Shama at Interbike 2009

My Kirklee shown off at Interbike 2009 at the Rotor booth!!!!

Selle SMP Forma and Carbon Lite. Brand new for 2010 and I already have them in the shop.
Yup, the latest greatest!

Dan B from Kelly Benefits on one of his countless attacks during the Pro crit. He could have won
from his breakaway of 6 but slid out in the last lap...he rolled though last to a cheer and
applause from the crowd honoring how hard he worked during the race.

The GURU Dynamic Fit Unit. Fully motorized bike fitting and more.
Guru shows why they are the largest custom bike company in the game.
Below
Guru Crono 2.0. WOW

Well its here, the biggest bike show this side of the pond. Shama Cycles is here to check out the latest greatest and get new tips and see what works and what doesn't. Especially since I am always trying to push the limits with my bike builds. I would have updated sooner but my feet hurt so bad after the first day all I want to do is lay down by the end of the night...something about walking miles and standing up (even while eating lunch) just kills in this city...not to mention how much of a rip off certain things are here. Like $8 for a tooth brush...or $5 for OJ from the Starbucks at the airport. Might as well gamble and REALLY throw your money away. Ok...enough of my rant. ;-) Bikes...and more bikes and parts! Being in custom bikes there was not alot for me to really drool over. Every manufacturer comes out here to show off the lightest, stiffest, aeroest (just made that one up) latest version of last years bike. We all look at them and go WOW if I only had that bike. Well...not any more. Now, to me, its about can you make that fit me...not can I fit that? Rotor and Kirklee was my one stop where my bike that I race (and wrecked on) was chosen to be in the Rotor booth to show off the new Rotor 3D cranks, S2 stem, and S1 seat post. I was very honored and happy to have my bike that I built as a show bike at Interbike....that is HUGE! Watching people stare, take pictures, comment on my components, pick it up and freak out on a race worthy 13lbs bike. AWESOME!!!! Last year I couldn't get some manufactures to take me seriously and this year I had a bike in a booth, and the top dealer for some of my manufactures that I sell. What a change....that came with alot of 18 our days and not much play. Now over the the Guru booth....yes that was one of the most talked about booths there. Why? Three things...Dynamic Fit Unit, Photon, Crono2.0. The DFU is a fit bike that is fully automated to allow changes in position to be made by millimeters while the rider is on the unit and pedaling. Allowing for the perfect position to be found in really time and position. Guru was the first to try to get this going, its take three years but its finally here. Funny how others came to the show with something similar, even saw a demo of one, the thing looked shaky and not quite ready yet. Guru's demos that ran all day were exact, strong, and the DFU feels like you're on a weight machine at the gym....SUPER STRONG. What an amazing break through. Oh yeah...Shama Cycles will have the first one in the country and exclusively in Houston. So for the latest in bike fitting and custom frame design Shama Cycles is where its at as well as where it will be at. ;-) I love my job! Guru also brought to new bikes to the show. The Photon is a road bike made for the serious enthusiast or racer or anyone who wants a road bike that is in the 700 gram range that performs like a dream. The Crono 2.0 is a tt/tri bike that represents the push for an aerodynamic design that is still customizable. Very tough to get both. More to come on all of these....time to get some food and hit the final day. All exciting stuff. Some though I will not blog about as these are tricks saved for my athletes and clients...sorry. ;-)

RAmaya Guru Crono....

SHAVE THOSE LEGS...oh yeah and nice bike!

A very happy man...holding the machine that will take away his excuses at the tris coming up!

The Vision carbon race bends and Syntace carbon base bar is one VERY clean combo!!!

Some more pics of the Crono

Pretty nice look of the TRP brakes here...
Nice Gold Chain...along with that super slick power meter the Quarq unit...
Of course Nokon cables...also notice the Tiso Ceramic Pulley wheels.

First ride, and some Shama marathon watching and placing.

Watching the marathon finish...that guy makes it look too easy!

Ok you might not be able to tell in this pic but Richard came over to ride his bike with unshaved legs. This detail almost killed me riding with him...but I let it slide this time. ;-)

Sunday morning...after working some seriously crazy hours the past week and actually loving it...Richard Amaya pulls up to my house for a morning ride. First ride on his new Guru Crono and second ride for me on my new Guru Geneo. Not only are we both on Gurus, but mine is red/white and his is red/black...and we both were rolling the new Garmin computers hooked up to our Quarq Power meters. I must say we were rolling pretty tough. We left the house and headed towards downtown to watch the marathon for a little bit. Besides, Shama Cycles had some tri team members out there racing and I wanted to yell at them...to HTFU! haha
Richard kept wanting to take off and after my last "first ride" with Euan, I wanted to take it easy. I was not in the mood for a hammer fest and I know Rich was itchin to open up that bike. The streets were clear for the marathon and we were able to cruise on down to the finish line with ease. Seeing everyone racing and cheering and supporting was great! At the end of the day, Trent Stephens helped pace Andrew Strong to 3rd place in his AG in the half with Brett Cole right behind him for 4th...then back in 14th place but only 6min behind was Walt Yarrow. Good on guys! Then there were plenty of other FOPs out there who had great races and maybe some with not so great races. We all have those days and hearing the post race stories was great! Its good to feel the race buzz again.
Basically we had a pretty easy ride...me falling in love with my Geneo and him his Crono. We both were all smiles on our rockets and can't wait for another great day to put them through the paces. It was a blast and a fun ride having some self admiration on the bike.

