Mackenzie Line

I'm writing this blog post right now to talk about the release of a new Celilo bicycle, which is a little different for us because we usually don't release bikes—we just make them. When I say that, I mean that each gravel and mountain bike we make is just a little bit different, not a standing model that, if two people bought six months apart, would be exactly the same. This hasn't exactly made it easy for anyone to get their hands on a bike, since at any given time we're probably right in the middle of one of those iterations.

Scott is a tinkerer, an engineer, an artist, and a restless creative, and while that is exactly what it takes to make a bike like a Celilo, it can make doing business complicated sometimes. It might be impossible to stop him from iterating, but we've decided to sort of place a bookmark on a design for an everyday, go-everywhere bike that we can hang our hats on for a while (at least until we change it, but the whole idea is to run with what we think is a pretty sweet design for a while).

Knowing we're going to produce more than a few of this bike lends us some manufacturing advantages: reusing the same fixturing, composite schedules, bladder designs, and having certainty about part compatibility and clearances. From the buyer's standpoint, we think it's nice to know that the bike is what it is-and if you test rode one but didn't pull the trigger that day, if you ordered one later, it would be the same.

We're obviously going to keep iterating, I think Scott might just keel over and die if anyone forced him to stop, and we'll keep offering and building bikes with new tech, fresh designs, and special features, but we're excited to start offering the Mackenzie as a bike that just stands on its own. In the nearish future we might offering the same type of thing in hardtail and gravel formats, and when that happens getting a Celilo for any purpose will be easier than it's ever been. 

The Mackenzie:

By a longshot, the most hours I spend on my bike are around town, going to the store, to friends' houses, to work, or just cruising around. I have a handful of bikes, but I more often than not end up taking my hardtail, even though it's objectively the least suited to townie riding. It doesn't have a rack, the gearing and brakes aren't really suited to town, and my 2.6-inch knobbies give up a lot of my pedaling power and just make a lot of noise.

I ride it though, because it's fun. The Mackenzie was born out of this-we wanted a bike that could be all of those fun, mountain bike-like things, yet also be a great town bike at the same time, and we thought, "we can just make that".

We took our gravel bike frame and simplified a few things, maintained clearance for big tires, and put together a drivetrain and cockpit that felt mountain bike-like but also smart, solid, and effective for city use. We picked a Shimano drivetrain that's designed for touring to get a big 1x range and minimal maintenance with easy adjustment.

GRX wheels with a set hardpack 29er tires make it fast rolling on big rubber, and a Shimano PRO riser bar cockpit puts you in an upright, jibbable, and high-visibility riding position.

This frame shares a lot with our regular gravel bike, but we wanted to be able to sell it at a price where people can really get on it. We simplified the frame, chose readily available, no headache parts, and eliminated some administrative headache and we're excited to start selling the Mackenzie, starting at $3000.