Aaron Heirtzler

A Family of 9s

October 12, 2012 by Aaron

In a highly unexpected turn, I have built another bike this year. Well, maybe not that unlikely, but exciting for sure.

Recently I took apart a bike I had owned for a couple of years. As things often go in the freelance design business, I was able to trade for a bike for some website work, which I then traded for some auto work. Paying for stuff with trade. Wonderful system. Anyway, after trading away the bike frame, I had some extra high end XC race parts laying around. What to do? Sell them on craigslist/ebay? Nah. I, of course, decided to get another bike frame and build it up. This time I decided to try for a sub 20lb Canfield Brothers Nimble 9 Single Speed. For those of you that aren’t familiar, the Nimble 9 is a sweet steel, hard tail, removable/sliding dropout, 29er frame from the Canfield Brothers. It’s a beautiful frame. This is my third. If you’ve followed my previous posts you know I have another built up with a 120mm travel fork and a 1×9 drivetrain (read post). I also have a Nimble 9 decked out with drop bars and panniers which functions as my commuter and back-roads/backcountry touring beast (read post #1 / read post #2).

My other two Nimble 9s are, well, bright. Red and lime green for one and purple and lime green on the other. They stand out in a group. For my SS I decided to round out the family by going with a basic black ad white scheme. Being an artist, however, I had to add a splash of color somewhere, so I threw on some bright pink grips. The whole build, including pedals, weighs in at 20lbs. Super light! Super fun! I love the SS setup on this frame and the Gusset Stash bars are a nice touch. Really like the angle they allow your wrists to remain while riding. It’s nice to just go out, pick a line and pedal. Let me know what you think!

The Build: