Singletrack/MTB
Gravel/All-road
Dirt-road Touring
Fat-bike
This week’s Reader’s Rig comes from Nico in Germany, who shares the classic steel all-terrain rando bike he had custom made by esteemed builder Jacek Orlowski in Poland. Find a deep dive into Nico’s cycling journey and a look at his one-of-a-kind rig here…
Words and photos by Nico Vetter
Hi, I’m Nico from the hilly outskirts of the Ruhr area in Germany. Besides my passion for the outdoors, I was a freelance music producer for almost a decade and toured with my bands around Europe before I became a primary school music teacher and dad to my little son, Bo.
New things can easily inspire me, so when my partner asked me to accompany her to cycle from our hometown to the North Cape in Norway in 2018, I said yes when she promised to buy me an ice cream every day. One year later, we quit our jobs, moved out of our apartment in Cologne, and started our trip. I was more into hiking and backpacking then and didn’t even have a bike besides my late ’90s full-suspension bike I’d owned since my ninth birthday. So, I bought a used city/hybrid bike that also took us to Senja and the Lofoten islands later on that trip, and we even crossed the highlands in Iceland two years later.
At the end of that mind-blowing trip, we met two guys with a Tumbleweed Prospector and a Surly Krampus at the campsite in Reykjavik. I had never seen bikes like that before, but I was immediately amazed. They just looked like the ultimate adventure machines—like you could ride them anywhere. Two months later, I found the same original green Krampus in very good condition near me. It was really addicting, and BIKEPACKING.com became such an inspiration for me during the pandemic. I just loved to explore every hidden singletrack in the local woods, become a better rider with every ride, try out various handlebars and grips, and experiment with shifting systems.
Shortly after buying the Krampus, I read an article about the Crust Nor’Easter, and its classic looks combined with the fat tires just blew my mind. It was my dream bike for three years, and I can’t count how many times I looked at the photos. After some bikepacking trips with my eventually drop-bar-converted Krampus in Norway and my salmon pink painted “fake-Nor’Easter” Surly Cross-Check in Slovenia, I noticed some things I didn’t like about their handling and ride qualities. I was so curious to try that low-trail randonneur geometry many people raved about.
I found a low-trail fork for my Cross-Check, and I instantly fell in love with its handling. Finally, I had a bike that felt just right and intuitive, both loaded and unloaded on every terrain. The only thing I missed was a fat tire! Because the USD/euro exchange rate and shipping costs would have made a brand new Nor’Easter frameset ridiculously expensive, I looked for frame builders in Europe. I dove deeper and deeper into the bike geometry and tubing rabbit holes. Bikeinsights.com, BikeCAD, some frame builder forums, and trail calculators were great resources for that.
Then, I saw Cody’s amazing bike by Jacek Orlowski from Poland, and I contacted him. I was so happy that he simply supported my vision of this bike from the beginning and just built the bike with the geometry, tubing, and details I had in mind. I love the look of skinny tubes and a good ol’ quill stem combined with fat tires and disc brakes. Some other frame builders wouldn’t build a frame with this combo, but I knew I wanted to try that lively, flexible frame hype. Luckily, I found fork blades from bikefabsupply that could handle the forces of a disc brake and could be bent with that dramatic classic curve I had looked at hundred times on the internet.
Finally, I sold my Surly Krampus because if I didn’t ride it with 3.25″ tires, the ride was just too harsh and too stiff for me. After the three years I rode the Krampus, I also got tired of the 31 “tractor wheels and the high bottom bracket. I wanted to trust Crust’s and Stridsland’s love for 26+ tires and surprisingly found a pair of 26 x 3.0 WTB Rangers and 26 “WTB i40 rims on eBay. Probably the last ones the internet has seen. It was an eye-opener that the diameter of 26 x 3.0 tires was around the same as 27.5 x 2.5, or 26 x 2.8 as 27.5 x 2.3. I really like that my new bike can accommodate so many different tire sizes from 26 x 3.0 to 27.5 x 2.8 to 28 x 46mm.
- Frame/Fork: Custom by Jacek Orlowski
- Rims: WTB Scraper i40 26″
- Hubs: Shimano Deore M6010 12 x 100mm / 12 x 148mm
- Tires: WTB Ranger 26 x 3.0″ Tough/Fast Rolling
- Handlebars: Rune Hilt Bar 52cm, Grepp Gripper tape
- Headset: Tange Seiki Falcon
- Crankset: Sugino XD with Garbaruk 34T narrow-wide chainring
- Pedals: DMR V12
- Cassette: Sunrace CSMZ903 11-51T
- Derailleur(s): SLX RD-M7100
- Brakes: TRP Spyre, 180 mm front, 160 mm rear
- Shifter(s): TRP RRL SR, Microshift BS-M12-R
- Saddle: Brooks Cambium C17 Special
- Seatpost: Kalloy SP-375
- Stem: Nitto NTC-DX 225 Technomic Deluxe 70mm
- Front bags: Wit Slingers Custom XL Handlebar bag
It was such a magic moment to finally receive the frameset. It was so strange to look at this object you imagined for so long in your head, and I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was even more beautiful than I imagined! Jacek did an amazing job, and it’s 100% the bike I wanted. But how does my new bike ride?
When I finished the build and got on the bike for the first ride, it felt strangely familiar. Well, it’s almost the same geometry and tire diameter like my modded Cross-Check but with 450mm chainstays instead of 425mm and 70mm instead of 66mm BB drop. After the first rocky descents, I thought it was a great decision. The same descents with my Cross-Check and ~46mm Rene Herse Oracle Ridge tires were always a bit slippery and thrilling, but with the new bike, it’s much more planted and controlled. So far, the 26+ tire size and the WTB Rangers ride amazingly, they have the cushion of the 29+ but are so much easier to accelerate and handle. Regarding the flex of the frameset, I didn’t notice a huge difference to my Cross-Check. It’s neither noodly nor too stiff, but somehow, I feel faster, more confident, and more comfortable on my new bike.
This bike wouldn’t be complete without a big handlebar bag, so my go-to bag maker Tijmen from Wit Slingers picked the finest waxed cotton for me. One of the final touches was the custom headtube badge. The color combo of my bag reminded me of Nintendo’s Zelda Majora’s Mask. Zelda’s Ocarina of Time was my favourite video game of all time, but I never had the chance to play Majora’s Mask when I was a kid. So, this Majora’s mask head badge symbolizes all the adventures that still may come. Someday, I hope to ride the bike in my beloved Southern Morocco, Kyrgyzstan, or Andalusia. I still don’t know how to categorize this bike. Is it an extreme rando singletrack grinder? A low-trail dirt tourer? I just hope it will be a bike I can ride forever, on every occasion I can imagine!
You can follow along with Nico on Instagram.
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