Ibis Cycles

09/30/2026

Congratulations to Pierce Kettering for winning the Stagecoach 100 Mile Run & Bike for the second year in a row, and for setting a blistering new course record on a longer course! Pierce finished in 7:33:58, setting the new course record for the Stagecoach 100, the race from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon via the rugged and historic Arizona Trail. It’s a rugged, twisty trail spanning a wide spectrum of singletrack difficulty. The old record was 7:36 by Chris Cone from 2019 and was on a shorter variation of the course. This year’s course was 7 miles longer, had more singletrack and started in the dark. The course has changed as they have built more sections of singletrack for the AZT from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon, hence the length difference.

Amazing effort and result, Pierce! 🥳

Pierce’s bike setup: an Ibis Ripley SL with Flight Attendant (front and rear), a 36t chainring, and Conti Dubnitals Trail Casing 2.4 front and rear (rapid compound for the rear, grip compound for the front). He utilized blip shifters under SRAM Motive brakes for shifting while in a more aero position. He used an 80mm Cane Creek GXC stem/ Pro Taper Hyperlite Bar set up with Ibis s28 wheels with Industry Nine Hydra2 hubs.

Pierce shared: “I had to dig deep in the last hour to secure the win. The SL kept me fresher, deeper into rough singletrack and held its composure extremely well on the nasty eroded bits of trail that aren’t as predictable as you’d hope 6 hours into a race. The more I bushwhack, explore and push myself on the Ripley SL the more I feel it’s an extension of me and the way I want to approach rallying real singletrack all day. It aligns with what I believe to be the purest essence of mountain biking, a mix of technical ability, adventure, unknowns and pushing yourself mentally and physically.”

Action 📷: Martos Hoffman | Landscape Photography Pierce Kettering

09/12/2026

Meet your dream bike: the Ibis Oso HD. 🐻⛰️ And help us reach our goal!

This bike packs 3 travel classes into one modular platform (HD | TR | S), so it adapts to how you actually ride. Bolt-on dropouts and brake mounts let you fine-tune chainstay length and run 27.5” or 29” rear wheels. PowerMore compatible for longer days out. A low, centered battery keeps handling sharp, and paired with Ibis’s dw-link suspension, the ride feel is next-level.

This is the bike you’re entering to win. 🎁

🎟️ $5/entry, every entry fuels CAMTB’s statewide advocacy for cycling, trails, and public lands.

Link in California Mountain Biking Coalition bio to enter.

Giveaway ends Sep 26. Don’t wait.

09/10/2026

For the MADE show in Portland OR last month, Ibis teamed up with Industry Nine to outfit this Ripley SL. Finished in a matte “Gold Rush” paint, Industry Nine used a prototype anodized finish called Dune on the hubs, stem and headset. The drive train is equipped with Shimano XTR Di2.

Industry Nine used a prototype anodized finish called Dune on the hubs, stem and headset. The We Are One carbon handlebars round out the cockpit.

The spokes fade from Black to Dune and are laced to i9’s Sector Carbon rims. The stoppers are 4 piston XTR.

08/18/2026

The Ibis crew is heading to MADE bike show!

We’ll have a range of California-made bikes from the 1980s through today.

August 21-23
Zidell Yards / Portland, Oregon

07/30/2026

05/15/2026

In the 90’s we worked with John Castellano on a few memorable bike projects.

John is an MIT educated engineer who has been building cool things all his life. Take a peek at his motorized unicycle in one of the photos. We devoted three entire posts in our 25 stories history that you can find on the Ibis website. It’s a fascinating read. Go check it out!

John is well known for his Sweet SpotĀ® full-suspension patent. Using his technology, we first built the Szazbo, an aluminum full suspension bike with 5” of rear wheel travel.

Next came a remarkable bike that John ruminated in his giant brain for quite some time. It was call the Ibis BowTi. Made from titanium, it had 5” of rear wheel travel with no pivots. No pivot means less maintenance and lighter weight. At about 5 pounds for the frame with rear shock, we could build the BowTi into a sub-24 pound full-suspension bike.

Here’s some BowTi marketing speak from back in the day:
“The BowTi features a custom designed tubeset of Ti-3Al/2.5V manufactured to our specifications by Ancotech. The frame “pivots” around the point where the down tube and the bow-stays cross. Because this virtual pivot is located at the Sweet Spot you get 5” of plush travel without bobbing when sitting, standing or sprinting.

And it’s durable too. Just like metal springs, or the leafsprings in your truck, the BowTi’s flexing members will hold up ride after ride.

