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

Our major goals at Bikes on the Drive (BOTD) is advocacy, education and awareness of bike commuting, bike culture and overall community building in the East Vancouver community itself. For any business owner it just makes sense to be an active, contributing member of the local community.

One way that we do this is through supporting Global Agents for Change. This registered non-profit was founded in January 2007 by a group of young professionals, university students and social change agents from Vancouver, Canada.

During one of the many conversations ilan has with his customers, he heard about Global AFC in 2007. Being the sociable and knowledgeable guy that ilan is, (yes he did pay me to say that), ilan offered some tour consulting to new riders who might be going down in the group.

“I invited the senior people of the group down to the shop and I gave them the full run down on touring bikes; The challenges people have with bags, peddles, shoes, living out of a bike for a month,”

What we found out was that it was the first time they were given this type of knowledge and information, which you really only find out by doing or talking to someone who has.

The result was that they booked the entire team of riders to come in and talk with ilan.

It was also a complete coincidence for ilan, a former financial planner who dealt in-risk management and lending and now manages  BOTD, to find a charity that dealt in touring, cycling and microcredit lending to break the cycle of poverty in developing and third world countries. It’s a good fit to say the least.

Since that time we have offered both education for riders on repairs and maintenance of their bikes while on a trip, along with a safety briefing and equipment knowledge.

The shop also sells gear to the riders at cost to the shop.

“We had sold really strong touring packages worth up to $3,000 for $1,800 and donating all the labour associated with bikes and components,” said ilan.

With both a Mexico and European tour with a total of 71 riders, the shop was a little packed this spring and the boys (and Jaimie) were a little busy in preparing a number of bikes for the trip.

Two additional things happened this year: One with the launch of The Tree commuting and touring cycle first aid attendant, Agent Bugsy Delesalle purchased one of the first BOTD Tree by Devinci after talking with Autumn, and had it loaded for bare as she left Vancouver for Mexico: Two, ilan had gone a step further and approached the supplier and manufacturers of components and equipment for the BOTD and told them about Global AFG. As a result Brodie, Arkel, Avid, Tubus and Shimano either offered at cost or at a discount on top of whatever BOTD was offering the riders.

And while according to the official Global AFC blog, Bugsy offically hates hills. Apparently she is doing fine and heading to Seattle as we speak.

Category: Advocacy, Events

Tags: Advocacy, Agent for Change, bicycle, Canadian, charity, commercial drive, Devinci, Global, microcredit, non-profit, sustainable, touring, Tree bike

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 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