It seems fitting that Zerode’s legendary downhill bike was the result of two restless minds meeting while working on an iconic trail that bears the name of a great New Zealander.
It was the summer of late 2005 in Whakarewarewa Forest and Rob Metz and James (Dodzy) Dodds were working on Billy T. Often on those long midsummer days, the best way to beat the heat is to sling as much banter as dirt. Inevitably the chat turned to bikes.
And Rob and Dodzy had plenty to talk about. They’d been tinkering away on their own contraptions, Burt Munro-style, in relative isolation: Rob had built a series of high-pivot trail bikes optimised for the steep, jank of New Zealand’s backcountry, while Dodzy had been trying to build the fastest downhill race bike he could. There was more than a little overlap in their bicycle Ven diagram: they met at a metaphorical and literal pivot point. By the end of that dig day, the Zerode seed had been planted.
Rob has been something of a hero of mine since I first crossed paths with him in Auckland in the late 90s. At the time he was larking about on what looked like a downhill bike, but one that came with
