There ain’t nothing like the smooth, sexy feel of steel. Sure, other materials may come and go, but nothing says bicycle like a wicked fast and reactive cromoly hardtail steel frame. Our productThere ain’t nothing like the smooth, sexy feel of steel. Sure, other materials may come and go, but nothing says bicycle like a wicked fast and reactive cromoly hardtail steel frame. Our productThere ain’t nothing like the smooth, sexy feel of steel. Sure, other materials may come and go, but nothing says bicycle like a wicked fast and reactive Cromoly hardtail steel frame. Our product manager Pat White feels the same way, and so do these Kona staffers. Pat snapped this photo one morning at the Kona USA Bellingham warehouse. Steel all the way round.
Check out the quiver: 1 UNIT 29er Townie, 2 HONKY TONKS, 1 KAPU, 2 PADDY WAGONS, and 1 DUCATI/KONA PROMO HUMUHUMU PIT BIKE
There ain’t nothing like the smooth, sexy feel of steel. Sure, other materials may come and go, but nothing says bicycle like a wicked fast and reactive cromoly hardtail steel frame. Our productThere ain’t nothing like the smooth, sexy feel of steel. Sure, other materials may come and go, but nothing says bicycle like a wicked fast and reactive cromoly hardtail steel frame. Our productThere ain’t nothing like the smooth, sexy feel of steel. Sure, other materials may come and go, but nothing says bicycle like a wicked fast and reactive cromoly hardtail steel frame. Our product
He’s taken matters into his own hands. Bought a chunk of land and a boatload of boards and is constructing a mega park. We catch up with Bas mid-build.
What are you building out there in your big backyard? How much land do you have to work with?
Well, lets just say it starts off with a 25-foot tall drop in…it’s not your average dirt jumps that’s for sure. Its on 30 acres right at the base of the Sierras.
Where and when did you get the original vision to do this?
I’ve always admired how TJ Lavin and Fuzzy Hall [famous BMX riders] had there own training facility in their backyard. That’s where it all started. Read More→
By Grant “Chopper” Fielder
It all started quite innocently. My girlfriend works at a local school, and one day asked me if I was interested in coming in and speaking to the kids about my riding. I gave it a go because I thought it would be fun. The kids loved it. That was just a year or so ago, now it’s become huge.
Read More→
Here’s a couple of ads we did for Outcast Magazine. Sweet road gap. Rad rodeo. Beauty magazine.
The 2nd Annual Kona Shoot the Ride Photo Competition has been in full swing for over a month now, and there’s been a steady stream of real beauties.
Here’s a collection of some of the best.
I, along with most Vancouverites, spent most of this winter off my bike. The Lower Mainland received an unprecedented amount of snow this season, not just in the mountains but right in the city. The snow banks in December and January were huge, reminiscent of more northern climes. This excess of snow was very out of place in a city that normally enjoys very temperate weather patterns, and is situated well within reach of a tsunami crashing off the Pacific Ocean.
So, due to the lack of exposed dirt on the trails, and the fact that I work all winter (yes, Regular Joe works, like the rest of you), I shelved my bikes for the season. Sure, I got out here and there on my trusty road bike and dodged some traffic, but my dirt addiction was put on hold. I stayed busy however, working and skiing, but every so often my mind would stray, and I would daydream of happy times gone by, of memorable days on my mountain bicycle.
It seemed that spring had finally chased winter to the higher reaches of the mountains, where it belongs this time of the year, the forecast was for a sunny, warm Wednesday, and I convinced my good friend at Kona, Dik Cox, to take off from work early to ride. Call it a business lunch. It should go without saying that after a few months of cold turkey, and a spanking new Dawg Supreme staring me in the face, I was beyond excited to get out for a spin.
