Bike Radar reviews the Lynskey Sportive

A glowing review of the Lynskey Sportive by BikeRadar, which we have in stock (medium size, Apex build), which I will repost here:

After the sale of Litespeed, the company the Lynskey family nurtured to such great heights, they decided to get back into the bike business. Their newest addition to an already well-represented stable is the titanium Sportive.
With tube surfaces treated with what Lynskey call an industrial mill finish – a rough, wire-brushed effect that gives a subdued sheen – the Sportive strikes a handsome note and provides a solid and reliable platform for anything from a quick 45-minute training loop to an audax brevet.

Ride & handling: Immediately likeable; quick responses combined with comfort
We eagerly swung a leg over this great machine and found it to be immediately likeable, with a sweetness of ride quality and handling. Miles of groomed dirt towpath are a piece of cake – the bike soaks up pebble-induced vibrations with gusto.
Equally at home in a highly strung peloton as on a dusty towpath, it responds quickly to pedal and steering input. While trialling a local audax event, staying in a tightly knit bunch felt easy. When the pace started feeling a bit slow, the Sportive had the lightness and willingness to leapfrog to the next gruppetto in search of a more vigorous speed.
While the front end of the bike feels strong and torsionally rigid carving through high-speed corners, this has no noticeable effect on front end comfort. In contrast, a simple deflection test of the rear dropouts revealed a considerable springiness in the stays. Yet with the wheel clamped in and closing off the structure, the back end always keeps up with the front, while providing noticeable shock absorption.
With a longish head tube and shortish top tube forming part of a mildly sloping geometry, the Sportive will go a long way towards keeping you in a pleasant comfort zone, minimising the usual shoulder and neck aches and pains on those longer rides. Whether you use it for an easy stroll, screaming quarter-mile or the full 600 miles of an audax brevet, the Lynskey is always ready. Even when the going gets rough, the Sportive will do it in comfort and style.

Frame & equipment: Well thought out chassis plus robust yet light finishing kit
Made of cold-worked 3AL 2.5V titanium, the frame features a fine balance of sophisticated tube manipulation and more straightforward sections, with welded cable guides in all the right places and riveted bottle cage bosses. The rear triangle is comprised of gently curved, constant diameter round seatstays, below which lies a graceful set of oval-round chainstays.
Anchoring the rear wheel are some very thick and burly dropouts, decorated with a three-leaf clover cutaway design for a little aesthetic enhancement. A standard head tube with reinforced zones for traditional headset cups finishes off the front of the bike. Single eyelets on the rear allow you to join in with traditional audax crowds if required, with plenty of clearance for a decent-sized tyre and mudguard.
Complementing the well-proven Shimano Ultegra drivetrain on our test bike was a nicely homogenous finishing kit and wheels by Pro-Lite, which were robust yet light. 

They are completely correct, it is a sweet bike (like everything Lynskey makes).

www.lynskeyperformance.com

My Knees Hurt

So that last post was from Charlie, not me (Lucero). Although I do get a fair number of new bikes, the Altitude is not one of them. My next bike is going to be an Anthem XO, and it is going to be fast and light and I am going to destroy Dan Swinton with it at Dawn til Dusk. Bwa ah ah ah ah.

In other news, we've begun getting back out for wednesday night rides. Two weeks in a row now, both nights were jersey and shorts weather, which made things much more enjoyable than those very cold winter rides we had gotten used to.
Last wednesday my trusty old Niterider HID finally gave up the ghost after six years or so, and died on me about ten minutes into the ride. This wasn't my first time out without a light, so I plodded along riding off of everybody elses lights (cohorts included Richaround, Dr. Dave, Danny, Tony and myself).
At one point I managed to get in front of everybody, and then in a moment of darkness totally throw myself into the ground, via the over the bars route, with "all the grace of a frog falling from the sky" as Danny put it. Much skin was lost from my left knee cap, a deep nasty puncture wound at the top of my right knee, which proceded to spew blood all over the trail.
But I am impervious to pain, and very manly, and proceeded to finish the ride with nary a wimper.

Last night we got out with Charles in charge, Scoot, and Travitron. It was a significantly faster ride than our typical weds night jaunts, which I blame Travitron for.
I was using / demo-ing the Lupine Tesla light, which had been sitting in the shop for a couple of months calling my name. It made me happy, here's my mini review:

The Lupine Tesla is good. It is bright, super light, and it makes me happy.

After the ride, whilst getting things in and out of Charlies vehicle, a managed to completely rip the scab off my left knee cap by rubbing it against his fender. It hurt big time, but I didn't wimper, you know, on account of my manly-ness.
The gross part was 5 minutes later before we left I found the scab, stuck to the fender. I showed it to Charlie, and he took it and said he was going to save it forever. He's getting weird lately.

Hoping to get out to the east mountains sunday morning. If anyone wants to join, give a holler or come by the shop. I'm excited to ride something other than the foothills.

Buenobye

When it rains it pours.

