TREK... H - E - L - P!!

I'll be right up front with this - this is a Help Wanted Ad - to anyone who works for Trek or knows anyone who works for Trek - or anyone who loves Trek bikes and cares. Chris needs your HELP.

I have a friend named Chris Lash, nice enough guy for an engineer-type, which means he can get pretty geeky about the design, maintenance and functioning of his bike. He owns a Trek Madone 5 series, nice looking bike - however - IT BREAKS! More than it should. Apparently Trek has built a really nice velo machine only to design a rather odd seat post with two cheap little bolts that break - rendering your ride (Chris' ride actually) worthless. Trek person (wanted in paragraph 1) let me walk you through last Saturday's ride.

Below is Chris and us pedaling along happily midway through a 100 mile, 8,000 vertical foot sunny day near The Dalles, Oregon. We're on the climb up 5 Mile Road - yes, 1.5 miles of hard pack dirt, part of the Cherry Blossom Stage Race.

And then the Trek Saga returns - his seat post broke (yes, this is not the first time Mr. Trek, just a few weeks ago it happened at the start of the Lost Coast Century... yes, that's in California, and no, we don't live there. Chris had driven 600 miles to participate and the seat post broke!). Sort of similar scene to that of George Hincapie's snapping handlebars on sector 10 in Mons en Pevele, in Paris-Roubaix, only difference is no broken collarbone - arses, at least Chris', are a bit more durable I guess. Your ads say, "Greatness Is Built Into Our DNA", well, you need to build better bolts and seat-clamps in there so DNA doesn't end up on the ground.
Below: This is what a Trek Madone without a seat post lying broken in the grass looks like - not pretty - nor were the words that followed it there. Yes, one was a four-letter exclamation, but trust me it wasn't TREK.

Below: After a mouthful of well chosen expletives - Chris seems to know more and more varied uses than your average cyclist which makes all of us who ride with him sense he may have been a golfer or auto-mechanic in a former day - he calls his wife (who is also a Trek owner and cycling in a nearby valley) to please come and fetch his arse, because it is no longer in that perfect saddle/arse harmony for which every cyclist urns.

So you see Trek person, whom ever you might be, Chris needs your help, before he starts public cursing and spreading factual and rightful displays of anger about your product and its designers. Maybe look at it this way, if this were Lance, he would have killed you by now.

Feel free to contact me - gerry@bicyclingnorthwest.com - I'll be delighted to pass you on to Chris.