Like presumably every other person who writes about bicycles on the Internets, I recently received an email about a big embargoed announcement concerning bicycles and LeBron James, and you can imagine my surprise when I learned that after the NBA he’ll be starting a UCI pro road team and riding alongside Mathieu van der Poel:
Just kidding:
Though he has launched a new campaign with Canyon, a company in which he has an investment:
LeBron James has long promoted cycling, though to my knowledge he has yet to partake in a gravel race:
Or own a bike custom-painted by Joe Bell:
Presumably he prefers to leave his customs unpainted:
It is of course a boon to cycling when a superstar athlete and role model like LeBron James professes a love for cycling, if only because it serves as much-needed ballast for the prevailing notion in America that everyone on a bike is a whiny entitled dork, and maybe motorists will even think twice before close-passing you on purpose. However, as a whiny entitled dork, I’d be remiss if I didn’t complain about the fact that it’s Canyon he’s promoting. I mean realistically I understand that if LeBron James is going to get involved in a bike company it’s going to be a big one that sponsors pro teams and uses cutting-edge materials and sells gazillions of bikes all over the world, but even so I reserve the right to wish he was promoting Rivendell instead:
Indeed, for the price of that video alone he could have funded Rivendell’s low-normal rear derailleur project to completion and purchased an inventory of square taper bottom brackets, front derailleurs, and long-reach rim brakes that would carry tjhe world’s retrogrouches through at least 2030.
But hey, I guess if it has to be Canyon it has to be Canyon.
Speaking of collaborations, since receiving a ticket in 2018 I’ve been known informally as “Tan Tenovo:”
This is because I was riding a Renovo Aerowood at the time, which the officer noted on the ticket as a “Tan Tenovo:”
And no, this error was insufficient for me to get the ticket dismissed.
In any case, as a cycling blogger of note (even if that note is usually “Give it up already”) I’m long overdue to release my own line of bicycles, and so I’m pleased to finally announce the official launch of my signature model bike, the TANWPN:
“TAN” is of course a nod to my post-ticket moniker, and WPN is just the word “Weapon” in gravelese–and a fine gravel bike it is, too, with disc brakes and everything:
The concept here is “modern classic,” and in designing the bike I took pains to incorporate nods to some of my favorite iconic bicycles. For example, I’ve long admired Trek’s Function Specific Design:
But since I couldn’t just steal that I went with “New Design Bike” instead:
I’ve also been greatly enjoying the LeMond Tete de Course:
By combining titanium and carbon, Trek engineers came up with what they called “Spine” technology and singlehandedly resolved a dilemma that had been taunting dentists for years:
Unfortunately neither carbon nor titanium was in the budget here at Tan Tenovo World Headquarters, and so the best we could do was make it out of cheap steel and call it the “Spino:”
Also, we’re calling it carbon because technically steel does contain carbon:
So far we’ve sent it out to some key influencers, and the feedback has been phenomenal, with riders declaring that it “corners like it’s on rails”–at least when you remember to flip the kickstand up:
We also put a tremendous amount of thought and consideration into cockpit curation:
Some people wanted downtube shifters, others wanted bar-ends, and still others wanted integrated shifters. It’s been said that the best compromise is when everyone is dissatisfied, and so in that spirit we went with the 7-speed top mount trigger shifters:
Eat your heart out, LeBron.
