Hodala Single Speeds!

Hodala is a Taiwanese toast that means, “To the bottom” and a good analogy for drinking beer and racing your bike. A bike that your throw up on your back, run with, and destroy in the mud. The cheer is also the name of a “ragtag, fugitive fleet, on a lonely quest–for a shining planet–wait that’s the intro to Battlestar Galactica … Still applicable though to Single Speeders who, as a niche of a niche, are a dedicated, rebellious group riding bikes like the Raleigh High Life and led by Raleighs Sally, the marketing manager for Raleigh.

Raleigh Bicycles is the sponsor of the Single Speed World Championships and make these limited edition bikes for SSXCWC. They sell them and use the proceeds to further their mission. This year with the Worlds here in Seattle, we’re blogging and racing it. A couple weeks ago, at the MFG Cyclocross party, Brian (aka Raleighs Sally) and I got to talking smack about single speeds, asked if I was racing, and I said something like, “Yep will put a bike together, got a bike from last year, come up with something.”

We weren’t at a mall, he wasn’t in a Santa suit, and I wasn’t sitting on his lap giving him a Xmas list, but a week later, I get a text that a frame is ready. “What?” He must’ve pulled this one from his personal stash, cause they only make about 50 a year.

“coming to get it and can I have a pony too?”

Yesterday, I handed Mark V the High Life frame and the Tricross Specialized got us last year. Like a Freakbike Apothecary with a mortar and pestle mashing a frame with bike and parts from his stash, he made this

Raleigh’s Riff on Beer Labels

Shimano Cantis

Hodala Decal

and I’m racing it today.

More photos.

Note for Starcrossed and SSXCWC it’s single speed. The rest of the races I’m on the Redline Conquest Team.

Hodala Tattoo from One Gear One Mind, Nat Pellman’s Single Speed Endurance Forum

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