Prices for Schmidt dynohubs and lights as well as all Bush & Muller lighting have gone down. From what I read, a weakening Euro doesn’t bode well for the long-term health of the world economy, but in the short term it means I pay less for European made products, which means you pay less. Prices for individual items and complete wheels have been changed in the webstore. For instance–

• SON 28 polished 32H hub was $262, now $245
• SON 20R/SONdelux polished 32H hub was $286, now $265
• Son Edelux Headlight was $200, now $185
• B&M IQ Cyo’s were $113, now $104

The first bicycle boulevard in the Southeast officially opens Saturday with an opening celebration at the Martin Luther King Center at 10am. The Ann St. Bicycle Boulevard terminates at the riverfront, and the grand opening celebration is timed to coincide with the Spring opening of the riverfront farmer’s market. I’m sure many of my local readers plan to walk or ride to the farmer’s market, boulevard, fanfare or not, but attendance at the opening of the boulevard will impress upon the mayor and others in attendance that bicycle facilities in the city are needed and welcome.  After the celebration (I have an inside tip that some bike locks and complete bicycles will be given away) their will be the shortest group ride in history to the farmer’s market.  The eastern end of the boulevard doesn’t extend out of downtown, but is  a part of the the  River to Sea Bikeway that will be improved in the next few years to eliminate the harrowing sections (on Oleander across Bradley’s Creek, Wrightsville Ave, etc) and provide a worry free route from downtown to the beach, and vice versa.

Happy New Year to all and best wishes for 2010. I’ve changed the shop walk-in hours which will now start at 1:30 instead of noon on the weekdays and 1pm on Saturday. I’m happy to set an appointment for those who want or need to come to the shop outside of walk-in hours.

The Christmas wheelbuiding special was such a success that I’ve decided to keep it around in a slightly modified form. Wheelbuilds with components purchased from us will be $15 for 2010.

Sometime on Christmas Eve I’ll close early for Christmas and I won’t return until the following Monday.

Locals, please note I will only be open by appointment from Christmas until January 4th. Call the shop or e-mail me if you need to stop by.

Web orders will ship during this time, and for long-distance customers everything will run normally except that I might be a little harder to catch on the phone. I’ll still be shipping orders and building wheels.

Through the end of the Christmas season wheelbuilding labor will be almost free–$5. This means you’ll save $50 on a handbuilt wheelset. The offer extends through the entirety of the Christmas season, so you have to the feast of the Epiphany (January 6) to take advantage.

As usual, if you’d like a wheel built with components you don’t find in our webstore, simply contact me. I’m happy to special order hub or rims that I don’t normally stock to build the wheel you want. The $5 labor offer is only good for wheels when all the wheel components are purchased from us, sorry. If you send me a hub to build up you’ll pay the normal $30 charge. To shop for wheel components start here.

We’ve added two new rims from our webstore, both are high-polished models from Velo-Orange. You can find both here.

Prolific list-master Jim G generously volunteered to start a discussion group for those interested in the 650B framesets and future Longleaf products. I think this will be a better medium for discussion than blog comments, which are limited to topics generated by me. The home page for the group can be found here.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Matthew at Kogswell and I have agreed that I will take over the Kogswell 650B P/R production and design. Kogswell has decided to concentrate on 26″ framesets and when Matthew told me he didn’t plan to continue production of the 650B P/R it seemed like a natural fit.  As was the process with the P/R, I’ll be soliciting feedback from owners and prospective buyers about fine tuning the G2 P/R’s before producing the Longleaf 650B frames. The broad strokes of the design will remain the same, a steel TIG welded 650B bicycle with low-trail geometry designed for 35-42mm tires. For now I’ll keep discussion of the frameset on the blog, but I think in the future a google or yahoo group will be a better medium for discussing this and future framesets. For starters, I’d like to solicit feedback about the following:

• Tubing–The current tubing gauge produces a lively bike, but makes shimmy more probable. What do we think about the pros and cons of zippy but-might-shimmy tubing vs. slower-won’t-shimmy tubing?
• Sloping top tubes–Some people hate them, others don’t mind. The problem with eliminating the slope is that it will mean a ton of stem/steerer tube for many builds.
• Threaded vs. threadless steerer tubes–I prefer threaded, but lean toward threadless for practical reasons. Perhaps a switch to 1″ threadless? This would give people who want to use quill stems the option of cutting and threading the steerer tube without using headtube reducers. I know there are 1 1/8 quill stems and threaded headsets, but there aren’t any good options in those categories.
• Fenders–I’m pretty happy with the VO 650B fenders, but I also have a soft spot for fenders painted to match the frameset, so I lean toward producing fenders with the framesets.
• Name? Just wouldn’t seem right to keep calling it the P/R. I have an aversion to branding, but realize it is important. Any name suggestions for this model?
• And in case anyone is wondering, I will make the frame modifications on this P/R standard to allow for further integration of the lighting system–ports for internal tailight wiring, brazed on loops for headlight wiring.

As for the inevitable “When?” questions I’m shooting for prototypes in early spring and hope to have the the first production run by the end of the summer.

Looking the calendar and counting the weeks I find it hard to believe that our girl was born eleven weeks ago. It seems like ages. I underestimated how much the addition to the family would cut into my usual hours, and I feel like I’m just now “caught up” and settled back into a normal routine. It didn’t help that September was the busiest month of the year here. Not that I’m complaining, but there were a few weeks that I felt like I’d never catch up. Honestly only the typical seasonal slow down as the weather has cooled has allowed me to catch up. During September in particular wheelbuilding orders didn’t always go out as quickly as I’d like, and I’m working on making everything here more efficient.  I’ll be working this week on adding new products to the webstore. There are many little bits and bobs that we have in stock that haven’t made it in, and anyone who prefers to build their own bicycles knows those little bits are important when you’re putting one together. I’ll list a summary of the new stuff in a separate post.

As I’ve been typing a shipment of Lazer infant helmets came in the door. We’ve been out of these for awhile, and they’re the best helmet for children under twelve months that I’ve found, so we’re happy to have them again. I know a few people are waiting on them.

As always, we sincerely appreciate the business, folks.

I’ve gone home for the birth of the new baby so we’ll be shut down for a day or two. I’ll put up a post when I’m back in the shop. Thanks to everyone who has sent well wishes to our family.

We have a baby due on August 8th, and since I work alone the shop will be closing sometime around then for an indeterminate amount of time. We’ll have to play it by ear. Expect us to be completely shut down for a couple of days. I’ll leave a note on the blog when I shut down for the new arrival.