New shop, new name, new location at N. 40th & Stone Way

The mountain biking conglomerate known as Fluidride has split up, with Simon Lawton taking the brand and Zeb Tingey and Jerry Knight the shop. They’ll all still do business together and work the Fluidride synergies — Simon reportedly will keep sponsoring Fluidride Cup competitions — but the new setup allows each to do what they love best.

Anyone who’s been around a bike shop for any amount of time knows the huge life suck it becomes. Simon wanted to devote more time and energy to his thriving instruction/DVD/racing pursuits, which have become hugely popular with the boom in freeride and downhill mountain biking. Zeb and Jerry wanted to keep the shop going. Simon sold the two the tools and business relationships, and everyone is good to go.

Renamed Big Tree Bikes, the new shop is at N. 40th and Stone Way N., which as it happens is the major north-south bike commute corridor. Fluidride built a reputation for downhill and freeride but has Seattle-based Evil street bikes on the floor as well. And Zeb can wrench anything on two wheels.

Although Big Tree has only been at its new location since Tuesday, it already has been contacted by Cascade Bicycle Club to host a ride station during Bike to Work Day, the annual commuter breakout in mid-May.

Zeb Tingey and customer talk bike

It’s also great to have a bike shop on Stone Way politically, because bike safety, visibility and respect continues to be an issue. Stone Way was originally supposed to have dedicated bike lanes but lost out in a political tug of war with Suzie Burke, a commercial developer who throws a lot of weight around in City Hall. So Stone Way wound up with “sharrows,” which Bike Intelligencer thinks are half a loaf (a sop, really).

The new shop has more room, parking, street traffic and everything else you could ask for. Go by and check it out tomorrow: Hours are noon to 6 p.m., and the guys will have all the bling plus refreshments on hand for Open House.

Oh, and the name? It nominally refers to a tree and trail in the new Duthie Park outside of Issaquah, but as Jerry put it, “The only big tree around here is Zeb.”

I spent a few days last summer in Rossland and was blown away, not just with the widely worshipped Seven Summits epic ride but all the close-to-town tech stuff. Rocky, steep, challenging, with hucks, structures and drops, the local trails will get your skillz up to spec in no time at all. My video of Seven Summits.

Portland takes its reputation as the nation’s leading bicycling city seriously. A man has been charged with intentionally crashing into a cyclist, a Class A felony, which “is used when police suspect there is an intention to cause serious physical injury…” More at BikePortland.org.

They may try to ban bikes on Grand County roads in Colorado. But they will never succeed in keeping bikes off of Grand County roads in Colorado.

Great Fluidride Cup. No. 5 in Port Angeles report from PinkBike. Some photos not for the faint of heart. Apparently you needed armor just to walk the course.

Delicious BikeHugger rant over airline charges for bikes as luggage … and how to get around them.

Cyclelicio.us: In Missouri you can run a red light, long as you’re responsible about it. One point is unclear: How do you tell a pavement-sensored light from a timed one? D’ya just have to sit there and wait?

In any case, a good idea, if somewhat dicey legally (e.g., what is a “reasonable” amount of time?).

Jacquie Phelan is back home in NorCal. Her pithy travel assessment of 60 days on two wheels: One Less Corpse. Ride on Jacquie!

Now all I need is an iPhone holder for my commuter bike handlebars.

At the Sea Otter Classic this spring in Monterey, I ran into a bunch of Marin high school kids who were absolute bike maniacs. Many brought along Mom ‘n Dad. There’s a revolution going on at the font of the sport that will pay huge dividends in years to come. The latest…

Iron Horse got purchased and the new owners will get the company’s patents. What they won’t get (automatically, at least), is Iron Horse’s most valuable asset before it went bankrupt: A DW-Link license. I just got my second DW-Link bike (a Pivot Firebird) and Dave Weagle’s brilliant innovation is the real deal. Believe it!

Biking Bis: Interesting piece on history of multi-gear cycling.

Cyclelicio.us on running red lights. I don’t run red lights either as a matter of principle. But I do use bike-specific maneuvers to get around them (e.g. taking a right turn and then U-turning back to make a left turn, as opposed to having to try to stop traffic on a bike in the middle of an intersection) when it’s safe and warranted. My philosophy on riding in traffic boils down to one simple ideology: Stay alive. Sometimes to do that you have to bend traffic laws aimed at two-ton behemoths.

PinkBike: FluidRide Cup No. 4 results from a rainy day at the Mt. Hood Ski Bowl. Bryn Atkinson pulled down the win with local (Issaquah) favorite Luke Strobel in second. Congrats to the Evil Bikes/Fluidride shop team which placed two finishers in the Top 10! The Evil Revolt made its debut in late spring, quickly sold out, and is showing some eye-popping results on the circuit. The bike to watch!

New Evils galore at Fluidride in Seattle

A bevy of new Evil Revolts came in yesterday at Fluidride’s shop on south Lake Union. The shop is putting in a white-on-black showroom to highlight the new frames with the revolutionary pivot design from Dave Weagle of DW-link fame. Here’s a closeup (note the logo detail at the bottom bracket).

Evil is as Evil does

There’s tons of buzz about the Seattle-based company’s new bike, which Jerry Knight predicts will “just kill on the circuit this year.” The big kickoff is this weekend in Port Angeles — reminder that the Hood Canal Bridge will close on Friday. Lots of folks going over Thursday to beat the closure. Otherwise the plan is to drive around through Gig Harbor.

Evil pro Steve Smith is expected to ride at Port Angeles, joining 50-plus other pros from around the world. This is the biggest race in years in Washington, head on over and cheer ‘em on!

Alas, Seattle was shut out in the League of American Bicyclists’ “Bike Shops of the Year” awards. Astoundingly so. I can’t think of a city with more diverse and numerous bike shops than Seattle.

The countdown to Sea Otter madness continues with updates from Mountain Bike Action magazine and Bike Rumor, which has the trailer to the world premier for Freedom Riders, a film about trail-building on Forest Service land. Worth the watch!

PinkBike has a Fluidride Cup photo mojo going, check it out…

I dropped down Fremont Ave. to the Burke-Gilman Trail and tooled around the north end of Lake Union, winding up over in Montlake. The Montlake Bike Shop is a cool place to see eye candy; they carry Santa Cruz and Ibis and usually have a demo bike or two in stock. Having the opportunity to demo a new bike is nothing to turn your nose up at these days.

This was almost a “tour de LBS” (local bike shop) day. I stopped in at Fluidride by the shipyard. They’ve expanded westward, breaking through the wall and setting up a glass counter with repair stall behind. The added room is nice; the former shop was a real cubbyhole — pretty dark and cramped. They’ve got so much elbow room now that they’re setting up a special “Evil Bikes” display: All black, with track lighting, to show off the new Evil line’s white-on-white. White is a great bike color btw, something I never appreciated till I got the custom pearl white finish on my Intense 6.6. Fluidride carries not just Evil but Cove, Transition, Kona, Iron Horse and just about all high-end lines except Santa Cruz. The expansion is not quite all in place yet but will be rockin’ when finished.

I also swung by Downhill Zone and Gregg’s Greenlake Cycles, missing R+E Cycles because of an errand detour. Let’s see, that’s five bike shops within what, a 3-mile radius. And I didn’t even take in Free Range Cycles or Cascade Bicycle Studio in Fremont! Or Recycled Cycles on Lake Union! Bike shops, they’re everywhere in Seattle!

To get a feel join the Fluidride Forum and start planning! See y’all there!

Be sure to check out the rockin’ vids (scroll down the first link)!