Bike of the Week: The Silver Surfer

Flying through hyperspace at the speed of light, superhuman strength, and telepathic powers, who wouldn’t love a bike that enables a rider these strengths? Okay, maybe this bicycle doesn’t have the same cosmic capabilities as the board of the Silver Surfer, but it certainly comes close. Swap out time and space to more earthly transitions like the city to a mountain pass, and you’re on the track to the kind of mythic adventures this bike can bring you. In this edition of Bike of the Week, we show you a super-powered take on the fabled gravel steed, one fit for a fantastic humanoid.

Take a look through Open’s catalog and you’ll quickly discover that you can’t find this bike. Skipping the stock offerings of available colors that echo the blue suits of the Fantastic Four or the green skin of the Hulk, this needed something else. We enlisted our friends at Spectrum for a custom job, treating this bike with a magical metallic silver skin.

Battling Galactus takes extreme strength, much more than any one groupset can offer alone. You’ll see this bike eschews gruppo conventions, mixing and matching product lines and even brands to unlock the bike’s full potential. The latest Shimano shifters are some of the most elegant around, and the Ultegra variety forgoes the bulk that is common to hydraulic shifters. Taking advantage of MTB range and durability, the controls are paired to an XTR electronic rear mech. Departing from the otherwise Shimano drive train, the Quarq DZero crank handles power transfer from the feet to forward motion.

Finally, Zipp 303s round out the build. When transitioning between Earth and Zenn-La, you need speed. The Zipps maintain momentum while The Compass Barlow Pass tires keep things fast with just enough volume to smooth out interstellar turbulence.

And there you have it, an all-terrain workhorse ready to take on any path in this galaxy and beyond.