Omega Tour Signature Edition

Our dear friend John from Pickering picked up his sexy candy apple red Omega Tour Signature Edition the other day. With more depth, transparency and pizazz this 2008 powdercoat is simply spectacular. For 2008, we're featuring medium red sparkle and sparkle sky blue standard finishes at no upcharge. Achieving the candy apple red however is a multi step process at $100 upcharge, but the results are well worth the additional cost.

John has been a long time customer, friend, supporter and fervent recumbent cycling enthusiast in our area. We always enjoyed his visits at our former store. In fact, John actually demo'd one of our first Omega prototypes and he was filmed by CBC MoneyWise TV crew for an episode in which our company was featured. So it was exciting for all of us that John will now be riding an Oracle Omega!

John requested the designer's signature on his frame and somehow we managed to talk Jack into signing it! The final result is really cool. The Designer's Signature shown here is in metallic silver but other paint colours are available. John we hope you have a blast on your delicious candy apple red Omega Tour!

If you are interested in receiving a one of a kind Signature Edition Omega give clear instructions to your dealer. Or if you're ordering directly from us just drop us a line to request this free option.

Omega Tour Bike and Omega City Get Hand Built Recumbent Wheels

Lots of you recognize David from his cheery presence at our former retail store on Saturdays and all the work he's done supporting us at trade shows, recumbent rides, BBQs and racing events. Well, now he's lacing wheels too. In fact even *I've* finally mastered wheel lacing!! no kidding!

In all honesty Jack has tried to show me how to lace wheels at least five times in as many years with absolutely no luck. Either I wasn't concentrating before or wheel lacing is as confusing as all heck... I still haven't decided which.

Jack calls the lace pattern triple cross, and we found out that it can be a bit more difficult to do on the smaller 20" wheels. But once you start to get the hang of it, lacing is really not so bad. David can now get a wheel done in about 20 minutes!!! And he does 'em while watching TV... bonus!


But anyhow, all of the 26 and 20 inch wheels on our Oracle Omegas are now hand built, hand tensioned and hand trued - and they will be from here on out. Well at least until we place our next wheel order anyway:)

BTW, our guru Jack still does all the tough wheel building stuff - the tensioning and truing - and those feats are really more of an art than a science in my opinion!

This attention to quality and details means you won't be repeatedly getting flats, a common problem with machine built wheels.

Contact us if you require a custom wheel set build. Email: oracle_cycles at yahoo.ca!

Scott and Becky Go East blog

I'm fairly new to blogging but I just read a blog by a couple who bought a pair of new recumbent bikes for cycling around the world. I'm not clear on where this couple lives but apparently they're Canadians intent on touring Europe, the Middle East and eventually other interesting locales. The "Scott and Becky Go East" blog: http://goingeast.ca/ has captured the interest of several prospective recumbent road bike buyers. This couple's decision to buy a pair of HP Velotechnik Streetmachines in favour of our Oracle Omegas is the subject of this post...

I simply have to make a few comments here. The NY dealership apparently wasn't able to fit Becky on either an Omega Tour or Omega City and apparently this was the major reason why this couple writes they bought the other bikes. As a woman myself at only 5'7" I'm not only the owner of this company but was the exclusive Canadian importer for years of the euro bents and proudly I'm the guiding force behind the development of the Oracle Omega project.

More background on this subject: I purchased my own personal Streetmachine in 2003 but immediately found it very difficult to mount and steer the Streetmachine because I'm just not tall enough to really fit that bike. Now I'm a huge fan of HP Velotechnik and honestly I DO consider them to be the ultimate Euro recumbent bike effort. Through my companies "Triketrails" and the former "Oracle Cycle Works" retail storefront I enjoyed representing HP Velotechnik as one of their "Premium Dealers" in Canada for several years. And I certainly sold many, many HP Velotechnik bikes to lots of happy customers.

But at Oracle Cycle Works we embarked on our recumbent touring bike design project almost immediately in 2003. We spent years designing, prototyping and testing our original model the Omega Tour and in 2005 later we also introduced the SWB Omega City.

Both our Omega Tour and Omega City recumbent road bikes offer literally dozens of handlebar adjustment options in order to accommodate the needs of virtually any size and shape of rider. The SWB City version of the Omega is very easy to fit for shorter riders and women too. For optimum demo testing in such a case however, the boom may actually need to be cut allowing shorter riders to really 'settle' into the reclined position. AND our handlebar setup borrowed from mountain bike schema offers unlimited versatility WHEN adjusted to fit the rider.

