Sam Noel came to work for Bivo at the tail end of his professional cyclocross career. His skills on the bike are remarkable and we take great joy at watching him show them off for special Instagram posts or as we try to chase him up hills on a mid-week ride. Sam is humble, but DAMN, is he good. He raced 5 World Championships (2017-20, 2022), so his advice shouldn’t be taken lightly! He wrote an article below about his transition to racing ‘cross with bottles, a change the industry has seen but many riders have yet to adopt. Sam has certainly taken his work ethic from riding bikes into helping us build Bivo – we feel very lucky to have him on our team.

Hello hello! We went to the Green Mountain Stage Race Crit over this Labor Day Weekend, and it was full of fast, fun racing. It was hot, sunny and humid and lucky for our kids, our tent was right at the park with the splash fountain and we think our daughter ran through that for at least 2.5 hours. One of the last people I talked to before I packed up the booth was a person from Montreal and he didn’t have his bike with him.

We are back in Vermont! Thanks to everyone for the support, cheers, emails, hellos and for helping us spread the word about Bivo during our Big Bivo Roadtrip! We continue to reflect on what we learned on the road. It was such a good experience to see you touch the bottles, ask questions and make decisions on which bottle to pick. This week, I wanted to focus on Raw versus Coated because that was a common discussion we had at events!

 

August has been a packed month of events and we are learning from all of you! We have been thinking about our bottles since 2019 so what may seem obvious to us by now is still new to many of you! Thanks for asking questions, sharing ideas, and pointing out important elements of the bottles to us!

This past week was a heavy hitter with Leadville 100, Breck Epic and the 1^st Annual Women’s Cycling Summit in conjunction with Breck Epic. 

We got to go on a group ride hosted by the Leadville 100 Podcast (they love Bivo too so asked us to join!) Hottie, the host of the podcast, announced before the ride began that his Bivo Trio "is his new best friend." We also met some amazing folks at Mosaic and Orange Seal and learned about some delicious new bars from a Phun Bar (they like to #fuelmorefun too!). 

Alright! We made it to Breckenridge after some fun adventures in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Sioux City, IA, Red Lodge, MT and Whitefish! We have seen lots of people along the way and it has been really fun to interact with so many of you - those of you who had never heard of us and those of you who have the OG bottles and haven't gone back since. 

We are in the eye of the storm in terms of our road trip – it was a crazy drive out to Montana for Robby with stops in Pittsburgh, Chicago and Sioux Falls for Ragbrai. Now, we are at Robby’s parents’ house while we get some extra time with family and a little more time on the bike too (thanks Tammy and Rob, my amazing in-laws!) before we hit the road again for a very busy August! 

Will my new Bivo fit in my bottle cage? What cage fits the bottles the best? My Bivo doesn’t fit in my cage, what should I do?

We get these questions a lot and hope this article can provide some answers. Through our own testing and customer interaction, we’ve learned the perfect bottle cage is entirely based on personal preference. How tight you like the cage to hold your bottle, the material, and location on your frame vary. Generally, we have found side loading cages work well for small frames, and carbon/plastic cages will hold the bottle tighter than metal cages.

Last week, our town of Richmond, along with several other small towns across the state of Vermont, flooded to historic levels and devastated the communities, homes, businesses and farms. Vermont is such a special place; the community is something all Vermonters cherish and it has been amazing to see the volunteers across the state help with cleanup in all the towns effected by the flood. Robby and I were away last week and have been watching from afar with sadness for our town and state.

On July 17^th we embark on what we have coined the Big Bivo Road Trip. We wrapped our personal car in a crazy Bivo water camouflage so you can spot us from a mile away, loaded it up with mostly bikes and bottles and saved a little room for us to cram ourselves into. We will be on the road for about five weeks and have a jammed packed itinerary that will put us from Massachusetts to Colorado and tons of places in between.

When we came up with the idea of Bivo, we felt fortunate to already by connected to so many cyclists through riding bikes ourselves and lots of friends who also like to ride bikes. Product design and development was part of our lives too – we owned a footwear design and development studio and making product was a passion. So, when Bivo popped into our heads, we had a product ideation and development process down. One of our first steps was setting up focus groups and customer surveys to get to the bottom of what cyclists would want out of a metal cycling bottle. Some of the answers surprised us (weight was less of an issue than we originally thought!) and others were things we predicted (how can you drink if you can’t squeeze?!).

Rachel Cohen is a friend from just down the road in Jericho, VT. She is a high school teacher and I'm certain every kid who ends up with her as a teacher is incredibly lucky.  Rachel loves spreading her passion for riding bikes by encouraging others around her, setting up crazy adventures, organizing The Ranger VT (such an awesome ride, add it to your ride list if you haven't done it!) and by working with kids outside of her teaching job through Vermont Youth Cycling. Rachel and her husband, Tyler, are about to take on The Memory Bike Adventure in the Dolomites next week and in preparation, they road 200 miles on Vermont's Route 100. She wrote a recap of the (very soggy) day, check it out below!