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…
I started using an old roof rack I had stripped off the wife’s Subaru. Coming back from a ride, I was thinking about how great of a time I had on my new 29er (the bike was only two weeks old) I rounded the corner of my driveway, hit the garage remote and rolled right in… well half way, when I heard a thud and scrapping sound coming from the top of my Jeep.

I remember clearly thinking… NOoooooo, oh $#!+

I sat in the Jeep for a moment… staring at the inside of my garage. I finally got out and just walked into the house… didn’t even look at the damage I had done. I finally came back out to see the carnage about 20 minutes later. The new 29er frame was bent and the entire rack had been pushed back about 8 inches from it’s original position on my Jeep’s rack.

I’ll never use another roof rack… I’m just too absent-minded to remember it’s up there and I’d rather thrash my bike out on the trail.