Eighty-Five Freakin’ Miles on a Stinner

When a friend lets you borrow a bike, you better go ride it for eighty five miles to see what it can do.

Not a loop around Riverside. Not a quick coffee ride. Eighty five freakin’ miles.

You’ve got to let the day stretch out and see if the bike still feels good when you are tired.

I have ridden this Stinner all over Tulsa. To work. To get dinner. To wander the north side looking for pizza and somehow ending up home without any. It is a bike that is ready for adventure, for tagging along on chill group rides, and for looking cool at Pony Coffee in downtown Tulsa.

If you have been within earshot of me over the last few months, you know I have been preaching that steel is real. I have ridden a few steel bikes, and I have loved all of them. There is a steadiness to steel that is impossible to deny.

Stinner Frameworks builds its bikes by hand in Santa Barbara, California, and its lineup covers a wide range: the Gibraltar for road, Carrizo for all-road, Refugio for gravel, and Tunnel for mountain biking, along with the newer Romero full-suspension bike.

They also have a pretty simple system for how those bikes are offered. Tier 1 is Select, their steel option. Tier 2 is Podium, which moves to titanium. Tier 3 is Custom, where you can choose steel or titanium and start getting into custom geometry, paint, and components. This Carrizo is a Select, a Columbus Zona steel frame, hand-welded in Santa Barbara.

Only a few weeks after returning the Stinner to its rightful owner, I ordered my beloved Ritchey Road Logic, and almost immediately after that, I found a Surly Midnight Special. If the Stinner taught me anything, it is to get my hands on more steel bikes because they have character, an otherworldly quality that is hard to describe, and bragging rights when you drop your friends, which you’ll inevitably do.I believe in you!

All in all, this is a sick bike. Eighty five miles confirmed it.

I would gladly knock out another eighty five with it if given the chance.