If you're a follower of our posts, you know that we like to do collaborations from time to time. So much so that we now have an informal "waiting list" of people wanting to do something together.
When the guys from
Ultradynamico tires contacted us a while back, we decided to not simply spec their tires on one of our Bikes Of The Month but to do something more. So they helped us design a special paint scheme using their tire tread pattern and perfectly matching their colors. The result is a very special green color which goes by the name of Pistachio. More Pistachio ice cream than the nuts themselves if you ask me, but nobody did. So I digress.
Anyway, Ultradynamico is a company founded by two people who worked for bigger companies and wanted to do something nice and small. Sound familiar? They make really nice gravel tires with separate tread patterns front and rear called the Cava (and with a name like that, what's not to like?)
Inside the tires are
Cushcores (you'll have to take my word for it), a great option if you ride your gravel bike in really tough terrain where a "run flat" tire is a game changer.
The final part that deserves a special mention are the wheels. We got these carbon gravel wheels from
our friends at HED, but they day before we went to shoot this video Anne, the owner, emailed me to say "don't use the wheels, we're changing everything". I know the feeling all too well, the WI.DE. frame we assembled for this BOTM was itself the recipient of
a massive last-minute change.
However, since Andy had already gone through the trouble of installing the Cushcores, he was in no mood to redo it with different wheels. We also didn't really have any different wheels, we were on a tight time schedule, we didn't know when we would see our Spanish photographer again due to Covid restrictions, and so this threw us for a loop.
Long story short, HED told us to go ahead with the wheels, but be aware that the wheels you see in the video and the photos are NOT the wheels you can buy. What you can buy is much better, much lighter, and also called differently. It is called "the Emporia GC3 PRO" and you can
check it out here.
Now for the important part: We liked the paint scheme of this bike so much that we decided to do a limited edition run of frames. So it's just the frameset (although we also have some Force/Eagle parts kits in stock you could use to turn it into a complete bike, albeit it not with the spec shown). And as always, we probably didn't make enough. So if you want one,
order quickly here (scroll down a little).
More photos and specs in the next posts, but there's already a small video:
