Suvi Loponen, Brad Sauber
Last week, we covered some of the bikes from our annual Member Summit and looked at what our members brought to Takayama, Japan. But as mentioned there, the summit this year also brought most of the Escape Team together, and as such, it was time for many of us to ride together for the first time and bond over off-the-bike activities like karaoke, too.
The team ready to ride, and ready to head out to town in the snazzy tracksuits (if they look familiar, no reason).
Much like the members’, our little crew’s riding habits and bikes are a varied bunch (though, as you’ll see, there are a lot of Tarmacs here, too!).
Here are the bikes we rode, in our own words.
Andy van Bergen
At home I’ve got a beautiful Serk all-road bike running SRAM Red eTap with ENVE contact points. On paper it’s probably the more obvious bike to take on a trip like this, but once I started thinking about getting a bike through Japan by planes, trains and automobiles (literally), the old S-Works Tarmac suddenly made a lot more sense. I’ve done a bunch of Everestings on this thing, and have dragged it around the world more than once – so while it’s no longer the bike I instinctively reach for at home, it has become the favourite child as a travel companion. It’s lighter than the Serk, has friendlier gearing for the Japanese Alps, and I absolutely love descending on it. But about those rim brakes…
I should probably qualify that I’ve been very much Team Disc for a long time. I was fortunate enough to be among the first people testing road discs way back in 2013 and stuck with them through those heady early days when – depending on who you listened to – pelotons were mere moments away from being sliced to death by rotors or riders were going to immolate themselves on these red-hot spinning discs of doom. I still think discs are better for most things. But for compact travel? I’ll happily admit rim brakes are brilliant here. No hoses to kink, no rotors to bend, no worrying about whether something had been knocked badly enough to need a bleed at the other end. And, slightly annoyingly for someone who has spent more than a decade defending disc brakes, they are also totally capable for everything Japan threw at us.
The other half of the equation was the Post Carry Co Transfer Case. It does require removing the fork, but results in being able to pack the whole bike into something comically compact. During our mass repacking in Takayama a few members kept looking at the bike, then looking at the case, and asking some bemused version of “How are you fitting that whole thing in there?” Once packed, I could easily wheel it through stations (I walked 18mins between platforms at a heaving Tokyo Central!), pop it onto my back when things got awkward, and generally move through Japan without feeling like I was dragging a wardrobe behind me. When I checked it in for the flight, I was even given the option of sending it through as a normal bag or as oversized luggage. Inside was a pretty straightforward mix of proven bits: Ultegra Di2, Dura-Ace wheels and a Specialized Power saddle. Nothing particularly exotic, just a bike I know intimately, built from parts I trust, that packs super small, climbs incredibly, and feels like a natural extension of me on the descents. It also gets bonus points for being able to source replacement parts on the cheap these days. It’s literally an oldie, but a goodie.
Caley Fretz
The build on my Mosaic travel bike hasn’t changed much since about 2018. It’s not the fastest, particularly compared to modern aero bikes (it was a lot closer to a race bike when it was built), but I love it.
I’ve written about this bike previously, including the story behind 2.0 vs 1.0. In short, 1.0 was stolen; 2.0 is nearly identical, with a few small tweaks. Both 1.0 and 2.0 were built around a couple core philosophies, the most important of which is simplicity. No discs, no hydraulics, no electronics. Rim brakes, tubed tires. Nothing likely to break in transit or require unusual parts or tools. I can both take apart and build the whole thing with three hex wrenches (4, 5, and 8) and the S&S tool, which is just a lockring tool.
The SRAM Red 22 I put on it nearly a decade ago is still going strong and provides enough range for most riding, though the 32-tooth cassette stretches the poor rear derailleur to its absolute limit. I wax the chain for cleanliness during packing. The old Quarq reads either 40 watts high or 40 watts low on any given day and I should really just take the battery out and forget about it. It has traditional-bend Ritchey bars, a 120 mm stem, and, for this trip, white bar tape. That’s definitely coming off. An old Tarmac direct mount fork and EE brakes, plus a high brake bridge out back, allow me to run 32 mm Vittoria Corsas without issue.
