A Suspend-Your-Judgement Mosaic GT-1 45
A Mosaic GT-1 45, a suspension fork and UDH - a build as divisive as it is gnarly.
January 8, 2025
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REGROUP CUSTOM
A Millimeter at the Junction: Joe's Mosaic GT-1 45
Joe has been fit to bikes before. This tan Mosaic GT-1 45 is the first one made for him, and the proof is about a millimeter wide.
When I call Joe, it's early in Arizona. He's just back from Chicago, where his new employer is headquartered, and the job keeps him on East Coast hours. The company also has a campus about ten minutes from Regroup. "That's dangerous," he says. "Very easy to just pop in and say hi and look at all the goodies."
It’s one of those goodies we’re here to talk about: a Mosaic GT-1 45 in a tan that isn’t quite tan. There’s gray in there, and the light lays with it. Joe can’t remember what Mosaic calls the color, which is fitting, because it isn’t the one he had in mind when he walked in.
“I had an idea in my head of some of the colors I wanted to incorporate,” he says. “But it wasn’t until I was there, talking to Tammy and looking through the endless little discs they have of all the finishes.” The paint chips came out, got held up to the window, then went outside into the Arizona sun for an um and ah. “What I’d originally had in mind for a base color, when I saw it under the sunlight, was way lighter than I’d imagined. It wasn’t until we were playing with the paint chips that we found what we thought would work.”
Adam sent mock-ups while the frame was being built, tinkering with AI to get the idea across. Then the real thing arrived. “The pictures didn’t do it justice.”
Joe has ridden bikes since he was a teenager. He’s been fitted before, at a couple of places around the Phoenix valley. This is the first time he’s done it the whole way through: a fit session with Barry first, then the geometry, then every detail of the build decided from those numbers. “The whole process has been more than I could have imagined,” he says. “I’m not even sure where to start!”
Tracing a line to Joe’s new Mosaic requires a brief detour to his early history with mountain bikes. For the longest time that’s all Joe rode, and then, like a lot of people, 2020 happened. “I had the wild idea: I’m gonna buy a bike. It was always something I’d thought of, a gravel bike. I just wanted to be able to leave from the house and go.” The Phoenix valley is laced with canal paths and gravel. As he says, from the doorstep, you can ride a hundred miles if you want to.
The first gravel bike was heavy, steel and basic, whatever he could get his hands on that year. Two years later it was a full carbon frame that opened up more gravel miles, and a first few events around the state. Somewhere in there a titanium hardtail, a Why Cycles, came and left a lasting impression. “I’ve always appreciated the look of titanium bikes, the ride of titanium bikes. Knowing folks that have had them over the years, you can throw a quick leg over one.”
The carbon gravel bike is still in the room when we talk. It’s on the trainer now. “I’ve got a lot of good years and a lot of good miles out of it. I’m sure Adam would scold me and tell me that not all carbon is created equal.” I venture that if you’re having fun, that’s all that matters and Joe agrees. “It was that, but the feel was eventually what got to me. It was pretty stiff. At the end of a couple of hours you feel pretty worked over.” There was a carbon full-suspension bike in the garage already. “I didn’t want another carbon bike. I did want to see what titanium could offer in the gravel space.”
Ask him to describe what titanium does, for someone who hasn’t ridden it, and he’s thoughtful. “You do almost have to ride it to appreciate it. But there’s a smoothness to it that’s quite hard to describe. On a stiff bike, every stone, every divot in the trail is transferred right back into you. The titanium, I’d argue, is still fairly stiff. I weigh 210, 215 pounds, and it’s still stiff. But it’s just enough to take the edge off. That’s one of the first things I noticed. I can be out on the bike for a few hours and I just don’t feel as worked over when I get back.”
He had to wait to find that out. The bike was delivered a few days before a work trip. One quick ride, then eight days away from it. “Just over this past weekend, it’s like, OK, I’m finally home, the schedule was light, I can finally get some proper rides in.” Saturday was a little under fifty miles from the house on those canal paths. Sunday he crossed town to one of the trail systems and put it on singletrack, which is where the aha moment came.
“That was the biggest surprise. I was riding stuff I would’ve done on my hardtail mountain bike with 2.4 tires. With the carbon bike I’d have just said nope, I’m going to get beat up and my teeth rattled.” Instead he did twenty miles of it, the day after the fifty. He credits the frame and the wheels equally: Zipp 303 XPLR SW rims with a wide inner diameter, Pirelli Cinturato Gravel RH tires. “The grip was excellent. You’ve got to grind through these very rocky sections, but you motor through. Bermed turns occasionally. It was just a whole lot of fun to be on that bike.”
