience, he explores your riding style, sorting through the matrix of material; it might be analogous to cooking a dinner. You have an ideal collection of material, and there’s a renowned chef making a terrific meal for you.