It was in the Stone Age of the Internet that I discovered Jobst Brandt. I was looking to expand my cycle touring destinations in the mountains of Europe and on the Trento Bike Pages I discovered a goldmine of information in Brandtβs accounts of his travels. An engineer living in California, he made annual trips into the Alps of Switzerland and Italy for many years, writing them up in clear and concise prose and illustrating the rides with excellent photos. But looking at the photos you had to wonder what kind of cyclist would relish taking a road bike over a snowbound pass? And with all his luggage for a three week trip in a saddlebag somewhat larger than a lunchbox?
In Isola Pressβs beautiful book βJobst Brandt Ride Bike!,β an affectionate celebration of Brandtβs life, we learn that he was so much more than a fearless cycletourist. Brandt was something of a force of nature. Standing 6 feet 5 inches (1.955 m) tall and, apparently having a voice described as βlike that of Darth Vader,β he was passionate in his beliefs, highly intellectual and keen for adventure. His status as a fearless outsider led to some surprising influence on the bicycle industry and in many ways he really was a pioneer.
The Stelvio 1970
The book is comprised of excerpts from a series of interviews done by and with Brandtβs friends and family, supplemented by some very interesting photographs and scrapbook pages. It begins with an account of his early life. Born in 1935 in New York City of German immigrant parents who had fled the Nazi regime, he caused some family dismay when rather than showing an intellectual bent like his professorial father, he showed strong mechanical aptitude. While not a great student in high school, his fatherβs tenure at Stanford University meant he was able to enroll there and found his calling as a mechanical engineer. His early enthusiasm for motorcycles was, after numerous incidents with the police, supplanted by a love of bicycles which he was never to lose. He was a figure in the rather miniscule Bay Area cycling scene, although not much interested in racing.
1975 in the Alps with Bill Robertson
Upon graduation and owing the ROTC time, he was assigned to service in Germany with the US Army and could indulge in his riding dreams, with his first big Tour of the Alps taking place in 1959. This was quite a trip as he took his Cinelli road bike to get Cino Cinelliβs opinion on how it could be improved. Cinelli made some changes but Jobst took advantage of being in the workshop to build up a new set of wooden rim wheels as he was dissatisfied with his alloy ones. He was to remain in contact with Cinelli for years and had several bikes made to his specifications there.
Passo San Giacomo
Finished with the Army, he elected to remain in Germany, where he finagled a job at Porsche translating the 356 ownersβ manual, then going beyond this to work as an engineer on suspension and steering for Porscheβs 804 Formula One car. Meeting an assistant at a local hospital, a whirlwind courtship ensued and three weeks later he was married, soon after hauling his new wife to the USA with a crosscountry drive back to Palo Alto. He must have been a very persuasive person indeed! Well, although a divorce did follow eventually.
Alpine road slide 1987
Returning to California saw Jobst wind up at Hewlett Packard, where he was involved with the development of that companyβs printers. However, his cycling passion was unabated and the βJobst Ridesβ of the 1970s and 1980s became the stuff of legend. Brandt was a solver of problems and when it came to racing bicycles with thin tires and dirt tracks or dense woods he saw no issue and his rides throughout the area attracted quite a following. They were renowned for their toughnessβone interviewee said there were riders who thought doing a 90 mile road race was a better choice for taking it easy than one of Brandtβs rides. He seldom had a specific route in mind or even a destination but with his encyclopedic knowledge of the geography he would get through. His rides thus pre-dated the emergence of mountain bikes and todayβs gravel ones, although Britainβs Rough Stuff Fellowship clearly led the way, having been established in May 1955. Many of the founders of mountain biking participated in the Jobst Rides, including Tom Ritchey, while Gary Fisher was heavily influenced by Brandt.
The Strawberry Store, Sierras with Tom Ritchey
For his Alpine tours he believed that booking accommodation ahead of time meant that you tended to underestimate how far you would ride and miss out on experiences. Of course, sometimes you would get stuck. On one of his group outings in the Sonora area the hotel was full up. βAnd so Jobst says, βWell, that canβt be, we need rooms. Weβre cyclists. We need rooms!β And in the end some mattresses got stuffed into a utility closet with mops and brooms and that was the solutionβ¦
The Avocet Cyclometer
The Alpine rides were always epic in scale. Brandt must have been a very strong rider as he tackled those climbs in 1959 with his easiest gear being a 47-22, but was able to switch to a 25-tooth cog, which seems to have been all he needed! And a firm believer in tubular tires, he held parties at home for sewing-up the sew-ups, only converting to clinchers in 1980.
βThe Bicycle Wheelβ
One of the most interesting sections of the book deals with Brandtβs contributions to the bicycle industry. Along with writing βThe Bicycle Wheel,β an effort to which he devoted a decade and which is still seen as THE authority on the philosophy of spoked wheels, he was involved with the owners of the Palo Alto bicycle shop, which went into accessory manufacturing as Avocet, a company name that Brandt suggested, and whose logo he designed. He thought up products for them like a special touring shoe offering extra heel support and showed how tires without tread were more capable of leaning in turns than the treaded tires of competitors but the real milestone was perhaps the Avocet Cyclometer. The first electronic bicycle computer, it was used by Greg Lemond with some success and Brandt, as a mechanical engineer rather than an electronic one, was instrumental in how the computer buttons functioned, as well as ways of calculating vertical gain for the altimeter function. Although he was no enthusiast for mountain bikes he was well-known to the Mount Tam group that started with the famous Repack Races and he actually designed the TR logo used by Tom Ritchey. It also seems from the book that he thought up vertical dropouts.
Smooth tires
A frequent contributor to online cycling fora, he could be dismissive and a curmudgeon. The engineering mind tends to divide things into a binary worldβblack/white, or right/wrong. Nonetheless he clearly inspired people, whether to join him on crazy rides or take his advice on product development.
In the Alps β 2007
The day after his 76th birthday in 2011, he was in a serious crash and never rode a bicycle again. There was no complete recovery from his injuries and he died in 2015, aged 80. Yet there are some people in the world who just donβt really seem to be mortal. Jobst Brandtβinnovator, iconoclast, adventurer, lover of chanterelle mushrooms and nature in general, cyclistβlives on in those reports of the Alpine rides that you still can find on the Trento Bike Pages (at: www.trentobike.org) but for a more comprehensive view of this fascinating individual (who ended his e-mails with βRide Bike!β) this lovingly compiled book is recommended.
βJobst Brandt Ride Bike!β
by Olaf Brandt, Matthew Forrester, Max Leonard et. al.
224 pages, profusely illustrated, hardbound
Isola Press, London, 2023
ISBN 9-781739-126711
The book is available directly from the publisher at: www.isolapress.com.
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