So, are you feeling like you still need to recover from your holiday gluttony? Yeah, I thought so. Might I recommend impulsively signing up for a 12 hour mtb race, out of shape and under-prepared? Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way. That's why I (Lucero) will be headed out to the 12 Hours of Old El Paso next weekend, February 1st.
http://www.the-bicycle-company.net/events.html
It's a 9.5 mile loop, and the race goes from 10am to 10pm, which I think is pretty sweet since I normally sleep til 8. I don't know the course, but I've been told it's a pretty mellow course, 75% singletrack, and the majority of the climbing occurs on a dirt road all at the beginning. Or something like that.
Anyway, I suggest that you sign up and join us. And I guarantee* that you will have a great time! (*Great Times not Guaranteed)
Best case scenario is that I put in a whole bunch of laps, and ride myself into some sort of fitness for the year. And my performance will be so impressive that all the other racers will take note and immediately become life long customers at Bikeworks and buy whatever I tell them to for ever and ever the end.
Worst case scenario is that I do one lap, quit, start drinking beer, walk around giving out unsolicited high-5's for 11 hours to friends and strangers, and then throw up in Dr. Dave's car (who was silly enough to drive me). In which case, I'll at least have something awesome to write about on this poor neglected website of ours.
Either way, I'm not at work on a Saturday, and I win.
Moving on... it's 2014 and we got some new bikes in the shop!
Firstly, some hotly anticipated BMC Bicycle Racing Bike Machines have rolled in the door. Such as the Granfondo GF02 Disc, in the best "orange colorway" ever. ("Orange colorway" is the pretentious way of saying "hey, this year we painted our bike orange")
(Photo of the actual GF02 in our shop)
(Photo of a GF02 from BMC's website)
The one we have in the shop is a 51cm, built with Shimano 105. Tons of awesome details, this bike just oozes style. We will have the more sizes showing up as they become available.
Also from BMC, we have the Trailfox TF03.
(My crappy photo in the shop)
(Studio shot from the website)
This is a 6 inch traveled, 29 inch wheeled, monster of a bike. However, with very short chainstays, low standover height, super short headtube length, and long top tubes designed around 50mm stems, this bike seems much more compact than you would guess given its long travel.
According to the folks at BMC, they did a bunch of timed tests riding a bunch of trails with a bunch of their sponsored mtb pros, and hands down 29" wheeled bikes were the fastest. And BMC is all about being fast. So despite trends, they put all their effort into a new 29er this year and ignored the 27.5 wheel size. And while we are very excited about many 27.5's out there, we have to admit that this is the first really big 29'er that we are excited to throw a leg over.
Speaking of hot and trendy 27.5's for this year, we have a Devinci Troy Carbon sitting in the shop, waiting to get ridden...
(this is clearly the best picture of a bicycle that has ever been taken)
and... Link to the website
We have had the Troy Carbon framesets in the shop for a few weeks now, but we have been waiting for their build kit to become available to build one up.
Why didn't we just make our own build kit? Was it because the build kit came in an awesomely overkill plastic compartmentalized cubbyhole thingy, and we love over packaging things?
(highly unusual bike part packaging, strange yet awesome, a French-Canadian thing, we assume)
No, that's not why we waited. We waited so long for their build kit because it is a silly good deal. Like unreasonably priced, make other bike companies angry type of good deal. Here's is the Devinci pricing scheme:
Alloy Troy Frame: $2000.
Carbon Troy Frame: $2400 (oooh, $400 more and I get carbon, sounds good)
Rock Shox Pike Fork: $1000 (hottest fork on the market, costs $1K just about anywhere)
aaaand.. Devinci Troy Carbon XP complete bike, with a Pike... $3400.
So, you buy the frame and fork, and get the rest of the bike for free. And it's not a build kit that some bike nerd is gonna get overly excited over and go blogging about (freaking bike nerds and their blogs), but it is good quality reliable parts, and it is a complete bike for the price of frame and fork.
Between the great value, and the fact that everybody who has ridden this bike has completely freaked out about its amazingness, we are very excited to have one in the store to be ridden. And since we are a bunch of dummies, we are throwing our first complete into our demo fleet, that is unless somebody comes in and buys it before it gets ridden.
Also, the specific frame/build kit combo that we are talking about here isn't listed on Devinci's website, all you will see is the Alloy version for $3000. But we are cool like that, so we just ordered "off menu".
Okay, that is all for now. Hopefully there will be some sort of tale worth telling after our little adventure to El Paso next weekend. And if not, I'll just post a whole bunch of pictures of Dr. Dave looking annoyed while driving, because as I mentioned, he was foolish enough to offer to drive me.
The End.
