A Visit to The Fat Bike Company in Colorado Springs, CO

Pedar Knows Best!  Seriously! 

Pedar returned from Interbike with tales of a new bike; spinning a story about the Borealis frame (Carbon and ridiculously light), Carbondale Rims (more carbon) and a 190mm spaced rear hub...ohhh, it sounded too good to be true. A few months later he returned from Jackson, WY with a bicycle that was too light to be a traditional fat bike, but too fat to be a normal high performance mountain bike. And yet, it was both. Borealis!  Pedar picked up and built his new Custom Dream Fattie, courtesy of The Hub.

190mm Rear Hub

Borealis Bikes have infiltrated the fat bike market with an incredibly high quality product which gives fat biking a technological jolt in the pants. The most amazing thing we noticed, right off the bat, was the workmanship.  This bike was the product of some serious thought, both in design, and concept.  For one, the 190mm rear hub made it so wheel spoking did not have to be offset. Stylistically speaking, it looks incredibly clean.  But was it worth it?  That was the burning question.  A question that was probably asked when the first upgrades were made on the original wheel....

Enter Ogden, Utah and the first ever Global Fat Bike Summit, a simple test ride at the demo show changed everything.  On the uphill, the Borealis was comfortable and easy to push as it glided up hills.  What goes up must come down, thus, Dewey entered the steep slopes of a monstrous molehill....at the local golf course, staging area for the demo rides.  After returning to his stomping grounds, Happy Jack, Dewey expressed utter amazement at the way the Borealis made it feel like he was mountain biking, in the middle of winter....sheer JOY!! He was stable and in control at speeds he never would have attempted on the bicycle he rode to the Demo. Very impressive.

The Pedal House was in!

As we entered the building and walked upstairs, what did our eyes see? A sweet Kegerator! Our people, for sure! It was like we had never left the Pedal House, instantly feeling "at home".

Steve showed us around the space and grounds known as The Fat Bike Company. Yampa frames were being outfitted with the best parts by precision laborers. Turnagain Rims were being trued. Demo bikes were being prepped for travel. New Borealis dealers were being set up with accounts and we were privileged to see it all first-hand and up close. As we strolled through the building, work areas and lounge, we asked questions, learned new details about the operation and discovered the origins of names associated with The Fat Bike Company products. Borealis Bikes is named after the well-known Aurora Borealis, a natural light display in the sky particularly in high latitude regions, caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitudes of the atmosphere (according to Wikipedia). Yampa frames are named after the Yampa River in northwest Colorado.

Carbondale Rims share a name with Carbondale, CO, a small town of 6,400 in the northwest portion of the CO Rocky Mountains with a number of fabulous mountain bike trails.

Turnagain Rims pay homage to the beauty of the Turnagain Arm, Alaska, 
home to the Bore Tide and incredible vistas.

It's clear to see that The Fat Bike Company and Borealis Bikes are the premiere fat bike manufacturers. We were welcomed with open arms from the moment we entered the parking lot. We greatly appreciated their hospitality, welcoming nature, inside perspective on the scene and cold beers from tap. We are very excited to be a Borealis Authorized Dealer!

An Inside look at Borealis Bikes...

Rims anyone?

Serious amounts of Stock!

Large amounts of fat tires and tubes.

Steve and Dewey loading up!
We needed a small yield sign for the window with a picture of a Borealis Fat Bike
 that said "Precious Cargo on Board". 

Thanks for the tour! We look forward to seeing you out on the trails.

Big Brothers & Big Sisters

I was originally an Elementary Education teacher.  That was my degree.  I couldn't get in the door of any of the local elementary schools in our community so I dragged my feet out to the Cathedral Home with wild ideas about how abnormal the kids were.  I thought that I would see kids who were crazy, drooling, spitting, incoherent psychopaths with missing teeth, and instead I found out that my dream job was actually working with treatment kids...and here is the kicker...they are all so eerily normal.  Granted I did find the toothless psychopaths, but we are not talking about the people it takes to work with treatment kids...(joking of course.)

I started as an English Teacher, but quickly grew bored of the curriculum filled with rules that aren't followed anywhere but the classroom.  I did, however, fall in love with the kids because they were so real.  They wouldn't accept anything but the truth from a teacher, and they even challenged the facts found in the truth.  It was fantastic because it made me focus in on the things I love about life, and I wanted to share that love for life with the kids.  My love for life has always, as long as I can remember, been most intense when in the saddle of a bicycle.  So, we started working on bikes, and to make sure it looked somewhat like English, we started writing about our process.  Now, some nine years later, and thanks to a plethora of people, there is a Vocational Education Program based entirely on the concept of fixing bicycles.  It is a dream job.

