Pinkbike.com takes to the road-Day 3:Dakine tour and on the road to Dallas, Oregon

Apr 10, 2007

After yesterday's awesome rides up on Post Canyon, our intentions were to venture over to Syncline this morning for a ride. Mother nature had other ideas for us and let the rain fall. Yes I guess we could have sucked it up, but I chose to play tourist and well Radek, he went looking for a massage. Since I knew that Dakine's offices should be open today, that was where I was headed.

No bikes today as the rain over on the Washington side of the toll bridge was coming down hard and we both had "tourist" things that we wanted to get done. Off to find a massage therapist for Radek and I headed out in search of Chico and Dave over at Dakine.

For those of you that have read the first installment of this trip, you already know that I like the gear bags and packs that the folks at Dakine make. What many of you may not realize is how big the whole company is and that biking is such a small portions of what they do. I am glad that so many of the workers at Dakine bike too and that is where the line has grown from.

I was greeted by Chico and given a nice grand tour of the premises. The ever growing bike sector at Dakine is headed by a great group of folks that really love to get creative with their designs and have a ton of fun while they are at it.


All prototype packs get built in house so that many revisions can be done, tested and revamped at will. This is where are the blood, sweat and tears happen.


Once the prototypes are dialed in, then its time for production to happen. Here is a sneak peak at some 2008 patterns that will be rocking the trails next year. I oh so want the red plaid set up!


After seeing all the new packs that were getting ready to ship out to a studio shoot in Portland it was time to see what else they do in house. Well if you are into water board sports, then chances are you probably own a Dakine leash for your set up. Dakine makes all the leashes for their global market in house and its a wild set up.


After taking up an hour or so of Chico's time, and seeing where the magic happens it was time for me to bust.

The Glove Wall

Chicos Den

I found Radek at Fresh Grounds sipping a coffee and as luck would have he was feeling better. No happy ending, but a good rub down just the same.
Can't have my biking buddy all beat up on the first day, so it's good to see he's ready for more. On that note, we loaded into the Windstar (gotta name it soon) and headed west to Portland for some more consumerism and then south west to Dallas Oregon for some shut eye.

Tomorrow we'll be riding Black Rock in Falls City, Oregon. I hear that it is amazing.