We at the Bikes on the Drive (BOTD) have been working hard this summer, so hard we had our busiest month ever at the shop in the month of May. And while we feel chained to the shop sometimes we decided to close the shop down and hit up Critical Mass while riding our new Tree bike by Devinci with some riders from Global Agents for Change.

And while we had a mini mass of 15 riders heading down to the Art Gallery to join over 900 cyclists we can honestly say it was the best idea we have ever come up with at the shop.

It was also the first time I took out a Tree for an extended ride. I had rode the bike around East Van and down to False Creek, but this was the first time I had rode the bike for more than an hour and in a lot of traffic (cars and bikes).

I also really like my old school Norco I have been riding around for the last year, it isn’t flashy or new and the frame is at least 20 years old. But I can honestly say that all of that changed when I took the Tree through its paces over the course of the night. It was by far one of the smoothest, hard-frame rides I have enjoyed since I started riding in Vancouver last year. I also had to shoot picture with one hand and ride with the other, so I felt it was a quite stable ride too.

After the ride the group from the shop went down to the Global Agents for Change BBQ in East Van where we rested our tired feet and filled our bellies with some nicely cooked burgers while meeting riders from across North American who would be taking part in the ride.

This is where ilan came up with the idea of closing down the shop on Critial Mass Friday. It was by all accounts the best critical thinking he had done all day.

So for the rest of the summer will be closing the shop at 5 p.m. on Critical Mass Fridays and enjoying a nice, long ride at the end of the week. Being a bike enthusiast yourself we hope you know why we decided to close down early one Friday a month and hope you will join us!

Category: Events

Tags: Advocacy, commuter, critial mass, downtown, False Creek, Granville, photography, Staff party, sustainable, Tree bike

The second part of the inspiration for The Tree took over when the owner brought the bike home.

“A bike is designed to sell, it is made to look good on the showroom floor,” said Darcy McCord, the knowledgeable  service manager at the shop.

Much like anything, manufacturers up-scale parts on the bike that the consumer can see, and to save money downscale parts that have less visibility.

“It is really problematic from a service perspective, because we see a lot of bikes that are relatively new, and some of the better parts on the bike are in great shape and some of the less good parts are in really bad shape after not too much riding. In particular one of the worst cases of that is the hubs, which often they (manufacturers) will use off-brand hubs that are one, not very good quality and two, when they do fail you can’t get replacement parts for them.”

BOTD also found that manufacturers were trying to edge out each other in weight of their mid-range consumer bikes regardless of the quality of the Components in the bike.

“We decided to favour robustness over weight for the tree,” replied ilan.

BOTD decided to go with Shimano Deore on the entire drive train and many components because of the high degree to which component parts can be replaced and serviced. In short, a great balance between durability, performance and price.

“When your bike does need servicing, all parts are either repairable or replaceable,” said Darcy.

The headset is a FSA conventional headset with pressed-in cups as opposed to an integrated headset, which is harder to service and harder to replace.

“So instead of up-spec-ing some parts and down-spec-ing others. We went medium specifications on everything, and in the long run it will be a much better deal for the owner,” said Darcy.

One of the benefits to living on the West Coast is the ability for the general commuter to bike year round to work, but with all the wet weather we are used to in Vancouver over the winter the rims can take a real beating from the constant braking as a result of mucky/wet brake pads. The disc brakes upgrade does come as an option and is completely upgradeable after the fact. But we have included this opinion because over the long run it will save you from replacing rims.

BOTD also requested that the bike be painted by powder coating as opposed to spraying because it has a longer lasting finish and it is gentler on the environment. All the unused powder can be reused on the next bike.

“Power coating is a long lasting finish process than a liquid paint,” according to ilan. “It is a much better process for the environment.”

Category: Story

Tags: bicycle, Canadian, commuter, False Creek, handwelded, Shimano Deore, sustainable

The Tree was conceived not in a moment of inspiration but from a general frustration happening to the mid-range-hybrid commuter bikes.

Reasons were many, but a couple of years ago ilan Handelsman, manager of Bikes on the Drive (BOTD), started seeing changes in the mid-range bikes being sold by all manufacturers. These included moving the welding and painting off shore, reducing the robustness of wheels and hubs and making the bike less versatile to disc-brake upgrades.

“We want Canadian made, we want disc brake upgradability… We wanted a bike that was a bit more sustainable.” coined ilan

Spoke counts were dropping from 32/36 to 24. Bikes were no longer coming with disc brake tabs and environmental standards are much less stringent off shore.

“We don’t want to have to replace the parts on a bike more often than necessary,” said ilan. “We prefer to repair parts as opposed to replacing them. It is much more sustainable.”

Handelsman had an idea to build his own bike and with having his hand forced by trends he saw in the industry, he went to find a way he could have all he wanted in a Canadian-made commuter bike. He knew the technology was still available in Canada to build and weld bikes, but he didn’t know who would jump on board.

Devinci still has a manufacturing shop based in Chicoutimi, Quebec and currently manufactures about 20,000-25,000 bicycles in-house per year. It was a perfect candidate to build the bike. We weren’t the only ones who have ever asked a bike manufacturer for a custom build, but now we had to convince Devinci to make a bike it had essentially stopped selling years ago.

In November 2007, ilan traveled to Devinci’s offices in Chicoutimi and spoke with Max, sales manager, and Yvan, vice president and production manager for Devinci.

ilan gave the reasons why he wanted to produce The Tree but was met with some resistance at first. ilan asked them to bring out a 2007 Devinci Oslo (the bike The Tree was based on) from the plant and show how he would showcase the selling features of the Oslo.

The people at Devinci were impressed with ilan’s candour, knowledge and passion for the project and what he wanted to do with the bike. They agreed and a year later they were touring the factory in Chicoutimi,viewing their creation.

In part two find out what is going into The Tree and why we have chosen to use the components we have.

Category: Story

Tags: bicycle, bike, Canadian, commercial drive, commuter, Devinci, False Creek, handwelded, 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