Peacock Groove Experiment Part #1

Published March 9, 2010 at 12:59 p.m.
This weekend I did something awesome, or stupid, or stupidly awesome...

I ordered a Peacock Groove


This past Sunday, I sat down with Erik and detailed exactly what it is I am looking for...

Let me start off by saying that what kind of bike to get was an extremely tough decision to make...On the one hand Erik is known for his short wheelbase 29'ers, but I already have a 29'er I love (my beloved El Mariachi). On the other hand I've always wanted someone to build a modern replica of my Benotto road bike (the best fitting bike I've ever ridden, and the basis for both my Capricorn and Big Block). However I already own a Croll 853 road frame that was built by Noren, and I was looking forward to making that my one and only geared road bike this summer.

After much hemming and hawing I decided to go with a road bike, simply because there's a production mountain bike that I adore (that now comes in Ti) and at some point in my life I've always known that a custom road bike to grow old with needed to happen. Not to mention the urge to immortalize the awesomeness that is my Benotto (the Benotto has some damge to the down tube).

Here's what I ordered:
A lightweight road racing frame and fork...Lightweight, but not so much that it has a definite fatigue life, I'm hoping to ride this thing for the next 20 years or so...I'd like the frame and fork to be able to accomodate 28's with a short reach brake, and 32's with mid reachs installed...The idea is that as I grow old I can run bigger tires, and it will give me all the clearance needed to turn this thing into a fire breathing gravel racing monster.

I need two bottle capacity, internal cable routing (okay, no one really needs internal routing, but I want it) and a pump peg...Many of the other details are yet to be ironed out, as Erik plans on sending over dropout and fork crown options via email...It is also still yet to be determined if we're going for sidetacked or fastback stays.

I'll share some of the options with you and further discussion as it happens...

Back to the matter at hand though; the potentially awesome or stupid part.

Everyone who's ever looked at a PG knows that Erik is one of the most talented framebuilders working today...He's an artist...
And that's the rub...He's an artist, not a businessman. Once you get your bike you absolutely love it (how could you not), but getting it has been known to be a hassle.

This is where the experiment and documentation comes in...You see Erik recently took on Bob Pavlica as his bidness manager...It is Bob's sole mission in life to make sure that the bikes get built in a timely fashion...
Along with Bob's arrival a number of other very positive changes have occured around the PG shop...The office moved down the hall, which means a clear separation of duties (when he's in the shop it's all fabrication) and Vincent Dominguez (a good influence) of Dominguez cycles moved in to share shop space...Both of these changes should serve to help production and increase delivery times.

The intial order conversation was filmed by Marty Wood and both he and I will be documenting the bike buying transaction from initial order, through fab and paint...The goal is to have the bike fabricated in 4 weeks from the time I supply the remainder of the deposit (half of the total cost), later this week.

The Peacock Groove Experiment Project Experiment: Operation Timely Delivery is to create a sick bike and document the process...To let my experience with buying a bike from PG be known, good, bad, and ugly. My goal here is to get an awesome bike and some blog content. Erik's goal is to showcase what the rebooted Peacock Groove can deliver in terms of both service and product...I'm freaking stoked on the project, and can't wait to get that email from Erik with my dropout and fork crown options...

Is this the awesomest thing I've ever done? Only time will tell...

And since a blogpost without photos is like nowheresville here are some shots of one of his NAHBS bikes.








My bike's going to be like this, but hottter.
Can't hardly wait


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