The story of this bike dates back to the early 1990s when I first became acquainted with Cannondale as a young cyclist. I remember being in awe starting at a bike built with 105 and a 3.0 frameset circa 1990 since that was around the pinnacle of technology and lightweight at the time. In spite of my early fascination, I never found myself particularly obsessed over Cannondales because they were aluminum while titanium was coming into fashion as a premium bike material beyond the traditional steel. At the time, carbon had not yet taken off as a popular building material.
Although I always followed Cannondale, including it is interesting alumni and carbon Six-13, I never really considered a Cannondale as a bike for myself. This was in part due to the fact that I didn’t have the means to have multiple bikes and already had one (maybe more than just one).
The story of this particular bike (a 2011) dates back to roughly 2005-2006 when, for the first time as an adult with stable employment, I started overdoing it a bit on bikes. Around that time I picked up a Calfee Dragonfly. It rode really well and was gorgeous. Eventually, Cannondale came out with the SuperSix, a hot new carbon bike. Better yet, Cannondale became a team (ok, really just a club but we like to pretend) sponsor and there was an opportunity to get an exciting new bike with a team paint job. As that was more exciting to me than the Calfee, I traded in (sold, but traded in sounds better) my Calfee to fund the Cannondale.
My first Cannondale was one of the last built in the U.S. Unfortunately, it cracked and I got a warranty replacement, however, it was just a standard paint job. Come the fall of 2010 there was another opportunity to get one with a team paint job. As before, I sold my old one and splurged to get the new SuperSix Hi-Mod with a SRAM Red group. The 2011 was the last year that Cannondale built the SuperSix with a BB30 bottom bracket before switching to PF30 when introducing the Evo.
Although I rode this bike less frequently with time, I did upgrade it to a 6800 group and it has become a fond memory of my years with Swami’s cycling and the many great rides I’ve had on it. For now, it joins the rotation as one of my coffee rides bikes and gets other occasional uses.
The Coffee Ride Reporter 