Decoupling Leaning H and a Domane SLR
Timing is everything. On a trip home to visit my parents in Kennewick, Washington, I stopped by Leaning H for a shop ride. The topic of gravel came up and I said to Heather, the “H” in Leaning H, “The rear works so well on the Boone, when are we gonna see fully-suspended road bikes?” She responded, “Sooner than you think.”
We pedaled up towards Jump Off Joe, a butte where radio waves are transmitted and wind turbines churn energy into the grid. On a clear day, it’s a place where you can see for 75 miles. The dirt was tacky like wet paint, our tire pressure low, and the usually brown shrub-steppe terrain lit up in neon green from spring rains. Our conversations were as animated as our bikes switching lines on the double track, the topics bounced from roadies riding off road to our mutual career trajectory. We both grew up here and ended up working in the bike industry, although we’d never met. We talked about all the great, mostly-undiscovered riding in the area and I recalled how that paved road we crossed over used to be dirt and we used to race mountain bikes where apple trees have been cut down, and the fertile farm land subdivided into plots for McMansions.
Of all the office parks that sprawl into the hills of Kennewick’s highlands, Heather’s Leaning H shop occupies the corner of the most eastern one. It’s filled with bikes, parts, and kit, and the positive energy a modern shop needs. The shop is located where I’d park my red Nissan truck 20 years ago, pin on a number, and race a Fisher with a Manitou front fork in a sea of gray-green shrubs, unweighting the front to not wash out in the moon dust, and recklessly descending to catch climbers on the flats. Scanning the new Treks in her shop before it opened for the day, one was of particular interest. As it hung there in the workstand, not yet ridden, right out of a box, even the matte paint couldn’t hide its specialness. Heather was bouncing off the freshly-painted shop walls ready to show me something like an overly-anxious kid with a new toy (and maybe one-too many juice boxes in their system). She jumbled up her words a bit, and I wasn’t exactly tracking the conversation, when I realized, in the workstand was a new Domane SLR — a front and rear suspended road bike — like the kind I just told Heather adventure riding needs. Cancellara raced it in Flanders and the news had broken in the bike media while we were out riding together, and reminiscing
Wait…is that what I think it is?
Yes!
While I got the good camera out, Heather prepped the Domane SLR like the bike industry pro she is. Today, the official Trek PR was released. Reserved for a future Leaning H customer, I didn’t ride that Domane, but planning more visits to Kennewick to visit with family, I’ll ride one where I learned to race, and became a roadie who now spends most of his time off road. What I can tell you now is, after spending months on the Boone (CX version of the Domane), riding road bikes on dirt is super fun, and the Trek’s decoupling tech totally works: the Domane SLR adds a decoupler to the front triangle and a lever to tune the rear. I expect it’ll work just as well.
Heather will eagerly and effusively show you where we rode ride gravel in the Tri-Cities, and introduce you to Trek’s decoupling tech. Believing so much in the bike, and the good it can do, she switched sides from manufacturing and marketing to retailing. Just outside her shop, is where I came up, and you can go on test rides.
Do it soon, before developers pave another parking lot over what turned out to be my once and future riding paradise.
Just before leaving for Kennewick, Issue 34 Truth dropped on iTunes and the Web. Our magazine is ad free and subscription based for $3.99 an issue or $16.00 a year.
