You ride at your own pace. You ride with your friends. You ride for the sheer joy. You ride. Short distances, long distances, epic climbs and sweeping descents. In rain and in sun. Pavé, strada bianca, city streets, fire roads and goat paths. It's not a race, it's not the destination. It's the journey. Ride your journey.
We have a few blue Velo Routier frames left. Even though we doubled the number of small and medium frames in our last order, they sold out quickly but our Large (57cm) and X-Large (60cm) sizes puzzlingly have not. So we are having the first sale we ever had to move the last of these frames along – reduced from $525 USD to $262.50 USD until they are all sold,.We have only a couple of 51 and 54cm frames left and less thirty-five of the 57cm and 60 cm left in both braze-on and without braze-on configurations.
We haven’t decided to do another run of Velo Routier frames. If we do, they won’t be delivered until spring of 2024 at the earliest.
On May 28th, 2023, four hundred masochists took on the first ever British Columbia edition of the hellish 219 kilometer – 136 mile Belgian Waffle Ride (BWR). About four hundred slightly less masochistic souls lined up to test themselves on the 108 kilometer / 67 mile Wafer Ride or the 52 kilometer – 32 mile Wanna Ride.
Being one of those slightly less masochistic fellows, I signed up for the Wanna Ride with my new La Taureau e-bike prototype—despite only having a mere 200 kilometers under my belt on this titanium all-road beauty.
As we waited for our start horn, the corral buzzed with anxious energy, revved up by the unseasonably beautiful weather and the task that lay ahead. “The climbing numbers are wrong. It’s actually 500 mmore than they said,” one rider said. “It doesn’t include any of the rolling hills along the paved sections of the route.” With the FSA 250W motor neatly hidden in my rear wheel I figured I’d be fine with extra climbing but would soon find out.
When I first began road biking in my mid 40’s, I was riding an aluminum bike which was fine and got the job done. A few years later I added a carbon road bike that I’ve ridden over eighteen thousand kilometers. After moving to Vancouver Island in 2021, I’ve found it more difficult to enjoy road cycling given the limited paved roads often have no shoulder and busy traffic.
More than one Vancouver Island local has mentioned they sold their road bike in favor of a gravel bike to unlock the Island’s beauty on the hidden gravel trails and old logging roads—places my road bike couldn’t take me.
Plus, the experience of zipping through the trees or enjoying a break by a lake is a whole level above the basement trainer set-ups or dealing with the looming fear of drivers staring at their phones.
On a couple of group rides with La Taureau, most people didn’t even realize I was riding an e-bike unless they noticed the glowing button on the top tube. The FSA E-System is so elegantly concealed in the downtube you could probably trick fellow riders into thinking you had unlocked some cycling cheat code.
But that wasn’t my plan. In order to maximize battery life and continue to challenge myself, I kept my assist level at the lowest setting, meaning it only really helped me out when I slipped below 26 km/h – 16 mph. Our prototype bikes were shipped with the European standard motors instead of the North American 32 km/h – 20 mph so when the pace picked up on the flats, the fitter riders on carbon bikes started to pull away.
I’ll confess, I did use a bit of extra e-assist during some of the steep gravel uphills and passed some of those same carbon riders leaving them to wonder how that old fart riding the titanium bike was now passing them without appearing to be breathing that hard. “E-bike on your left!” I occasionally announced with glee, fully disclosing my pseudo-superpower cycling.
The bike tracked well on the descents and was compliant on the single track. Only occasionally, on the really loose gravel sections, did I wish for tires wider than the 33mm ones I had. The worst moment for my ego was around kilometer fifty, when a twenty-something year-old kid on a mountain e-bike slipped past and beat me to the finish line by twenty seconds. But hey, I probably have 25 years on him. And I’ll tell myself he had his e-assist cranked way up.
Of the ~120 Wanna Ride participants, six rode e-bikes. If we merge the times for both categories four out of six of those e-bikes landed themselves in spots among the top ten (1st, 2nd, 6th, and 8th). Even with the extra weight of a motor and batteries, the e-assist obviously improved our ride times.
Hats off to everyone that finished any flavor of the Belgian Waffle Ride, especially those without assistance. Overall the FSA e-system worked flawlessly for my ride and I even managed to arrive at the finish line with 18% battery. Perhaps next year I’ll challenge myself with the Wafer…maybe with the extra external battery.
