Showing posts with label Riding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Riding. Show all posts

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/

 

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Saturday, 28 August 2010

Rapha Continental | Ride the Rockies

<p>Rapha Continental | Ride the Rockies from RAPHA on Vimeo.</p>

The thing is what is really cool about this short film from the Rapha Continental Team is their passion for the 'The Ride'. The clothes, the bike is doesn't really matter as it is the journey that counts. The experience is shared, and maginified if spent with other people. I like the fact that the bikes of the Rapha Continental are all in the same colour scheme, black, white and pink. I am really pleased to see that they have moved on from just steel, you mean you didn't see that horny looking Moots, take another look.

The riding that they undertake is the kind of thing I love. In many ways it's the Punk Rock of Road Riding, mixing fun, competitveness and a spirit of adventure. I've always referred to this as Noddy Riding. The Rockies look amazing, and I'll have to add it to my 'To Ride List', which is a long one as I'm always finding new places to explore.

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Sunday, 4 July 2010

A Ride in the Lanes ... mainly in pictures

I set out for my ride this morning, and frankly I had too much on my mind and my heart wasn't in it. But I thought I'd get out for an hour to grab some head space. Here are some photo's I took along the way.

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