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As usual, the start of a new month marks the beginning of a month of rad events.  Though we haven’t got any countryside rides to expect, there’s a variety of other things to look forward to, including gold sprints and an especially special Friday Night Ride.  Favorite our schedule so you can pull it up whenever!

10/7 FNR Panda Ride

What says more about Chengdu than pandas.  To spice up the ride a bit we figured a panda theme would be fitting and fun.  We’ll provide a little bit of panda for everyone who joins in this ride but we strongly encourage going full force and wearing anything panda related, black and white you might have.

10/7-10/21 Women’s Riding Competition

Our women’s riding competition starts.  Be sure to read up our post on rules and requirements for participating.  There’s an awesome raffle prize up for any participant and four categories to compete in.  Take home a title for bragging rights and more awesome prizes.

10/12-10/14 China Bamboo Cultural Festival And Sichuan International Bamboo Product Trade Fair

We’re off to Meishan to represent our wares.  Keep your eyes peeled for shop hours or more info regarding our sojourn down to Meishan.

10/16  Full Moon Ride

Our pal Peter’s famous full moon ride has returned for this month’s iteration.  Setting out from Tianfu Square at 10:30 p.m., be sure you don’t miss it!

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Join us again this week for September’s first Friday Night Ride. All the same as ever, with a special surprise for the end.  This week we’ll be stopping off at Aw Yeah! Diner located at Dave’s Oasis to celebrate it’s grand opening.

Expect some awesome specials on drinks, American comfort foods and an awesome vibe：30RMB Carlsberg Draft pints, 20RMB Bud Heavy, 15RMB sampler size Chicken and Waffles, Banh Mi sandwiches, and poutine.Now that Autumn’s here get out and cruise the cool streets with us. Read more

When it comes to having nice stuff, the most important thing is caring for it. This means that you keep up with all the little things. Keeping it clean, checking its condition, and having them repaired whenever a problem occurs.

This same idea applies to anything, whether its shoes, a television, a car, a washing machine, your apartment and yes, even bicycles. Although bikes are simple machines and relatively easy to fix, you can prevent serious problems from happening by having a professional mechanic look them over on a regular basis.

A big part of our offerings at the shop are our repair services. We take fixing bikes very seriously. Why? Because no one likes being caught out on the road with a broken bike. This is why customers at our shop all get a free check up with their new bike.

This is also why we suggest that anyone with a bike brings it to a professional shop for regular service. At Natooke, we offer a full variety of repair services and packages to keep your bike rolling like new. These include a basic check up, a complete tune up and a total overhaul depending on the condition of your bike.

The check up is your standard repair service. Our mechanics will run through all the major systems on your bike including the brakes, shifting and bearings to insure everything is in normal working order.

The tune up is a little bit more involved. Beyond the brakes, shifting and bearings we’ll replace all the cables and housing and make sure things are good and greased.

For the bike that needs the most love, we recommend a complete overhaul. This is a total rebuild of your bike. We’ll take your bicycle apart piece by piece for a complete cleaning before reassembling with all the necessary new bits included at no extra charge.

The type of service your bike may need depends on how well maintenance has been kept up. Wanting to see what new life you can breathe into your bicycle? Stop by and have our mechanics give it a look over to see what kind of work you need to make it like new. Read more

There’s no dearth of awesome well-ridden bicycles that roll their way through our doors looking for much needed tending to. Sure there’s a few common brands and styles of bike, but occasionally you get a rare gem like this one.

You may remember our post about the vintage Diamondback we have on sale at the shop. This Rock Hopper is of the same generation of machines. And yes, despite it’s apparent condition we still love the chance to work on such a fine piece of equipment. Why? Because they were built to last.

This makes repairs just that much easier. Any long-neglected piece of equipment with a little bit of tinkering will spring back to life. For instance, the index shifter for the rear derailleur had lost its dust cap ages ago and the mechanism had been left to rust. When we started in on it the thing could barely twist enough to cover shifting between two gears. A little reassembly and some grease and voila! It returned from the dead.

And the funny thing is, this chromo Rock Hopper was Specialized’s “younger brother” model to the higher end Stump Jumper. Makes no difference though as quality begets itself and regardless of it being the pared down offering, still manages to work, 30 years later on a tour around the world.

Which at the end of the day, for our mechanics is likely our favorite thing. You don’t often get to see the relationship with someone and their beloved bike. However, with this degree of use we get a good feel for all the intimacies a person has had in exploring the world on their favorite ride. Read more

Over the past couple months we’ve failed to keep on top of keeping stock of more affordable entry level bikes. Never fret. In the interest of getting more people riding we’re going to redouble our efforts in putting on sale some cheaper bikes.

Take for instance these two new rides. One pink, one purple: both were built in colorful but nearly complementing color schemes. Sure, something so bright may not be for everyone but who hasn’t considered getting a bike that shows a little of your wild side?

To top it all off the bikes were on offer for only ¥700 a piece. We should repeat: were on offer. Before we had a chance to list these builds for sale, we already had people asking. Within two days both had already found new homes with several other inquiries.

