Bike of The Week: The New/Old Cubano

This week we’re bringing you an older bike heading for new experiences.

First, the backstory: This Baum Cubano was originally built for Above Category’s founder, Chad back in 2013. This was his third Baum as he’d already ridden the Corretto and the steel Ristretto models. Fully acknowledging the tough job he had, he knew that he needed to test the Cubano model as well in order to be able to fully explain the range to anyone asking. Keeping this story short, Chad gave Baum the geometry of one of his prior bikes to build the first two frames that he got from Baum. For this one though, Darren Baum wanted to create something that he felt would fit Chad’s riding style to a tee with a heavy bias towards very quick and agile handling, especially on the descents. Suffice to say, Baum nailed it. This was the best handling and quickest descending bike Chad had ever ridden. It worked as good as anything else in other areas, but it was crazy good on the descents.

Here is a look at the geometry for this Cubano. Check out that trail! It works though further proving that Darren and his team know what they are doing.

Here is a shot of what the bike in it’s original colors and build.

The bike was awesome. Super light, incredible handling in all conditions and tough. That toughness was put to the test a year and a half ago when Chad got hit head on by a truck on his way home from work. The hit was hard enough to dent in the front quarter panel, put two holes in the windshield (head and shoulder) and rip off the side mirror. Thanks to the million PLF’s (all you Airborne guys and girls know what we’re talking about) he’s done in his life, he bounced off of this relatively unscathed. The Cubano looked a mess though. Wheels bent out of shape, top tube dented, bars and saddle twisted around etc. We thought that was the end of this bike, it had a good life but that was that.

Chad still decided to send it to Baum to see if anything could be done with it and Darren got back right away saying that the frame was totally fine! It was straight as the day it left the factory in Geelong and the dent in the top tube was purely aesthetic. So, they fixed that, put a new paint job on it and set it back for round two.

This is where Landan comes in. Landan is Above Category’s new(ish) and great Marketing Manager. He comes from a world of stock, carbon bikes. Great bikes in their own right, but totally different than what we’ve got here. After a few months of listening to all of us talk about how much we loved our Baum’s, Mosaic’s and Pegoretti’s Landan and Chad worked out a deal and Landan became the new owner of this new/old Baum Cubano.

So, as we said, chapter two starts now. This bike is going to be another one of our long-term test rigs. We’ll see how Landan likes this compared to some of the bikes he’s ridden in the past. We’ll see what kind of miles he puts on the bike and how it feels in all the different condition and roads out there. Stay tuned for a few months from now when we get the first report and see below how the bike looks now.