Back in 2022 some bright person at Hercules had the idea of hopping on the gravel e-bike trend by completely phoning it in. Enter the Edison GR I-11: The eagle-eyed might look at this and say “this looks an awful lot like they took their regular joe-shmoe Shimano e-bike and put a set of dropbars on it”. Do I have news for you. This is the exact same frame as the flatbar Edison series Hercules was selling at the time.…

Schwalbe’s launch of “their” new Valve didn’t quite go to timeline. Right after they showed it at eurobike I put in an order for a bunch and our first sampler arrived two weeks ago, bit of a jump from September. The bulk of the order is still due to arrive, this was more of a goodie from the Schwalbe sales rep. Curiosity got the better of me and I discreetly nabbed the package.…

A variety of factors recently lead to me sourcing an Isaac Vitron for a customer in September. The factors of a fitting geometry, really good price and it being a decent bike all coalesced. At the time I already knew I could not run the stock stem for the customer’s position, but I still filed the matter away with a certain naiveté. 2023 Models used the Token S-Box system and while the degree of integration looked higher in 2024, surely it couldn’t be that bad, right?…

Two occasions usually bring me to the lands around Münster, both are bikes. I always greatly enjoy my time there, gently rolling hills, red brick houses dotted btween, time seems to pass a hair slower whenever I’m there. Just a bit north of the city is Velo de Ville with their now massive facility, two factory halls, flagship store, offices et cetera. If one takes the train west, coupled with a small bike ride you end up at Maxcycles and their much more humble abode.…

This is the last part of the eurobike trilogy, all the leftovers, it’s gonna be a bit long. Schwalbe’s new valves were the talk of the show. In fact I cannot recall a single booth being quite as crowded (apart from Cosmic’s on wednesday night but they had margaritas and tacos at the time). Apparently they were giving out samples on wednesday but by the time I got there on thursday that practice had been halted, due to overwhelming demand.…