Ahh Car Free Days, Who doesn’t love when they close down the drive to motor vehicle traffic and open up the streets to entertainers, street vendors and community groups.

We at Bikes on the Drive will be giving away one of our Tree commuter hybrid bicycles. And you can either fill out a entry form in shop  or download the entry form at bikemonth.ca and drop it off at the shop, 630 Commercial Drive, before 6:45 PM on June 13, 2009.

The draw will take place at Bikes on the Drive at 12 Noon, June 14, 2009.

Along with the fab-tree give away we will have a table out front that might have a few specials for you to gander at and one of us will be out their talking about the Tree.

See for us The Tree is more then just a bike we sell it is about the ideology of what we see in a new urban commuter for Vancouver and being the advocates of sustainable culture that we are we’d really like talking about it. (Were total bike geeks, but you knew that)

So we hope you’ll stop by the shop amongst the Old School Roller Disco, knittervention, and street hockey and I what I am sure will be day full of merry mayhem (car free of course).

Category: Events, News

Tags: Advocacy, car free, commercial drive, sustainable, Tree bike

The whirlwind trip The Tree has been on this spring just got a little bit more historic.

The Tree is on display at the newly branded Museum of Vancouver (the MOV; Formerly the Vancouver Museum) and their new show Velo-City: Vancouver and the Bicycle Revolution.

The Tree was chosen by Nick Rust from Propellor Design who heard about The Tree through the grapevine and thought it was an awesome project. He approached Autumn about having the bike as part of the show.

“We were blown away Nick asked us to have our bike as part of the show and though it would be awesome to be part of the exhibit.” said Autumn.

Autumn dolled up a large Tree with the disc brake upgrade, some lights and a pannier. She jumped on board putting foot to peddle(s) and headed to Kitsilano, the bikes new home for the next six months.

The Opening

The gang from the shop took off a little late and hit the 10th street bike route, we had a hilarious time biking across town trying to race each other on the hills. Darcy had his old school, three-speed Raleigh and was giving us gear heads a run for our money.

We then turned down the Cypress Avenue bike route and were welcomed by a cool breeze and a drop in temperature as we neared the ocean shore next to the venerable Museum.

We were impressed with the red carpet treatment by the Bike Valet. While we dropped off our bikes with Shera Kelly, a Bike Valet attendant, Jaimie had a little photo shoot with Rebecca Blissett outside the museum. Who knew we were so popular?

Walking into the exhibit I was completely impressed with the curator of the exhibit, from 1980’s road racing jerseys, to the exceptional quality of Tito Precott “Three Wheeled Method of Convenance” and a special performance of the BCclettes to cap the night off.

I kept on returning to the tree, trying to get a decent photo. Trying to shoot a black bike against a black room with a point and shoot camera is darn harder than you might think. But it allowed me to see a array of different people checking out our little creation.

It was far from the flashiest bike, the most expensive cycle, or most popular exhibit at the opening, but what I did hear was a lot of people coming by taking a closer look at the frame, inspecting the components, making subtle comments to friends about how cool the concept of our bike was.

Of course we are somewhat preaching to the converted at the opening of a bike show where the bike valet is as full as the parking lot.

This little project is barely into its first month and yet we’re already getting a huge and equally important positive response to our first cycle. So please drop by the museum, check out the choppers, the fixies, and the chalk murals. It is a great show and we could not be prouder to be a part of it.

Category: Events, News

Tags: Advocacy, art, BCclettes, bike, commuter, culture, exhibit, Kitsilano, museum, red carpet, sustainable, Tree bike

Welcome to the birth of The Tree website. If a bike were to run its own website we hope it would look like this.

Throughout the summer we will bring you the story of The Tree along with events we’re at, rides we’re on and customer reviews.

So what is The Tree you ask? It is a commuter bike conceived more than two years ago by Bikes on the Drive to give bike commuters of Vancouver the quintessential ride that is made for the long haul of commuting year round. This bike was built with sustainability and serviceability in mind.

How did we accomplish this and why did we decide to reinvent the wheel? Read on to find out more. It is a bit more than a short story and in fact it is the foundation of the shop itself. The bike and the shop are both sustainable, environmentally and socially conscientious; Both are made for and by people who believe in a sustainable life.

How are we going to do this? Well, if you’re reading this post then you have already seen the way, but rather than just tell you how much we love this bike we will show you too. If you prefer video, we have a youtube account. For those of you who are a little snap happy we have a flickr account. And if you tweet, well you can find us on twitter. You can also see our friend feed to the right.

So if you want to check us out at a number of events over the summer we’ll let you know, (psst…you can also follow us on our RSS feed if you like that sort of thing). We have published our Specs and Stats of The Tree so all you gear heads can geek out over how many spokes our Shimano Deore hubs have.

But thanks for stopping by. We have our helmets on and are ready for a whirl-wind cycle this summer. We hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Category: News

Tags: bicycle, bike, commuter, Devinci, False Creek, Tree bike