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05/07/2026

Ibis Factory Tour

“We Bring Good things to life” Was a slogan General Electric used from 1989 to 2003. Indeed, GE did bring good things to life, for Ibis, back in 1988.

Their steam turbine and generator production division in Lynn, Massachusetts closed in 1987, and a huge multi-day auction took place. We flew back for the auction, and with the help of Gary Helfrich (of Merlin Titanium fame) we purchased approximately 80,000 lbs of good ol American lathes, milling machines, tool cabinets, surface plates and miscellaneous tooling. Prices were ridiculously low, we were basically bidding against scrap dealers.

Gary loaded a 40’ container in Boston (well actually he overloaded a 40’ container) and sent it on a rail car to Oakland, CA. When it got to Oakland and the trucking company went to pick it up from the rail yard, we got a call, telling us we had to reduce the weight inside the container by over 30,000 lbs! The max gross weight for a container to be transported in California is about 44,000lb, when the weight of the truck is added to the max gross vehicle weight. And we had loaded it to nearly 80,000 lbs! So we rented a flat bed and unloaded a bunch of the tools.

With those tools, we outfitted our shop in Sebastopol. Here is a montage of moody (mostly) B & W images of these machines (and maybe a few we acquired elsewhere) and of the steel and titanium frame building process.

The last frame is from our 45 years, 20 stories section on our website, showing a few photos from the actual auction.

05/05/2026

Which one of these decals doesn’t belong?

The top one of course.

Our friend Arnaud from Chamonix used to put Ibis logos in interesting places (or hand them to famous cyclists as evidenced by yesterday’s post). Here’s an old school Ibis logo that Arnaud lovingly placed on a very fancy storefront in Chamonix. He tells us that the Ibis logo stayed on the window for 10 years (!) and they only took it down when they remodeled the store, removing the entire window.

05/04/2026

Here’s a fun, never published series of photos compiled by our friend and a big departure from our normal story lines.

Fans of road cycling will know who these people are.

For a few years, Arnaud took pictures of famous road cyclists holding our “Ride More Work Less” sticker.

In order, we have
Bernard Hinault: One of the greatest cyclists of all time, “the Badger” is a 5 time winner of the Tour de France, 10 time grand tour winner and the 1980 world road champion.

Paolo Bettini: 2006 and 2007 World Road Champion, 2004 Olympic road race gold medalist (among many others)

Andy Hampsten: 1988 Giro d’Italia winner and also winner of the 1992 Alpe d’Huez stage of the Tour de France (among many other legendary results). Andy rides an Ibis Ripley these days.

Pedro Delgado: Won the 1988 Tour de France, as well as the Vuelta a EspaƱa in 1985 and 1989. He finished in the top 10 of eighteen Grand Tours.

Francesco Moser: Winner of the 1984 Giro d’Italia, a race he podiumed six times. He also won the world road championships in 1977 and three consecutive wins in Paris Roubaix.

Alessandro Petacchi: Super sprinter Petacchi has won 48 grand tour stages along with the points jersey in the Vuelta, Giro and Tour.

05/01/2026

~Derby~

Some of the best days ever on a bike happened every year around April Fools’ day. A group of mainly Marin County (California, eh) folk would meet over on Angel Island for the annual April Fools Derby.

Angel Island is in the middle of San Francisco Bay. The group takes the ferry over (with the obligatory bike pile on the ferry), then rides part way around the island to the “Derby Bowl”. Angel Island is now a State Park. It was used as an army post during the civil war, and a POW camp for German and Japanese prisoners during World War II. Most famously though, it was used as a quarantine station, often called the Ellis Island of the West, where Asian immigrants were detained before being allowed into the country. You can see the abandoned buildings in some of the photos.

This Derby is somewhere between Roller Derby and Destruction Derby. Think of it as a bicycle mosh pit. The pictures shows what happens at Derby, so there no need to describe it. The rules are nebulous, except when someone called out “COCKTAIL RULES” then you needed to participate with a cocktail in one hand. We don’t seem to have any photos of a cocktail rule session.

In the 90’s we did a limited run of single speed hardtails. We did 26 of them, one for each letter of the alphabet. Scot snagged H for Heywood and you can see Scot talking to Chris Paretich (RIP 💔) and another with Chris riding a wheelie on Heywood. Chris was an amazing metal fabricator and perfectly bent all of the handlebars that we put on another limited edition bike, the 100 Ibis Scorchers we did in 1993. Chris died in 1990 after a long battle with cancer. We miss you Chris!

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