It all fits in a bag under the airlines’ oversize limit. It also lives in that bag most of the time when I’m not travelling, so it only gets ridden 15-20 times per year. At that rate, I figure it’ll last me at least another decade before I have to figure out who still sells a mechanical drivetrain.
Dave Rome
When I first heard the team was headed to Japan, I immediately knew I wanted to spend some extra time there. The thought of so much train travel between a few major cities soon sparked the idea of travelling with a smaller bike bag that doubled as my suitcase. And the planning spiralled from there.
A smaller bike bag (I bought an OruCase B2 MTB) meant choosing a bike I could pack more easily. In other words, a road bike without headset cable routing. Sure, I could have taken my rim-braked CAAD12, but soon enough I was dreaming up how to rebuild my Ritte Phantom steel frameset I’d relegated to a box over a year ago.
Built a few weeks before the trip and with easy travel in mind, some build highlights include the 1x drivetrain with a SRAM Eagle AXS derailleur (previously used on a hardtail build), a pair of new Zeno V2 brake couplers for easy handlebar and fork removal (review coming!), plus a secondary 27.2 mm seatpost clamp to confidently replicate the saddle height. Meanwhile, the build also brought in new Force E1 levers, a 46T chainring, a bottom bracket, a seatpost, and some fresh bartape.
I had planned to write more deeply about my build choices, single bag travelling experiences, and packing thoughts from this trip. I’ll try do that soon.
Chris Riekert
This is my Tarmac; there are many like it, but this one is mine.
I’ve ridden, or at least spent time on, every generation of Specialized Tarmac since the SL2, and they have virtually all felt like the benchmark to measure other brands against. They’re almost never the superlative, but they’re always so well considered as a complete package for ride quality, handling, and speed. If you’ve read a review of an SL8, I’m sure it falls in line with the ramblings of tech editors industry-wide.
This one, in the resplendent Demi Vollering “Everything Starts With Dreaming” livery, is par for the Tarmac course. It does nearly everything so well that you’d raise eyebrows if you said differently.
The build is pretty straightforward. It’s outfitted with SRAM Red eTap from tip to tail, with 48/35 chainrings and a 10-30 cassette. I dared to go with the larger 52/39 rings but was thwarted by a lack of fitness and the realization of a fading amateur bike-racing career. It rolls on ENVE SES 4.5 wheels and Conti GP5K STR tires. The cockpit is a stock Roval Rapide in 120 mm x 40 cm, and the saddle is a Fizik Vento Argo 00. Sprinkled over the top, like flaky salt on a steak, are oil-slick anodized titanium bolts from Better Bolts.
The total package weighs in under 20 lbs, I’m guessing, as I have never actually weighed it. And in a world full of group rides filled to the brim with SL8s, it still manages to turn heads.
Alex Hunt
Ah yes – my lovely purple SL8. As a tech writer, it isn’t all that often I get to spend much time on the bikes I call my own. In fact, any time spent on my Tarmac is mostly to serve as a comparison point to other bikes that I have for review. So when the details of the Japan trip landed in my inbox, I knew that ol’ faithful had to be the bike to come along.
I’ll admit, as far as road bikes go, there are some unusual quirks going on, but the SL8 has become my comfy slippers, a bike that I can swing a leg over and simply enjoy the act of turning the pedals.
Let’s start by getting the most unsightly part of the bike out of the way. Yes, that is an almighty chimney, and yes, those spacers are not all the same outer diameter. I’ll address the presence of the chimney altogether first, with the simple answer of flexibility: if I cut the steerer, that would be that, and I could only run the front in a slammed position. Leaving the steerer uncut allows me to change my bar height to replicate different riding positions and, if I’m honest, hopefully helps with resale value when the time comes to find it a new home to live out its years.
