Aaron is hosting a contest over on Instagram! Take a photo of “611s” in the wild, and post to Instagram. Tag your photo 611sINTHEWILD and cc @611bicycleco and @hillclarke for a chance to win a custom 100 mm 31.8 1 1/8” threadless stem, with single color paint by Airglow Painting (@hillclarke!).

TShirts are being given away every hour between now and 6:11 PM EST for the first 3 posts each hour. Everyone who submits a photo is entered to win the drawing at 6:11 p.m. for the custom stem! Free shipping within the US to all winners.

Photo from bikerumor.com

The day JWR picked this bike us from us he rode off into the sunset for a nice break-in ride, and immediately wrote us an email when he got back home:
“After riding it 27 miles I’m just starting to fully recognize the finery.  Sure, the drivetrain, brakes, wheels and other components are stellar and state-of-the-art delights, but the real joy is in experiencing the feel of the steel…crafted into the amazingly responsive unit that is the heart and soul of the bicycle….

A wholehearted thanks to ya’ll for making such magic happen. I could not be any happier with it.”

Denver was great, but obviously cold. It was really nice being in Austin 2 years ago and even Sacramento last year was warm. We didn’t get much time to see the city, but the people were nice and we were happy with our hotel. Attendance on Saturday at the show seemed on par with last year’s attendance. Needless to say, we were thrilled to hear that NAHBS 2014 will be in Charlotte, NC!

We received tremendous response to the bikes we brought this year, and as always it was awesome seeing everyone that we hadn’t seen since last year. NAHBS is always a good time for catching up and seeing how everyone else is doing in this crazy world of framebuilding. We were exhausted most of the show, and only made it out on Saturday to socialize for less than an hour before I gave up and went back to the hotel. Come Sunday we were eager to pack up, but our truck and trailer were stuck in Golden, CO where it had spent the weekend, unable to get down to Denver with the additional foot of snow that had fallen. So we took the bikes back to our hotel room.

We spent the day Monday retrieving our truck and trailer and getting packed up. We went out to a Denver Nuggets game that night (Denver beat the Lakers), and hit the road early on Tuesday. It took us just 6.5 hours to get back to Salina, KS, a drive that had taken over 13.5 hours just 5 days earlier. We stopped for dinner in Kansas City, finding Oklahoma Joes BBQ surprisingly busy considering KC was buried in almost 2 feet of snow. The brisket was outstanding, as were the onion rings, and we were really glad to get to sample some KC BBQ during the epic road trip. We pulled over for the night in Columbia, MO. It was snowing, yet again… and we were pretty ready to be done with it.

Not to be confused with the snow covered truck photos from 5 days prior…

We finally pulled back into Roanoke around 1:00 a.m. on Thursday morning, truly grateful to be home safe and sound.

There have been some great write ups about our bikes around the web. And since we haven’t gotten any photos of the show bikes yet, here’s a few we’ve seen over the past two weeks. Credit for the photos goes to each website that we’re linking to.

Bike Rumor’s coverage of all of our bikes

Urban Velo

Prolly:

A fun image gallery Prolly did of headtubes and headshots:
Prolly NAHBS Gallery with our raw fillet brazed frame

NAHBS Website Article

Let’s start with the journey to Denver. For anyone who follows Aaron on Instagram, you may already be aware of the perils we encountered. But for the rest of ‘ya… it’s almost unbelievable. I won’t get into all of the details, but let’s just say it all started with an unplanned, last minute detour to Pennsylvania on our way to Colorado. On the Tuesday before NAHBS, the morning we were supposed to leave for Denver, we ended up driving 5 hours north. No, north is not in the general direction of due west, where we were trying to head. But when it comes to NAHBS, you do what you have to do.

The rest of our delay in PA involves a story that is better told over beer, but it involved attempted dognapping by a crazy lady and dog poisoning. Both dogs survived, safe and sound, and we were on the road around 8:00 that night.

