Shenandoah Bicycle Company

Saturday February the 6th @ 7:30 is the annual Bicycle Movie night,  This year the film will be screened at the Court Square Theater American Flyers, and hopefully some local footage will be shown.  This event is a fundraiser for the Shenandoah Valley Bicycle Coalition and the Blue Ridge Food Bank and costs either $9 or $7 if you bring 2 items of canned food.     As always the Movie is in Conjunction with the SuperBowl Sunday Ride. Either leave from the South 42 Food Lion at 8:45 or meet at the Briery Branch community center at 10:00  This is a fun group mt bike ride up to the reddish saddle and onto Flagpole knob before descending one of the single-track trails off the mountain.

Here at SBC we have the ability and lots of practice building wheels so if you ever want a special wheel for your bike pick out the hub spokes and rim (we'll be happy to help you) and come on down to the shop to get one of our highly skilled wheel builders to lace it up, bring it up to tension and finalize it for you. The bike featured in these pictures is a FUJI road bike that is a few years old. Our customer had us build him a wheel with a White Industries ENO hub . The ENO hub allows you to turn any bike with vertical dropouts into a Singlespeed or Fixed gear bike. The ENO is an eccentric hub that allows you to tension the chain through the hub rather than moving the wheel back on horizontal dropouts. Notice that this is a team issue JV SQUAD bicycle, one of very few!

 Winter in the bike shop means projects for team SBC.  First on our list of changes was moving the register to a more central location in the store.  Part of the new counter space is an electronic register which we are working to get up to speed now. When we lifted the counter from its old location we found 11 years of bike shop detritus: pens, razors, old receipts, inner tubes, a pair of pedals, lots of change and more all perfectly outlining the counters footprint! here is how the old counter zone looks  now,  full of fixed gears! skinny jeans rejoice

The skies opened up on Friday and Saturday as the snow fell for almost a 24 hour period. The shop was closed on Saturday as downtown was mostly deserted, except for those with cross country skis. All day Saturday you could ski the paved roads of Harrisonburg including main st, Cantrell, Mason and Chicago. It was a nice change to see people on skis or on foot taking over the roads from cars. The occasional car was forced to drive slow and carefully unlike when the streets are clear and wide. Ski tracks were set in Hillandale, Rock garden and the Arboretum but the real treat has been skiing the SVBC built trails over at Massanutten. The Upper Ravine and lower Ravine are particularity fun and exciting with many grade reversals and banked turns. The shop is all clear of snow and as you can see from the picture, Thomas made sure to shovel out the bike rack on main st (despite the snowplow's efforts to thwart bicycle parking). Jeremiah, Andy and Kyle got their picture taken as they sk...

If you ever find yourself south of here in Asheville North Carolina make sure that you stop by Industry Nine and take a brief tour of the factory. I-9 is a small company with only 8 employees, one of who use to work here at SBC. Their wheels are 100% made in their Asheville, NC facility. They outsource rims and bearings…that’s it. Now you can even get an I-9 rim on your wheelset (as pictured) or most other rims of your choice. They make beautiful wheels with aluminum spokes and without nipples. The aluminum spokes are super large, drop into the rim, and thread directly into the hub. So that there is much less wiggle than on a normal wheel. Flats are machined into the spokes so that you can true the wheel like any other wheel. They have some of the best engagement of any wheel, 3-degree engagement ensures that you can ride all your favorite rock lines. Anyhow we are a dealer so if you get the itch come on down. Wheels are available with multiple colors of hubs and spokes.

Free Grassroots racing was in top form this fall cross season with the second installment of the Blue Ridge Cyclocross Cup . A local series between Staunton, Harrisonburg, and Charlotesville, saw 2 races in each town spaced out across the fall riding season. Every other Tuesday afternoon a race was held in one of the towns. Points were awarded not only for the top 10 positions but also for new riders, number of spectators and participation. The races in Harrisonburg saw 40-60 people turn out for each event, an amazing turnout for such a small local race series. Each race was at a different venue, in town we used Westover for the first race and Ralph Sampson park (in the dark) for the second. Fooftown and Rocktown battled it out for points the entire series but a weak showing but the Foof led to a Rocktown landslide bashing at the last race of the year. Look forward to an even bigger series next year.

IBEX Merino Wool , not the scratchy itchy wool that your grandmother's sweater is made out of. Instead imagine silky smooth, soft, warm, and insulating even when damp or wet. Once you try on IBEX products you won't want to every put your "plastic" cycling clothes back on. Some of our most popular products this time of year have been the new IBEX 3/4 Bib knickers, come by the shop and check them out. We can order ANY products you see from the IBEX website and we can match any of the Sales IBEX has on their site and have it delivered to the bike shop with free shipping.