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Words: Stan | Photographs: Courtesy of SIP
A 71bhp Vespa engine deserves to be raced and fortunately, that’s exactly what SIP have planned for their 25th-anniversary special.
Looking content, “2019 is a big year for us” began Alex Barth, co founder of SIP. “It’s 25 years since Ralf and I established SIP and we wanted to mark that occasion with something special.
Over the years we’ve produced several customs, but to mark this anniversary we wanted to build something that would encompass our entire history.”
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The man charged with bringing the concept to reality was Jesco Schmidt, Product Manager for SIP’s Classic Vespa range.
February 11, 2021 at 2:23 pm
Mathias Scherer has been building titanium bikes under the Mawis name in Kleinblittersdorf, Germany for 11 years now. His work first came to my attention at the Bespoked handmade bicycle show, where he normally exhibits a small selection of the 35 or so bicycles that he produces each year.
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Given that Bespoked 2020 did not happen, I thought it was a good time to catch up with Scherer and showcase a couple of his recent builds.
Whether it’s a bespoke titanium hardtail, fixed gear or road build, there are a couple of elements that every Mawis bike has in common. The first and most obvious is that it’ll be crafted from titanium, Scherer doesn’t work with any other material. Second, all Mawis Bikes are clean to look at, often with neat integration and details from an obsessive mind.
It had taken me my entire adult life and required traveling 4,500 miles around the world, but halfway up a frozen waterfall in Norway, I could cross something off the bucket list: I was finally in Conrad Anker’s pants.
I was also in Steve Swenson’s gloves… The French Ace Mathieu Maynadier’s jacket. And German ice-wizard Matthias Scherer’s sunglasses.
Matthias Scherer on
Flågbekken. Photo: Heike Schmitt.
While the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to dawn on much of the world back in early March 2020 the frenzy of buying essentials like skim milk and toilet paper in unreasonable qualities was still weeks away my main concern at that moment was that Lufthansa had lost my luggage during my four-flight marathon travel day to the Arctic Ice Festival here in the small village of Tennevel, in Troms, Norway. I was going to be here for nine days and, stranded without my personal gear, the Petzl athletes had taken pity on me and kitted me out as best they could.