Self Bike Check: The Parakino (Year 4)
This is finally happening: the third installment of the Parakino series is here, and there’s a lot to unpack. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, you can catch up by reading the first two parts on what I consider the most personal of all my bikes:
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- Self Bike Check: The Parakino (Year 0)
- Self Bike Check: The Parakino (Year 2)
I’ve discovered something quite interesting about this bike over the past two years… Not riding might actually be a good thing, because it means I have other bikes to try for Slow Spin Society. And that implies there’s work to do, and work is just more stories for this platform.
But at the same time, not riding it makes me, quite simply, sad… I still have a giant smile on my face every time I hop on it, no matter what I was riding before or what I’ll try after. But unfortunately, these moments tend to get more and more rare, and even though I’ve had the opportunity to ride some pretty exquisite track bikes over the past 24 months, this rig, somehow, still feels like home to me.
I’ve also decided that, because I’m officially in my 30s, the Parakino needed a slight shift… I call it a touch of “weird gentleman attitude.” That, and the fact that I couldn’t see myself publishing yet another update about the Parakino just to say it had collected a few extra paint scratches and stickers. I know some of you will be sad to see the retirement of the Zipp 30, but we have to face the fact that the Zipp 30 trend is almost a decade old now. Maybe it’s time to move on, and while I wanted something unique, I was also genuinely excited to finally use this HED Belgium laced to a track Chris King hub (yes, you read that right), a wheel I built four years ago and never put a single kilometer on.
So if you’re in shock about this Chris King track hub, let me tell you that you could actually get one yourself. To my knowledge, Sir King, in the 50 years of his company’s existence, never officially released a track hub. I’m sure there might be a prototype floating around somewhere, but for the rest of us, we have to use a little trick.
A couple of years ago, a shop called Culture Club in Nagoya, Japan, decided to use the very short-lived 110×15 mm thru-axle Chris King ISO AB front hub (that later somehow made a comeback) to create an axle kit that would fit a rear 120 mm spacing and a bolt-on ISO cog.
At the time of buying the kit, I roamed high and low to get my hands on one of the few remaining ISO AB hubs available. But even if Culture Club kind of doesn’t exist anymore (for now), you can still buy the limited remaining quantity of these kits on Circles’s website (also located in Nagoya, Japan) and the compatible hub directly from Chris King.
For the front, I knew I wanted mismatched wheels, and I was dead set on grabbing the first cheap deep wheel that crossed my path. Somehow, that cheap wheel appeared in the form of a custom-polished vintage Mavic Cosmic that only ran me back 40 euros. Most of you probably know my stance on Mavic wheels, and this one is no different. But, it’ll have to do until I break it, find something else, or both. (Likely both.)
To continue with a few changes, we can, of course, mention this handlebar made in collaboration between the frame builder SyCip and SimWorks. The JJJ bar is wide, with over 700 mm from end to end and a tiny 20 mm of rise. It’s sort of been the “coffee table” to this bike that I sometimes reference as my sofa. It’s comfy, easy to flow with, and I’ve always been a fan of mustache bars on track bikes.
The pedals are also new, as mine were a decade old and very tired. Same MKS Sylvan Stream as before, but with a twist, though you’ll probably have to wait two more years to find out why. Finally, this titanium headcap is a gift from my buddy Taiga, who runs PATH Backyard and FlowLab in Tokyo, and the slammed headset cap was a project born in the SSS Discord server by Jan. Just more proof that this bike is a giant collection of my life, experiences, and friends.
Talking about experiences, I had the pleasure of adding Shanghai to the list of destinations this bike has been to, and hopefully I’ll get a few more cities in in the next two years. I've also noticed a definite rise in the number of times I've been tagged on Instagram posts featuring freshly repainted bikes with flames on them. I can't say I'm anything but happy to see more of them out there, even when the similarities with mine are… Striking... But as I always say, I don't have a monopoly on fire bikes, so maybe it's time I make another one.
Owning a bike for four years isn't anything particularly remarkable. But what I do deeply appreciate is how this bike has been a fixed point in my life for the past 50 months. It's my ultimate fallback, something I know I can always return to. At one point it sat at the very center of everything, and then... not so much anymore. But somehow, I'm pretty confident I'll find my way back to it.
Alright… See you in 2 year.
PS: I don’t know how, somehow, every time I take pictures of this rig, the shots end up looking like trash… But I guess this goes well with the aesthetic of the bike itself…
🎞: Kodak Color Plus 200
📷: Nikon F100
📍: Paris
