So You Want to Pre-Order an Unreleased Bike?

Then prepare for some frustration along the way.

I had a feeling headaches and delays my friend Eric endured with the then-unreleased Santa Cruz Nomad last year weren't restricted just to dealing with Santa Cruz. The Ellsworth Evolve "due out late December 2006" that I pre-ordered 4 weeks ago is apparently not going to be available in my size until mid March of 2007. And no, my size is not an irregular one. It's a size Large. Not really that out of the ordinary, especially for a 29er which are most often sought by riders 6 feet and taller.

On the one hand this really sucks because I was obviously looking forward to adding another steed to my stable, but moreso because my brother was going to be in the Seattle area on business in January and was going to help me build it up. But, truth be told, I wasn't likely to ride it much during the winter months anyway. As long as I have it in time to get some quality pre-rides on it before heading to the Kokopelli Trail in May, I'll be happy.

When I got home from NJ the other day I was looking online to see if there were any reviews published yet for the Evolve. In hindsight, the results of Googling "Ellsworth Evolve Reviews" proved rather forewarning of this delay. Why you ask? That's because my blog postings about ordering the dang bike appear on the first two pages of hits. Look a little deeper and you'll find links to my discussions on MTBR about the bike. There's not a piece of info availble that isn't an Interbike-releated posting from September. Hopefully they're taking this delay to fix the rumored problem about the fork crown hitting the downtube.

Oh well, nothing I can do about it now. I just picked up my other bike (new bottom bracket!) and am heading out for a 35 mile ride. Oh, and if you think building up the Evolve is going to be expensive, Singletrack Cycles in North Bend had a brand new Specialized S-Works Stumpjumper in the shop retailing for a cool $6299!

Show of hands: how many people's first car cost less than that? Heck, my first two cars cost less than that combined!