"Hey Swobo people,

I got my Dixon in on Wednesday and built it up that evening. However, I didn’t really get a chance to ride in until the next day. An interesting thing happened that I wanted to share in order to convey how satisfied I am with my new bike..

My first ride on the new Dixon was not a good one. I was stopped at an intersection about 90% of the way through my daily commute. It was raining lightly and the world was composed of various shades of grey. I was sitting two cars back from the light behind a white sedan. The car may have been a Chevy Malibu. Out of nowhere, the sedan began to back up. The driver was clearly not looking back or he might have seen me sitting behind him. My mind froze for that one crucial second and then BUMP! The car hit my front wheel. I began to shout things that I’m sure were not polite as his car rolled back ONTO my front wheel, pushing it beneath the rear bumper.

At that moment, I knew that my wheel would be destroyed. It’s not that I doubted the quality of the Alex 36 hole rims that Swobo choose for my bike. I just didn’t think that wheels survived that sort of thing. I was FURIOUS. I slapped the sedan’s trunk and roared with anger. This was my new bike. It was brand new and some asshole had crippled it on the first day.

The pounding on his trunk did the trick. The car, now slightly leveraged off the ground onto my wheel, stopped. It proceeded to roll forward, releasing the Dixon from a death grip. The driver jumped out of his car, in shock. He immediately began apologizing and inquiring about my wellbeing. Once I convinced him that I was fine, we turned our attention to my ruined bike.

Only, it wasn’t ruined at all. I lifted the frame and gave the front wheel a spin. It looked whole and true. The spokes were fine, the tire still held pressure. Nothing seemed wrong. We were both impressed and relieved and I let the driver go. I needed to get to work and I didn’t really feel that he deserved some sort of punishment for a 5 mile an hour collision.

Just to be safe, I ran the Dixon by my LBS so that one of the mechanics could insure that the rim hadn’t been fractured and that the bike was, in fact, perfectly fine. The mechanic told me that it was not uncommon for a low cost rim to be able to take this level of punishment, but I’m still pretty impressed. I definitely feel more comfortable riding the Dixon now that I know what the wheels can endure.

Thanks for the bike,
Thomas “Max” Steele
Portland, OR"

Firstly we are very glad that this story had a happy ending, and secondly, you can bet Max has forever locked himself a spot as the official Swobo research and development team.