Bikes R In and a fat bike...

Last week I was lucky enough to get to spend some time with my family in wonderful Emerald Isle North Carolina. Perfect weather, great company, and quite the cycling infrastructure. It absolutely blew my mind that a tourist based community could have such a strong cycling culture. If only major cities would take notice. Anyway, while driving around from one nature hike to another I happened to stumble upon a gem of a bike shop. Enter Bikes R In...



Now normally while on vacation, I try to stay out of bicycle shops unless I need that random part to fix one of my bikes, but while driving by this little shop, a certain bicycle caught my eye. Sitting out front of the shop was a Sun Spider AT (Click for specs.), a beach cruiser fat bike! I had never seen one of these before, but I had to take a closer look. This bike was made for cruising around slowly in the sand, with 26x4.0 tires, a relaxed geometry, a Sturmey Archer 2 speed coaster brake hub, and did I mention 26x4.0 tires? This bike really made my day, and for the price of around $800, it almost went home with me. The main reason that it did not was due to the fact it is a cruiser bike only, no rim or disc brake mounts on this rig. Still a very cool bike.



Once inside the shop after drooling over the fat bike, I was blown away with the amount of bikes packed in the store's space. Everything was covered, from the dedicated road ride, to a dual suspension mountain bike, folding bikes, recumbents, even unicycles hanging from the ceiling, every cycling discipline was covered. The shop also has rental bikes to keep you peddling even while on vacation. This is the type of shop that every cyclist wishes they had in their area. If you are in the Emerald Isle area, stop by and check them out, I know that I will the next time that I am visiting family. Who knows, maybe I will take home a new fat bike...