"We're Gettin' the Band Back Together..."

Carbon Ibis bikes? Yup. It's a brave new world, y'all.

Sometime back in the early reaches of last summer, we posted a news piece here, and in the print magazine, about the re-emergence of the hip San Francisco wool-barons known as Swobo.

At that same time, word was circulating about the phoenix-like resurrection of the Ibis brand. Speculation about what kind of woolly goodness Swobo would entice us with this time swirled throughout the cycling community, and internet chat-rooms lit up with the eager keyboard speculation of potential Ibis Mojo owners who’d missed the soul boat the first time around.

Swobo’s website, promising a July 4th opening, sat dead in the water. And not a peep was heard of from Ibis all summer long, aside from cryptic “This ain’t yo’ grandpa’s oldsmobile” style messages.

At Interbike, Ibis showed up, displaying in its booth a single mountain bike. Crafted into swooping shape from carbon fiber, featuring a Dave Weagle designed, floating pivot rear suspension with 5” travel, alongside some gargantuan claims of development time and expense, the new Mojo, while very pretty, was probably not the steel hardtail throwback that the luddites and hairshirt faithful were expecting.

Still, there it was, carbon fiber and real. And as of this writing, it looks like they’ll actually start trotting out into the real world, at about $1800 per frame, backed by some quintessentially entertaining and sorely missed marketing spiel (visit www.ibiscycles.com and see what we mean), sometime next spring. Scot Nicol, who is but also isn’t the soul and vox populi for Ibis says “next March”. Grumpy old steel singlespeed hardtail riding throwback that I may be, I’m curious to throw a leg over this puppy.

Meanwhile, the Swobo website (www.swobo.com) maintained an ominous corpse-like silence. I had occasion to ride dirt bikes, drink cocktails and listen to lies about fishing with Tim Parr plenty during the summer and fall, whenever he’d come up to Truckee to hide from his real-world responsibilities. Any questions along the lines of “So, any idea when you might have some product to sell?” were deflected with almost Dick Cheney ease. Similar inquiries to his “mouthpiece”, Jackson Hole’s King Of Spin, Mike Geraci www.base-camp1.com/guide.html) met with similar eerie avoidance. Oh God, I thought, there goes our credibility. Too bad we went and wrote a story about the guy. It’s all a shell game...

Still Swobo. Still admirably funky.

But then, late last month, the site went live, and the Swobo online store burped into existence. But, much like Ibis, the hair (or in this case wool) shirt wearing faithful were left a little confused.

Sure, there are some beautiful, miraculously soft, Merino wool jerseys and base layers, as well as t-shirts sporting a welcome irreverence (although it is difficult from my perspective to determine whether I feel proud or sad when a thread appeared on mtbr.com asking the meaning of one of the t-shirts: http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=148066, but there was also, say it ain’t so, Lycra! Yep, that’s right. Jerseys made from stretchy synthetic. Good looking ones, but still Lycra. The faithful, even the ones who don’t know what the t-shirts mean, were shaken.

But there ya go. It’s been a few years since Ibis went under for the first time, and a few years since Swobo shut it down so that Tim and crew could all go get real jobs. Things change. There are lots of small boutique steel builders now making a living in the vacuum created by the departure of Ibis and others, and there are plenty of garment makers out there spitting out very soft Merino wool jerseys using the exact same stuff that Swobo once had a corner on.

As riders we have a lot to be thankful for. There are bikes of every shape and type crafted with talent and love, readily available with a click of the mouse for your and my riding pleasure. We can dress however we want when we ride now, too. It is a good time to be into bikes. Our choices are myriad. And some of the truly maverick weirdos are back doing what they love to do. They probably won’t get any richer this time around than they did the first time, and I wouldn’t take any bets on Ibis one day turning into the next Trek, or Swobo into Pearl Izumi. But I sure as hell am glad to see them back.