Reader’s Rig: Luis’s Flowers ATB

Words by Luis Espel, photos by Nic Morales

Hey! My name is Luis. I currently reside and ride in Asheville, North Carolina, a beautiful town nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountain Range. However, I grew up and spent most of my life in Tampa, Florida, where I got lots of sun and learned how to surf through sugar sand. For work, I manage a coffee shop called Cooperative Coffee Roasters. When I’m not working, I love to spend as much time outside as possible. Whether that’s hiking, biking, running, or most recently (although the season’s over), snowboarding.

My main interest in cycling is riding ATB. Just a good ol’ mix of terrain ranging from gorgeous country roads and rolling hills, to singletrack connectors, to massive gravel descents. I’m also interested in doing some more bikepacking in and around this new place I call home, since there’s so much opportunity for out-the-door overnighters and some longer multi-day stints around the massive amount of forest surrounding this town. And lastly, but maybe most importantly, I’m always interested in building more community and involvement around cycling.

Currently, I co-host group rides in Asheville under the name Slonuts alongside my good friend McKenzie “Kenny” Clair, and it’s helped me meet a lot of really wonderful people to bike with and build community. It’s fun to get people together around a shared interest, and it’s even cooler to get them more engaged in supporting community efforts to improve infrastructure, raise awareness of issues, and help others. That’s something I’m hoping to do more of as I help grow this group of rides into something bigger.

I’ve always kind of romanticized the idea of having a custom bike. But with many things I “want” and don’t necessarily “need,” I’ve always felt it best to wait for the right opportunity to present itself, instead of forcing something to happen and ending up with something I’m not really stoked about. Before moving to Asheville, I snooped around on a bunch of bike shop pages just to get a lay of the land and see what group rides are happening, where people were riding, and so forth. I came across Flowers, a framebuilder in Asheville.

I didn’t know who was behind it; it seemed like a newer page, and they had only made about two or three frames at that point. But I loved the way the frames looked and what they were made for, and loved the music taste of the person making these bikes (cool bikes with Thou and Weedeater playing in the background will definitely grab my attention), so I gave them a follow. Little did I know how small a town Asheville is, and it turns out that the person who makes these bikes, Jack Kosma, would end up frequenting the coffee shop I work at since their partner is a glass blower and did the bar lights for us. So, we got to know each other a little bit, and I made a passing comment about wanting a custom frame one day, and before I knew it, I was in the queue.

As far as the build goes, I knew I wanted something that felt zippy, was short and long for my body proportions, and could tackle pretty much anything I could throw at it. East Coast singletrack and gravel can be some straight-up chunder sometimes, so I wanted some decent bottom bracket height, the ability to clear 2.3″ tires, and cable routing for a dropper in case I wanna get into some really rough stuff. I also wanted a bunch of mounting points for bikepacking versatility, so there are three bottle cage mounts, two cargo mounts on the fork, eyelets on the dropouts, and mounting points for a rear rack.

I also love versatility with any bike (my last one was a Soma Wolverine), so we put some Paragon Rocker dropouts on the rear so I can switch out axle type, brake type, or make it single speed if I want to, and there’s a tapered head tube so it’s compatible with most forks on the market in case I ever wanna upgrade to carbon or some short-travel suspension fork down the road. I currently have it set up with some wide drops for stability and have been riding it a ton over the past half-year. When people ask what kind of bike it is, I’m never really sure what to say, so I just call it an ATB. Jack feels like it leans more into rigid drop-bar MTB territory, and some people say it’s a big-tire gravel bike or a monstercross (still love this term) bike. Whatever you wanna call it, it’s my bike, and I love taking it wherever it can go.

• Frame: Flowers ATB
• Fork: Velo Orange Chessie
• Rims: 700C DT Swiss Gravel LN
• Hubs: DT Swiss 370
• Tires: Continental RaceKing 29 x 2.0″
• Handlebars: PNW Coast, 520mm
• Headset: Cane Creek Hellbender
• Crankset: SRAM GX Eagle DUB w/ 36T Wolf Tooth chainring
• Pedals: Crank Brothers Stamp 7
• Cassette: SRAM GX Eagle 12-speed 10-52T
• Derailleur(s): SRAM GX Eagle 12-speed mechanical
• Brakes: Ol’ reliable TRP Spyres
• Shifter(s): SRAM Rival w/ Ratio 12-speed upgrade kit
• Saddle: Brooks C13 Carbon
• Seatpost: Cane Creek eeSilk+
• Stem: Cane Creek, 90mm
• Front bags: The Spindle Minx in waxed canvas
• Frame bags: The Spindle Full Frame in waxed canvas
• Rear bags: The Spindle Paddle Sack in waxed canvas
• Other accessories: Yellowbird Threadworks top cap, Campandgoslow Brown Trout bar tape, Haute Cycles T-Bar

One of the most important things about this bike is that I had the absolute pleasure of getting it designed and painted by Kenny Clair, my Slonuts co-host mentioned above. Kenny is a sign painter and an incredibly talented artist, and it only felt right to make this a community project, with people I care about involved in creating it. Green is my favorite color, and I couldn’t decide between light and dark green, so we went with a two-tone fade for the base paint. I wanted the dots to resemble those enamel camping cups that are usually blue with the little white paint dots, but splatter jobs are inconsistent, so Kenny actually hand-painted every single one of those dots on the frame. And the Flowers lettering, the flower decal on the seat tube, and the headbadge were also all hand-painted. I also love how the gold-anodized parts really help the paint job shine.

And the very last thing is that I recently got an entire bikepacking bag set custom-made by my friend Ezz down at The Spindle in Atlanta, Georgia. I knew a bike this good-looking needed a tasteful matching set to go with it. They had one of their Minx front/rear rambler bags in stock with coyote and olive waxed canvas, so I picked that up on a road trip down to Florida and put a full-frame bag and Paddle Sack on order to match it. I’ve been using The Spindle’s bags for a while. You can find many photos of my bikes rocking a Kofta handlebar bag or a 40oz Crusher stem bag. They’re well-made, they look great, and Ezz is an absolute treat to talk to and hang with.

You can see more from Luis on Instagram.

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