If you could have only one bike, what would it be? On a budget?Without price limit?

With Christmas coming up, just for the hell of it I reopened my wishlist, with the unlimited budget in mind. Clearly, even with an unlimited budget, a single bike must be one that you could, and would want to ride every day. In no particular order, some bikes definitely not in the mainstream:

THE PEDERSEN
http://www.pedersen.info/en/Pedersen_en/Models.html
Still after 120 years one of the most technically impressive bicycles. Extremely comfortable too. You can buy several versions but this one is good and reasonably priced. It takes 50mm Big Apples with mudguards, 60mm without. I'd order it in sunflower yellow, not the black that is everyone's first reaction to such a venerable design.

THE RENOVO
http://www.renovobikes.com/touringbike/
I'd ask them to build me a rack and mudguards out of matching wood too (something like the stand on the Tout Terrain but better integrated aesthetically). No point in going to wood and then being halfhearted. Of course I would ask for a rear triangle to take 60mm tyres and mudguards. For a fork I'd probably get Uwe Marschall
http://www.marschall-framework.de
to build me something in polished P&P Noblex stainless with a triplane crown.

THE UTOPIA PHOENIX
This one has been on my shortlist since I bought a Utopia Kranich and found it wonderful. The Phoenix is a bike Utopia appeas to have taken over from Scooterbike; in the hands of the previous makers it was a bit crude for me, but Utopia understand that their market demands engineering punctilio; actually, I don't think they know any other way to do the job than right, correctly, and with extreme attention to detail. In red, I think:
http://www.utopia-velo.de/nc/service...chash=645b8d01
Production stopped for redevelopment; perhaps when it returns this wonderful concept will be brazed rather than welded (one of the things I objected to).

All these bikes with suspension supplied by low pressure Big Apple balloons, and my 5000km service transmission concept which makes for a bike serviced in ten minutes once a year, at most twice a year.

Andre Jute
Out on the edge

GREAT CUGNOT !

Out on the edge on one of THE CLASSIC JUTE LAMINARS...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H9S7eS7ONo

Blowing sand tore skin from my face. We pedaled forward blue mountain wall of the Rockies rising from a golden grain waving horizon.
It was Hell.
Days passed, astride the Jute Laminar I left the Roubaix behind, the mountains rose.
Soon we will climb, The Laminar will ascend into pine scented fir forest peddling past roaring creeks of snow melt.

From A LAMINAR ACROSS AMERICA