Hey Y’all,

Lots to talk about after the show in Vegas. But I don’t feel like talking about much of it right now. The good news is that after Vegas each year, there is usually a posse that heads up the old I-15 and lands themselves in Utah, just a couple hours away. Zion and Bryce Parks are there, as well as some really good riding.

The normally total crap camera on my iphone actually took an interesting shot while on an early ride in Zion. Looks kind of like a painting. Highly recommended if you’ve never been there.

Click the pic to see the big beauty.

Speaking of paintings and beauty and stuff like that, if you find yourself in the North SF Bay Area Saturday, come on by and see Sheryl’s art sale. I saw the show last night (already hung) and it’s pretty spectacular. Lots of stuff from small and cheap to large and amazing. She’s doing it with two other very talented artist types.

Quick Thursday morning update for you all.

We’re at Interbike, things are quite busy but we have managed to get some new info on our 2009 products up on our website.

Check out the new Hakkalügi.

Check out the new Ti Mojo LTD. We’re only making 150 of them.

The new 2009 specs are up for the components groups too.

Cheers, more soon!
Chuck

Well, it’s the yearly massive push before Interbike. Hence not too much spew happening from Chuck Spew.

One of these years we’ll learn and actually do things in advance. But not this year.

Playing around with booth ideas drew me to visit my good friends at Ink N Burn, a playground of high tech machines allegedly for printing t-shirts but really so you can play with ink, fire and LASERS, and see what you can do with them.

I wanted to stencil some Astroturf. Long boring story. But the not boring part is the process.

Here we are with the first cardboard sample. Happy happy.

Below is the first test result, but getting there was a real blast. Click on the image for a glimpse of how we made the stencil (a movie file will open).

Now, off to paint the town. Of Vegas. Literally.

Here are the steps.

Step 1: Get Plexiglass Sheet
Step 2: Cut out your art or message or ? with a fancy “LASER” (finding a LASER might be problematic).
Step 3: Go to Vegas. Get a paper bag with handles and cut a rectangular shape slightly
smaller than stencil.
Step 4: Replace opening of paper bag with your stencil, tape
securely.
Step 5: Make sure you have a small pre-opened spray paint can and place
inside corner of bag, careful not to tear stencil.
Step 6: Walk nonchalantly on sidewalk in front of convention center, place
bag down and yawn, stretch, tie your shoe laces..
Step 7: Rummage through bag like you are looking for something (scratch head
for added effect).
Step 8: spray paint your message onto sidewalk carefully , keeping hand/paint inside
bag
Step 9: get up, leaving your “footprint” behind you.

Thanks to the Rob and Megan at Ink N Burn for the LASER and to Roxy for the tagging ideas.

Chuck

PS, I’m not really tagging, it’s for the booth.

Many of you have been waiting patiently to see the new Tranny colors. We’re doing a matte clear (non rubberized-looks incredibly good according to me), a granny smith apple green and a burnt orange. Here are a couple of shots of the colored bikes for you to check out.

Couple of things that grabbed my attention today.

First, the Lopes Link first production proto. Gorgeous. Not quite ready for the Ibis store, but they’ll be there before the end of September.

Second, looking out in my back yard today at my nuclear powered Sunflower.
The package said height to 6′.
I measured this one a couple days ago at 13′6″.
I like summer.

Last weekend arrived with very high expectations attached, and I wasn’t disappointed. The Single Speed World Championships were right in my backyard, just over the hill in Napa California. The 400 entries were offered online at midnight January 1 this year, and were sold out three minutes later. So this qualifies as a very exclusive event. And the sale at midnight qualifies for a good excuse for me not to be online then. Which gives me an excellent excuse when asked why I’m not racing.

The festivities started the Wednesday before the race with a race in Santa Rosa’s Howarth Park. It’s an evening Dirt Crit that’s been happening for many summers in a row. Single speeders were there. Missed that one.
The next morning was a ride in Annadel (Santa Rosa park where single track is actually legal), followed by a party over at the Sycip world headquarters. Missed em both.
Friday was a bike ride in Marin, followed by party at American Cyclery in SF (missed both of those too), followed by bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge to the coldest spot anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere on August 22, followed by a “BBQ” on the beach (made the last two).

