Gary Fisher Collection Sawyer: It's Light, It's Racist, And It Has A Split Dropout So You Can Clean Your Chain

 

My new bike is named after a Rush song…and I don't even like Rush. Alright, the Rush song is named after a book by Mark Twain, but who thinks of Twain before they think of Rush when they hear "Tom Sawyer?" It's sad. Sad like the fact that a half-assed blog about bikes and, and…who knows, shows up before its namesake in a Google search. But, nonetheless, I'm going to go with "Thom's Sawyer" as the name for the new, big, gray beast. It just fits. I walked into the shop on Friday, pulled the thing out of the box, and Erich Leas started singing "Tom Sawyer," and that was that. Boom! Bike named. I knew I was getting the bike for weeks…months even, but this connection had never occurred to me: a.) because I'm dimwitted and b.) because I don't think about myself in the third person, so it was "my Sawyer;" not "Thom's Sawyer." And ya, the H thing threw me. Rush's Tom Sawyer doesn't have a
silent H.

Did you know the Sawyer has a split drop out? Amazing. I think it's so you can install and then remove your chain for cleaning without breaking it.*

By the time I dragged my ass over to IBC, it was late, I probably wasn't going to have time to build the bike….unless I had help. So I enlisted Bryan Philbrook, who is not married to help me.
Just wanted to clear that up. " Bryan Philbrook married?" has got to be the weirdest keyword search that has brought someone to Big Bikes. OK, wait, I lied, I'm totally wrong. The weirdest search
has got to be (aside form all the porno craziness that is too gnarly even for BigBikes) "Pocket bike leakin nd bubbles." That would make "Bryan Philbrook married?" the second weirdest search. A very distant second.

I bartered my slightly perturbed video skills for a banzai bike build — Bryan would swap the parts from my Superfly SS to the Sawyer -  I would just film the event. The video was inspired by 21st Avenue Bikes' bike-build time-lapse piece. If mine comes out 1/100th as good, I'll be stoked.  And that may be your entertainment for tomorrow — my 1/100th as good as 21st Avenue Bikes' bike build video.  I'd be a great Hollywood ad man: "If you liked the original Death Race 2000…and you have always thought to yourself 'hmm, I would even watch a film that is 1/100th as good as this,' then you're
gonna LOVE Death Race 2000: The Remake!"

21st Avenue Bicycles - Family Fun Bike Build! from James Wilson on Vimeo.

The build went well. And I'm glad it did. International is ten miles from my house and that bike was my only way home. That's why Erich, Bryan, and I did the "three brains are better than
one mind meld" before embarking on the frame swap. "Will all the things on that thing work on the other thing?" "Yes…except for the headset." The Superfly uses an integrated headset, the Sawyer
uses a segregated headset because it is a racist. And by that, of course I mean: The Sawyer uses a traditional headset. And one of the traditions of a traditional headset is to be totally fucking racist.

The Sawyer and I have some stuff to work out.

The only thing about the Sawyer more shocking than its racist-ness is its weight. It is incredibly light. You'll see Erich's reaction in the video as the bike hits the scale — he is dumbstruck by the incredible lightness of the Sawyer. **

For actual facts about the Sawyer, you might want to check out Guitar Ted's article on Twenty Nine Inches, I don't think it's called "Fisher Collection Sawyer: It's Light, It's Racist, And It Has A Split Dropout So You Can Clean Your Chain."

*I'm laying bait to see if and BikeRumor readers followed me over here…out yourselves!

** It's like spilling a glass of blood in front of a vampire as he tries to conceal the fact that he is a vampire from the other dinner guests.