Specialized Bicycle is a very cool outfit!

Today, I got to be a small part of an amazing story. It's the story of a man who won a bike.

My part of it started with a phone call from Specialized Bicycle Components a couple weeks ago. The shop where I work, Bluegrass Bicycle, LLC, is now a dealer for Specialized bikes. One of the fine folks at Specialized called the store, saying that Robert had been awarded a bike as part of the Globe Community program, and as we are the closest dealer to where Robert is staying, askied that we accept delivery on the bike and assemble it for him. Since I am "all about getting folks on bikes," as both of my readers know, and since it was a cool project, I agreed wholeheartedly. During that phone call, I was also advised that Robert is having some health struggles. Naturally, my interest in making good things happen was piqued just a bit more.

The bike arrived a couple days later, and what a cool bike! Globe is a subsidiary of Specialized, with a focus on comfortable utility bikes, urban rides with tons of attitude, and some neat features that aren't typically found on bikes from mainstream bike manufacturers, like integral racks, Esge double-leg kickstands as standard equipment, utility-oriented geometry and so on.

To backtrack a bit: Robert spends a fair bit of time online, and has at least one or two blogs going. Globe Bicycles had a contest, and winners got bikes, with the contractual agreement being that they'd post about how much fun they were having on their bikes. Oh, and if they DIDN'T blog about their experiences with the bikes--good bad and otherwise, Specialized would take back the bikes.

They chose Robert as one of their bike recipients.

Robert isn't from Louisville, but he's staying with family in the area while he undergoes treatments for testicular cancer (more on that in a minute). He, his wife, and their son came to pick up the bike today, and I got to meet him and congratulate him for getting this bike (and wish him well in his recovery). He tells us that the bike (and the surrounding excitement) will be a big part of his recovery.

We hadn't taken the time to really know how he came to get the bike, and invited him to share the process with us. He explained the contest, then went on to say that, after a recent note from Specialized, he doubts he'd ever buy a bike from any other manufacturer. Remember that "contractual agreement" I mentioned above? Specialized told him that whatever happened, the bike is his. If he's not able to blog due to his health struggles or whatever other reasons, they want him to keep the bike. The Globe Blogger site has a whole group of links to blogs people are writing on their bikes.

He won't be able to ride it for a while yet, probably a few weeks to a month or two. I'm looking forward to reading his comments, though.

Globe Blog community

Robert's blog and web site