Hammer & Cycle Maiden Voyage

We took the Hammer & Cycle All Roads out on its maiden journey today. We went hunting for dirt and mud. Unfortunately, Winter still has its clutches on our trails and dirt paths. We did find a small section of the Minuteman trail to at least kiss the dirt and mud with our tires. It wouldn't be a proper ride on an All Roads without riding some dirt! Its been a cruel Winter. As the snow banks recede they are leaving a wake of potholes, sand and road debris. The first impression I had on the bike was just how smooth the ride was. With 40 mm tires I didn't even really need to avoid the potholes. Sure I instinctively did so to avoid a flat or dinging a rim but it was mostly unnecessary. This bike was built around Shimano's new Hydro road disc brakes. The levers and brakes are mated to a Di2 Ultegra group. Both performed flawlessly. The lever action was light, the stopping power firm but not overpowering. The two words that come to mind are stable and smooth. Two great traits for a bike built for long days in the saddle riding all manner of road and trail. This is not an overbuilt cross bike. It rides very much like the road bikes we all used to have before "race" bikes influenced the geometry of the modern road machine that is built more for office park crits than all day riding on broken surfaces. Di2 shifting is on a whole other level at this point. Smooth, silent and shifts across the cassette with a flick of a finger or knuckle.

Spring is coming. And to say we can't wait to ride this bike all day with good friends is an understatement. This bike is is going to get a lot of action in the next couple of months. The Ronde de Rosey, Divereged, Rasputitsa.

Look for a more in-depth posting in the coming weeks!

Ride on

At Honey there is only one thing we are more passionate about than bikes. And that is riding. We love all types of rides and riding. The rides we love the most are the ones we share with good friends and involve lots of adventure and hilarity. Even on "epic" rides we probably endup smiling way more than we should. But that is what riding does for us. It always brings a smile to our faces.

For 2014 we compiled an extensive calendar of rides we would love to go on,rides that we will be sponsoring, and rides that we will be putting on ourselves. Last year we put on three Honey-centric rides: Divereged, Coffee Cross and The Honey One Hundred.

New for Honey in 2014 is an exciting partnership. We will be a sponsor of the Rasputitsa and Dirty 40 gravel races held in VT. The Rasputitsa is coming up fast. The race will be held on April 19th on some amazing roads in VT. To celebrate this new partnership we developed a Rasputitsa-inspired All Roads purpose built to take on the early season mud and (snow?) gravel. Its paint scheme harkens to the harsh conditions of Northern VT in early Spring. We are very excited about both the sponsorship and this new bike.

Honey Bikes 2014 Launch Party

On a cool February evening in Boston,  Honey Bikes came out of its Winter hibernation at the Ride Studio Cafe in Lexington with its 2014 Launch Party. Winters aren't easy in the Northeast but it gives us a chance to work on new projects, develop new bikes, and paint schemes. At Honey we are always working with clients on special project bikes. A Winter party featuring new bikes and bringing good friends together has become an annual Honey tradition. Its what we are all about after all, and Winter is a good time to get together as a community, recharge and get excited for the upcoming riding season. But this is the first time we have taken on such an ambitious endeavor.

The idea was to show 11 bikes, and to do it more as an art gallery opening than a party. The focus of this launch was gravel and cross bikes. Those are the bikes we ride the most and that speak to us on so many levels. With Spring fast approaching and the less ridden path on our minds we set out to push the bounds of what we could do with steel, paint and bike components.

We had 6 Cross bikes, 2 All Roads, 2 Mountain bikes, and 1 Road bike on display. In the coming weeks we will go over each bike individually and discuss what went into the development of each bike and the story of its rider and intended usage. It can't be stated enough just how much work and creativity went into these bikes. The painters took concepts and designs and produced works of art. The framebuilders and mechanics built and assembled the bikes in an astonishing time frame. As much as Honey is about the rider and delivering a bike that exceeds all their expectations its also about the process. The people who work on each Honey put so much into each bike and it shows. We owe them so much for making bikes that put smiles on so many people's faces. Each bike is so special. A huge thanks to the staff at the Ride Studio Cafe in Lexington for hosting the party, building the bikes and being such great supporters of Honey. We can't even put into words how much we appreciate the work the painters Staci and Jordan do for us on a regular basis. They have taken the craft of painting a bicycle and turned it into an art form. The framebuilders and machinists produce one of the finest steel framesets you could ever ride.

