QCycle Blog: Exustar USA–The Necessities of Bike

Take a close look at recent pictures of offroad superstar, nice guy, and all-around paragon of testicular fortitude Tinker Juarez, and you’ll notice he’s using Exustar gloves, hydration pack, and bottle cages.

Just goes to show  Tinker knows a good thing when he sees it, and he gets to see these things long before they’re introduced to the rest of us.

The T-man recently premiered Exustar products while en route to victory in what we pinche gabachos cabrones know as the Peru Stage Race and Peruvians like to call  El Reto de los Misioneros, which means…well, you figure it out. Basically it’s like a 140k, 3-day version of La Ruta de Los Conquistadores, but, you know, in Peru…where the air is even thinner and the climbs are, if anything, even steeper.

Or, as he modestly puts it in his highly recommended Tinker’s Cycling And News Blog, “Peru is amazing. The people are wonderful, the place is beautiful, and the whole experience of being there and contributing and giving back to the sport is fulfilling. What an awesome experience it is to go to a country that steps you back in time where the people have the biggest hearts and care about you being there. Gosh – the entire town came out to the events!! We were rock stars for a few days and did our best to return the sentiment!...It was a long trip to the track but it was a great experience. Oh – and I won.”

Whatever, Dude.

I guess when you’re Tinker, winning a 3-day death march through snake-infested Andean jungles that other riders, according to MountainBike.com describe as “way harder than Leadville,” by twelve freakin’ minutes is, well, just another day at the office.  But for the rest of us—who might brag about being first up anything higher than a praire dog mound (and you know who you are)—well, the word epic hardly does it—or Tinker—justice.

Let’s face it, the man just plain rocks. And we’re proud to have him on Exustar equipment.

BTW1:This amazing photography is courtesy of a talented Chilean shooter we know only a Danny (or Dani, en español).  He’s got almost 200 more ’09 Reto images (!) on his site, http://rideordie.cl. Nice work, ya think?

BTW2: If you want to know more about the awesome sauce that is El Reto de los Misioneros, peep dese below. They’re from the 2008 edition, so there’s not as much Tinker to be found (he took either 6th or 7th, I forget) , but still pretty interesting. And not just because Peruvian podium girls make Le Tour’s look like a mid-60′s Soviet Bloc women’s shotput team.