Salsa Cycles is one of those bicycle companies that branches out and tries to do things a bit different. They are a company that rides, and rides and rides. Proven with Gnat and Meiser‘s personal blogs of wonderful stories and photography. Their staff includes finishers of the most extreme long distance bicycle races, sponsors of the Clif Bar Development Racing team and swell guys all around. They know what they are doing, designing and spouting when it comes to bikes and components.
Meet the Vaya
Earlier this week Salsa released news on their blog of a road touring bike, disc brakes, steel and smartly places braze-ons that only product designers that ride would know about.
The Vaya will be available as a frameset ($540 MSRP) and as a complete bike ($1500 MSRP). Frameset includes frame, fork and Lip Lock seat clamp. Complete bikes feature a mostly Tiagra 9speed STI group, a wide ratio cassette with a 34-50 crankset. All good stuff.
Now, for the past 3 weeks I have been weighing all the pro’s and con’s of getting a new road bike. Should I simply update my cyclocross frameset to something with disc brakes, or get a dedicated road bike for my road adventures this spring and summer. All these speculations and thoughts were quickly thrown out the window when I met the Vaya this past Monday via the internet. Dreams of 80 mile road rides, with a rear rack attached so I could carry my lunch and digital SLR with me. It also would be pretty awesome to show up to a sprint triathlon on the Vaya!
Sound Off!
What do you think of this steel touring bike with disc brakes? How’s the price and what would you of done differently?