E120 Demo

After multiple requests from Dangly D and much contemplation on my part, I finally gave in and let the E120 demo out last night for a test ride. I had to think long and hard not because D is usually a wrecker or anything like that, but simply because this bike looked so beautiful brand new standing in the showroom freshly polished back from Sea Otter in all its’ carbon glory. So last night all 23.5lbs of the E120 went out to hit the trails of Southern Oregon and the initial feedback was great:-

“The E120 begs you to push yourself. Big ring the three-mile fireroad climb, then point it downhill and see how many bugs you can get in your teeth by the bottom. Like a full-carbon Ferris Bueller, everyone from the supersuit racer boys to the bighit heshers will think the E120 is a righteous dude.” -Dangly D

After the bike came back, unwashed as I assumed it would, I had another opportunity to see how the shock placement on this frame really protects from dirt and debris. The designers at Whyte understand that little things like keeping your shock clean during your ride can prolong its' life expectancy massivly, and to that end have it tucked away nicely here as pictured.

Whyte E120 frames and complete bikes are now available to order exclusivly online though Unreal Cycles. Call 800-303-2927 to order yours, or just to prod Dangly D for more information on his epic test ride.

Latest from On One

At long last devout supporters of On One can breathe a sigh of relief. On One are coming back to the USA via Unreal Cycles. We have gained the exclusive rights to sell On One online in the USA! Once again you will be able to source your Mary bars, your doofers, and your Complete 29er Inbreds!
We're all very excited, and as if that wasn't enough! We've also talked On One into letting us have a portion of the Linconshire Poacher limited production run. This retro-lugged “50’s clubman” build will be available soon. There are only going to be a handful brought into the US, so check back often for more information. Once production is finished we will be having a pre order sale, more details to come. Spy shot available above, click to enlarge. Check back often for further detail as we get it.

We're in pieces, bits and pieces!

In all the boxes of goodies from Whyte, they sent us out some trick little bits and pieces to help us tell you about all the cool things that they incorporate into their frames. The blokes who design the Whyte bikes must put in some serious overtime at both the computer and in the saddle. Everywhere you look on the bikes, there is another little touch that is there to make your life easier and also to make you say "Why didn't I think of that!"

Instead of cutting a slot into the seat tube, which weakens the frame, lets in grime and gunk, and places nasty crimping forces on seatposts, they came up with an ingenious design called the Getta Grip. It uses a window in the seat tube. Inside that window sits a pad, which the QR pushes onto the seatpost. The QR collar completely covers the window to keep gunk out of the seat tube. Since pictures are better than words, here's a few to peep.

This is the pad sitting in window with the QR closed. When it's in this position, the seatpost has almost 100% contact with the seat tube.
This is the Getta Grip open. The amount of force needed to open and close is silly in just how little is needed. After years of having to crank down on QRs to keep posts from slipping, it's almost hard at first to get used to this system.
If all the passengers of this blog look to the back of their bikes, you'll see the Big Gripper droupouts. It's Whyte's system that allows any 135mm QR rear wheel to have the stiffness and rigidity of a much heavier and clunky through axle. You attach these little doughnut doodads onto your existing rear hub, throw the old skewer into the parts bin, slide the rear wheel in to place. and turn the clamp lever until the arrows line up. Everything always lines up and you never have to mess with adjusting your QR's clamp tightness. Yet again, more pics.

This is the Big Gripper open. The black top hat shaped doodad i the middle is what goes onto your hub and what the rest of the droupout clamps around. It winds up with way more comtack area than a regular QR.
This is the system closed and ready to ride. All you do is rotate the long arm of the lever until the arrows on it and the arm line up and you're done. Now go ride.
The Ti hardtails use the the 19 dropout, which actually gives you 20mm of chainstay length adjustment. It's called the 19 dropout because you can use either one gear or nine on the rear, hence the 19. It also allows you to fine tune the chainstay length, BB drop, and even ST and HT angles slightly. Running it shorter will steepen the bike up and raise the BB, perfect for the tight and twisties. Rock it in the longer spots and the BB drops and the angles slack out a bit so you can get your flowy groove on. For grins, here's pics of the dropout in all of the different spots. It's shown on a aluminum frame bit, but comes on the ti rig. Also, the dirty coffee cup is not included.

Short
Less Short
Smack dab in the middle.
Getting slacker.
Lebowski slack now.
Kiddies, have a great weekend and remember, ride fast and take chances.

Sea Otter dust gets into everything.

It's taken the better part of the last few days for the Unreal crew to blow out the dust and grime that we picked up down at Sea Otter, but we're back at it and all cleaned up. I still wouldn't take us home to meet Mom, but we're about as good as we're ever going to get.

In keeping with the Sea Otter theme, but at the opposite end of the awesomeness spectrum as myself, Mikey Haderer wound up taking home a top ten in the Pro Dual Slalom. Not only did he lock down 8th, but he did it on a bike that he finished putting together about two hours before the main event. Pretty Crazy! He railed it on a brand spankin' new Blood from Orange. Here's a couple of pics swiped off the innerwebs, courtesy of cyclingnews.com
As the week rolls on by, check back for more updates and Otter-riffic goodness. Marketing Mark and his Funky Bunch is still weeding through the pics he took. .

