Summertime Evenings at Passion Trail Bikes

This week’s news and info on June 23, 2009

This week we have at least three fun evenings on the trail, enjoying summer’s warmth. And a couple things to read if you are stuck inside. Check it out!

1. Female Friday!! Whoop, Whoop! It’s HERE June 26th, 6:30pm
2. Trail Work Tuesday, Today, 6pm at the Lake!
3. Wednesday Wrides: Sweaty Singletrack at 6:30pm
4. Travel Tips! Shipping, Airlines, Renting, Demo Bikes at PTB
5. Particularly Nice Weather


1. Female Friday!! Whoop, Whoop! It’s HERE June 26th 6:30pm
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It’s nearly here! This Friday, June 26th is our next Female Friday. As usual, we have our all girl gathering with ride leaders volunteered from the PTB regulars sporting XX chromosomes. Patty will be out doing the Fat Bottomed Girl ride, coaching and coaxing new riders and those that want a mellow and laid back ride about the park. There will for sure be a White Socks contingent, a Regular Ride, and don’t forget the Long Legged Ladies ride will get to zip up the switchbacks and get their mojo on! All rides will gather and launch from the shop right around 6:30, with the faster groups going out first and the slower rides holding back a few minutes.

Note to all the boys out there, please don’t pout that we don’t invite the male contingent along. There’s no need for the men to feel left out, as we have our Co-ed rides on EVERY Wednesday. Female Friday is a great time for women to bond, find ride partners, and enjoy a little girl time together, without the sweaty thrice worn jerseys that seem to fog up the mid week social hour. It’s also the one time that Patty gets to relax and not have to handle the kitchen duties.

Executive Chef Adam Maher will be serving up a tasty Cajun style meal featuring BBQ Pulled Pork, Cajun Fish, Corn Bread, and Grilled Cajun Veggies. Charles is working on the bar menu, and we suspect there may be something flavored with Burboun available, but we will have the kegs full of Devil’s Canyon goodness, including their very special Devil’s Draft Root Beer. Please remember to feed the tip jar so we can help defray the costs of these super fun evenings.

Make sure you tell your girlfriends!

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2. Trail Work Tuesday, Today, 6pm at the Lake!
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Construction plan for a seep zone with multiple culverts and elevated turnpike trail through the willows.

Just a quick reminder that Patty will be out there after work today, hitting the dam about 6:00 and working until dusk. Come stop in on your ride any time this evening and lend a hand for a little while moving timbers and driving a few posts; she will be on the north side of the lake, behind the garbage can.

We are keeping the momentum going through summer with a plan to do a little bit of work with a few helpers roughly every other Tuesday evening, with a lot of work with a larger crew once a month on a Saturday morning. The Tuesday workdays will always be drop-in friendly – no need to RSVP or wear special clothes – so you can ride up to the lake, drop your bike and put in an hour or however much time you have on the project and continue your ride. Patty will be there next week on 6/30 also and will send out reminders with upcoming workdays in this newsletter.

To find out more send Patty an email at patty@passiontrailbikes.com if you have questions, otherwise, just show up at the Lake Loop Trail, north side of Waterdog Lake, Waterdog Park, Belmont.

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3. Wednesday Wrides: Sweaty Singletrack at 6:30pm
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Sunset is at 8:35pm this Wednesday 06/24/09. Twilight ends and darkness falls right around 9:30pm. Next week the Regular Ride launches at 6:30pm

The hot days of Summer are HERE! All the usual rides apply. See below. This week’s food fest will feature pizza AND some awesome brownies for dessert. Please remember to feed the tip jar to defray the costs of putting on the spread.

P. L. E. A. S. E. . . . P. U. T. . . . L. I. G. H. T. S. . . . O. N ! ! ! !

Please remember to put a light on your handlebar and have a blinky ready for the ride back to the shop! CA vehicle code requires it. Don’t get caught out on the streets in the dark! Also, a reminder that we need to be super conscientious about stopping at stop signs and lights, yielding to pedestrians, and operating our bikes predictably and responsibly while on the roads and trails. Let’s be safe and kind out there.