Brett Cole's baby

After lunch I had to run home and grab a box that was delivered there by mistake and come on back, and on my way back I get a call from Brett Cole who is waiting at the shop with the UPS guy asking if he can sign for the packages so the UPS guy can go and he can check out his rig. I roll up to the shop and there is Brett with some boxes that he should have ran with...but fortunately for me his bike is worth more than my goodies that showed up today. ;-)

This is the first time I have seen the Platinum and Black together and its stunning. While I fight with the colors and exact components on my own bike I look at this and the parts we are going to build it up with and am just amazed (and a bit jealous) with how good this is going to come out. In the sun light its just....WOW. I can't wait to hit this one up next week. Tuesday will be a pre fitting to know where to cut the steerer tube and the aero bars and make sure everything is on track so when its built its just some minor tweaks. We are using a Syntace carbon base bar and Vision Tech R bend carbon aero bars...so there is little room for adjustments after the build. Measure twice and cut once. ;-)

On to the rest...Richard Amaya is pickin up his Crono in a little bit and I have to finish the Quarq install...which is like the EASIEST install ever! Love these things!

Carima Cranks...Quarq to come.

The signature of a Shama build. Laser etched stem caps with matching bolt that takes off the standard 26gram combo and puts on a 6gram cap and bolt is color matched for each bike and looks way better than a sticker on the frame. Just another example of that little extra touch that goes into each bike that rolls out the door here.
And YES, that is a diamond crusted headset spacer. BIKE BLING!
Carima crank arms with a Phil Wood bottom bracket and TA Specialties chain rings...why? Its a 165crank arm that will take a Quarq power meter. Which is on the way.
The bike overall. More to come in future posts and on the website when it gets launched. But yeah, there is alot of little goodies on this one. Its evolved quite a bit over the past year.

Saturday Ride with a final stop at the shop.

Quarq second gen for Agilis cranks from Rotor. 54/42 QRings. Perfect...as long as I don't ride them outside of Houston. ;-)

(The spread...DunkinDonuts coffee, 2 dozen bagels from Panera...gone!)

Chris Lockwood is one of those guys in the cycling community that is rare. He maps rides, plans routes, sets times, picks rest stops, and rides hard. In 2008 he clocked 10,000 miles. Geeze...do you know now how much laundry that must be? haha
He has a blog and an email list of riders that an ad company would envy. Yet every week he picks his route with a come one come all attitude just to have some people join in. He also blogs about it and posts pics he takes during the ride just for fun. Which is what this should be all about. I love this ride every time we do it.
http://web.mac.com/chrisl1216/SaturdayRide/Saturday_Ride.html

About the ride...what a day. Only in Houston can you roll out of your house at 6:15am in January and start sweating in your warm up which did not last...by 8am a cold front and some rain blew in which took myself and some others by surprise...as we were not prepared. Starting off I had to rush over to Starbucks for a fix. Ran into some more guys there rolling out, chatted about how out of shape we all are in and how we all have not been riding. Cyclists are the biggest fakers...so that all just means that they have been putting in time on their computrainers with monster intervals! So yeah today's ride was tough. I swapped my Quarq cranks from the Kirklee to a Guru Merus tt bike. The BBs were the same so it was one bolt off and one bolt on. Piece of cake. Swapped the Garmin over and it was done. So easy! LOVE THIS THING. Also love the part how it was telling me that as we were in a rotating pace line for on 5 mile stretch that as we were fighting to hold 17-18mph into the wind, I was drafting at 280watts and pulling at 380watts. All that work and no speed...that is was a tough stretch...though really the whole ride was tough...I don't remember seeing under 200watts unless we were slowing down to stop.
Today we finished up our EPIC RIDE rolling down Post Oak and about 15 guys rolled into the shop for some coffee, bagels, and BS about how we all just ripped the legs off of each other. It was great, and just fun to start showing off the location and showing everyone what I am doing and talk about some of the bikes that have rolled out of Shama Cycles that were on the ride today.
I think the bagels and coffee will be there more often on Saturday Post Rides

Quarq Power Meter install

Quarq has been that company that has been teasing us for two years with another option for power that seemed to be great but never came out. Well finally it did and they are opening dealers now as well. Friday I got in the Quarq Cinqo Power Meter and Garmin 705 unit for my Kirklee and Rotor Agilis cranks. After taking care of some client's bikes I was able to look at my own.
The Kirklee was sitting at 14lbs 7oz. Post Install its only up to 14lbs 11oz. Not bad for a power meter upgrade! Mind you I only removed the Mavic Wintech ES computer with cadence.
Pretty straight forward to install and the Garmin is very user friendly. Plus I like the idea of being able to select your display screen format.
I have had a Power Tap and an SRM. Easy to use like the PT and almost as easy to install...when talking about the wireless one. The true staple has been the SRM and this was WAY easier to install than an SRM but with even more display info over the SRM and you still get to use any wheel you want. What a great little meter.
Oh yeah, and it has GPS positioning so you can map routes or see where you are at. I am gonna have some fun.