Cool Trials Video

Somone just emailed me this video.

Very impressive.

Check it out:




I'm inspired and going to ride bikes... I want to learn to do that backwards wheelie / manual.

Check back tomorrow for an update on that :)

Greetings from Sea Otter

Where does the time go? Oh yeah, that's right, it flies by when you are scrambling to get ready for the annual trip to Monterey. After a few late nights building demo rigs and tracking shipments, one of the last things I wanted to do was to sit down an write something. I figured I'd wait until the week was almost over and a few tents had blown over. Since we've now reached that point, here ya go.

Like all things Otterish, the winds have been high and the scene has been cool. It's always nice to boogie out of the office and "escape" to NorCal for a few days. There were a few moments of panic, like when a desperate search was started trying to locate the correct disc brake adapters so that there would be at least one functioning bike for the grommets to thrash. Or how about yet another wheel build, this time with the correct spoke lengths once I remembered how to correctly measure and calculate ERD and hub center to flange. Fun times. Definitely not a rock star moment. And lastly, frantically tracking a shipment of some super gucci carbon bikes that were supposed to be in our hot little hands, but had decided to take an extended break in customs? We finally had them routed a Nor Cal shop so we could pick them up on our way down. I wonder why we're all going gray and drink so much?

Anyhoo, it all wound up coming together before we came apart and we have bikes and wheels and all sorts of goodies for display. Yeah!! A little bonus, anyone who comes up to the Unreal booth (525) and asks for Lew Muff Tarkin gets to here his acapela version of Danzig's shopping list. Plus, you will more than likely see Mark shoot Ruby Red Mountain Dew out his nose at the site. Good times for one and all.

Here's a shot of what you'll see at the booth.

The swanky and crazy light Carbon 19 from Whyte. 1150 grams. Soo sexy.
It's big brother, the E-120. This 21lb., 5" travel, full carbon bike makes me want to max out my credit card.
Soma and Pake make enough stuff for you any hipster's fixie to make your head spin. This is about 5% of the goodies we have to hang on your whip. (For fun, put a lot of emphasis on the h in whip, like Stewie from "Family Guy"!)
The Factor 5.0 TT wheels from Grammo, these are the first sets in the US right now, but we have more that will be here any day now. Don't chop off a finger.
The Blood from Orange. 125mm travel. 4x and slope style fun machine. Like a BMX bike for big kids in the woods. Try not to smile when you ride it, we dare you.

The Orange Alpine 160. 160mm of all mountain good times powered by a Hammerschmidt. Uphill, downhill, who cares. It's all good.
Alfine equipped, belt drive, Orange P7. Prototype for now, ready to ship very soon. I don't know why, but I want need one of these.

See what the see Otter does to a person? I was clean shaven until I went into monk mode to get ready for the Otter. You can blame Muff Tarkin for this, my wife does.

Busy Weekends make for tired Mondays

Which is why you are reading this on Wednesday (don't even ask about Tuesday). Some of the crew here spent the better part of Sunday trying our best to get lost and suffer as many flats as possible by participating in the inaugural GP Rogue Flahute. Despite our best efforts, the weather and our backsides prevailed so we could experience 115 miles of smiles, 35 miles of which were gravel. Dangly D and myself rocked the Grammo Tubolari CX's and were resplendent in all of our best Flahute tubular glory. No flats and a super cush ride was just encouraging us to slay it on the gravel (or as we called it Grah-vell) sections.

Dangly D's self pic with me and others who shall remain nameless in the background.



Crazy field of vetch. Luckily this was in the middle of a climb, so I just had to stop and take a picture.


All this saddle time made it hard to get moving come Monday, but get moving we did. Waiting on our doorstep was some goodies that will be making their way south to Monterey for the Sea Otter.

What do you get when you cross this


With this?

Well, besides the next few day and nights filled with frantic bike builds, you get some schweet demo rigs to let the groms thrash on. And like all things in the bike industry, we might even get to ride them ourselves someday. Actually, I plan on sneaking off under the guise of a "shakedown ride", and I might even return. It depends on the weather and of course whether or not there's beer back at the Unreal headquarters. If you are coming to Sea Otter, you should definitely stop by and take out a bike. Plus, you'll get the chance to harass Mark, our marketing guru. Besides putting the Mark in marketing, he'd love to regale anybody with at least one functioning ear about all sorts of fun stuff like vectorized images and web banner click throughs. Good times, let me tell you. Also, you'll be able to call Lord Muff Tarkin fat, and who doesn't love that (except for him)?

Unreal Cycles to have live performances at Sea Otter

For the last few weeks, we've been working like crazy to find something special for us to have at Sea Otter. Sure, we'll be showing all the new cool bikes from Orange and Whyte and the wheels from Grammo, but we needed a a certain something to help us stand out even more. On the last trip back to the Taipei show, Gran Muff Tarkin (the boss) may have found what we were looking for. We've managed to sign him to an exclusive US performance schedule and he'll be kicking it off at Sea Otter. Here's a little taste of what to expect.


If that wasn't enough, Unreal Cycles went the extra mile and scoured the US trying to find the best and most talented riders to represent the brands we carry. We decided to settle on nothing but the best and in our exhaustive and thorough search, I think we've found our man.


Oh yeah, by way. April Fools!