Our final ride of the year, this brand new loop takes advantage of lots of recent paving as well as the fall colors, which should be in full bloom on ride day. We’ll have 45 and 62 mile loops.

The 62 milers will be heading out to the southern Kettle Moraine district to La Grange. County highway D has been freshly repaved and the rumble strips at Highway 120 have been redesigned to let cyclists through. The La Grange store caters to cyclists with snack food, espresso and other beverages. We’ll head back on scenic county LO to Mukwanago.

The 45 milers cut off early but still get plenty of fresh pavement, fall colors and terrific scenery.

Factory tours are available at 8:00 AM. Instructions and group photo are at 8:45 and we roll at 9:00 AM. We’ll be serving lunch and refreshments from 11:30 to 1:30.

There’s no charge for the ride, but helmets and a signed ride waiver are required. Help us plan enough food by filling in the form below. See you Saturday!

“Can you please leave off the decals? I don’t want anyone to steal my bike.” It’s a special request we receive surprisingly often – mostly from people who live in the big city. Many people shun ostentatious displays of wealth to avoid being targeted by thieves. For cars and homes, this makes sense. For bikes, it doesn’t work that way. Here’s a case that shows why Waterford decals on your bike actually helps foil, not encourage thieves:

About 15 years ago, Diane E. of Milwaukee purchased her Waterford and over the past decade and a half enjoyed many fine rides on the bike. A few weeks ago, she went into here garage for a ride, to only to find it gone – stolen!

She called her good friend and Milwaukee bike luminary Russell Jobs, who put out an call to the local shops. Lo and behold, within a few days, a young man walks into some local shop with a brown Waterford looking to swap out some pedals. The mechanic got suspicious because 1) the young man didn’t know what he had, 2) there had been an alert about a stolen Waterford, and 3) why would you put platform pedals on a Waterford anyway?

The young man was confronted, photographed, and ultimately arrested. The bike was recovered without damage. Diane’s back to enjoying her Waterford.

Just imagine how much harder it would have been to say, “Be on the lookout for a brown unmarked bike.” How much less suspicious would it be for someone to be working on an unmarked bike?

In talking to cops, most bike thieves don’t know a thing about bikes. If they do, they prefer a generic bike like a Huffy, not a bike that someone is going to care about. Unlike cars, there aren’t bike “chop shops”. It’s not worth the labor to tear a bike down for parts – even good parts. Trying to fence a 1997 Shimano Ultegra rear derailleur is just too much work, let alone fencing a 1997 Waterford (for which we keep serial number records).

So, keep our name on your bike – it’s better protection. Of course, the name comes with its obligations. You’ll have people asking you to brag about your bike. Tough duty.

Last week we were paid a visit by Bill Wischer, who, through the cool bikes and photos he showed us, opened us up to a whole new world of Milwaukee-based racing and bike building. The race scene centered around builder Grover Horn.

Grover was a promoter who ran the South Milwaukee Motor Speedway during the late 20′s and into the Great Depression. By 1934, he was promoting midget car racing at what became the Milwaukee Mile. In 1936, he caught the bicycling fever, starting his shop on the northwest side of Milwaukee, around the corner from Ware’s old shop (Ware’s subsequently moved to West Allis).

Unlike many framebuilders, Grover never lost his promotional touch. In the late 30′s, he organized the dominant race team in the city with 75 members.

Among the members were Bob Wischer and his wife to be, Dolly Becker, shown her on a trip to the races in Buffalo, NY. Both of them won state championships (Dolly was the Wisconsin State Champ 1937-39) and competed nationally. Grover’s framebuilding and bike racing program continued until World War II, which halted all bike racing. Though he may have tried to crank up his team and building after the war, bike racing fell into decline. He passed away in 1956.

Dolly Wischer is still alive and taking the time to maintain some of this history. Here’s a link to a numbers of photos of her bike. The set includes photos of the track in Kenosha as well as at Chicago’s Humboldt Park.

Thanks again to Bill Wischer for this terrific piece of cycling history!

This bike went down in flames. Our client, a business person from Taiwan, saw some of our Flame Lug designs through the years and needed one to match his special fit requirements. The entire frame is built in stainless steel. Let’s walk through the build process:

As with all Waterfords, we collaborate with our dealers through four stages of design: function, fit, feel and finish. Once a work order is complete, the details are confirmed through the local shop. In this instance we worked with Modus Velo in Tai Chung. For this frame, we began work by crafting the lugs:

After crafting the lugs, we machined the frame materials. We then fixtured the frame for brazing. EJ is shown here brazing the head lugs.

Brazing stainless steel lugs to stainless steel tubes is one of the most challenging demonstrations in the art of frame building. The especially large size and ornate profile of the Flame lugs present demands to the builder as well. After brazing, the frame is cleaned in preparation for inspection:

Then it’s off to the polisher for a mirror finish. Here are some samples of the finished bike:

American Cyclery, a terrific shop in San Francisco, approached us about a customer of theirs, Tom Savarino, who has been suffering from number of leg and hip injuries, including losing part of his leg. In spite of this, Tom has remained an avid cyclist, tackling the hills of San Francisco between surgeries. One of the ways he coped with his situation was to move his cleat to the heel of his prosthesis:

This created obvious toe overlap problems. Instead starting to build a bike, we connected him up with Mark Laytham, Waterford dealer (Ballwin Cyclery in Ballwin, MO) and one of the most knowledgeable people around on prostheses. Mark walked Tom through modifications to his artificial limb. Now we could make a design really work. Tom sent us this photo from when he picked up his bike from American (shown with owner Brad Woehl):

“Sorry it took me so long to write. Thank you for all your help. I really love my new bike. . . . Also, I’ve accidentally turned into a roving ambassador for Waterford. More people
that you’d think (than I’d think) come up to me and ask me about my leg and my bike.
I gave up trying to lead a low key life while riding, so it’s no problem. i hope some
other amputee gets convinced that it’s possible.

best regards
ts”

May you have many happy miles on your new Waterford!

The project to update the web site started last summer but was put off because of philosophical issues with the model line. We decided instead to focus on our new order form, which has turned out to be quite successful for both dealers and riders.

So, for now, we decided to ignore the model line organization problem and forge on based on the philosophy behind the order form.