We need to stress as well, that we offer a factory installed mid pannier rack for the Oracle Omega ($100 upgrade). I'm not certain where Scott and Becky reside, but had they done more research and actually contacted us they might have been surprised to find out that our factory direct prices are lower than the NY dealer by $ hundreds per bike and we offer a couples price package on His & Hers purchases too.

To add insult to injury, I have personally been on the lookout for years for an opportunity to sponsor a cycling team interested in long haul adventure cycling! And for the right opportunity (a Canadian couple - willing to buy a pair of bikes - looking for touring recumbents no less - in order to do extensive adventure cycling? wow) I would have made them one heck of a sweet finanical deal. Oh well...

This post was intended to highlight to folks not only the facts about the adjustablity of the Oracle Omega, but to stress the value of research - that it really does pay to do research when purchasing a recumbent bike. The market for good recumbents is actually very small. There are only a handful of manufacturers and few dealers.

So Scott and Becky not only took their business to the USA, but they purchased a German bike that by their own admission is not as well equipped as ours, and wow did they overpay! Our Oshawa Ontario bike company is yes newer to the recumbent world than HP Velotechnik but our product is finer. And it's a shame that message isn't even being delivered through dealers.

Oracle Omega Recumbent Road Bike Demos Running Again in Oshawa

It was wonderful to see our dear friends John and Kathy R. who dropped by today with their cute Shitsu Bowser. Despite the miserable 40 degree cold and way too much rain, John took the Omegas out for demos. It's already midway through April and believe it or not these are the first demos we've run this year! And it's really not our fault that things are so delayed either...

Our weather here in Southern Ontario has been dreadful. Winter was fierce with bitter cold, abundant snowfall, high winds and freezing &/or rainy conditions through most of March. Sure, there were a few nice days mid week here and there but since we're only running bike demos evenings and weekends, things with our factory demos got postponed.

Anyhow, we're finally open for 2008 Omega demos! They're available here at our North Central Oshawa residence most evenings and weekends by firm appointment. Just email or call 905-718-7080 to arrange. Once an appointment time is set we'll email complete driving directions.

Why firm appointments? Why only evenings and weekends? Well, I like to have my posse around when demos take place. By posse I mean the whole team... that includes our friend, colleague and bike designer Jack as well as David my other half. Demo sessions are always exciting what with meeting new folks, teaching newbies how to ride a recumbent and all the banter back and forth about the myths and facts surrounding recumbent road bikes. Jack and David definitely handle things like bike set-up, mechanical adjustments, spotting riders, etc. way better than I. And there are always questions that pop up that we all learn from. So when you demo our recumbents, you get to meet the entire team.

All three of us love this aspect of what we do and it shows! We get a blast out of connecting with folks in this manner. And I truly appreciate the support given by Jack and David. I respect the time and effort they invest in working with prospective clients. So when you express interest in dropping by to demo bikes, I first confirm with my guys that they can attend - yep we all have day jobs.

Demos are also available through our dealer network. If there are no dealers in your area and you wish to try an Oracle Omega recumbent road bicycle, ask your local bike shop to contact us through http://www.oraclecycleworks.com. The email address is oracle_cycles at yahoo dot ca.

Wow - bike season is finally here!

Welcome to our new blog feed. With the thaw we have finally arrived at what I hope is the dawn of another great cycling season. I generally love the cold weather and definitely I'm crazy for snow, but this year even I'm fed up with living in The Great White North. I just can't wait to get cycling again.

Here at Oracle Cycle Works manufacturing season is finally in full swing. The weather warms a bit and suddenly everybody's thoughts turn to new bikes. Last minute orders are arriving almost daily here and we are excited about our sales prospects for 2008.

This year, we've introduced two new powdercoat finishes. Featured on our homepage is sparkle sky blue and an inset pic of our candy apple red. Both colours feature a UV protective clearcoat 2-layer finish over discreet flecks so these frames glimmer in sunshine. Very sexy!

For 2008 you get your pick of seat with or without head support. Avid discs are shipping standard and our not-so-standard standard features still includes a valuable package of accessories at no upcharge including our proprietary black anodized heavy duty aluminum cargo rack, heavy duty custom kickstand and full front and rear mudguards (I call 'em fenders).

More news to follow...