Too Much Typing. Let’s Have Some Pictures. 

Here’s the ferry ride, resplendent with douche bags and others
(PS, Thanks to Holt the Relaxer for these here pictures)

Then with much anticipation we rode across the bridge, up a big hill down a big hill, worked up an appetite.
And waiting for us at Kirby Cove, there’s the BBQ!

It took a minute, but we did manage to find the food. As promised a BBQ!
Unfortunately it was all gone by the time I put the camera away.

Saturday was registration and drunkenness in Napa. Missed those too.

But Sunday we were there, and here is what we saw.
Racers, ready to race.

However, I’ve saved the best costume for last.
Santa Rosa’s own Glenn “Tinker” “Factory Pilot” “70’s” Fant rocked it all day long.

And YES, those are denim Lycra rights. Not shorts, tights.

ON TO BUSINESS
We have a nice commemorative T-shirt we prepared for the race. Get them while you can, there are only 50 available for sale in the entire world. Once they’re gone they’re gone.

Order them HERE.

See them just below…

That’s what the art looks like, the actual shirt is shown in the next picture. It doesn’t look this washed out though, it looks pretty darn good. It also doesn’t quite look as good as the image above. Somewhere in between.

Again, we are offering only about 50 these for worldwide distribution.

We won’t make them again, so now is your one chance to get them.

Ciao!
Chuck Ibis

Many of you may remember the raffle we had a few weeks ago, raising $37,505 for cancer research, the winner getting a brand spankin’ new Silk SL with full Dura Ace.

Those nice folks at Shimano managed to find a brand new 2009 Dura Ace kit for the bike, and the winner was a very happy (and lucky) fellow. Here’s a picture of the happy ticket buyer with his pimped out new ride up in Crater Lake last weekend. He’s actually using the bike! 330 miles on it last weekend.

Check our boy Brian Lopes winning the Jim Beam Air Downhill in Whistler at Crankworx.

Brian piloted his Mojo down the legendary A-Line ahead of  second and third place Greg Minnaar and Chris Kovarik in a time of 4:22.10

Nice Work Old Man!

We’re now shipping all kits with 2009 Fox Forks and also the Mojo Carbon is shipping with a 2009 Fox RP23 rear shock. In addition, we’ve added a new optional shock (see below). The DT Swiss rear shock on the Mojo SL remains unchanged.

There have been some changes to the RP23 for 2009.
I’ll just quote a recent MTBR entry that Hans posted, letting everyone who reads the Ibis Forum there what is the latest:

Compression damping for the Mojo spec Fox ‘08 RP23 is medium. For ‘09 it is low. We weren’t able to use low for ‘08, but Fox has it working nicely for ‘09. The PP is tied in to the compression damping and the ‘08 low did not have very effective ProPedal, plus we couldn’t tell much difference overall other than some wallowing with the low compression build. For ‘09 the low compression build rides awesome. The pro pedal works, but is not as effective in the higher setting as the 08.

If you like a firm lockout, we have another shock called the Fox RPL that has a very plush open setting, 1 level of propedal (like level 2 on an RP23) and lockout (at sag). It’s a no charge option. It’s not on our website or anywhere else yet, we just got them in…

So there you have it.

Ladies and Gents,

A good Samaritan recently got in touch with Ibis World HQ reporting that he’d recovered a stolen Ibis Spanky. I looked it up in our oh so organized archives and found it was first sold in 1997. Let’s just say that the bike was originally sold in the SF Bay Area and remains there. It’s been modified a fair amount from stock, but is apparently a very nice specimen.

If you can describe the bike, the color the size and the mods, we’d love to return it to you. Email me at chuck (over there at good old) chuckibis.com if you think you know who it belongs to.

For giggles, here’s what state of the art looked like back then…