- Long time... -

It's been quite a while since I've been able to get up here and post. Doesn't seem to have bothered anyone though...

There's been a lot happening. We're rolling closer and closer to having the Sram and Ultegra Hudz ready. At this point we are expecting delivery of about 300 of all the colors in the new styles on roughly May 20th. To hold everyone over until then we have Celeste and Orange available now in DA and Campy. And we should have the much requested 'Gum Rubber' hoods, we call them Bordeaux Gold. As with all of the other colors, these three new additions will benefit specific charities. For more information on Hudz click here.

In other - fairly big - news, the date of the Rocky Mountain Bicycle Show has been changed. Instead of shoehorning it in to May, it has been pushed back until November. The new dates are Nov. 1 & 2 for the public show, and Oct. 31 for the Media/VIP reception and setup. We are working on getting together with the Portland and East Coast shows with the hope that we can coordinate our efforts and make these all successful events for both builders and buyers. I see long weekends in DC and Portland in my future...

Finally, after careful deliberation we have decided to close Groupe de Tete. The project bicycle 'shop' was interesting but ultimately did not prove its importance to us after three years. We will continue with the full range of bespoke services for Temple Cycles, but will no longer offer them for outside bicycles. All of the other projects that have previously fallen under the Groupe de Tete label will be transfered to Applied Cycling Labs (the parent corporation) and offered as they previously have been with GdT (Hudz, shoes, etc.).

OK, this is really the last bit of news. We seem to be getting closer all the time to bb30 compatibility. We have shells, we have cutters on loan, we have the installation and alignment tools coming, and we have high quality cranks that will be available soon (sorry, but FSA doesn't quite cut it for us...). It looks like this is going to be the new standard with everyone from Zipp to Shimano coming on board with it (Shimano is still just a rumor, but I think - and hope - that they'll come on board with it). You don't even want to know what kind of gnarly steel road bike I'm working on for the first bb30 that we do... Bwah, Ha, Haaaa (sinister laugh)...

- Crazy mountain springs -

Yesterday it was about 60 and sunny (15 for people who are smart enough to use metric... damn Imperial weights and measures). Then in the afternoon it turned a bit grey, and I kept expecting rain that never came.

This morning I woke up and it was 32 (0) and snowing.

This is about the seventh time that we have gone through this pattern since the start of March. Not much you can do about these crazy mountain springs. Almost makes those sissies in Belgium who were going on and on about the weather at RVV look soft... Of course I'm not out riding today so I should probably take back the sissy thing... Especially to you Meatball and Maggy...

- Trek and Lemond sue each other -

It appears that Trek and Lemond will part ways in typical American style: by suing each other. Lemond is not pleased with Trek's performance supporting his brand, and Trek is not happy with Lemond bashing LA for years, and other saying other things that they say are damaging to the Trek brand.

Maybe this is good?

Word is that the Klein brand is supposed to come back to prominence in the Trek Bicycle Company lineup now. Of course it probably won't be anything like the great Kleins from way back when, and they'll probably be carbon, but it's nice to think that they may be coming back around. It's probably also good for the engineers at Trek/Lemond because they will have to work with the marketing department to come up with something even catchier than the "Min/Max" theory... Crimeny...

Some people have been saying that this is good for Lemond. I'm not sure how. It seems that they have been languishing for years and other than the new introduction of the carbon bikes have not really done anything exciting in a while. For more than a decade Lemond bicycles have been built on the strength of Trek engineering (no judgments there). With out Trek, what is Lemond anymore?

- Process of refinement -

It seems that with most things that we do there is a process of refinement where we take something and massage it, mutate it, sometimes even mutilate it, to get it where we are happy enough to call it 'done.'

What brings this rumination you ask? We just changed the website again. This time instead of a dramatic overhaul, it was a little nip and trim. Out with the red, in with the blue. Overall the whole thing looks less intimidating, and more pleasing.

Plus, we just got a fork back for our EE Cummings steel bike. The current GS30 fork flares a good deal in the hips of the fork (top of the legs, right near the crotch as Bert Hull from AlphaQ says...). With the moderate size of tubes on most steel bikes (and even a lot of Titanium bikes) the look was just a bit off. So I went back to my reserve of older AlphaQ forks and found a Sub3 with the right rake. Two weeks later that puppy is mounted and looking good. The slimmer profile simply matches the proportions of the frame.

Of course everything is not a matter of subtle refinement. We nuked the 07 jersey design and came up with something completely different for 08. I love it. We'll see what other people think. Matching bibs in the darker blue with light bands at the bottom of the legs will be coming also. Just in time, my old stuff is getting pretty worn...