OK, finally it's all ready. The demo bikes are built (well, a few things to touch up), the site is finished (well, a few things to touch up) and the ONE+ is ready for launch.


So instead of writing a long blog, let me just say I am very excited to be able to launch the ONE+ today. It's been a very long and (for Andy and myself) very costly journey, fraught with disappointments, unreliable suppliers, failed experiments, a bankruptcy (not ours! :-) thrown in for good measure. But in the end, in a strange way, all of those things have made the final bike better. 

While relief to finally be able to present a working and worthy successor to the O-1.0 is definitely part of the excitement, the other part is that I am excited about the category that the ONE+ carves out. It's a bit similar to the U.P., in that it offers a Swiss army knife of riding experiences (you just know Andy is going to love that reference).

It's I think the best cross country racer you can find, a no-compromise go-fast machine. Light, agile, great geometry, anything you could wish for. But throw on those 3.0" Plus tires and it's a go anywhere fun factory. It really is amazing what the change from 2.25" to 3.0" tires brings, it's so much more than you would deduct from those two numbers.

Geek hat on for one paragraph: Of course tire performance is really a performance of volume, not tire width, so if you take those widths squared (5 and 9), you probably get closer to a numeric representation of how big the difference is. Anyway, back to the normal world.

While these two riding options of pure XC and Plus tires areinteresting, to me the most interesting aspect is actually a third option.How I will set up my ONE+ is as a super-light XC racer with extra comfort and traction. So I would use all the lightest but durable parts and then put on 27.5+ tires.

This gives you some suspension, but with hardly any weight penalty. Of course it also doesn't give you the suspension performance of the full-suspension bike, but on the positive side it does give you extra grip, more than a fully does. So it's a trade-off, but an interesting one compared to a full suspension bike.

Especially on courses that are long and gruelling and potentially technically demanding but not in a way that absolutely requires a fully. If the technical aspect is more about grip on difficult climbs than on extreme descents, then that set-up would be amazing. I hope to put that to the test at the Cape Epic in the not-to-distant future.

Anyway, enough talk, head on over to the ONE+ page and take a look.