The Stars were out in force for our Dashing Bike Show premiére at Bicycle Space in Washington.
The Brooks Dashing Bicycle Show rolled into Washington D.C. on Saturday, April 20th amidst the splendour of spring to find the capital city’s bicycle culture thriving. Bicycle Space, the show’s host, is at the forefront of the urban cycling boom currently in full swing.
Im deutschsprachigen Raum sind Brooks Sättel bekanntlich sehr beliebt. In der Schweiz, in Österreich, in Deutschland selbst und natürlich auch in Ecken von Pennsylvania, scheint es nach unseren Zahlen so zu sein, daß kaum ein anderer Sattelhersteller in jenen Territorien überhaupt versucht, Geschäft zu machen.
Das macht uns natürlich sehr froh.
Wir können nicht genau sagen, ob es rein an unserer sättlerischen Exzellenz liegt, oder an dem guten Geschmack von unseren Kund(inn)en. Wahrscheinlich hat’s aber mit beiden zu tun.
Jedenfalls, haben wir einen neuen Sattel in der sogenannten “Pipeline”. Cambium heißt er, und soll ab Mitte Juni zu kaufen sein. Vielleicht haben Sie schon was darüber gehört?
Bis Juni wollen wir aber 100 Leute aus aller Welt finden, die für uns den Cambium vorher probefahren, und ihre Eindrücke und Erfahrungen dann mitteilen.
Wir haben zur Zeit eine kurze Umfrage auf die Brooks Homepage. Und zwar nicht nur “in English“.
Alle, die gern in unsere engere Auswahl kommen möchten, sind herzlich eingeladen, diese komplett auszufüllen und an uns hinzuschicken.
Sie erfahren spätestens irgendwann im Mai, ob Sie von uns einen Cambium bekommen. Wenn nicht, kriegen Sie sowieso als Trost einen Rabattcode, was ihre sämtlichen Brooks Einkäufe in unserem Online Shop 10% billiger macht.
Also viel Spass, viel Glück und einen schönen Tag noch.
Coast to Coast. Tuula with the bikes in Florida.
Sustenance and Saddle Sense – Why a Brooks is like a well balanced meal.
By Tuula Rebhahn
Every Brooks saddle owner has had this experience. You pull up in front of the store, school or work and some non-cyclist approaches you to gawk at your saddle. It’s sleek, they say, but where’s the padding? You couldn’t pay me to sit on that thing!
On our tour through the southern United States, my partner Hannah and I have these interactions frequently. But the odd looks we receive outside the grocery store are nothing compared to those we receive inside. Passing on the fried chicken, ramen noodles and “sports” drinks, we stock up on eggs, prunes and salad greens, then refuse the plastic bag at the checkout line. We know we’re marking ourselves as weirdos – but hey, we already did that when we walked in with spandex and metal in our shoes.
Stop teasing! A quite unfulfilling glimpse of the new Brooks Cambium.
Readers of the 2013 Brooks Bugle will have had an informational head start on everybody else regarding the imminent release of a new addition to our range of fine bicycle saddles.
The current copy contains an article on our latest model, the Cambium C17. It’s a saddle that represents a fairly unusual departure for us in that its top is not made of leather (cue sharp intake of breath). Rather, it is made from natural rubber and organic cotton, and enhanced by a thin layer of structural textile for added resilience.
It is immediately comfortable and maintenance-free, which might possibly put a dent in our Proofide sales. Even without Proofide, it still offers the longevity for which our products are legendary.
Come on, bit more. I’ll see your two rivets and raise you a bag loop
But a rather interesting piece of extra news began doing the rounds yesterday, which we are happy to officially confirm for our readers today.
Between now and its release date, we are undertaking a worldwide search for 100 lucky people to road test the Brooks Cambium. The group as a whole will naturally consist of cyclists of both sexes, and encompass a full range of cycling activity and body types.
Part of A Return Of The Jedi Speeder Bike? Not quite. All will be revealed…
From the fair-weather, six stone bicycle commuter to the 300 pound daily Centurion, we hope to find our Cambium test pieces bolted to 100 very distinct seatposts.
Those chosen will report back to us with their impressions and experiences, and we’ll publish them in a special section of the Brooks website. Of course, our testers will all get to keep their Cambia in gratitude for their efforts, but would be strongly advised in advance to read our post on saddle theft prevention.
And those who apply unsuccessfully to test our Cambium will have the consolation of receiving a special discount code for our online shop. It will give you 10% off all Brooks purchases you make over the coming twelve months.
At any rate, several notable cycling websites publicized this news yesterday evening, along with a link to the Cambium Tester registration form. If you were one of the applicants who experienced the inconvenience of our server crashing under the weight of subscriptions, please accept our apologies. We are reliably informed that it’s “back up” again.
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has been firing back lots of good pictures from the Red Planet lately.
As we say, we are looking for a diverse pool of riders, not the first hundred who apply, so those who were unable to send their form to us yesterday are at no disadvantage in regard to the decision making process.
That said, we hope to ship out the 100 test pieces as soon as we can, around mid-May. So don’t dally, fill out our questionnaire and cross your fingers.
Friends across the Pond of the World’s Finest Cycling Saddles are abuzz with anticipation. And as Saturday approaches, our colleagues are putting the final transformational touches to Washington’s Bicycle Space as the Dashing Bicycle Show readies itself for a fortnight-long stay in the American capital.
The bike is heavy and the pace is quick—driven by expressions of excited freedom and adventure. Months of anticipation and enthusiastic strategy is finally deployed into the unknown. A saturating realization of what I have just embarked on imbues every thought and translates into explosions of pedal cycles. The Southern Tier of the United States is stoically awaiting my progressive arrival. The only obligations I possess are finding the strength to complete this voyage and experiencing the wondrous phenomena which are literally in front of me.
Spirits Abound Last Week by the Dashing Bicycle Show at Salvagetti in Denver
If you were lucky enough to visit the NAHBS last weekend, we hope you made it by Salvagetti for some good old fashioned cocktails and conversation. Next stop: Washington D.C.!
All photos by David Niddrie, Momentum Mag
Works Manager Steven Green presents Phil Webb with his Employee of the Year trophy.
Last week at the Smethwick Works, a small ceremony took place to honour our 2012 Brooks Employee of the Year.
Since his initial short spell with us way back in 1971, Phillip Webb has found himself at times elsewhere employed, but like the proverbial bad penny, he always come back. This, of course, is the only tendency which Phil shares with a bad penny. In all other respects he’s an excellent guinea, so to speak. And fortunately, his most recent stint has lasted thus far since 2004.
On your own. This year’s Transcontinental will demand much independent thinking of its riders.
If you were one of the thousands who avidly followed the heroics of Mike Hall et al last year in their race around the globe during the WCR Grand Tour, then we have news of a very special forthcoming event that should be of interest to you.
Two weeks of two-wheeled, human-powered, sleep-deprived talking to yourself, with little but Mother Nature and the purr of chain sliding over cog to keep you company along roads sandwiched by the Thames and Bosphorus. “Unmatched… Unconstrained…”, but perhaps most importantly, “Unsupported.”
Welcome to the Quick Energy Transcontinental Race.
We mentioned here recently how we have been lucky enough to have Rivendell’s Grant Petersen contribute a piece for our forthcoming edition of the Brooks Bugle.
The excellence of the machines designed and assembled by Petersen and his team in Walnut Creek, California has long since attained Article of Faith status among aficionados of lugged steel frames around the world. Not forgetting that before setting up on his own, his work as a designer at Bridgestone in the early 90s had already spawned the iconic X0 series.