Well this past Saturday I was able to share the fruits of the Vocational labor (of too many people to mention) with the local community.  The Cathedral Home Advanced Bicycle Mechanics class, in conjunction with the Pedal House, held a 2 Hour Basic Maintenance class for the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization here in Laramie.

As you can see, the snow cut back on our participation, but the kids and Bigs that did show up were AWESOME!  Not to mention how fantastic my advanced kids were in helping assist with the instruction.

Overall, I think it was a big success.  David, Michael, Dezarae, and Katie learned how to service a couple of parts on their bicycles.  My advance class was able to demonstrate their knowledge in a real world setting while meeting Wyoming and California Vocational State Learning Standards, and I was able to enjoy the company of both groups.  It was a pretty good day.





So to everyone at the Cathedral Home, and everyone at Big Brothers and Big Sisters, thanks for sharing your life with kids.  And to all the young people who have been in both programs, thank you for sharing your life with us.  Until next time, Happy Trails from the Pedal House. 

Preaching Sportsmenship

I am a horrible example for sportsmanship. I have never been good at being good at something. I try to be humble when I am excellent at something, but truth be told I have a lot to learn. For instance, I need to learn to be excellent at something. :)


But I do know one thing. Justice, one of my young apprentice mechanics is a much more suitable individual for teaching the ways of sportsmanship. During this last weeks race he had a mechanical, as we call it in the bicycling world. (A quick and easy way to say something went wrong with his bicycle's mechanical workings.) Anyway, as he pulled over to fix it another young rider rode by him and laughed. He actually found his misfortune amusing. Justice finished way ahead of this young man, but in the end was humble and didn't gloat. I made a funny comment, meant to be a joke, about how he tried to leave that kid in his dust for laughing, but by the time the kid had arrived the dust had settled, and Justice defended the other rider. Kudos Just Ice, for teaching me about sportsmanship, and how to be a better role model. You are the reason that I work with young people...and welcome to the Pedal House, (He fixed two bikes today up to Joel's standards.)

I would also like to welcome Max to the Pedal House. Though he has some major catching up to do in the mechanical realm, at least compared to his young friend Justice, he does outshine him in the quote department. Welcome Maximus...and my you have a thousand quotes on the bathroom door before you move on to bigger and better things.

Merchandise

As a great man, (or anthropomorphic lizard???) once said, "Spacebaalls the T-shirt, Spaceballs the Coloring Book, Spaceballs the Lunch box, Spaceballs the Breakfast Cereal, Spaceballs the Flame Thrower." And Now....Spaceballs water bottles;

The new Pedal House water bottles are in. Specialized, so they won't leak all over you while you try to drink from them,...Nat. We will be donating these, along with a bunch of other gear to the Laramie Mountain Bike series, so if you don't want to shell out the four dollars, go and race and win one.

In other news, I finally got out on a bicycle and turned over a few pedals. It was fun, but I got dropped by my riding buddy, who was so excited about the possibility of a ride he was geared up from the get go.

Dmitri was a rock star and I think that he is going to be a beast this season on the bicycle, so all you Juniors out there, you should know he already has a wool jersey. Happy trails from the Pedal House.

A Few More Changes

I was working in a kitchen once when a good friend of mine, and my boss at the time, Gabe Aragon told me that in any good restaurant, the cooks have to run the place. That is where the old saying comes from; if it is too hot, get out of the kitchen.

The same thing is true when you are working in a bike shop. Keep the cooks happy! And the only way we can help do that is by keeping the guys who work on their bicycles happy. At the Pedal House we wanted some room to move around, room to grow, room to blossom, room to....fix bikes. So Saturday we decided to jump into another project.

This is our shop area. Notice the familiar look of sawdust on the ground, however, it is not because there was another famous blowout Friday night closing "celebration." No, this time it was due to the cutting of particle board and 2x4's for new bench parts. Notice Joel on the right side of the photo installing a bench in our new and high tech "welding center." I wanted to name it "Big Al's Extravagant Table for All Things Metal", but I was outvoted.

