I’m not a bike fanatic (used to be one, though), but I still really dig a well-crafted bike.  Rivendell Bicycle Works makes well-crafted bikes.

But they’re about more than the bike — they are a group of people unreasonably obsessed with workmanship and doing the Right Thing.  When was the last time you came across any business with a mission statement like this?:

Our bikes are designed and built to withstand a lifetime of long, hard, fast riding and racing, if that’s what you’re up to, but we don’t go out of our way to appeal to the rambunctious, speed-before-all crowd. It isn’t us versus them, or retro versus techno, or old versus new. It isn’t niche marketing in the tactical sense, either. It’s the same gear we prefer and ride, every day. It is not a "market-driven" approach, which is one reason we’re so small.

It’s enough the make the skin of any cost-conscious, 6-sigma-driven, Excel-grubbin’ business person pucker up like an old prune. 

I love it.