Monday, September 22, 2014

Oh world, why do you keep tempting me? N + 1 Elephant

Elephant National Fores Explorer prototype © Elephant Bikes

Two weeks ago I saw an announcement on the iBOB list about a new low-trail, wide-tired 650B frameset, handmade in the US by Elephant Bikes. The National Forest Explorer looks great: Clearance for 42mm wide tires with fenders or 55mm without, disc brakes, braze-ons for front and rear racks, and just $1085 for frame and fork. Now that's still a bit out of my price range, but I was relieved to see that the size only came in sizes small to large, with the large being definitely too small for me. So no real temptation there.

Image © Elephant Bikes
“Unfortunately,” today it was announced that Elephant will scrap the small option in this batch and replace it with an XL—which would be the perfect size for me. I can't really justify nor afford getting this bike, but the temptation is strong. Oh well, I'm sure these will sell really well, and I can maybe get in in a later production run.

PS For another awesome bike made by Elephant, check out this thread on Fred Blasdel's bike.
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1 comment:

  1. John SpeareNovember 13, 2014 at 6:35 AM

    Great blog: lots of work and passion here.

    Thanks for the NFE shout out. I work with Glen at Elephant.

    The stock NFE project is going gang-busters. Glen is mid-way through the first batch of 24 bikes now. We'll start taking deposits for the second batch at the beginning of the year. We'll continue making batches as long as folks are interested.

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