Here we see the new Shock repair area. Our goal was to keep all of the machine work away from the areas where the mechanics do their magic. Grinder, welding, drill press, and all have been moved around the corner where the flakes can fly and you don't have to interrupt the Bike Whisperer.

So come and see our happy mechanics, a road race on the box, and let us help keep you in the saddle.

New T-Shirts Are Here!

Life is all about the little things. I have always been a fan of the little nuances of day to day living. For instance; I love the smell of the top of Jeff's head. (Jeff is my dog.)

I also love the smell of a brand new t-shirt. Especially when the back of the shirt says "We Still Hang Bike Thieves in Wyoming". When we were designing the backs we knew that we wanted our t's to have the same old Pedal House feel, but with a little bit of a twist. As you can see the new design is basically the view from the throne....after you have entered the outhouse.

If I were Phil Liggett, I might call them Cheeky. What keeps us grounded in tradition is that the front is the Pedal House logo, unchanged. We hope you like them.

In other news, you might have noticed a race or two being broadcast at the shop. It has been a pretty exciting road racing season, and we intend to enjoy it. So if you like road racing, come on down and see the latest races.

Off and Runnin'

What a monumental weekend. Friday night we had an open house, and boy did we ever enjoy ourselves.

We cleared out the center of the shop so that we could accommodate a soccer game that eventually made us start thinking about putting turf in the showroom.

I do believe a good time was had by all;

We were going to have a simple little gathering from 6-8pm, but somehow we didn't get home until 2:15 in the morning, And Pedar found a new protege to mentor...in the art of bicycle mechanics of course.

The next day we had a Grand Re-Opening celebration that lasted all day. We gave out prizes, visited with old friends and family, made some new friends, and even found time to complete some mechanical work....(Thanks to Joel, Pedar and Lindsey!) So now we are in full swing, and I just can't wait for Mother Nature to provide us with some weather to ride in. Happy Trails from the Pedal House.

Grand Re-Opening

I was walking through campus today when I saw a flyer carefully taped to a pole. It was like I took the little red pill. It hit home, Jess and I are really a part of the best bike shop in town. I know I am supposed to say that, but I am shocked to be part of something I find so special. I am also shocked by the amount of work we still have ahead of us before Saturday.

As you can see from the flyer, this Saturday is going to be fun. We will unveil the new t-shirt designs, nothing radically changed, but a new twist on the old idea. I even heard that we might have a few as door prizes...But I'll never tell.

There are also a good number of bicycles in boxes that we just pulled off the truck today, and a number of bikes that we can special order to meet the needs of all the local riding fanatics. Joel, Pedar, Lindsey, Miguel and I will be working quite diligently to create a quiver of bicycles that will tickle your fancy and help you shake off the winter blues.

As far as the reorganization, it goes well. Here we see my dear friend Joel enjoying the fruits of our labors...that is apple juice in his hand. Cold brewed, frosty apple juice.

This was a rewarding Saturday evening, if you will notice, the picture is moved closer to the mechanics were we have opened up a little space to view the latest races on the telly, or to try on a pair of Shimano road shoes. Notice that the counter is clear and the mechanics are visible for harassment, or just a little social interaction.

So come and join us on Saturday, check out the new bikes and see what all the fuss is about. Hope to see you there.

"We need the moisture"

When I flung open my curtains on Saturday morning, my first thought was, "NO" ! I was in denial about the chances of snow in Laramie during the spring,...as if I have not lived here my entire life.
The snow was extremely wet and heavy, but at least there was a lot of it.



The snow did provide us with the opportunity to examine our layout around the Pedal House. Joel revealed that in another life he was actually an interior decorator, and so the adventure began. We decided that we did not want the customers to come in and feel like we were a completely different bicycle store. In fact, we wanted to have the customers feel at home, like always. Which leads me to my first dilemma. I had some bad feelings toward this painting;


I won't go into detail, but it has nothing to do with long standing love triangle between Lance, Greg, and Trek. We don't sell Trek, so I don't care. :) I am just a huge feng shui kind of guy, so we moved it to accommodate my flow. In fact we found a few changes that made us all feel a little more comfortable.

Before:
After:


So come on down and let us know what you think of the new face of the Pedal House. We did a lot, and it was all thanks to the snow. Mother nature, you are the best. Thanks for the chance to clean and reorganize, and as so many people who optimistically view the world, "we need the moisture."