Monday, October 19, 2009

Hard Plastic Wheels with Precision Bearings



Got an email today from Randy today
"The long awaited rear wheels for the Trek MOD are finally available. Trek did a special batch of only 500 units. We have 100 en route and will re-order if needed. I have a feeling that this will be the last batch of replacement wheels from Trek, forever."

The Bigwheel races have been a little slow recently, mainly because everyone has burned through their stockpile of wheels. The famine hit some harder than others. Those who were not prepared missed out on some great riding but truth be told I have really missed the race car drivers at the weekly Bigwheel races, they bring a level of insanity to the ride and it just wasn't the same without them. Hopefully the wheels will show up before the snow files and they close the road. The next bigwheel rally will not be one to miss. And yes the offer still stands if you want to ride let me know, a few dollars to my livestrong page is all it takes.

I haven't posted for a while, been pretty busy. We went down to Las Vegas to Interbike to scope out an Asian supplier for our own Bigwheel. We found a vendor that makes a steel frame Bigwheel similar to the MOD and showed him our Youtube video on Randy's IPhone so he could get a feel for what we were looking for. He didn't speak any English so we had to communicate through an interpreter. Here we are trying to explain to him that this plastic wheel we have sitting here on the table is the same one we used in the video He just couldn't comprehend it.
The Mad Dog site has been getting a lot of people asking to buy Bigwheels but since Trek doesn't make them anymore and even if they had them they couldn't sell to non-local people because the Dealer agreement restricts selling over the phone and shipping product out in boxes, we are pursuing avenues to spec and import our own model that we will be able to sell to anyone regardless of their geographical location. Very exciting! This is going to be huge.

Interbike was fun, but you know what was more fun? The parking garage of the Venetian. The security guard was too busy watching videos on his phone to pay any attention to us. I almost got taken out by a Corvette.
After Interbike we went out to Boulder City to ride in some of their drainage ditches, followed up by a quick detour to Brianhead on the way home to make a couple of runs down the canyon. We took Dwayne from Media Works along for the ride so there should be a new video coming out as soon as he finishes editing.
One of the best parts of the trip was the drive down and back. Experienced race car driver + Subaru STI + Radar Detector= very little strain on the bladder between St George and Vegas.