I love bikes. I can find something to like about almost any bicycle. Here are the bikes in my personal fleet. They're a constantly changing collection of bikes, most of them a bit weird. I'm a tinkerer by nature, but not a wholesale adopter of the latest, greatest. I ride road (where my cycling began when I was 12 years old), dirt/gravel road, and love to mountain bike. I'm no shredder. Long days in the saddle are my usual priority. With all that in mind, here is the first installment:

Harvey Cycle Works S&S Rapha Continental bike

photo credit: Brad Kaminski, VeloNews Photo Editor

Kevin Harvey, a longtime friend from my home state of Indiana, built me this bike in 2011 when I worked at VeloNews. I was a temporary member of Rapha's Continental team and we rode the US Pro Challenge route in Colorado that year. I built the bike late in the process and climbed aboard for only the second or third time to start the ride only a day after flying home from my first Dirty Kanza 200. To say I was shattered is an understatement. Pictured above is its first build and as I used it for the Continental.

Since then, it has served as a test bed bike and a great travel companion. It's seen duty in Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Belgium, France (where I got to ride hot laps on the Roubaix Velodrome with James Huang) and all over the U.S. I did Tim Johnson's Ride on Washington on it and took it to several races when I was covering tech. It was also used as a baseline for aero bike testing at the A2 tunnel for a VeloNews article. It's a well-traveled bike that has never let me down.

Another iteration, testing SRAM's then new Red group and Shimano C35 tubulars

Drying out after a rainy day in Germany and Switzerland. Rode with Lennard Zinn and Morgan Nicol from Eurobike in Friedrichshafen, Germany to Lugano, Switzerland over the course of a few days.

Heading up Pikes Peak on a chilly day in 2012. Photo credit: Chris Case