H. H. Holmes – 70s Sekine road bike conversion
This was the bike I built myself while I lead the Ride Like the Devil tour for the Chicago History Museum. The tour was based on the book Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen and started at the Chicago History Museum, went south along the lakefront, into the Museum Campus and turning around after exploring Hyde Park and sites of the original World’s Exposition.
The bike is named for the book’s proverbial Devil, one of the earliest known serial killers in the United States, Chicago’s own H. H. Holmes who terrorized the south side of Chicago at the end of the 19th century.
The frame is a Sekine, a Canadian bicycle manufacturer who not too modestly declared the bikes were the World’s Finest Bicycles, and certainly sport one of the most beautiful head badges of any mass market bicycle I have seen. The bike is a combination of chromed and blue electro-painted steel.
It has campus pedals, custom built wheels with Sun M13II rims to Formula Hubs, flip/flop rear with 16t fixed cog, and Continental Gator Hardshell Tires, rear rack and fender, Brooks B17 saddle, Nitto Stem with bullhorn bars, FSA Metropolis Crank and Front long-reach caliper brakes with Cane Creek TT levers.
