What had been started as a moonage daydream by Greg, who came in late 2019 with the idea of creating a bike inspired by his idol David Bowie / Ziggy Stardust, turned out to be it ain't easy to make it become a reality. We put a lot of soul love into this bike and luckily it did take a little bit less than five years to get everything together, even though we were sometimes quite close to commit a collective workshop rockn' roll suicide while building it...
But we hung on to ourselves and finally that Starman's bike touched down and Greg is ready to take off for whatever journey Ziggy's stardust will take him to!
This amazing bike is one of the lightest we ever made, really pushing the limits for fully equipped wide tire steel randonneuer bicycles. The whole thing weighs well below 11kg's including lights, fenders, racks and all. The frame is made from a blend of Columbus ultra thin wall Life tubing and our exclusively custom drawn Columbus rear triangle tubes. Super light wheelset with HED Belgium 650B rims, tune MAG rear hub, Sapim Laser spokes and rolling smooth on Rene Herse 48mm Extralight Switchback Hill tires. Super tight 140mm Q-Factor with our signature vintage Dura Ace Crankset installed on a SKF bottom bracket, Crisp 12 speed shifting via Gevenalle in combination with Sram Eagle on a super light weight Ingrid cassette. Ultralight and ultra stopping power with Extralite V Brakes.
Power and headlight by SON paired with Rene Herse Taillight to be switched on and off with a Velolumino stemcap switch.
Tight grip on a Rene Herse Maes Parallel handlebar surely wrapped with ESI tape, ultralight but comfyly seated on Tune's Speedneedle and post, dry ass by Honjo and supernice fenderstays and barplugs by our friends at Berthoud Cycles.
Awesome night reflective Ziggy Stardust paintjob by our Spiderman from Mars, aka Robert at Velociao .
The amazing bag set up on this bike is all custom made to measure by my love Lady Stardust at Gramm Tourpacking and features the brand new commuter panniers which have a build in laptop compartment for Greg's daily rides in and out Suffragette City, but the whole set up of bags could aswell be used for real intergalatic deep space travelling!
Thanks for all your patience Greg and I hope you will have some truly amazing space oddity adventures on your new Fern Starship!
Photography: Florian Haeussler / FERN Bicycles.