Sunday 5 September 2010

Eurobike 2010 ~ Part 3, Chris King & Cielo

Part three belongs to the good folks from Chris King. Having spent Saturday morning in meetings with suppliers I wanted to spend some time feeding the geek and enjoying bikes and the whole show from a bike riders persepective. I'd passed over the site a couple of days earlier but today I actually got chance to talk to Chris DiStefano and Jay Sycip. I've been a fan and user of Chris King headsets for a long time, and in my ideal world all of my bikes would have a King headset fitted, they truly are a fit and forget item. The bottom bracket looks stunning and Chris King are one of the few companies that manage to combine both the wow factor of a gem encrusted eternity ring, while providing the bomb proofness of a Toyota Hi-Lux. It is rare for any company to combine the two together and the name of Chris King has been built on this, and it is truly a set of products that deserve its legendary status.

Cielo is another line of bicycle frames built originally by Chris King himself and now with a key group of frame builders and fabricators. But if you want a Chris King built frame by the man himself you can get that also, just in a limited run and I am guessing for a few dollars more. The Cielo frames ended up being a real hi-light of the show. I'm no retro geek and for me a good frame is built around good design principals and not the tubing it's made from. We can get all hung up and concerned about lables on the seat tube. I've always liked the Steel builders who won't comment on the exact tubes they use, rather than focussing on that it is the ride that is the real thing to be making the fuss about. From what I can tell from talking with Chris (DiStefano) that this is at the core of what the frames are about. I asked the question, 'what about fitting a carbon fork', the reply from Chris was 'the bike has been designed with the fork to work in harmony together'. You may think that this would be a common place thing, but it isn't alwasys the case.

So after spending some serious time on the stand I'd really like to own one at some point. They look simple and in essence that is part of the charm. The lines are clean and timeless, and any real bike fan needs a bike like this. The toughest decison would be which one to have, the Cross bike has the biggest draw, but the Sportif is also a great looking machine.The frames aren't cheap but compared to other exclusive frames they seem to represent a good buy.

the last two galleries are full of images from the Cielo site, thanks for allowing me to use them as they convey the nature of riding they enjoying the area that they ride in.

http://cielo.chrisking.com/

http://chrisking.com/

 

Posted via email from Sprinting for Signs's posterous

No comments: