Ibis Tranny

I snapped this pic wondering what was going on with the new Ibis rigid carbon MTB, the Tranny. Does that rear triangle come off for repair, maintenance, swap out with a full suspension rear traingle?  No, no and no.  Apparently, his bike attempts to be all things to all people.  According to Ibis it is:

-A geared bike

-A single speed

-A travel bike

-A bottle opener

Now, when you see how it works as a bottle opener, you will say "what the hell, I have to take the rear wheel off to open my beer?"  Yes.  Once you have done something catastrophic like ripped off your rear derailler on a stump, or taco'd your front wheel, go ahead and lay the bike on its side just off the trail, sit down, remove the wheel and open the glass bottle you've been carrying around in your camel-back.  I have to say, Swobo's seat rail bottle opener seems more practical.

The geared/single features of the bike are modular cable stops and an adjustble rear triangle to take up extra chain length.  How does it adjust?  Watch the tranny hump itself* in this short animation:

http://www.ibiscycles.com/images/full/tranny_anim_1.gif

What interests me the most is that the rear triangle is removable for travel.  Up until now, I felt that the slickest travel system was the Ritchey Break Away.  Of course, that works best on my kind of bikes - metal ones with tubular members.  If you go to crazy box-section carbon tubes.  Go tranny.  I wonder if they will bring this travel modality to a road frame?  I'm sure there are some folks out there who would like to take their sporty carbon road frame to Europe and avoid paying through the nose to get a big bike box on the plane.  How about it Ibis, travel carbon road frame?

*I'll do anything to boost blog traffic.