So we hadn't had the keg filled in a couple of weeks due to logistical errors. We did our best to make up for that with extreme beer deliveries via Charlie and numerous afternoon 12pack runs, but it just wasn't the same.
So yesterday we finally picked up our Cornelius from Il Vici, filled to the brim with IPA (what else). Then not ten minutes later, our friend The Jesus called and asked if we might be willing to help with a full, full-size keg left over from a party, this one filled with Marble IPA.
Being the good Samaritans that we are, we said yes, bring it on over, even though we definitely don't have the space in the fridge to keep two kegs cold.
So basically, if you are of proper drinkin' age, and fancy yourself a hoppy beer from time to time, I strongly recommend coming on by in the next couple of days.

In other quasi-news, I've decided that a one year birthday party for Bikeworks in on order. On Novermber 15th it will have been one year since we officially opened for business (take that economy!).
I've been shooting ideas around amongst my cohorts. One is to rent the group shelter up at Elena Gallegos, bring lots of food and beverage (early Thanksgiving?) and probably some fire wood and propane heaters (depending on the weather) and have ourselves and early winter bike and eating fest. Ideally we would be able to line up a bike demo and get one of our bigger brands out there with us with a fleet of test bikes, but we'll see.

Another idea would be to just throw something like a party at the shop. I'm not sure that it would be a whole lot different than any other day, other than hopefully there would be more poeple in there, we would not be fixing any bikes, there would be more food than usual, and we'd probably start drinking earlier (AM Ale anybody)? We'd probably have to give some stuff away, and maybe incorporate a booze cruise to one or more of our local watering holes to wrap things up.

If anybody has any suggestions or ideas, let us know, I'm kind of fishing here.

So on Sunday I got to ride my bike, for several hours, and it was glorious. In honor or Rich-around's b-day, a small group of us headed up to Tunnel bright and squirrely for a full day of sweet Otero action. We basically did all the singletrack that is legal that we could think of. In the end we had about 23 miles. Thanks to the rains on Saturday, we spend the majority of those miles with huge cakes of mud on our tires, so we were really earning it.
I really like Otero. It's amazing to have that many miles of good tight singletrack 20 minutes from the city. And if you get bored, you can just hop across the street and start checking out Cedro, which has a completely different terrain.
This was the first ride I had done on the ML8 since I returned from the Europe trip. I like my bike. Other things I like are my new Shimano AM 50 shoes, the bottle of Perpetuem I brought with which kept blood sugar level for all 6 hours, my new pair of Endura Singletrack baggies, and riding with friends on a Sunday.

The past few evenings, while chillaxing at home (dang, spellcheck doesn't even know what to think of "chillaxing", it's all like "what, I don't even know that word, it must be correct") I've been reading the new Mountain Flyer mag from cover to cover. It is by far the best bike magazine out there. The only one that makes me want to put down the magazine and get on my bike every time I read it (most other magazines seem only to want you to put down the mag and go shopping for bike junk you don't need).
If you haven't seen this magazine, you should pick up a copy next time you are in the shop. It comes out 4 times a year, and is a pretty new venture, as they are on issue ten right now. We have a little stock of #9 as well, so if you come get the new one, I'll give you the last one as well.

Well, it's time to be off to the shop. It's raining, so I'm going to go ahead and drive, because I'm from New Mexico and that's how I am. Didn't manage to eat any breakfast this morning, all this babbling on got in the way. Hmmm, I hope Danny's feelin' the breakfast burrito this morning, since he can't stand to get himself one without buying one for me as well. Yayyyy Danny!

Charlie can type!

Turns out Charlie can type! And he put his typing skills to good use, and penned a very well thought out review of his Rocky Mountain ETSX Team, published over on Bikefix, the ultimate unbiased bike review site. I believe Charlie was inspired to write a review, after reading this review of the ETSX, that was brought to our attention by our Rocky rep.
Funny, as we're trying to sell this bike and all, that Charlie's review is decided less positive than the other one. It's not negative by any means, but surprisingly objective coming from a retailer of said bike. Perhaps we're just too honest to be good salesmen? Or perhaps Charlie's just a little too picky?

I know it's getting to be short notice, but a little reminder about tomorrows alleycat in Albuquerque, Going Postal, starting at Noon at the Duck Pond. Rumor has it, the race will be ending at Bikeworks, and another rumor has it that there will be copious amounts of free beer and food there. I'm planning on attending, while Senior Swinton will be singlehandedly running the store.

We sent a set of White Industries Double Double cranks, chainring, and freewheel out the door today. It was a sweet setup, and very very shiny. We like shiny.

This video was brought to our attention recently, plucked from the cornucopia of awesomeness that is How To Avoid The Bummer Life
Having thrown a few "parent out of town, let get rowdy" parties in my youth, I found the video and it's star very amusing. The best thing about it though, is how he didn't let the uppity TV woman bully him.

A little bit of industry news making the rounds lately is that Cannondale has been bought by the same company that owns Schwinn and Pacific, and Cannondale labeled bikes will become available in department stores in the near future. Having never been much of a Crackandfail fan, I found the news mostly entertaining. But it is a bit sad, as that is one less company of that size to compete with the mega brands such as Spez and Trek, and that much less variety will be available. On the up side, maybe this means that a few more people will buy a bike that actually rides well.

That's about all the pseudo-cleverness I can muster for now. Til next time.