MAJs gay bikes [she’s in her fitness era]

coughs

hello,

ladies, gentlemen,

it has been a while since we done this, if those of you who can remember all those years ago, back on page one i bought an old raleigh and proceeded to have what, some users are calling (not me) the 69th most degenerate, self destructive, but alluring series of posting from a member this forum has ever seen. we took an old ebay find and transformed it into a neo retro gravel bike, mile muching,road buzz defying, picnic wagon almost as quick as we sold it.

wanker bikes we called them, grocery getters for those who find themselves between gails and highgate whole foods. we would put annodising and sparkles on anything. log onto blue lug and type

"most expensive seatpost you got please mate"

think nothing of it, we loved it. finally something new which allowed us people who did not do sports at school to also become a coveted marketing demographic for bicycle manafacturers accross the globe.

time went on, builds passed, there were too many itterations of that one damn pompino to count

things were good, prosperous, back to normal people were dropping their delusions of riding to the shops on 2.8's and £500 worth of xpac and starting to post about caad10s, genesis's and those regular gravel bike things. not fixed gears mind you, those days are long gone mate and so are your knees.

i didn't understand why really, but i could see why people love caads. i love caads, i had a caad x

but you know what i wanted?

a caad x with 2.1 tyres, lugs, a mismatched fork, sliding drop outs and a second top tube (i still don't know why i wanted that second top tube, it was lockdown, we all did crazy things)

people said i was crazy, they asked why i wanted rim brakes (on a 29r no less), they asked why the paint couldn't match and most importantly, if i knew what toe overlap was

suprises no-one when i say i couldn't awnser any of these questions but i ordered it from the forums very own M_V anyway, he was more than happy to make this cross klunker in his scottish garage.

when it arrived i learned what toe overlap was, but also i learned i was right. the idea that you could just reject everything about sensible, efficient bike design and instead build something just because , was quite rewarding. both in a internal sense but also an external one to have people ride and suddenly see their preconceptions shattered. or at least tempered.

it has been two years since that now and we've been running on fumes, we've had... how many surlys? too many that's for sure. i was churning through models so fast i'd run out of SKU's before the end of the year so we had to pivot

and that brings us to TODAY

today, we have something very special, to me at least. maybe to you

it was previously under nda but i had the lawyers running round the clock to get us round it and hammer out those final details so i could give people an update on what promises, if nothing else, to be one of the bikes, ever made.

i prestent

the

HULSROY GAATB (the marge)

we have

dropper routing

disc brakes!

thru axels!

26'' wheels!

external cabeling!

some really fucked up geometry! disclaimer this was my request

i've got some words here from the marketing department:

The aim of the hulsroy GAATB is to capture what was so great about the vintage mountain bikes of the late 80's and early 90's. Not from their day or design intentions, but as a retrospective. Those designing vintage mountain bikes did not set out to build what they have become within cycling, a bike which is just at home on your local trail as your commute to the shops, a versatile frame which can be built and rebuilt like the ship of theseus as it changes lives, continents and owners.

What we wanted to do here is capture some tha magic of utiliatrian design which does not rely on the gimmicks of modularity and pre designed use cases. To build a bike which hopefully has a similar life to one of these earlier frames, but for the comfort and taste of the modern cyclist

Out with the quick release and rim brakes, in with the thru axel and disc brakes. Allowing for better, more consistent braking power while reducing the faff and play introduced by a quick release skewer. The Geometry has been designed to not only incude space for internal droppers, but also had the stack height raised to allow the rider to use a wide variety of bars over the bikes life. The wheel base is relatively short by todays standards, with the headtube being steeper than you'd expect for a modern off road bike, it's very much in the 2000's school of mountain bike design to keep it capable off road and nimble on. We've strayed away from the cutting edge of boost and TA, instead relying on standard spacing an IS mounts, allowing for greater flexibility and part choice accrosss the board, while being easier to maintain and source as the world moves forward.

Things are still subject to change, and more details about the build will be released in due course, but here are MAJ's thread and @Hulsroy cyclery we're happy to bring you some first look images

there will also be a specially designed frame bag by @Tijmen over at wit slingers to round the build out

wild right?

who'd had thunk?

i actually originally messaged hulsroy about this bmx clunker ass thing that i thought would be great, another fucked up thing i thought, continue the tradition. as part of this process i bought a surly 1x1 as a sort of research project off my friend zahir and built the bike i kind of wanted.

you know the one with the bmx bars

it was great, but it wasn't doing anything for me and it certainly didn't make my bunny hop any higher

i felt a bit silly really, here i had just started this project and i was already having and existential crisis, but three things happened:

1) i bought some new handlebars

2) i saw the bike hulsroy had built for his daugter and their adventures, the one where she picks up the pinecones to put in her frame bag really got me. that's what riding is all about right? just being out with people you enjoy the company of, eating snacks and picking up weird rocks

3) i went on a sunny ride with friends around cambridge and the forest on the 1x1, it was perfect. i thought this is the sort of riding i want to do now, this is where i see myself moving with my relationship with bikes. not riding for the sake of it, maybe not even commuting, just nice days with friends.

with this in mind i pivoted, i just wanted a simple, easy to maintain, posh picnic bike, a day tripper, a sunday best, a gravel pootler, basket packer, holiday cruiser, pine cone hunter. and that's how we've ended up here, with what is just.... a really nice practical bike.

that's all i have for now, still a while to go, but i thought i would share with hulsroys blessing, i'm sure he'll have plenty to share in his own thread when it starts.

going to be a fun one!