Hit By Car and His Bike Stolen...All On His Birthday

This happened to barista and cyclist Mike Hardy on his 27th birthday back in September. He was struck by a car riding his Soma Rush to his girlfriend's house. While paramedics were treating his injuries, the bystanders, who initially checked on Hardy after the accident, made off with his bicycle. This was all caught on a Kansas City Police Department dash camera. The video footage (click to view news story and video) shows the thieves checking the bike out for damage, then rolling off with it.

With the video footage in hand the police and Hardy hoped to be able to track down the thieves. The Kansas City cycling community and his friends had all pitched in to help get the word out on the stolen bike, which Hardy was very appreciative of. But so far, no luck.

When we heard about the incident, we tracked him down on Facebook and offered him a new frame and fork if his bike was not recovered. After giving the cops six weeks, he took us up on the offer. We also sent him a set of red Foer rims that were on the stolen bike. It will still be some time before Mike can ride, but at least he has something to look forward to when he can. We wish him a speedy recovery.

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Mike said he and his friends lovingly built the Rush to be a racer. But we bet he didn't have a set of these new Urban Pursuit 31.8 bars. These are 31.8mm in the center for enhanced stiffness and have shorter horns than our original Urban Pursuit bullhorns. They kind of look like RB018's. These should be available in shops in a couple of weeks.



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More new track bike news....track not tark since this show involves vintage pistas and other classic bicycles. Superb Bicycle asked us to offer up a little schwag for their vintage bicycle show, Bella Biciclette. I saw their promotional image and thought it was so cool and had to up it here.

More New Products

We have been asked why we started doing colors on bars with a unusual 31.8mm track bar, instead of going with one of our established designs. We really didn't have a good answer for them. Instead we decided to add a few colors to our Urban Pursuit bull horn bar -- Powder coat white, red and gold. Only in 38 to 42cm for now.
We have no immediate plans to color any other of our bars. We don't want to get you all sick on too much eye candy. Frankly some of us get a little nuts already when we see the mass of multi-hued bars in our warehouse shelves. The left eye starts to twitch first usually. Unless we are looking at gold, then it starts with the right eye. Then we start humming tunes from the Willie Wonka movie (the original one.) But as long as people find these offerings adding joy to their bicycle lifestyle, we will learn to live with it.



Today the oompa loompas delivered these new bottle cages. What's so special about them besides the colors?
We found a excellent manufacturer in Japan instead going to China. There was a time when cyclists all either wanted an American-made Blackburn cage and Japanese-made cage, because a cage made anywhere else was crapola. We just want to appeal to those who want something a little better, perhaps a little more special.
- We call it the Mizu. Mizu simply means "water" in Japanese.
- It features extra mounting holes to allow you to mount the cage straight or slightly canted left or right, just in case you find that more ergonomic.
- Aircraft grade aluminum of course.
- In black, white(not shown), silver, gun metal, pink, ice blue, dark blue, red, amber gold, and green. These should be in stores early spring.

Product Updates and Belated Name Dropping

Here's an example of how off the back we can be at promoting ourselves.
Patrick O' Grady of Mad Dog Media (and VeloNews fame) bought a Double Cross for his wife back in Dec. 06. We were aware of that purchase, but never knew that he bought one for himself as well last June. So here we are name-dropping 8 month later. If you are interested in what he thinks of them, see the 9-09-07 and 6-15-07 entries on The Daily Dog.

In other Double Cross news, you people have been asking about the Double Cross Disc/Canti edition. We have delayed releasing this at least until May. We apologize to those who were looking to get this for their spring rides. We just have a lot of things taking up our time and y'know... trying to catch up on promoting ourselves 'n s__t. We have more bars coming out..... the El Toro STEEL pursuit bar is coming out end of the month. This will be the only steel bullhorn bar on the market we think. We have had multiple e-mails of people destroying their alloy bullhorns on a regular basis. We made these for them. First batch will be 26.0's like Nitto's are. If you prefer 25.4, give us a holler. We are also wrapping up development on straight bars in colors (how hard can that be?). Plus we are testing the B-Side 650b MTB frame and finishing specs on a new mixte frame. Yes, mixte!