Bike & Jeep

I don’t normally carry my bike on the roof of the Jeep, so as it goes… I drove into my garage with my V on the roof… bent the frame. Even worse, it was only a month old and I had a big MTB trip coming up in two weeks that I had planned out with my Bros for over two months.

I was sick to my stomach and hating life… hating myself for being so stupid!

So I contacted Ventana, talked to Teresa and told her the situation….
“I bent my frame, does the customer loyalty program cover a damaged frame?” She said “yes”. I then told her I was going on a bike trip in two weeks… is there any way to get a new frame before them? This time she told me that she would check into to it and get back to me on a time frame… but it shouldn’t be a problem. About 4 hours later I got a phone call from Sherwood, we talked, he felt my pain and we discussed a few modifications to the frame I wanted in the process. Right before we got off the phone he said, “the new frame would ship that evening”.

Isn’t that amazing… I contacted Ventana Sunday evening 6PM EST, got a reply at Sunday evening 8PM EST and Monday evening my new replacement frame was on it’s way. It took one week to arrive by UPS ground. The following Tuesday I built it up, rode it the next day, dialed it in more. Packed for my MTB trip Wed. evening, finished packing Thurs. evening and Friday 5AM in the morning I was on the road and riding by 10AM in Douthat, VA.

Tell me of another bike manufacture who can top that kind of customer service!
Ventana’s customer service is outstanding!

So check this out…
Living near a busy city driving a Jeep, I find myself being tailgated quite often. So I made a custom built hitch bike rack to go on my front bumper. I decided to carry my mountain bike on my front bumper so I didn’t have to worry about some jerk destroying my bike if I was rear ended.

Just last week I was traveling some back roads coming home from a trip and had a deer run out in front of me… I barely missed the sucker and if I hit him it would have destroyed the bike not to mention what it could have happen to The Wife, Myself and The Jeep.

I’ve also got a Jeep roof rack to carry my mountain bike up top. So this past weekend I was carrying my bike on top of the Jeep rack. I don’t usually carry my bike on the roof rack and as I was driving into my garage. I forgot my bike was up there, drove it right into my garage top and destroyed it myself… yea I fell real stupid about this and it’s almost funny now that I look back. I did so much to prevent my bike being damaged and then I destroyed it myself. Go figure.

So now I’m looking into other options for carrying my mountain bike without using the roof rack and without carrying it on the front or rear hitches. I’ve been thinking about purchasing a swing away tire rack for my Jeep and mounting my bike rack between the tire and the Jeep’s tail gate, so it’s up high and some what protected from rear end collisions by the spare tire.