For all the details about what makes each group listed below unique, please refer to this webpage. If your questions aren’t answered there, you can also email us for info at info@passiontrailbikes.com.

All rides start pedaling from the shop: Passion Trail Bikes, 415 Old County Road, Belmont, CA 94002 650-620-9798

Riders queuing up for the launch of the Wednesday Wride

The EARLY ride will go out at 6:15 PM.
The REGULAR rides will go out between 6:20 and 6:35 PM.
The FBG or Fat Bottomed Girl ride will go out at 6:35 PM.
The WHITE SOCKS ride will go out at 6:35 PM.
The STRAGGLERS ride goes out sometime around6:45 PM.
For future planning, we have the upcoming start times each week for the REGULAR ride posted on our Community Calendar

Note we may not have leaders for each ride but usually someone knows their way around. All groups will meet back here at Passion Trail Bikes right around dark for the usual story telling & beverage enjoyment. We will have stuff for the BBQ along with some carbo laden side dish, chips and fatty snacks and EANABS to pair up with the Devil’s Canyon Brewery’s Full Boar Scotch Ale, Silicon Blonde Ale, and Little Devil Root Beer. We will hang out until about 10pm, so come on down, even if you can’t make the ride! Passion Parties are better with YOU in the mix!

Riders enjoying one of Waterdog’s great trails

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4. Travel Tips! Shipping, Airlines, Renting, Demo Bikes at PTB
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As promised, we’ve started writing up some info on Vacations and Travel with your bike. Here are the first installments, expect to see more good stuff all Summer long!

Shipping Your Bike via PTB

According to United Airline’s website, taking your bike on a plane will cost you dearly, to the tune of $175 EACH WAY for a box under 50 pounds. Wow.

The good news is that if you plan ahead, we can ship your bike for you via UPS or FedEx and save you a bundle. As an example, we can ship a bike, insured, to the east coast for $65 via UPS. Read on for details.

Berry sez “Shipping bikes can be complex, hopefully the following info will be helpful. We charge $40 to pack a bike for shipping, whether by common carrier (UPS, Fed-Ex) or on an airplane. This can be done in a cardboard bike box (no charge for the box), or one of the plastic, re-useable boxes as well (rental fees apply). For cardboard bike boxes, we re-use the heavy duty box and internal packing materials that the manufacturers use to ship bikes to us, including braces for the fork ends and dropouts, internal padding around frame tubes, internal boxes for pedals and skewers, etc.

“Actual cost of shipping has a lot of variables, so here goes with that. Road bikes and shorter travel mountain bikes will usually fit in an “OverSize” box that when packed properly without bulges, conforms to what UPS calls OS 2, but is VERY close to OS 3. Common carrier rates, for ground transportation, for an OS 2 box would range from $35-40 for West Coast destinations up to $75-80 for East coast addresses (which will take 5-6 days), depending on the box weight and delivery address. OS 3 sized boxes add substantially to the cost, usually a $50 surcharge. We do our best to get a bike to fit in an O2 box, but longer travel bikes, and larger frames sizes will frequently have to go OS 3. We can ship for you via our UPS account for a small, 10% additional surcharge over what UPS will charge you if you do your own packing and take the box to them. This surcharge is to cover our time and gray hair for having to berate them and have them remove OS 3 overcharges on our account for an OS 2 box.

Check with your specific airline for their bike rate EACH WAY and any additional weight penalty you might pay, to compare to common carrier rate. Airlines charge flat rates per box, usually with weight limitations, whereas common carriers rates are based on weight and distance. So larger, heavier bikes may cost less to ship on a plane, depending on your airline. Check both kinds of shipping to be sure. Also, check insurance and damage limitations. Airlines are notorious for crushing things, and you don’t want to be out of pocket for thousands of dollars if they destroy your box.UPS, FedEx, and the US Postal Service all have online shipping calculators, and one website will let you compare them.