We only made it to Columbus, OH on Tuesday. We were both exhausted and there was no way we could drive through the night. We pulled into a Motel 6 (where pets stay free!), and slept about 5 hours before getting on the road on Wednesday. We were still at least 20 hours from Denver.

Leaving Columbus at 7:00 a.m. meant that we could, FEASIBLY still make it to Denver on Wednesday. We gained 2 hours heading West, and that would have put us in Denver around 2:00 in the morning MST as long as we only stopped for gas and nothing else. We drove along, rather uneventfully through much of the center of country. We made it through Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. After crossing over the Kansas state line around 8:00 at night was when all of the trouble started.

We knew that there was a winter storm heading across the country. Our original plan was to leave early enough on Tuesday to get into Denver early on Wednesday so as to avoid the whole thing. We knew that the storm was headed straight towards us, on Interstate 70. And we knew that it was going to cause some problems. But what no one really seemed to know, was exactly how bad it was going to be. And when or where we would hit it. As we were cruising along I70, past Kansas City, not a snowflake yet in sight, we received some really unfortunate news from Chris Rowe, painter for Indy Fab. Chris was driving the Indy Fab van, complete with all of their bikes plus Bailywork’s bags, and he was about 40 miles ahead of us. He told us to pull over as soon as we could, that I70 became a skating rink about 30 miles up the road. He was lucky to get off the highway, and he was going to spend the night and see what it looked like in the morning.

Dejectedly we pulled off in Salina, KS. It was 9:00 CST at night. We pulled into our second Motel 6 in 2 days, checked in, and turned on the Weather Channel. Things weren’t looking good.

The biggest storm of the decade was headed directly towards us, smothering I70. Salina and east to Kansas City were supposed to receive 18-24 inches of snow, starting during the early morning hours. And we only had 1 day left to make it to Denver.

After a sleepless night spent checking every online weather source on the hour, we got up, got a real breakfast (figured we needed some sustenance for what lay ahead), and decided to try to beat the worst of the storm that was supposed to bury us in Salina. It had already snowed at least 6 inches over night, but we figured with the light of day we’d be able to get through the most dangerous parts of it.

The truck as we pulled out of Salina.

I just don’t think we anticipated how bad the worst of it was going to be. Chris got on the road around the same time we did, 40 miles ahead. We all 3 discussed later how treacherous the driving truly was. There were almost no other vehicles on the road. The plows were not out. The snow was blinding. Chris is from New Hampshire, was used to driving in snow, and had tire chains. He made it 20 miles, and pulled off in Hayes, KS at exit 186. He barely made it up the exit ramp, and was fortunate to find a Wal Mart parking lot that had been plowed. At that point, when we reached his exit, we had been behind a giant bus for the past 10 miles. The bus was at least making tracks on the unplowed interstate, and even though the back of the bus was white, it had some red writing on it that we could see that was helping us gauge our distance from it. Additionally, the bus driver was sitting up higher than we were, and could see the mile markers that were marking the outer edges of the road. We could not see them with the amount of snow on the ground, and wouldn’t have been able to stay on the road without him. We made the decision to stay with the bus, and keep pushing on.

The view from inside the truck.

Chris got stuck at that exit overnight, because it turned out that the highway was being closed about 10 minutes behind us as we were driving on it. However, we didn’t know that at the time.

I was checking the weather on my phone, praying for a break in the blinding snow. Aaron had both hands on the wheel, driving 15 miles per hour in 4 wheel drive low. We were towing a Uhaul trailer. Our biggest fear was coming up on stopped traffic that had blocked the road, making it impassable. We passed at least 10 tractor trailers that had slid off the road, one that had careened straight through a billboard. We watched as a tractor trailer tried to pass us on the left, and mistakenly overshot the crown of the road to end up sideways in the center ditch. It was the most treacherous driving conditions either of us had ever been in.

When the snow would lighten up.

