From Perfect to Personal : Building a Bike You Actually Love
For most cyclists, the search for the perfect bike is a familiar obsession. I’ll admit, I’m usually the first one hunting for my “next” thing, and I fall way too often for the famous N+1 rule: the correct number of bikes to own is always one more than you currently have.
But for my friend BJ, the story has been a little different. After moving to Paris post-COVID and wanting to avoid the metro, he built a simple budget fixed gear, and that’s when a whole adventure began. In his own words: “I had that very simple bike, and then I met you, and it just went completely nuts from there.”
What started as one modest bike spiraled into a multi-year quest through a revolving door of machines, each one promising something closer to perfection, and ultimately, each one teaching a lesson. And the peak of this quest, when he thought he had finally reached the ultimate build, the lesson turned out to be a counter-intuitive one: This time what we know as “high end” wasn’t the answer. So what does the real value of a bike lie in?
To understand BJ’s journey, here’s a quick look at the bikes he owned. But always keeping it N=1 (because unlike most of us, BJ never had more than a single bike in his apartment at once, which may or may not make him a psychopath…)
BLB Viper → the “very simple” starting point.
Brother All Day → more versatile, but too heavy, not aggressive enough.
Dolan Pre-Cursa → racier, but too common.
Look Al 264p → A touch of vintage, to understand that some new standards are just far superior.
Mash Parallax → Exclusive, but with geometry so aggressive it was terrifying in Paris’s traffic.
Mash Steel → Very nice, but boring after a while…
Planet X Titanium Gravel → Beautiful on paper, but it never clicked.
Dolan Carbon Gravel → Kept it a while, but felt the need for an upgrade
Cervélo Carbon Gravel → And here’s where things get really interesting…
So after years of experimenting, the goal became clear: “Let’s build the ultimate gravel bike!” It had to be super-light, aero, and technically flawless. As you read, this journey culminated in a Cervélo, a high-end machine that represented his endgame frameset, which then spiraled into additional component upgrades, pushing the final price tag over €8,000. On paper, it was perfect.
But in reality, the experience was a huge disappointment. The bike left him feeling completely empty, not due to a vague lack of affection for the project, but because it became a constant source of frustration. All the proprietary parts resisted personalization, the geometry was brutally “racy” and designed for competition rather than daily riding, and it was plagued by a well-known curse: a press-fit bottom bracket. The paradox was brutal: the machine that should have been the ultimate expression of his cycling journey brought no joy, no inspiration, and no desire to actually ride.
“The fact of having spent a lot of money on a ‘full-package’ bike you can literally just buy from a website gave me nothing at all. Even after some upgrades, it just left me empty.”
This bike, supposed to be pre-conceived ideal of perfection available to anyone with enough money, lacked the two things that make an object truly special: a story and a personal connection.
This soulless experience sparked a radical shift. Instead of buying another off-the-shelf product, BJ and I talked about the next move. I (Paul) want to ride with my friends, but I can’t do that if they don’t enjoy the bike they are on… So we took it back a couple of steps.
As I was working in collaboration with Weis for their Paris trip, I asked what his take on the brand was. BJ knew Weis from the fixed-gear world but had never really explored custom bikes and framebuilding. But what if this was exactly what he needed? A commissioned custom bike from skilled artisans, something that I’ve been pushing here on SSS, and that I personally think is one of the most beautiful side of the cycling industry. The goal was no longer to simply buy a finished object, but to engage in a collaborative process, so BJ wasn’t alone in executing a plan; it was him, a builder, painter and mechanic, who challenged his ideas and guided him with their expertise.
So we tried! We contacted Weis for a custom Hammer Gravel Steel Plus and this is what happened: His initial vision for the bike was, in his own words, “much more extreme.” He admits that if the people at Weis had simply followed his instructions, he “would probably have been disappointed” with the result. Instead, they questioned his choices and guided him toward a design that was more flexible and coherent, so they kind of “saved him from himself,” so to speak. This is the crucial difference between a simple transaction and a true collaboration.
“When I started this dialogue, I felt that I would have completely accepted it if they had told me, ‘No, we won’t do that for you because it’s not our vision… Trust us.’ That’s where an exchange becomes interesting to me. If you find a framebuilder who will just do a full custom job, but is really just your little helper and has no personal input… To me, that’s not a true interaction.”
This dialogue created the true feeling of ownership that an expensive off-the-shelf purchase never could. And that’s what I’m trying to tell here again and again on SSS: When a builder is a trusted guide, the final product is a shared and unique creation, with a story that a factory frame can never replicate.
For years, BJ’s cycling journey was defined by a central conflict. He found himself “lost,” caught between two unsatisfying poles. On one side were bikes he found visually cool but hated to ride, like his Cinelli Mash Parallax. It was just too much on too may levels: too twitchy, too fast, and too much toe overlap. On the other, bikes that performed beautifully but felt generic or too common, like his Dolan gravel bike.
“…what I like doesn’t correspond to my riding style, and what corresponds to my riding style is not at all my personal style.”
The custom bike from Weis was the final resolution. By working with builders who understood both performance and artistry, he created a machine that was “97% perfect” in both form and function. For the first time, he didn’t have to sacrifice one for the other. No compromise, just harmony.
Underlying this entire journey was one self-imposed rule: only ever own one bike at a time. Born from practical reasons like limited budget and living space, it was also a reflection of his “one thing at the time” personality. This single-bike philosophy might seem quirky, but it’s also a powerful challenge. With a fleet of bikes, you can have specialists: one gravel, one road, one track bike, etc. With only one, it has to do it all.
This limitation forced a deeper, more focused reflection on what he truly wanted. But it was also this very thing that led to the disastrous attempt to solve the problem with the hyper-expensive Cervélo. And when that failed, it forced a new path that guided him away from soulless “perfection” and toward a more meaningful, collaborative process.
So, what is your dream bike? BJ’s long road through countless bikes reveals a simple truth: the search for the perfect bike is ultimately a journey of self-discovery. The true “dream bike” isn’t defined by its price tag, its weight, its component list, or how “hype” it is. It’s the story you decide to create with it, either through the collaborative process of building it with a frame builder, or with the adventures you’ll do with it. And working with experts and artisans to craft a bike that truly reflects your needs is to me a crucial step in understanding yourself as a rider.
Maybe the search for the perfect bike isn’t about finding the right object at all, it’s about understanding what you really need...
💾: ???
📍: Dunkirk
