Once upon a time there was a boy, and this boy was abducted by Pee-wee Herman disguised as an alien spaceship zoo thing.  The boy then found himself transported through time into the future, where he got to meet young Tiny’s first movie crush, and he didn’t even try to cop a feel.

 Sandra Bullock would be the only babe to topple her, in The Net

 After that he saw some slimy Jim Henson muppets, went underwater, and probably learned a life lesson or something.  Who knows.  I certainly don’t, because all my detail memories of The Flight of the Navigator have long since been displaced by memories of Sarah’s extreme 1986 foxiness.

Anyway, I have a point here, I promise…

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The newest development for the 2013 cross run isn’t on the bike, it’s when we’re building the bikes. Up until this point, we’ve built our Road Racing and Cross Racing Machines in groups of 30. This is a small number in the world of large scale manufacturing, but in our shop, 30 bikes, with the level of detail that each frame gets, is a massive undertaking. Because we love trying new things that help us improve our process, we are going to test a new scheduling model for this batch of cross bikes and our hunch is that we’re going to dig it and that the new method will extend into Road as well. Here’s how we see it going down:

• We will have three deadlines for deposit: April 1st, May 1st and June 1st.
• Frames will be built on a rolling schedule, so the earlier your order is in, the sooner you get your bike (assuming we have all of your details confirmed)
• April orders will be shipped in June/July, May orders in July/August, and June orders will ship in August/September. (Approx 8-10 week turnaround) As of today, we have one slot open for the April build window and a small handful available for May and June.

I asked Sacha to go a little deeper into the Why? Here’s what he had to say:

“There are a lot or reasons that building smaller batches makes sense, chief among those is a quicker turnaround time for racers. When we build a full run of 30  bikes, we basically need to start the process 6 months ahead of time, which isn’t a  big deal, except that in spring, not a lot of people are thinking about what cross bike they want to be racing come September. And something just doesn’t feel right about cutting off orders for the following year’s Road Racing Machines in August. I want for someone to get excited about a Speedvagen in December when they’re thinking about their road season, and call us up and for us to build a bike for them. Period.”

The bikes continue their evolution and get better (sometimes subtly, sometimes by leaps and bounds) each year. Things to know about this batch of mud eating, gravel spitting, barrier destroyers are:

• We will be offering a carbon fiber seat tube upgrade this season
• The 2013 color palette includes Milky White, Matte Army and Fluorescent Yellow. And Surprise Me! but we can’t say more.
• Popular upgrades including the Speedvagen Integrated cross stem, carbon seat post head and Di2 integration will return.
• We continue spec the best components available from ENVE Composites, Paul Components, Fizik saddles and DT Swiss among others.
• Bike Rumor did a nice job capturing the 2012 cross machine here if you’re curious

 To secure your steed please send an unbridled email to: info@speedvagen.com and we will walk you through the deposit process*.

(*Oh, that’s right, all we need to get started on your 2013 cross machine is a deposit by April 1st.)

Daisuke warms up with his number one fan at Lake Biwa. Wind jacket and AeroRace bibs.

The Speedvagen Team kit is available for pre-order now through March 20th.

Army green has been one of Speedvagen’s core colors for, well, since the very first prototype I made back in 2006. I love the the icon of militarism and the toughness that the color represents juxtaposed by the goofiness of racing your brains out and crashing cross bikes in the mud with your friends. I’ve wanted to do an army green kit for a long time but as I started to dig into the design I was conflicted: On the one hand, you have all of this space that you can fill with words and logos; get all bilboarded up, right? But I kept coming back to the idea of a uniform. A uniform is clean, crisp, balanced, minimal. This kit doesn’t need a lot of shit on it to get noticed in the peloton and for that matter, the more I put on it, the less it really says.

We wanted to offer  something special to our Speedvagen family and friends. Offering the team kit up for you all seemed like just the way to do that. We’ll be taking orders for two weeks only and we won’t be keeping any back stock. This means that only a handful of you will have the kit, well, you and our 6 team members. We’re planning to offer a fall/winter kit too, something a little warmer for cross and getting in base miles.

The jacket and vest, originally designed by Jeremy Dunn (of Embrocation fame) are an abstract design in our signature blue, army green, and red with an explosion of Speedvagen text and sheilds. The answer to the abstract outer layers is the strictly business base kit in army green with color bands as punctuation on the sleeves, legs, and collar with Speedvagen shields enblazoned on the chest, back, and legs. We also have a new Team cap that you can add to your order.

Castelli makes some of the best apparel available and has for over 100 years. Plus they’re right down the road from us, so it only makes sense that we work with them for our racing gear. All of the clothing is made here in the Northwest and the items we’ve selected for you are the top of the line of what Castelli has to offer. Wear them well. To place an order please visit the order page. If you have any questions drop us a line: customerservice@vanillabicycles.com

Scroll down to see the team at work in the kit. 

Laura and Daisuke cool down in the money truck. SS skinsuits (post race), Laura threw on the team jersey.

Tina makes friends in Nobeyama. Wind vest and team jersey.

Laura suits up for a race in the team jersey and AeroRace bibs.

Sacha rides into the sunset in the team jersey and AeroRace bibs.

Photos are all from our very own Jeff Curtes.

before

after

The campy build.  A+ Gorgeous, A+ light, and an A+ pain in the cheeks.  Read on, for details…

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Mr. Lorenz has been racing his matte army green 2011 Speedvagen road machine with his Cable Huston team for the last couple of years. It’s been a great bike for him in fact he liked it so much that he wanted to give it a little makeover for the 2013 season. He had always remembered the first time he saw the 2011 Surprise Me! paint scheme; the color panels stacked on one another, the clean and orderly way it all fit together. So he picked his team colors, orange and blue, and had Coat work up a custom version of that 2011 Surprise Me! scheme.

“I was ready for a change and I wanted something that was both unique and timeless.  This is more than just a bike.  It is my bike.  My reaction when I saw it was that it looked not only refreshed but it looked like a brand new bike.  In fact, I am glad you are doing the blog post because I think my wife still suspects that I bought a new bike.”

This wasn’t going to be just a repaint for Coat though, it would be an opportunity to challenge themselves in a way that they don’t often get to. Each component of the Campagnolo Super Record gruppo, the saddle and bar plugs would be painted to match the orange panels on the bike. One of the signatures of Coat is their component colorwork but they don’t often get projects with such small detail.

After a few paint tests the team got to work. There are 5 stages of detail and a base coat to this paint scheme. We use stencils, not decals, so that’s a lot of cutting stencils, painting, sanding, repeating… Of course, it’s worth it when you see the finished product as a whole bike and everything connects.

It’s amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do. Check out the finished product below. There are more photos of this bike and all the little details on Coat’s Flickr page too. Time for a refresh? Drop us a line: customerservice@vanillabicycles.com