It has been a long week, great, but between the Holiday weekend and all the other things life throws at you, Long. The most important though is my wife and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary.
It has been three great years. We were able to take advantage of all the family in one place as babysitters and escape for a night away on the Central Coast. Of course we brought the bikes and made some time to explore the bluffs around Cambria.
Thank you to my patient and loving wife as I am getting the OAC venture off the ground, without her support this would never have made it this far.
It has been a while coming, but the latest batch of Ramblers is into the fabrication phase. The forks started yesterday, and went into brazing today.
I am stoked to have Jonathon working on this batch, they guys at Zen are top-notch. Thanks Dave for the update and pictures, and thank you to the first five Rambler funders who have been waiting patiently for this to get under way. There will be more pics as they come in.
Sales Calls November 19 2012, 0 Comments
The whole Ocean Air Cycles project has been an organic progression. I do have a plan, it distills down to making really great bikes that work, and sell as many as I can, and then sell a bunch more. It is tilting more to the direction of partnering with brick and mortar shops as well as direct sales to get the bikes out into the world. Today was my first shop visit. I headed up to Ojai to visit an old friend and his Partners at the
MOB Shop. It was a great visit, all three owners took my 63 for a spin and came back with smiles. Each noticed something different but consensus was universally favorable. I am really stoked at the possibility of working with them. I rode up, it was an incredible day, and I needed to get away from the keyboard.
The leaves are starting to fall, just a little chill in the air, but still doable in shorts. The trip up took a bit longer then expected, so not as many pictures. I will be heading up again next week, and plan on allocating a bit more time to snap some pictures then. If any of you are contemplating a Rambler and live in Ojai, you should let these guys know soon, as in let's get it done through
Kickstarter. They get "it" and would be stoked to put you on one, and I would love to run the builds through them.
The weather was so nice I decided to push the schedule a bit and take a different route home.
Blue skies and puffy clouds over the mountains. I wish I had the time to get up there more, maybe in the spring.
a day can make in the weather. The storm has passed.
With the lowriders back on, it was time for the standard Sunday trip to the market. This time it was a heavy load stocking up on taters for the holiday. It was a great day to take a break and go for a ride on the Rambler.
there have been a few drizzly sorts of days, but today was the first chance I had to get out in a good solid rain. The Rambler was still all clean and shiny from the expo, pimped out with a new chain and all. I needed to pick up some fixings for the first turkey and soon to be soup that is going through the kitchen this season as well. Is there a better way to run some saturday morning errands in the rain than on your bike?
The first stop was on the far side of town, through the farms and resulting mud, to the mushroom farm. If you have a mushroom farm in your area, it is probably worth checking out. I was able to score a pound of fresh crimini shrooms for $2.50. Heading back across town to the farmer's market the rain really started to come down.
The fresh hard rain helped to clean the grit off of the bike from the agricultural diversion. With the last stop in the bag, literally, it was time to head home and dry out.
Having a
bike purpose-built to run wide tires and fenders really helps with keeping the rain rides fun. Also, this was my first chance to push the Paul Racers in the rain. While not as powerful as in the dry, stopping from the hoods on hills was no sweat at all.
Get out there and play, do not let the rain slow you down!
New Bike Lanes November 16 2012, 0 Comments
My bicycle has been the primary mode of transportation around town for about 5 years now. One of the biggest hurdles getting other folks to jump on board has been the fear of riding in traffic. In the last few years though the city of Ventura has been making great strides. There are well marked bike routes that will get you to most parts of town. In the past the routes were a mix of neighborhood streets and bike lanes on the main arteries. The challenge was in navigating the jumble, often ending up on heavily trafficked 4 lane roads with the bike lane you were in just sort of disappearing. As part of our seasonal repaving, and thus re striping, I am really stoked to see new connecting stretches showing up every week now. The latest is on a stretch that I ride all the time, and used to be a sprint to get past.
I had long since given up trying to count the times that cars would pinch me to the curb right underneath the share the road sign. Thank you to the City for fixing this stretch. Hopefully it fuels the ever-increasing number of people I see choosing the bike over their car for getting around town.
Happy Friday! DO not forget to play outside this weekend!
We are still in recovery mode from the SF Expo, it was a great time, and now we need to get back up to speed. The day before we left for San Francisco the decals made it here, nothing like everything coming together at once. Her is the slide show of the decals and colorways for the three primary combinations:
[gallery link="file" order="DESC" columns="5" orderby="title"]
They are top mounted mylar printed by the last professional bicycle decal shop here in the US, at least as far as I could find, that could work in full color as well as variations for different types of application. I am beyond happy with how they came out. The bikes feel much more like the real deal. Not that they ride any differently, but the branding definitely kicks it up a notch.
You probably noticed the "FOUNDER" sticker on the left chain stay, these will only be on the first run of bikes in production as well as the round coming out of Kickstarter. Which if you missed it, our Rambler project is live:
We are getting tons of interest, likes etc. and while that is great, we need backers to make it happen. We will take the support in any way you can give it, but without enough pledges to reach our goal, the project will not fund. Thus, I am asking directly for your help, your pledges and to spread the word to everyone you know who rides a bike, has been thinking about riding, and wants to be able to get around on a true sport bike, that can still be comfortable and carry home the groceries.
The project went live last night, and we already have one backer for a frame set in the first few hours, Thank you!
Please help spread the news about the project. The word of mouth distribution is the most powerful, blog, link, Facebook, throw it out there on the forums every little bit help to get the Ramblers out into the world. I can not do this without your help.
The SF Expo is going great, I met some awesome people on the first day: vendors, promoters and bloggers. Between the show and the KS project I could barely sleep, from all the energy building up, although I am sure that problem will start to ease off after today, first full open to the public day. I am so grateful to the support of my family, friends offering us a place to stay, cousins coming up to help and all of you who have come out and been so stoked to see the Ramblers. It is all of you that give me the energy to keep this going - Thank you!
I am so lucky to have friends and friends through my wife that are gifted artists and designers. I have a heavy tilt towards the analytical side and while I can conceptualize what I want an art project to be, it is awesome to throw out a range of ideas and to get something like this back on the first try. Gigantic thank you to all of you who have helped me.
This is very close to what will be the shirt and bag art for the Kickstarter rewards. There will be options of this or the porteur build, as well as a couple of color options. Now to get the Kickstarter part launched, stuck in a holding pattern waiting for approval.
Nothing like cutting it to the wire, but it seems like things happen that way sometimes. Decals should be here before the show, fingers crossed, here is a preview with the proof sheet:
The top three will be the primary colors used, with a few neutral options down the line for custom colors. The small square logo will be on the head tube, made in Portland on the seat tube, Ocean Air Cycles on the down tube, RAMBLER on the top tube up front drive side, and Founder on the left chain stay for this first round of bikes being run through Kickstarter (soon, very son).
It has been three great years. We were able to take advantage of all the family in one place as babysitters and escape for a night away on the Central Coast. Of course we brought the bikes and made some time to explore the bluffs around Cambria.
Thank you to my patient and loving wife as I am getting the OAC venture off the ground, without her support this would never have made it this far.