The mismatched spacers were a result of some of my spacers, and my multitool for that matter, not making it from London Heathrow to Tokyo Haneda airport; not sure why they disappeared, but I hope whoever has my 10 mm of spacers and a rusty Crank Bros multitool is sleeping happy.
Elsewhere on the bike, I decided to run the WolfTooth Alt SPD pedals. This is partly because I simply prefer mountain bike shoes and pedals, but also to allow for minor excursions into the undergrowth if I see something of interest.
One of the long-lasting items I reviewed and subsequently decided to keep on my bike is the Joyseat 3.0 saddle from Posedla. As far as 3D-printed saddles go, this one has been the best for me: comfortable, yes, but also the smoother external surface hasn’t taken to abrading its way through bib shorts like other 3D-printed saddles do.
After a few hundred kilometres through the Japanese Alps, it was nice to reacquaint myself with my SL8, like meeting a distant friend and remembering what it was that brought you together in the first place.
Iain Treloar
I had a travel bike already, but when this thing popped up on Facebook Marketplace early this year I was powerless to resist. Truth be told, I didn’t even need to twist my own arm that much – my Ritchey Outback Breakaway is a lot of bike for chunky stuff, but not great on the road, and when travelling I yearned for the simplicity and serviceability of rim brakes (with the caveat that I still wanted biggish tyres, ruling out a pure road bike). In short: a rim-brake CX bike with S&S couplers ticked plenty of boxes, and the small case makes life far easier in transit.
This bike came to me in an almost entirely different configuration, and I’ve been slowly dialling it in to my ideal with things mostly hiding around the garage, bought secondhand or swapped off my other bikes. The cockpit parts came first (including a shiny new Ritchey Butano, my perfect handlebar, wrapped in Burgh tape), followed by a SRAM Red crankset and some Hunt Sprint Aero Wide wheels from Facebook Marketplace. The King stainless steel cages were lying around in a drawer. The skewers are by Paul – a present from my wife about a decade ago – and are simply perfect. The Paul MiniMoto brakes are also magical, mostly, but my case took a knock in transit so by a convergence of a slightly out-of-true wheel and slightly bumped brake arm, one of them was squealing for most of the Takayama trip. Now I’ve put it together back home, it’s all perfect again. Mysteries.
At some point I’ll consider a Ratio 12s or eTap AXS conversion if any rim brake levers pop up, but for now the groupset is a mix of 11-speed Rival levers (gutted for 1x) and Force 1x rear derailleur from an old CX bike I had, the continued existence of which has since been justified with a dumb singlespeed conversion. This one has 11 gears, a 40t chainring and 11-42 at the back, which is fine 98% of the time and is a much higher strike rate than I manage myself.
Other things: a few months ago, I started waxing my chains, and reluctantly concede it is a good thing – and it’s lovely and clean for a travel bike. The pedals were snagged off a counter at my LBS, the saddle is an S-Works Mirror knock-off from the dark web, the seatpost is a Roval Terra, and the tyres are S-Works Mondos in 35 mm with TPU tubes inside. I’ve got clearance for much bigger at the front, but that’s almost as wide as I can squeeze between the chainstays, which is the only real downside this bike has (I’d really love the option of fitting 38s).
That’s the boring stuff, but how does it make me feel? I love it. From what I can work out, I’m the frameset’s fourth custodian and it’s at least 10 years old, but [Mr Rock Lobster himself] Paul Sadoff doesn’t keep old records or geometry drawings or tubing details, so its exact providence is really a bit of a mystery. Regardless, in this form it’s extremely close to perfect for what I need of it – not just as a travel bike, but as the first bike I reach for on any road-leaning ride, with a bit of zip and a geometry that makes sense for my crooked, inflexible spine.