Also one other thing to keep in mind is airline security is much tighter than common carrier. It is pretty uncommon for your box to be opened if you ship via truck, although it does sometimes happen and stuff goes missing. If you are going to Whistler and fly into Canada, you may have to open the box for customs and security inspections. This means you need to be able to close it back up! Have tape on you to re-seal your box, and make sure you know how to repack it if they want to remove it from the box entirely. Because you are traveling with your box, you can take your bike through customs yourself and supervise the opening and re-closing of your bike, but be prepared for it to be a pain in the backside, and to slow you down.

We rent the large hard plastic bike boxes for $75 a week. These are a better option than a cardboard box if you are flying on a plane and expect the box to be opened, as they are a clamshell type of case and don’t use tape to seal. They typically sell for around $300, but price does vary some between brands and models.

Bike Rentals, Demo Rides, and Friends Visiting California

Passion’s demo and rental fleet has grown over the years, and we have kept it stocked with the latest bikes that are garnering the most attention on our sales floor. We currently have 20 bikes available from Specialized, Giant, Santa Cruz, Maverick, and Ibis, and rent them to regular customers that like to try different things, and to those visiting or working in the area that find it more convenient to rent than to travel with their own bikes. Our rental fee is $75 per bike for the first day, and $25 for each additional day. We try to keep a day down to 24 hours, but we’re reasonable. Let us know what works for you, and we will try to accommodate.

For your out of town friends, have them arrange a rental bike reservation with us via email or phone, and then show up with their shoes, helmets, and possibly pedals. We do have a few loaner sets of Shimano and Crank Brothers pedals, and are happy to set a rider up with them when we can. When a rider comes in to pickup a rental, we will want to spend a half hour or so with them, adjusting each bike sizing, dialing in the suspension in the stand, and orienting the rider on the controls and on the fly adjustments.

We also have a demo bike program that allows you to test several bikes before you purchase one. The demo program is free of charge when you do end up purchasing the bicycle from us, and if you are not ready to purchase the bike then standard rental fee applies. The demo program requires a $200 buy in and allows you to take three different bikes out for a full day ride, locally or elsewhere. We will spend time with you and each bike, setting up the suspension and sizing, as well tuning you into how you get the absolute most ride out each ride. If you fall in love with one, your $200 fee rolls over into a deposit on a custom built version, dialed in to your size, budget, and intended use.

Some bikes are hard to get overseas, and we have on occasion sold new bikes to customers who are visiting as tourists from out of the country, who then ride them around various parks and venues in California before shipping them home dirty and used. Note that none of our manufacturers allow us to sell new bikes without delivering them to the customer fully assembled. We cannot do mail order sales.

Also, one other point is that we are only 20 minutes from San Francisco Airport. If you want us to ship or receive a bike when you are travelling via air from SFO, we are pretty convenient. Fly without your bike, then come to the shop to pick it up after UPS delivers it to us. And you can take BART and Caltrain from our shop to the airport, for those who go auto-free.

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5. Particularly Nice Weather

Rest of Today Sunny. Highs in the mid 70s to upper 80s. West winds 10 to 15 mph.   Tonight Mostly clear. Lows in the lower to mid 50s. Southwest winds around 5 mph.   Wednesday Mostly sunny. Highs in the upper 70s to lower 90s. Southwest winds 5 to 15 mph.   Wednesday Night Clear in the evening then becoming partly cloudy. Lows in the mid 50s. South winds 5 to 15 mph.   Thursday Partly cloudy in the morning then becoming mostly sunny. Highs in the lower 70s to mid 80s. Southwest winds 5 to 15 mph.   Thursday Night Mostly clear. Lows in the mid 50s.   Friday through Sunday Clear. Highs in the mid 70s to lower 90s. Lows in the mid 50s to lower 60s.   Sunday Night and Monday Partly cloudy. Lows in the upper 50s. Highs in the mid 70s to upper 80s.

Read back issues of the Passion Trail Bikes Community e-Newsletter on our website

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To contact us, email us at info@passiontrailbikes.com, or call the shop at 650-620-9798.

Happy Trails, the PTB crew
Charles, Patty, Berry, John, Bret, Sterling, Daryl, Peter, Reba and Buster