Close to the Kansas/Colorado border, the snow was supposed to stop. Colby, KS was our beacon. As we pulled up to Colby, we could tell the snow was letting up. We needed gas, and pulled off for the first time in over 7 hours. We had only made it less than 200 miles. As Aaron got a cup of coffee and contemplated a sandwich, we heard one of the truck drivers say that they had to get on the road, that the entire highway was being closed. We panicked, having made it this far and not wanting to get stuck, and jumped back in the truck with Aaron’s coffee, a bag of beef jerky, and a bottle of water.

As soon as we crossed the CO state line, the sun came out. We put on music for the first time all day, having driven the past 230 miles in complete silence. We did the math, and estimated that we could still make it to Denver by 6:30 p.m. Denver time. Load-in was only until 9:00, but that would give us enough time to unload the trailer, and we’d have to figure out the rest on Friday morning before the show started. We were driving under the speed limit about 45 minutes into Colorado when we hit black ice.

First sign of the sun all day

The truck and the trailer skidded about a quarter mile, swerving from edge of the highway to opposite edge a total of 6 times. The trailer jackknifed,  but fortunately we believe it’s what kept us from flipping. Aaron steered into the skid, turning the wheel as we hit each edge of the highway. I don’t know how he managed not to slam on the brakes. We hit 2 mile markers with the trailer, and eventually came to a stop in the center of the interstate. Aaron averted the entire disaster while holding a cup of coffee in his right hand. It would be awesome to be able say that he didn’t even spill it…

We pulled to the side of the road and hyperventilated.

Looking back on the black ice

Cars flew by us at 80 miles per hour, totally unaware of the patch of black ice they had just speeded over. Timidly, we pulled back onto the highway, and drove 55 the rest of the way to Denver.

We pulled into the convention center loading dock at 8:20, giving us 40 minutes to unload the trailer before we were kicked out for the night. We got the heavy stuff inside, and took the bikes to our hotel, 2 blocks away. All of our bikes this year were customer bikes, with exception to the San Rensho tribute, and we were so grateful for the very careful packing job they had all received before loading them into the trailer. All the bikes arrived unscathed.

Part II to come (complete with links to photos) sometime this afternoon…

We had a great time seeing tons of folks that we only get to see once a year. It was awesome seeing Geekhouse, Golden Saddle, John Prolly, Chris Bishop, Ellis, White Industries, Royal H, Stinner, Ian from Icarus, Blue Lug, and a bunch of other folks that I’m unintentionally leaving out right now due to exhaustion. We got some amazing feedback on the frames we took this year, and I’ll try to get some photos compiled for a big post next week.

Thanks to everyone for all of the support and well wishes this year.

Update to follow!

We’re taking 5 bikes to NAHBS this year, 4 fully built and one raw frame (this one is still tentative - it has to be finished!). 4 frames are client frames, and one is a frame that Aaron built as a tribute… details to come. We’ll have a road, mountain, track, and coupled CX bike fully built, and a CX/gravel bike shown raw with a new Whisky Parts No. 9 Cross Disc fork.

Here are some teasers, below. We’ll try to update via instagram during the show, so follow Aaron @611bicycleco.

Here’s one of Aaron’s instagram shots of a frame with an internal fillet:

@TwotoneATLs last instagram update on his NAHBS Six-Eleven, which is currently at paint:

Bits and pieces of the rest of the bikes:

Hope to see everyone at NAHBS! We’ll be camped out at booth 611 this year, so come by if you’re in town. We leave Monday to make the drive to Denver, so there probably won’t be any more updates here until we’re back. Safe travels to everyone making the trek!

We recommended a US Made Wound Up Composites fork on this bike. The carbon color and silver crown really played nicely with the ice blue paint and white and silver decals.  The paint, by Bryan at Fresh Frame, is really dynamic - there is a slight gradient from dark to light as your eye moves up the bike from the bottom bracket. This has a lot of depth!

The build came together really naturally and the components all fit in perfectly, right down to the shock of red from the SRAM bottom bracket. The frame pump was added both for pumping up tires and for the occasional dog encounter on back country roads.