The evening had so many highlights. So many good friends were on hand to help us celebrate the past year and to help us get excited about 2014. We unveiled our latest partnership with the Dirty 40 and Rasputitsa Gravel Races in Vermont. And to celebrate this partnership we created a Limited Edition Rasputitsa-inspired All Roads. It featured a paint job harkening to the mud season in both VT and Russia and was emblazoned with our take on the Hammer and Sickle—the Hammer and Cycle. The bike features the most cutting edge technology from Shimano with the new DI2 Hydro Disc brakes and Ultegra DI2 groupset. It is built to shine on all roads and in all conditions. We are very excited to be a part of the Rasputitsa and Dirty 40 gravel races. Heidi and Anthony both traveled down from VT to be a part of the party and for a tour of Honey. We are looking forward to riding many gravel roads with them for years to come.

The party was a huge success by any measure. Everyone had so much fun and left excited to ride bikes. The Rasputitsa is a mere six weeks away. We will be getting these beautiful bikes dirty in no time at all. Thank you to everyone who came out and shared the evening with us. A special thanks to Russ Campbell who shot all the great photos in this post. Thank you to Thom Parsons for his amazing video work. And thank you to all who work on Honey and help us to make the ride better one bike at a time.

Also, check out this amazing video piece Dirt Wire TV did for our 2014 Launch!

http://vimeo.com/87505573

What is Honey?

We started Honey with the simple mission of making the best possible bike for one type of riding:  the kind of riding you want to do. There is so much going on in cycling right now - with multiple wheel sizes, evolving brake systems, cross-pollinating of various disciplines, limitless niches – and Honey focuses on these types of riding in a unique way.

We offer more bike categories than any other U.S. builder.  We handcraft each frame one at a time – no batches – in the United States.  We build each Honey from cutting edge steel.  And, because we’ve designed each model’s geometry and tubeset already, we can deliver your hand-made bike in about five weeks.

Honey is specialty bikes – each model purpose built to excel at one style of riding.  A good example of this specialization is Honey’s cyclocross bike category.  We offer four distinct cross models, each for very different purposes and strengths.  Do you focus on the cross race season, featuring tight and technical U.S. races?  We have a bike for that.  Are you looking for a cross bike that’ll excel at 70-mile rides through uncharted trails?  Honey has a specific bike for that.  And we offer all four Honey cyclocross models in singlespeed versions, too.  Honeys are not ‘one bike for all kinds of riding,’ these are no excuses specialist bikes.

One of our favorite examples of this is a recent customer who saw a Honey Winterando at an event.  He said, “I have been wanting that bike for years, and no one makes it.  Until now.”

NEMBA Trail School

NEMBA’s Trail Building course was held this past weekend on May 18^th and 19^th in Charlemont, Massachusetts.  A couple of friends and I signed up for the class earlier in the year, not really knowing what to expect, but excited about the prospects of learning more about trail design and getting our hands dirty.

According to some of NEMBA’s bylaws, “The New England Mountain Bike Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting sustainable trail access for mountain bicyclists, and to maintaining the trails on which mountain bikers ride. NEMBA supports the conservation of open spaces and is committed to educating mountain bicyclists to ride sensitively and responsibly in order to protect the natural environment and the experience of other trail users.”

This statement among many other sustainable guidelines were presented to our class of nearly 30 during the first day of Trail Building school. NEMBA’s mindful message of compassion and communication with all trail users and making sustainable trails was explicit. It laid the foundation for how we would work on our own trail over the weekend. NEMBA is about creating a community.

Out in the field, we were working on the Charlemont trail system, which had already been dug out the year before by a non- NEMBA affiliated group. We were there to correct some of the damage done to the trails, and try to reroute a few to make them more rideable. It turns out, that while a lot of trail building is extremely labor intensive, it is also a lot of standing around and talking about where the trail should go and why. We spent time debating about where water would or would not collect or how to prevent it from doing so, a huge concern when designing. How do we connect the trail we are working on to an existing one? What is the gradient of your trail, and is it within standards?

We learned about benching, the technique used to cut trails into slopes that makes trails sturdy and practiced it during our course work. We moved boulders that took four people to budge to create a rock feature that was far better than the existing one. We built boardwalks, but also learned that you cannot cut wood while out on the trail system and that the logistical hardships of getting your timber into the woods and leaving no trace of your recent build work. Lectures were given by trail managers and NEMBA members who had been building for over a decade.

As I am hiking up a steep, overgrown hill in the woods at 9am on a Sunday, struggling to carry a plank of wood, breathing deep, calves burning, abs engaged I appreciate more than ever the trails I ride on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. The volunteer hours that go into design and construction for multi-use, sustainable trails is astounding and the passion of NEMBA members is unyielding. The camaraderie amongst mountain bikers was refreshing and an unexpected part of taking this course. As we gathered for a ride, or around our nightly camp fire you saw tired faces, but all were smiling and talking excitedly about the ways we wanted to improve our own trail systems back home.

Check out more ways you can help NEMBA, or even take one of their Trail Building courses they offer later this summer by visiting the NEMBA website:  http://www.nemba.org/

Photos by Philip Keyes