He’s a functional person, he says, not a ten-bikes-in-the-garage person. “I know I’d look at them and think, oh my gosh, I’m not riding all of these.” Once the full-suspension bike arrived the hardtail mostly stopped getting ridden, so it went. “Having this one almost makes up the gap. It covers what I would have ridden on those rare occasions.”
"There's lots of good bikes out there you can be fit to. But there's a difference between a bike being made for you and a bike being fit to you."
JOE
That line came to Joe on his first ride home from the shop, stopped at the side of the path to take a photo. Everything about this bike’s spec follows from it.
Tires first. For the last handful of years Joe has driven down to Patagonia in southern Arizona for the Spirit World 100, on remote old ranching roads. He’s done the 100, the 80 and the 60, and he’s going back for a fourth in November. “On the carbon bike, with the washboards and everything else, you’d get back and just be beat up. So I knew I wanted something that could comfortably and easily fit a 45.”
Right as the order went in, Mosaic updated the range and the GT grew to take a 55. “At that point I’m just riding my mountain bike, let’s be honest.” Forty-five it stayed, and the weekend’s singletrack says he called it right.
The frame got Mosaic’s refreshed details where they helped: the T47 bottom bracket, so the rear brake hose runs fully internal. The fully integrated front end that came with the refresh he turned down, and asked for an external-cup headset instead. “Once you start to have everything completely integrated, you’ve got a titanium bike, and it’s a beautiful look, don’t get me wrong. But the front end starts to look like another carbon plastic frame. I liked the look of a titanium bike.” The ENVE IN-Route G Series bar and stem still tuck the cables away up top, so the bike reads clean without pretending to be something it isn’t. He calls it a combination of the old version and the new version, by request.
The external cup had a second benefit. It lifts the front end ever so slightly, which lifts the top tube, which gives a little more standover. Joe is six feet tall with a thirty-inch inseam, and that’s a big part of why he went custom. “It wasn’t just because it’s neat to get something made for you, or to pick out the paint. From a body-proportion perspective, that gave me just a little bit more standover than I’d have had.”
His last bike was bought too big. The shop that sold it did a good job fitting it to him, as far as a frame that size allowed: a 70mm stem, brake hoods rotated way back. “I start to notice how much time on the other bike I spent trying to find my position. Shifting around in the seat, pushing myself back from the bars. On this one, even on the singletrack, my hands are on the hoods most of the time and everything is already where it’s supposed to be. I’m not constantly fidgeting.”
And then there’s the long game. “Knock on wood, I shouldn’t have to replace this bike. Carbon has a useful life to it.” At Regroup in the Desert back in February he got talking to another rider who’d had his titanium bike for twenty years and planned to keep going as long as he could find components to hang on it. “The fact that it’ll last helps justify a bit of the sticker shock that comes with having something made for you. It should just be the bike that I have now.”
Joe found Mosaic before he found Regroup. He’d seen them online, then at events. “When you see one up close, you start to appreciate the finish work and the welds. It was always, man, wouldn’t that be neat someday.” Follow the breadcrumbs from there, who carries these in Arizona, and you arrive at us. Then Regroup in the Desert was announced. “This is my chance to actually see a couple of them in person.”
What sealed it was Mark from Mosaic. “Getting to talk to him about sizing and fit, and hearing more about them being a small US-based outfit. Everything about it went really well. Don’t get me wrong, Adam, Tammy, Barry, Andrew, they’re all fantastic. But Mark took the time to chat me up and answer all the questions, and that’s when it was like, OK, this is the way to go.”
Joe has been through a couple of bike fits before this one, so I ask what was different about Barry’s. “The amount of time he takes. The level of detail he works through.” And the terms he set at the start. “He said, we’re going to do this fit, I don’t care what you buy. I’m here to get you the best fit possible. We’ll figure out what works for you, and then you send me anything you want to ride and I’ll tell you how we’d make it work.” The measurements and the size cycle, all of it, but also the questions: what do you want now, what’s working, what isn’t.
How well that translated is written on the bike. The seatpost is painted to match the frame, and when Joe collected it, it was set exactly where Barry had him. “When you look at the gap between where the paint ends and where it meets the frame, it’s probably only a millimeter. Between Barry’s measurements and Mosaic, they got it that close. Unless you see that junction it’s hard to notice. But it was just great.”
In November the bike goes to Patagonia for the Spirit World 100, its first proper go at the washboard it was bought to beat. In February Regroup in the Desert comes round again, and Joe will be there. So will I, with any luck. I’d like to see that junction for myself.
