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Grasshopper
by Will Meister

When they colour-xeroxed photos of the bikes I was interested in, they left the Hopper on the plate. It came out sideways on a sheet of pre-WWII utility bikes. I'd never even heard of Hopper and the componentry sucked, but I was struck by the way the frame had stayed true through what had obviously been years of neglect.

It was on sale for £15 ($20US) so I decided to take a chance. It turned up a couple of months later on a roof rack among a bunch of collector bikes. Under its coat of household gloss paint it looked pretty drab, but the frame retained that tough, solid appearance.

I started researching and turned up quite a story: Elswick-Hopper had been among the biggest UK manufacturers before the inevitable buyout. My bike was probably a Lincoln Imp, a mid-range tourer churned out in the 1950s, the Benelux derailleur and Williams cottered chainset factory originals.

This was not good news. I'd been hoping for a svelte 50s sports tourer to make into a town fixie. I had a lookalike on my hands. Still, I figured that it would be a good enough beater.

The BB and headset were long seized, the hubs worn out. Stripped of steel components, the plain-gauge frame still weighed 7 1/2 lbs. But with its laidback angles and long fork rake it would stand any amount of pounding, and the massive clearances would swallow any tyre I cared to fit. I'd never heard of anyone riding a fixed gear bike offroad, but the idea appealed to me. I set to work on finding components.

While stripping the frame down for a dire home aerosol spray, I was delighted to find a '531 frame tubing' transfer. It might be heavy, but it was all lean meat--no flab.

When I took delivery of the built-up bike I was amazed by how well everything worked. The shallow angles and big tyres gave it an eerie resemblance to some of the early mountainbike pictures I had seen. At speed over rough surfaces, the handling came into its own, the bike holding its line with the singlemindedness of a carthorse.

It weighs 23lbs, but how many fully-rigid touring frames will take treeroots in their stride?

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