VBT Bicycling Vacations’ Post

Transcript

Hi, I'm Dave Drum. I work as a Field Operations Manager with VBT since 2016. Prior to joining I was a professional cycling team mechanic for some of the fastest female athletes in the world's. Been in the bike industry for 25 years, a lifelong cyclist and I really enjoy my job. We have three different models of bike Rd. hybrid ebike. When choosing a bike style for your tour, the best thing to do is mimic what you do at home. If you like riding a road bike, it's probably best to go with a road bike. If you're not sure about the tour itself by looking at the maps it might seem a bit intimidating, it's hilly or what have you, it's best to choose an E bike. I mean E bikes are always fun when it comes to bite size and fit. We have bikes in our fleet that will cover. Heights of 411 to 263 comfortably. We do offer a fit sheet which will basically give us a more accurate look at what you're writing at home. And if there is some sort of special setup, we can mimic that on trip. And a tour consultant will ask you for your height. And then based on our years of experience, you know, we know which bike you should have. And on your first day you'll get to take it for a test ride. And the leader is totally capable of making any adjustments to make it fit just right. We have a bike resource page on our website that will give you the complete spec geometry chart for the bike model that you're choosing. O if you really want to geek out over numbers, you can. When Field Operations looks at new bicycles to be brought into VVT to be used on tour, we look at reliability, serviceability and whether or not it's a bike that our guests would enjoy. The life cycle of a bike at BBT is generally A5 year span. People want the latest tech, we want the latest tech. We bring bikes in, we test them. It's a great part of the job. We get to ride bikes that we normally wouldn't get to ride and just kind of compare and contrast when we do. Get a bike in for testing. We'll actually put it on the stand, take apart a brand new bicycle and see how hard it is to put it back together and look for things that could cause problems down the road. The bike has to be easy to work on. It has to be serviceable. We do spend quite a bit of time teaching leaders how to make adjustments on the bike, how to make sure it's shifting correctly, making adjustments on the fly if needed, how to get the bike to fit you the best that it can. We'll take a a bicycle. We'll pick five things that we will purposely miss, adjust, and the leader has to go through and diagnose the bike, figure out what we did to it and fix it. We really hope to see you out on the road and join one of our trips and just see how much fun you actually can have riding a bicycle in far-flung destinations. We'll see you out there.