The serendipity of a perfectly-fitting, custom-built frameset from Santa Cruz turning up on the other side of the world at exactly the time I needed it still kinda makes my head spin. But mostly, I’m just smitten with this lovely mongrel of a thing.
Jase de Puit
With the sort of riding we had planned for Japan there was no question that I wanted to be on my SL8 Tarmac for the trip. The positive vibes from my early review have only increased with time. I still love riding this bike, and the sort of rider it has helped me become.
Due to the hoses routing externally under the stem, I can remove the bars and put the bike in my original EVOC bike bag. The bag is a bit cumbersome, but manageable for travel. Inside, I’ve added the EVOC Bike Stand Pro for some structural rigidity.
During the Japan trip, the bike ticked over 20,000 km. Very little has changed since the original setup.
The Merida-branded bottle cages ejected a bottle early-on (admittedly, riding down a gravel descent), so they were promptly replaced with Tune Wasserträger cages. I’m on my third set of tyres, and the bar tape was replaced a few weeks ago. The same two original immersion-waxed chains are still rolling fine. I’m happily running TPU tubes full time, and I swap between the Knog light you see here and a Varia depending on if I’m riding in a bunch or solo.
The frame bag is an unusual addition, just for the trip. It’s borrowed from a mate and helped me carry some extra supplies as a ride leader during the trip. I didn’t really notice it until I took it off again once I arrived home.
Overall, I had a great time on the bike as expected. It was great for the long climbs, hanging on for dear life behind Ronan on descents and desperately trying to hold Alex’s wheel through the valleys.
Jack Duncan
Thinking that our in-house aero guru, Ronan Mc Laughlin, would show up ready to battle on every open stretch of road, I armed myself with the fastest test bike in my garage. I reviewed the new Soloist at the release back in July and have hung onto it, hoping to do some comparison reviews. Since the review, it has been my daily driver. Compared to the S5 I was riding previously, the Soloist feels more stable in high-speed handling, which I enjoy. I know the performance isn’t quite at the level of the S5, but feeling in control at speed is worth quite a bit for me.
Across a handful of bikes this year, I’ve been riding and racing on the road exclusively with SRAM AXS XPLR 1X13 drivetrains. I love the simplicity and never having to ease off the pedals as the chain ramps into the big ring. No front derailleur, no problems. I’ve been racing with either a 50T or 52T chainring, but was rightly intimidated by the mountains in Japan. 48T was the right call for Takayama.
I’m a late adopter of the radar rear lights. I got a Garmin Varia earlier this year and now struggle to ride without it. It’s like having my own little security guard on the back of my bike, whispering in my ear, “there’s a car coming.”
The saddle is a Wove M8, which works very well for me, but I hesitate to make a blanket recommendation. It promotes a very anteverted, aggressive position. If that’s your jam, it might be worth a shot.
As a stack height nerd for aero and low center of gravity reasons, Wahoo Speedplay Zero pedals are my go-to. The cleat setup is a bit cumbersome and clipping in is a different motion than any other pedal, but for me, the benefits outweigh the particularities.
Vittoria Corsa Pro tires are not the most durable. I typically get about half of the life out of them compared to a Continental GP5000 S TR. But the ride feel is my favorite. Even including the 370 km ride from Takayama to Tokyo that Ronan and I did after the Member Summit, I did not flat on the trip.
Matt de Neef
I wasn’t even sure I’d bring a bike to the Takayama Summit. Thanks to a frustrating back injury, I barely rode in the lead-up and it was looking like I wouldn’t ride at all in Japan. So when I eventually decided I would bring a bike, I knew I wanted the lightest option I had available to me. With so much climbing on the menu, and being at my most unfit in maybe 15 years, I didn’t want to be hauling any extra weight uphill that I didn’t need. I also didn’t want to be futzing around with disc brakes.