In the meantime, you can find me out on the trails and backroads on Le Taureau, riding my journey with a smile on my face.
We started Cycles Toussaint without aspirations to be another mega bike corp but to make great, affordable bikes for exploring, randonneurs and light touring. Since we launched the original cro-moly Velo Routier ten years ago, we’ve also worked on several other prototypes including two stainless steel prototypes. We built and tested a Velo Routier 650b prototype. We dabbled with a 700c allroad prototype, the Pave. While feedback was very positive, the minimum order quantity necessary to place a production order was too risky for us to consider.
In the meantime, the allroad / gravel bike concept took off. For us original mountain bikers, it was a déjà vu moment that brought us back to early days of mountain biking exploring fire roads and single tracks on our rigid framed 26” bikes. At the same time the nascent ebike drive trains began to evolve. We had the good fortune to meet the FSA engineers working on a road-specific rear hub electric-assist motor system in Taiwan just before the pandemic shut everything down. It got us thinking.
Life with all its responsibilities made training hard or near impossible at times. We have to battle the middle age spread brought on by metabolic changes as well as VO2max and strength decreases with advancing age. Our ability to keep up with the youngsters was fine on the flats and downhills, but uphill was a totally different matter. Could the developments in electric-assist level the playing field?
Could we design a bike that weighed less than 15kg that would ride, look and handle “normally”? Perhaps with a battery fitted in a slightly oversized downtube? Aesthetically the bike could look like a conventional allroad bike and could fit right in with any group ride. With all of this in mind, the Le Taureau eAllroad project was born!
As a rider and engineer, I respect the application of carbon fiber composites for many high-performance applications. At Toussaint we believe that titanium is the most appropriate choice for the Le Taureau frame with its superior impact resistance and in spite of today’s fashion-driven, throwaway zeitgeist, long-term durability. Titanium has a smooth and lively ride quality that in our opinion has not been duplicated by composites.
It has taken a while for the bicycle industry to recover from the pandemic induced chaos and settle back to its normal cadence that allows small companies like ours to consider placing orders. We finally managed to have three Le Taureau prototypes made up and shipped this past winter to Canada to begin our testing.
We have several tweaks to the design in mind and are planning to launch an Indiegogo campaign to gauge interest for the production run of frames. Here is a preview of the campaign.
We have been riding our second stainless prototype around Calgary for the last 2 months and were supposed to report back on it weeks ago but summer has been really nice here for a change and well, you know how it goes…
The protoype is a 650B frame based on the same low trail geometry as our cro-mo 650B Velo Routier frame. .Like the Pavé Prototype, it is made from Carpenter stainless steel with a twin plate crown fork, disc brakes and 1-1/8″ Aheadset.
We stuck to the tried and true Velo Routier V1 geometry and made a few improvements to increase fender/tire clearance.
Top Tube 31.8mm Dia 0.7/.04/0.7
Seat Tube 31.8mm Dia 0.7/0.4/0.7
Down Tube 38.1mm Dia 0.8/05/0.8
Top Tube Length 550mm
Seat Tube Length 540mm
It has clearances to accommodate 54-55mm wide fenders and braze-on fixtures to attach fenders and racks to. We fit up our prototype with 52mm Velo Orange Zeppelin fenders. A rfear fender attachment to the underside of the seat stay bridge was spec’d but missed on the fabrication of the prototype.
We deigned an all stainless steel with a twin plate fork crown similar to the Pavé. Unfortunately, the prototype is also missing the top of the crown fittings.
Bare frame weight is 1998 grams vs. 2177 grams for medium cro-mo VR 54 cm frame and the bare fork weight is 926 vs. 958 grams. Even accounting for the extra weigh of the disc brake fittings, it not a huge weight saving for you weight weenies but we think the ride is super smooth and frame is bomb proof ! With a bit of refinement, we think we might be able to shave another 50-70 grams off but not the at expense of durability.
The Pavé protoype is at Free Range Cycles in Seattle for the next couple of months and the stainless steel VR prototype should there in 2-3 weeks. If you are in the area, drop by and say hi to Kathleen. Give our prototype a good test wring out – we really want to hear your comments and suggestions!
The V.2 frames, after a long and winding journey (don’t ask!), have arrived safe and sound. We will have photos up, our on-line store updated by this weekend and stock shipped out to our dealers in 1-2 weeks time.
Ride Your Journey 