Kona PhD 2008 Lands

OK, it’s a loooong time since I wrote that I was on the way to owning a Kona PhD 2008. A lot has happened since I put that order in, not least with the actual order and the bike itself. Originally, I was expecting that the bike would turn up towards the end of October, having ordered it at the end of September. As things turned out, that wasn’t to be.

I contacted Cyclestore towards the original ETA and they told me they were still waiting on the arrival of stock. I was OK with that in that new year bikes sometimes take a while to make it to market – particularly when you aren’t buying British. Cyclestore, to their absolute credit, worked really hard to get hold of a bike as soon as possible.

Time ticked by. My birthday came and went. October came and went. Eventually, I decided to check with Kona to see when they were expecting supply.

Now Kona in the UK are distributed by Paligap, who are based over the Channel from me in Avonmouth. After a little detective work, they managed to find a European-based PhD at Kona Europe in Monaco. Around a week later it was shipped to me, via Cyclestore for setup, and was to be delivered by UPS by 22/11 – a week shy of 2 months since I put the order in.

Or at least it should have been delivered by UPS on the 22/11 had managed to get out as far as us, which they singularly failed to do. Live tracking on the UPS website saw the carton out for delivery and then checked back in overnight. It finally arrived on 23/11.

So this is what it looked like after UPS finally got it to me. By all accounts, the FIRST PhD 2008 in the country.

I thought I’d checked the carton over and found it to be OK, but must have been a little over excited. On further inspection (on the other side of the carton) I came across this…

Uh-oh.

Thankfully, on taking the bike out of its packing crate, everything looked to OK. Here’s that quick release skewer that was poking out of the carton (below) – it’s picked up a slight scratch in transit, probably from sliding around in the back of a UPS van. Grrr.

Once assembled, this is the Kona PhD 2008 in all its glory (below). Dig those crazy reflectors!

Once of the main reasons (aside from the fact that they’re the number 1 Kona dealer in the UK) that I went for Cyclestore this time around was the fact that they were offering 10% of the value of the bike in free accessories. I really needed to get a new bag, as the amount of sweat and bacteria in the shoulder straps of my old one would likely cause the UN to come down heavy on me for harbouring a biochemical weapon, and fortunately Cyclestore sell a range of bags from Deuter. I went for a TransAlpine 30L backpack as shown below.

The rest of my booty comprised of a new CatEye rear LED light, a Specialized water bottle to replace one of my aging old bottles on the O2 and a contour headband – the greatest ‘technical accessory’ I’ve ever owned. Remember, at the time of writing, the outside temperature is hovering just above freezing, and the windchill at 36mph on a downhill is significant.

A final inspection revealed that one of the brake levers was slightly bent

Bums.

A quick call to James at Cyclestore sorted things out, even though it meant that they would be out of pocket given that UPS had a signature for the parcel. THAT’s the kind of bike shop you should be doing business with – despite everything over the lack of supply and less than quality service from UPS, Cyclestore and Paligap did not disappoint me in the slightest.

If you’re thinking of going for a Kona, you could do a lot worse than give Cyclestore a call.

Related posts:

1. New Stablemate
2. Lotusphere 2008