Actually, I WISH it was still 1 week to showtime, unfortunately it’s a few days less. A few days that I really could use right now. Last week I wrote about the self-imposed, non-essential goal to show three bikes at Eurobike. A fairly unrealistic goal but you have to dream. Or as they say in German: “Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt” (Hope dies last).

In a perfect world, we could have shown our pathfinder/gravel/adventure frame. In a slightly imperfect world, you lose just three days in machining because the chainstay mold needs to be slightly different than initially thought, and Eurobike is over. I’m really bummed out about that, which is weird since there was absolutely no real reason why we absolutely had to have it at Eurobike to begin with.

So now we’ll take our time and show you a fine sample sometime in the weeks after Eurobike (given Andy’s and my travel immediately following Eurobike, it may take a bit of time though). In the meantime, I will write about some of the design details.

On the full suspension frame, getting a tight timeline has been even tougher. Since we are charting new territory in the design (not so much the suspension principles since it uses a Horst link but in the way the kinematics are translated into the final shapes) and even more so, charting new territory in the way we build it, we run into problems on a daily basis.

To quote an unlikely source in Donald Rumsfeld, there are the “known knowns”, the “unknown knowns”, the “known unknowns” and the “unknown unknowns”. We’re dealing with all four of them, and many issues fall into the worst (the fourth) category. So we’ve learned a lot this week, all problems that we can solve but which take time.

This doesn’t mean I’ve given up on the full suspension at Eurobike, it just means I’ve set a new unrealistic goal of showing at least some parts and maybe only to select retailers.

You may wonder why we don’t simply set realistic goals. One reason is the aforementioned “Hope dies last”, the other reason is that even if we don’t achieve the stated goal of showcasing a new product at Eurobike, the push for such a goal will still get us further than we would have been otherwise.

Anyway, a little side view of the full suspension frame model is below (I know, the side view skilfully shows very little :-).

More soon, for now it’s back to the last preparations for Eurobike, which means a few more long days and then the show itself. If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there. We’re in hall B3, booth 108.

BTW, since we are now talking more and more about the pathfinder/gravel/adventure bike and the full suspension, some of you have asked if there is a waiting list. So we’ve made one. Just fill in your info here and you’ll get onto the priority list for either (or both!) models. Then when the bikes go into production, we’ll let you know and you can decide what you would like to do.

This entry was posted on August 22, 2014 at 20:00 and is filed under OPEN.