Read More→
In our first installment of My Bike, where Kona staff wax poetic on their favorite Kona ride, we get the drivetrain from Chief Executive Plate Spinner (Marketing Manager) Eddy Marcelet
Eddy’s 1994 Kona Kona (Prototype)
History: In 1993 Kona decided to get into making high end road bikes and began testing different frames made of Easton Scandium with carbon seatstays and Easton EC50 carbon fork as well as Columbus Airplane aluminum frames with carbon seatstays and Columbus Muscle carbon forks. Dew and Jake had the honors of testing the first prototypes we got in. The first frames up for testing were the compact geometry Columbus frames. The prototypes were made using Columbus’ Airplane tubing and had a compact geometry, something new-ish that was sweeping the road bike world, basically just the road bike equivalent of the sloping top tube MTB, but really different handling for a road bike compared to classic road geometry. The frames were stiff as hell and light. Jake and Dew liked the ride, but weren’t crazy about the compact geometry and complained about how stiff they were, so those test bikes were hung up after a season. The tubing spec was changed to a more compliant Columbus Altec 2 frame material for production. The Euros, who were more into the trendy geometry got the Columbus frames and North America went with an Easton equivalent. Both frames were called the Kona Kona, which means strong and muscular in Hawaiian.
Eddy rides his prototype Kona Kona commuter rain, sleet, sun and slum
My Bike: In summer of 2004 I ended up getting the North American Easton frame, but after a few years riding I broke in a crash and I needed to get it replaced, so I got one of Dew’s old proto Airplane-tubed Columbus frames that was hanging up in the warehouse, built it up with my winter bike parts kit and I’ve been using it as my ‘rain’ bike ever since. I use the Kona Kona only for wet Vancouver fall/winter/spring riding and it’s been a great ride. I equipped it with some nice, light SKS carbon stay & fork-friendly fenders, cabon bar & post, ti-railed saddle, FSA SLK carbon cranks, Campy wheels & cheap Campy groupo, an old-school HP pump, repair kit and lights, and aside from the odd flat and a replacement set of break pads, I’ve had two years of flawless commuting in all sorts of conditions. It’s dealt with rain, snow, sleet, salt and even mud from the odd rip through the UBC endowment lands over the Salish trail just to see what a beating a racy road bike with 16-spoke wheels could handle. It’s amazing the abuse the thing has endured between the conditions and terrain. Jake and Dew were right, the frame is super-duper maximum stiff, but unlike them I love the ride. The bike accelerates like a bat out of hell and feels great in corners. It’s true it can be jarring over rough terrain, but I never got the thing with the intention of riding the Paris-Roubaix, so it’s fine. My only complaint is the pedal overlap with the front wheel (something we fixed for the production frames). It can be a pain in the ass when you’re track-standing, waiting for a traffic light to change and eat shit in front of a bunch of pedestrians and drivers when you go to take off. That did only really happen once, so big deal.
…And then the road continues going on more to the right than you first anticipated and/or thought was really possible and you bump across those raised plastic dot-like things in the middle of the road that remind you, “hey idiot this is the middle of the road” and you think “yes, yes it is” but are unable to keep it (your bike) on your side of the road as small ribbons of blue black smoke begin emanating from the decreasing angle between the pavement and your tires and you start scanning for escape options and only three very viable ones present themselves and none of these are really all that great. To the left of you, (or more correctly straight ahead of you, but more or less to the left of your body due to the angle at which you are traversing the road way via sliding bicycle) is a steep embankment covered in yard debris (cheap hauling indeed!) and bottoming out in a rocky creek bed. Less to the left of that is a six foot wide redwood tree spanning the distance from embankment to road surface and even more less to the left and rapidly becoming proximal to you in the roadway, (which is definitely not the side of the road you desire and/or intended to be on) is a Honda minivan driven by a mother of five whose children (aged 3 to 12) are in repose in the back two rows (of the minivan) having succumbed to the massive amounts of sugar they ingested while terrorizing the local Costco free sample providers while mom was loading up on industrial size tubs of milk and mayonnaise. As such and being distract concurrently by the 7 year old who is no longer manufacturing Z’s and instead is requiring a slice of chewing gum, she does not see your sliding manic mass until just about too late, but she luckily also has equipped the minivan with the optional breakaway mirror package to assist in narrow gauge parking and then this is fortunate for your right forearm as it makes a sickening smack and retracts it (the rear view mirror, passenger side) a bit more forcefully than is S.O.P for the mirror but still gets the job done with minimal damage (to the mirror or your arm) and concurrently microscopic redwood bark slivers enter your left forearm in the same instant but you don’t really realize it (being distracted by the impact on the other arm and/or near death experience of threading the needle between outsized human conveyance and tree) until a week later when you notice small festering bumps on that lightly abraded forearm but that still is a small price to pay for the near miss and then you ride away thinking…
