Excellent Local Bike Shop

In the run up to the Deerfield randonee, my biggest ride of the year, I've been trying to get the bike set up properly and well tested. So I was alarmed to find last night, three days before the ride, that my saddle has cracked. This means not only finding a saddle fast, but I won't have an opportunity to verify the new one is installed properly, with all the fine adjustments critical for comfort on a long ride.

Let's back up a bit over two years to the start of this story. I bought a Specialized Toupe from CycleLoft in Burlington. They have a more liberal return policy than the other shops I know about (which is to say they accept a new-condition return). Around a year later, I found the saddle had cracked, with the effect of making it softer - a very bad thing on long rides. I bought a replacement right away, then later came back with the bad one. They refunded my purchase price on the original one, and said if I'd brought in the bad one, they would have just swapped it for a new one. By this time I believe I was talking to the owner, but I'm not sure. I went on to describe what I see as a design flaw in the saddle, and he mostly agreed, but also said the saddle is designed for people lighter than me. (There's no weight limit on the saddle packaging.) I parted asking whether my new one would hold up, and he said 'worst case you bring it back and get a new one each year. It's an ideal situation'. For me, ideal would be a reliable saddle, but I guess this isn't too bad.

Now return to today. Saddle in hand, I start with a random salesperson who tells me the saddle is more than a year old (so past warranty) and anyway they don't have a match in stock. (Well, they do have white, but I don't like that look. The same out-of-stock issue happened last time and I shifted to a slightly different model.) I didn't argue, but I did ask questions and wound up chatting again with the owner (I think). The three of us searched the store again for the matching saddle which their computer says they have, without luck. Then the owner says they can order the right saddle and in the mean time, he has a Toupe on his own bike which I can borrow! As he was taking apart his bike in front of me in a daze I actually said out loud, "this is like the shirt off your own back". He was saying he wanted a white one on his bike anyway, but I was so amazed that I didn't quite follow how this all works from his point of view.

Bottom line, I'm all set for Deerfield, and in a week or two they'll send me an email* to come pick up my new saddle for free. Where they could have said 'out of warranty; out of luck.' I'm a fan!

Other CycleLoft goodies: 10% off if you're a member of any bike club, and they'll put it in their computer and it becomes automatic forever. Friendly and skilled mechanics (unlike that other bike shop I go to). And my friend DP says they just did a great job servicing his Campagnolo brifter shift discs - work few bike shops will attempt - and they did it for far less than an online shop in CT that I'd figured I'd use when it came time for mine to get serviced.

* email itself is amazing because even this year I've had trouble finding a bike shop that will do email.