Добро пожаловать русские друзья !

After six weeks of translation our Russian Language site is finally up: www.bikeswitzerland.ru . Again, our goal here is to make our rides truly international. Why Russian ? I love the people (especially my girlfriend, Irina) and Russians love Switzerland ! According to the Swiss Tourism board, the the number of Russians coming to Switzerland has been growing around 9% a year over the last 10 years. Now, while it is true that most of these tourists are the “elite” who come for the exclusive ski resorts and shopping, there is also a more democratic brand of tourist coming out of Russia. Unfortunately, the population knows very little about bicycle tourism and so we feel it’s necessary to introduce our concept to them in their native language.

We’re also going to be working with our friend Vladimir Filippov of the Russian Cycling Touring Club to bring a first group of Russian cyclists on a tour this summer. We also plan to hire a someone on the ground in Russia to promote the tours.

The BMC Streeftfire: Road bikes for Rent !

BMC Streetfire for rent

We’ve now gone beyond our classic BMC Alpen Challenge to offer BMC’s new 2010 Streetfire for rent !

We still believe that the Alpen is the best machine for our tours, but we do get quite a few people coming through every year asking for a good road bike to rent and there are very few places to rent in Switzerland.

So, in order to meet this demand, Bike Switzerland has ordered a smaller fleet of the BMC Streetfire for rent at 50 Chf per day. All Streetfires will come with computer, tools, water bottle and saddle bag. The bike weighs in at 8.6 kilos (around 1 kilo lighter than the Alpen Challenge, comes with a triple chain ring and is outfitted with Shimano 105. You can take a good look at the bike and our new re-designed rental site: www.bikeswitzerlandrentals.com

New Reviews Pages:

We’ve had hundreds of Bike Switzerland riders over the years and the feedback on our Reviews page was getting long and unwieldy. So, we decided to redesign this page so that the reviews are arranged by tour: Challenge, Lite and Independent. Of course, we’ve only been doing the Lite and Independent tours for two years and so we have fewer of those reviews. If you do have something “nice to say”, then send me your quote with your picture…it’s never too late to say something nice. (Right mom ?!)

Bike Shop Switzerland:

Bike Switzerland will be selling BMC clothing and assessories on our upcoming website: www.bikeshopswitzerland.com . Our on-line store will carry more BMC clothing and assessories than any other shop in the world (virtual or otherwise). Some of the items to be on sale are shown below. World-wide shipping from Switzerland at reasonable rates.

Messenger bag $79, Swiss Army Tool $99, Traveller bag $219

For a better look at the new line of BMC bicycle clothing, check out www.bicyclerumor.com

We hope that the website will be up by January 1st.

Canary Islands Update

The tour is about 1/2 full. As I mentioned in the last newsletter, BMC is going to be there in the mountains with us along with a fleet of their 2010 bikes. I’d like to make sure that our riders are dressed appropriately, so anyone signing up for the tour will get a very special BMC incentive. Please contact me directly to know more.

The Dollar and Bike Switzerland:

When we started Bike Switzerland, we were focusing on bringing American riders to Switzerland and so it seemed logical to gain trust and make things easy for our riders by accepting dollars. It’s now been 7 years and we have a wider international audience and the dollar has been volatile, and so to keep things simple in the accounting office, we’re moving entirely to Swiss Francs beginning January 1st. The prices for our 2010 tours will also be going up at this time. So, everyone really does have a huge incentive to get their deposits to us by January 1st. So, get your $500 per person deposit in by January 1st, and you’ll be able to pay your entire tour in dollars at 2009 prices! (January 2nd is too late)

Super Sexy Bike Switzerland

A friend of ours made this video for us. If you watch it through, you’ll see the Bike Switzerland crew.

I think we’re pretty good sports.

See you on Facebook

…I hope to talk to you again before the new year, but for near daily updates become our “FAN” on facebook.

JOHN