There’s nothing particular fancy about my 2014 Cannondale CAAD10. It’s got exposed cables, 11-speed mechanical Ultegra shifting, rim brakes, 25 mm tyres with tubes inside – it’s all decidedly old-school. And I’m totally OK with that. I’ve never felt the need to continuously chase the latest and greatest in bike tech and as long as the CAAD is fun to ride – which it definitely still is – then I’m happy. With a new drivetrain every so often, and a new set of wheels every few years, the CAAD10 still does everything I need it to do.
You might notice some odd component choices, like the Quad Lock out-front iPhone mount instead of a regular cycling computer mount. That’s still on there from the many rides I’ve spent exploring with Wandrer in recent years.
The Stages crank-based power meter is a legacy from a time when I was actually fit enough to chase personal power records and climbing PBs. And who knows where that old saddlebag is from. It holds the things I need, though, and much like the CAAD10 overall, that’s enough for me.
Suvi Loponen
I didn’t really have to think twice about which bike to bring to the summit; the obvious choice was my blue Cervelo Soloist. Unsurprisingly, my bike was probably the smallest at the summit, but perhaps more surprisingly, it was also one of the few lower-tier groupset bikes — an SRAM Rival E1 2x in this case. Not to mention, the cable routing at the front makes this bike so easy to pack into a bag, making it a great travel companion, too.
Some of you might now put two and two together; this bike came to me first to test out the then-new Rival groupset, and it has remained my test rig for plenty of other things since. Most recently, it’s been rolling on these new Zipp 202 NSW wheels, which are proper climbing wheels and were a brilliant fit for all the elevation we racked up at the summit.
Due to those elevation metres I’d seen before packing the bike, I also made a change to smaller chainrings. Having learned my lesson climbing Mont Ventoux only a couple of weeks before Japan, I wanted easier long-climb gears, and fitted 46/33T rings to pair with the 10-36T cassette. While the boys were pushing the big gears, I was very happy spinning away and never once regretted my choice.
I also refreshed the bar tape to Ergon All Road 2.5 mm. It grips well even in the wet, and has good cushion without feeling too thick. This one does have a slight blue tint to it too, which was unintentional, but kinda matches the bike, right? My saddle on this bike is the Specialized Power with Mirror — not quite my absolute favourite (that’d be the Power Mimic), but the shape is identical so I get on with it fine.
There’s very little else to say about this bike, other than that I love how it rides. It’s one of the nicest-riding small bikes I’ve been on, and I guess the fact that it’s not equipped with the flashiest things – yet still makes me so happy to ride it – makes me like it even more.
Wade Wallace 
This bike is perhaps the biggest luxury I own, and the only one I can’t hold back from bragging about. It sits in a suitcase for months at a time, and when I need to travel I just grab it and fly. No stressing about which bike to pack. Every time I ride it in some beautiful location, I think to myself: “I forgot a bike could feel this good.”
I affectionately call it the “Baumpton.” My mate Darren Baum made it for me in 2013, and it was meant to be my forever bike. At the time I was travelling a lot, and while I don’t mind lugging a full-sized bike box to the airport, it’s the trains and taxis that get tricky. Not with the Baumpton.
You’d think the S&S couplers would make it ride like a noodle. Not at all. I don’t know if it’s the titanium frame, the fit, the craftsmanship, or all three combined, but the only way I can describe it is that it rides like silk. Smooth, comfortable and rolls fast.
Over the years it’s turned into a bit of a frankenbike, purely for practicality. The second-generation Di2 shifting got swapped for wireless SRAM, because it’s so much easier to pack without cables running everywhere. The Ambrosio 32-spoke rims are indestructible. Even if a spoke breaks, they stay true. Tubeless wouldn’t work for me here: I ride it so infrequently that the sealant would dry up between rides, and I’d be topping it up or replacing tyres every time I took it out. And I wouldn’t trade the rim brakes for discs either. They’re still excellent on alloy rims (don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), and there’s no bent rotor or hose to bleed after the bike’s been taken apart and put back together. Sure, it’s not the latest and greatest bike in the stable, but the practicality of travelling with it and the ride quality beat that stuff hands down.
