Cannondale Flash. Oakley Split Jacket, facility, dirt track, and gloves

It has been a crazy two weeks in SoCal. I started receiving all of my 2010 products, built two new Cannondale bikes, found out what parts didn't work or were delayed, searched for replacement bits, met with many of my sponsors (got to ride with a few), trained and even did a couple races. And most of this without Todd!  He is now back and spent the entire last two days doing taxes, what fun.

My Flash! 17.75 lbs with everything (pedals, water bottle cages, bar ends, etc.)

Visit and ride at Oakley!

The facility is huge, thank you to Steve Blick for the personal tour and MTB ride! That was just amazing. This SoCal facility houses everything, from concept design and development including engineering, artistic expression, rapid prototyping, destructive and cycle testing, to the build and packaging of final products in the factory. I saw Oakley watches, shoes, grips, hats, clothing, bikes, and of course sunglasses.

The Oakley website describes the facility as "a place of reinforced blast walls, product torture chambers and the padded cells of mad science. Oakley design bunker is where inventions are conceived, developed, perfected and manufactured. In addition to the hidden catacombs of research labs and proving grounds, the architectural design of Oakley President Colin Baden includes a 400-seat amphitheater and absolutely no adult supervision."   I saw lots of bikes in offices and hallways throughout the day, a gym with a trainer-led boot-camp-style workout class, and a foosball table. I think the only thing that was missing was a Starbucks.

 Oh, and this was out back, just one small part of the new track.

My shades. top left: Enduring Edge, top right: Forsake and the not even on the website yet, I had to take the picture myself, brand new mini-Jawbone-like Split Jacket!

I didn't take a picture of my gloves but am digging the Oakley Factory MTB gloves, white with red of course.
.

Last week I attended the grand opening party for the Incycle shop in Rancho Cucamonga, CA. This is the fourth Incycle shop, another huge store packed with anything you'll ever need. My not-quite finished Flash was on display during the party and Tinker and Jeremiah were there as well, go Cannondale!

Jim, Andy and Colin (Kenda)

The Bonelli race was a great time to catch up with even more sponsors and fellow racers. It was also a crash course on my new bikes, quite literally in fact.

I have one more training race in a couple weeks, after which it will be time to see if all this training and new super-sweet gear will pay off as my season will "officially" start.

I now have demo WTB saddles (10 different models). I will have these at next week's FRS clinic (at the new Incycle shop) if anyone wants to try them out. Details on the clinic to come.