Now that I work from home every day of the week and don't leave the house much, I'm not even sure what day it is most of the time.

It reminds me of a meme I saw online:

Moving on from funny memes, this is all taking time to get used to. I have two daughters, 7 and 11, which like most kids in our country, are both now being home-schooled for the rest of the school year.

Aside from being closed and having to adjust our business to our new normal, my wife (which also works at Franco) and myself are now part-time school teachers. Which is much, much harder than I thought. God bless all the teachers. Not only do they do this on a daily basis, they are now having to host zoom meetings with 25 seven year olds. Just think about that...

So yes, things feel a bit upside down. We now have added teaching jobs and payroll protection programs seem to be going to Harvard and Shake Shack instead of small business. But we're still here!

And we're still building bikes and talking to people about bikes every day. Keep those emails coming. Talking bikes gives us some sense of normalcy. Hopefully it does for you as well.

Oh, and we are on the cover of the upcoming RBA gravel bike issue :)

- Hector

Road Bike Action Review and Cover Bike!

In the midst of all this craziness, this was a welcome surprise and one that lifted our spirits. One that we are extremely thankful for.

This is our third cover in 13 years, and it still feels as awesome as the first one. And while each cover has a story, this one was fun, and you guys might have followed along.

You might recall that we launched a limited edition Repsol Grimes back in Vol 03. It was done on a bit of a whim. Mostly because I wanted one, which I still don't have by the way, since it went to another home.

In Vol 06, we received our first paint sample, which we managed to pull off in record time to get it to Road Bike Action for its fashion shoot. They asked for a Repsol bike with short notice and not making it happen was not an option, even though a cover was far from guaranteed.

We pulled it together last minute. Customers (friends) even pitched in components to make the build happen on time. We have awesome customers. We sent it over to Road Bike Action and the rest was out of our hands.

It worked out. The Grimes is on the cover of their upcoming gravel issue, and inside of their June issue is a review of the carbon Grimes. Some quotes:

• "For anyone that has to ride pavement to get to gravel or for those who are looking for one bike to do it all, this gives the Grimes an advantage over dedicated gravel rigs"
  
  
• "Oozing an appreciable sense of style"
  
  
• "Simply put, the Grimes expands the horizon of where you and a bike can go, and you can expect it to capably open up the sort of gravel roads that your 23mm slicks stopped short at years ago"
  
  
• "The Grimes can conquer the growing scene of all-road riding"

If you're looking for a bike that can expand your riding terrain and get you your #newtwobikeday, shoot me a message below. We'd be pumped to build one for you!

We recently worked with a customer to build this all-road Grimes. While it started as a stock GRX 800 build, it evolved into a fully custom build as the customer and I talked through components and what was available. 

The end result was a bike that gives me a case of serious bike envy. Here's the lowdown:

Frame: Grimes Carbon, R.A.W. Edition, because the R.A.W. finish is awesome.

Drivetrain: SRAM Force AXS Mullet Build with and XX1 Rainbow 10-50t Cassette / Chain and XX1 Rear Derailleur.

Crankset: The popular Easton EC90SL crank paired to a good-looking Wolftooth 48T chainring.

Wheelset: A custom hand-built set of 700c HED Belgium Eroicas, laced to Chris King R45 hubs in Matte Slate. Tires of choice were 38c Challenge Gravel Grinders

Components: A Whisky No.9 carbon bar with 12 degrees of flare, a Whisky No. 7 stem and some Fizik Terra bar tape (which has a bunch of subtle killer colorways I was not aware of).

More Bits: To finish this rig up, we went with Matte Slate Chris King bits throughout - the Threadfit T47 bottom bracket and the Dropset 2 headset to match. We even tried to get the Chris King thru-axles, but they've been discontinued. Not shown here were matching Whisky carbon cages and a Wahoo computer.

The end result was a great mix of performance and aesthetics. It's a unique bike that I hope will be enjoyed for a long time to come.

As always, if you want help building your new bike, shoot me a message!

Custom Hand-Built Wheels
and More

While our primary focus is bikes, we know our way around gravel and road products - whether it be hand-built wheels, cranksets, drivetrain upgrades or whatever else you can think of. If you're looking to upgrade your existing bike, shoot us a note. We're happy to help.

There's a lot more that's happened since the last email, but we'll leave that for the next email. Plus I'm already on the third glass of wine, so time to call it a night. And I don't know what day it is!

Until next time. Keep it out there,
Hector
@hector_823