Then the donkey jumped into the bushes and made no sound at all. He didn’t look very smart but he was smart. We are working as hard as we can.Once upon a time, in a place far away there lived a donkey. Thanks for all the inquiries about purchasing. We are working to bring the bike to market in early 2015. We love what we’ve put together and we are currently refining 2.0 designs. Check back for details.įive development Trail Donkeys have been built and are being tested. Here is a sense of what a ride on a mule is like, and we hope a ride on a Trail Donkey is similarly exciting. The Trail Donkey may never be the fastest or sharpest bike out there, but it will be sure footed, versatile, and dependable. Are mules the smartest animal out there? No. Are mules the fastest animal out there? No. Mules are also stubborn, and we like that. Mules are the chosen pack and riding animal for the task because they have excellent stamina, are extremely sure footed, and are very dependable. The descent and ascent into the canyon is long, steep, and treacherous. Why the Trail Donkey name? Trail Donkey is an homage to the famous mules of the Grand Canyon which have been in use since 1887. We want to get in the lab, have some fun, and break some eggs. We want to do it our own way and we don’t want to make any apologies along the way. Rodeo wants to play with it’s own niches. The lines and genres of cycling are already well established and the major manufacturers are already servicing them well. We don’t expect the bike to do any of those things perfectly. We want to be able to descend a steep, rutted, Rocky Mountain without fearing for our lives or having our hands go numb from braking stresses. We want to take our road bike on the dirt sometimes. Such bikes have probably been built by others, but we wanted to answer the question for ourselves. They also birthed something else: The question that asks if a bike can be built that is adapted for all three disciplines. As much as anything else they were some of the sparks that birthed Rodeo. Full writeup HERE:īoth of these rides involved three disciplines of cycling: Road biking, Cyclocross, and MTB. A full writeup can be found HERE.Ī few months later as the snow began to blanket Colorado, Peder and Stephen embarked on a similar adventure, but with more white stuff and more hiking. (spoiler: of course it was possible, but it was tough!). On one such ride, Stephen rode Denver’s extremely rocky and extremely steep Mount Falcon, just to see if it was possible on a drop bar bicycle. (Pre-Rodeo), team founders Stephen Fitzgerald and Peder Horner went on a few epic rides on Cyclocross bikes that pushed up against the limits of what they could do. In the mean time we will keep sharing the ride.įor more info on our Donkey aventures, check out our writeups here and here. We won’t be selling 1.0 Trail Donkeys, but with a little luck we could have 2.0 Donkeys out on the roads and trails early next year. We’ve come away with a lot of ideas for things we want to tweak with Trail Donkey 2.0, and we are currently in development on the next iteration of the project. We’ve ridden the five test bikes very hard and they have impressed us with their versatility and performance. If you follow us on social media you’ve seen it in action all over the roads and trails of Colorado. Trail Donkey has passed “what if” status and has become a real “thing”. When we do we will update the site with a full product page outlining intent, specs, options, pricing, and delivery timelines. We re-designed the bike from scratch, cut new molds, have started testing the prototype, and are nearing a public release where we offer the bike for sale. See photos below for the revised design and notice the differences in geometries and design vs the 1.0 bike. Traildonkey 2.0 is in the final phases of prototyping.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |