Sarah and Brandon Fry up a Good Time on Bikes
Two of Columbus's finest young engineers, Brandon and Sarah, found out about roll: bikes through fried chicken. Yes, fried chicken and fitness can go together. I was able to speak with Sarah about her experience so far on her and and her husband's roll: bikes. Here is what she had to say.
Tell us about why you decided to get roll: bikes in the first place?
Sarah: It seems strange that a passion for Hot Chicken is what led us to discover roll: bikes, but that’s exactly how it happened. We are regulars at Hot Chicken Takeover, and happened to see a shoutout to roll:’s kickstarter on Hot Chicken Takeover's Facebook one day. We’re both engineers, so we were immediately intrigued by the promise of a lightweight, customizable bike with disc brakes. “We’d always talked about how cool it would be to have a bike with disc brakes, but the ones we found were always far out of our price range,” says Brandon.
Sarah: We used to ride often with friends in college, and have always loved how biking brings people together. It’s an activity that we both enjoy doing together and can do for hours without being bored. Being out in nature has always been important to us, and biking is just one of the best ways to get outside and get moving! When we bought a house and got married, we always talked about bringing our old bikes with us to ride again, but never got around to it. The roll: campaign came at just a perfect time, so we took the plunge and ordered two new bikes!
You and Brandon were two of the few prototype test riders, tell us about that experience.
Sarah: We were thrilled to be part of the bike test program. We each got a prototype bike to ride around for a month, with Brandon getting the Adventure bike and Sarah getting the City model. From the first time we got on them, it was LOVE. The bikes were so smooth rolling and lightweight, and it felt like significantly less effort to ride them. My favorite ride from the month we had the test bikes was a day that we took them down to Xenia and rode on one of the paths there. We had been talking about trying out some of the paths near Xenia but had just never gotten around to it. It was the longest we’d ridden in years, and we felt so accomplished afterwards.
When you built your own bikes, which model you chose and how does that fit who you are?
Sarah: For our actual bikes, we ended up choosing the same models that we had tested since we loved them so much! I think Brandon appreciates having a bike with nice sturdy tires, while I really enjoy the smooth-rolling feel of the City. The thing that we loved the most was being able to personalize the bikes to what we like. Brandon got the crazy orange color, and I went for the gorgeous matte blue. In addition, we both picked the Brooks leather saddles as an upgrade…they looked way too cool to not try out!
As summer quickly approaches what plans do you have on the bikes?
Sarah: We’re really looking forward to riding our bikes a lot now that the weather is getting warmer. We hope to get back to how fit we were when we used to ride all the time in college.
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