Which tells us just one thing. We need to keep more bikes like these around. If you’re interested in picking up an economical ride for getting around all we can say is be sure to stay on top of the shop and keeping checking in with what’s on offer. Read more

Can you believe it? It’s already the end of August and here we our putting out our September events schedule.

Summer has been a long hot one and frankly, we’re a bit happy to see it on its way out. Since we’ve been kept real busy with all the long days of fixing/talking/dreaming about bikes and riding, we decided that this month we will keep our events on the light side.

Expect the FNR to continue on its usual schedule as well as a couple other special occasions including a party celebrating our 4^th anniversary! More importantly we’d like to remind you that we’ll be using September to catch our breath in anticipation of a bunch of other cool stuff we’ve got in the dockets for October.

We don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves so check out the below schedule for more details.

 September 9 FNR

September 13 Maintenance Workshop

Thanks again to all the folks who came out for our last workshop at the onset of August about Preventative Maintenance. It was great to see so many flavours of cyclist (commuters, cycle tourists, roadies, and recreational cyclists) all interested in keeping their machines in tip top operating condition.

Now that we’ve passed on some invaluable knowledge about how to diagnose and identify some common issues, our September workshop will give you a chance to actually get some grease under your finger nails. We’ll be discussing drive-trains and gearing specifically this time around, including showing participants how to make all the relevant adjustments.

Stay tuned over the coming months for more workshops. Based on your feedback so far future workshops will certainly include more tire and tube changing and patching, wheel building and truing, as well as how to safely and securely pack your bike for travel.

September 16 Full Moon Ride

Just another fortnight to go! Join Peter and the gang for a wonderful moonlit cruise around town. Open to anyone interested and sets out from Tianfu Square. Stay tuned for more details.

September 23 FNR

September 30 Four Year Anniversary Party

Jacob and Larry absolutely cannot believe it’s imminently coming up on 4 full years Natooke has been serving the cycling community here in Chengdu. A lot has changed and evolved, certainly for the better, since way back in 2012. As you prepare to enjoy Golden Week definitely come by and celebrate with us. We have enticing deals planned so roll on by an celebrate with us!

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It’s no secret that this week is shaping up to be likely the largest of all FNR’s we’ve ever had the good fortune to host. As summer is breathing it’s last hot breath, everyone seems to be eager to embrace the dwindling summer days with their warm and vibrant nights.

It’s a time of transition for a lot of folks and it’s usually in these times that we see huge groups of friends show up to ride. So when JingA approached us to collaborate and host an FNR with a special added summer vibe, we couldn’t resist. So here’s what you can expect.

We’ll start out the shop as usual. Show up early because we’ll not only have our own ice-cold Asahi on tap, but a couple special kegs including JingA’s Koji Berry Red Ale and Mandarin Wheat. Refreshing. At only ¥30 per for some of China’s finest craft beer, you can’t complain.

Once the ride wraps up we’ll find ourselves at [find the name of the bar] in [the name of the area] where we’ll have full access to the same party in a rad space. Hang out, chat bikes, drink beers and celebrate the end of summer with us. Read more

You may remember last summer when we put together a fleet of rental bikes for Bike China. They made for a great ride and have kept Bike China’s clients happily pedaling along. Some of our friends in Chengdu here have had the good fortune of riding them on some of our countryside rides.

Being in Chengdu, surrounded by an endless array of world-class roads and scenery we’re no strangers to touring. So we weren’t surprised with Escape Adventures, a New Zealand touring company that guides tours all over the world asked us to give their bikes a full refurbish in time for this season’s tour.

They wanted to take their stock Avanti hybrid touring bikes and have them outfitted with complete Deore groupsets, given a proper overhaul and most importantly given a fresh coat of paint befitting the company’s style. Orange with the updated logos and markings of Escape Adventures.

It took a bit of elbow grease and little bit of magic, but the end result is twelve striking good-as-new bikes. Eye-catching and clean they’ve had all the right bits updated for another dozen seasons of introducing groups of eager riders to Western Sichuan. Read more

A couple of weeks ago we hosted a free bicycle maintenance workshop wherein we had the chance to share with our friends a few basic tips and pointers on how to keep your bike running smooth.

The course was a cursory look at how to diagnose problems with your bike: what that sound means, where it’s coming from, what the issue is and how to fix it. Bikes may seem a little overwhelming but with a bit of know-how and some elbow grease you can sort out most anything.

Afterward we opened up the conversation to a little friendly Q and A where we fielded more specific questions about folks personal bikes and even took the opportunity to problem shoot a few of them on the spot.

If you’re looking for a little bit more independence on the bike, the security of knowing you can sort out any of those odd problems you might encounter out on the road, then keep checking for when we’ll be hosting our next maintenance workshop. We’ll also be sure to include details as to what you might expect to learn.

Our workshops are bi-lingual so whichever language you’re comfortable speaking, we’ve got you covered (if you speak Chinese or English, that is…).

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