Ronan Mc Laughlin
Round tubes, big tyres, a frame bag…. Not what you were expecting, right? I did fear the members joining us in Japan might be more than a little disappointed to see me turn up without some fully optimised racing rig.
Truth be told, after a long season (in comparison to the past five years or so) I just needed a break from aero and having a new Campagnolo Record 13 groupset and Zonda wheelset in for review, I took the opportunity to build something a little different, a little simpler, and arguably a little classier. FiftyOne provided this Sika frame for that groupset review. It’s a frame I’ve long been interested in test riding and so I justified that bringing it to Japan would allow me to enjoy the social side of riding with friends, force me to take it easy rather than race every segment, and as such I didn’t need a fast bike, I just needed a fun bike. I also assumed that it would likely be the only Campag 13-speed groupset many of the group would have ever seen…
How wrong I was! Yes I really enjoyed some more relaxed kilometres, but I still got sucked into racing (mostly Jack), it wasn’t even the only Campag-equipped bike on the trip, and I sure wished I’d something a little more aero for the 370+ km ride to Tokyo that Jack and I rounded out the trip with.
Still, I was quite happy with my ride for the week. The Sika is a lot of fun, the Record 13 is really good, I really do like running a frame bag for all the extra capacity and the Lead Out (sadly now defunct) is one of the few that doesn’t rub my knees. I did, though, crack with 35 mm Pirelli P-Zeros and had to change them to 30 mm GP 5000 S TRs kindly donated by Alex midway through the week.
Ryan Newill
Nine out of 10 times I’m traveling, I bag up my unapologetically mechanical, rim-brake cyclocross bike, either because I’m traveling for cyclocross or because it’s just simpler and I don’t sweat any travel-related bumps and dings too much.
One look at our Member Summit routes in Takayama revealed that would not be a winning strategy this time, so I packed up my Mk. IV Trek Domane. Key decision points were more-and-smaller gears for sustained climbs like Mount Norikura and discs for the correspondingly long, fast descents. Cruisey geometry and a more forgiving ride for back-to-back big days didn’t hurt, either. Practicality aside, if you’re not going to ride your best bike in the coolest places, what’s it for?
As I told Suvi when she snapped the shots above, we’re not all tech editors, and the overall setup here probably reflects that. It’s a pretty down-the-middle build, but there are a few small tweaks. I ditched a tubeless setup ahead of a spring trip to Belgium in favor of latex tubes and the thinner, non-tubeless version of the Challenge Corsa Stradas in 32. No regrets so far — they feel good and, particularly when I’m not near home, I like the hassle-free nature of just throwing in a new tube if needed.
The Flite saddle feels like a throwback at this point, but I’ve had them on a lot of bikes for a lot of years, and still no problems. The star ratchet in the rear hub has been upgraded with a few more teeth for quicker engagement, and the -17° Zipp Service Course SL stem brings the front end’s endurance geometry closer to the drop of my older position. (Yes, I’m aware of the chimney. Please don’t write. Measure twice, cut once.)
Is it a faux pas to turn up at the Escape Collective summit with a Velo-branded name sticker on your bike? Maybe, but we all came from somewhere, and I don’t cycle through enough bikes to have used up the 20-pack quite yet.
None of that really matters, though, because from home roads, to Belgium, to Japan, the only thing most people notice about this bike is the paint. I got it in late 2023, and this was the paint job Elisa Longo Borghini and the (then) Trek-Segafredo women’s team rode at Paris-Roubaix Femmes earlier that year. My previous Wilier was from cycling’s extended black-and-white era, so this felt like the way to go. I regret nothing. The bonus is that it matches most things I could wear, with the notable exception of an orange Escape Collective jersey.
Until next time!
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