Big Red S

What should I be doing? Either writing the Bicyclical or packing to go home. What am I doing? Sitting in a sushi restaurant trying to remember the salient points of my visit to Specialized.

I rode a few bikes: a Tarmac disk (yum), the new Venge ViAS (so fast), a very nice Diverge, a 29” Camber, a 6Fattie Stumpjumper and a Fuse. I think the Diverge is and will continue to be a marvelous bike for Michigan. I also think the 6Fat (which is terminology for a 3” wide 650b/27.5” tire) is a glimpse into the future — rollover is almost identical to a 29er, but with increased grip and passive suspension from the wider tires.

Specialized does a lot of things. I toured the very impressive water bottle printing facility. I toured their very impressive and full nerd wind tunnel. I managed a brief tour of their clothing lab, in which they can pattern, sew, test and repair prototype clothing. Interesting fact: mens and ladies clothing is prototyped to a medium (a perfect medium, said the head of the department). When that medium pattern is finalized, it is then scaled up and down from XS to XXL.

The last item on my trip was a tour of Specialized’s test lab in which they test the heck out of many things, though the primary fixtures are set up to bike frames and wheels for impact and cyclic fatigue. An insidious problem in the industry these days is counterfeit frames — frames that look, perhaps exactly, like the real deal, but aren’t. Our host showed us a counterfeit S-Works Tarmac frame, which looked and felt like one might expect. Then he handed us a real frame, which weighed easily half to a third as much as the phony. Crazy.

Good trip. Impressive company. Super fun products.