We are thrilled to announce that Rob J Heran has joined the iXS family!
He's got style, grace and is chock-full of fun facts that he has openly shared with us. Read on to learn more about what tickles his fancy and grinds his gears.
He needs twice as long in the bathroom to wash, un-fizz, brush and enhance the springiness of his curls in comparison to his spaghetti-haired wife. When he brushes his hair dry, he can sport a fro that is twice as big as you see him with normally.
He owns a car that really is akin to a transformer and can change into a massive ramp that sends him to the moon on his bike if needed.
In the first years of his pro-riding career (20 years ago), he lived mostly out of his van for years. At this time, people had the perception that living out of a van was the definition of a "dirtbag lifestyle". Look how that's changed... #vanlife is so hyped today and more like #glamping for Instagram Likes... for Rob it was "a necessity to keep costs low in order to live a free lifestyle riding bikes full time and compete".
With that van setup, he really lives up to his 90’s TV heroes like McGyver, Knight Rider and the A-Team.
Talking about the HasselHoff and the 90’s, other kids sometimes called him “David” because he looked like the Hoff.
He sometimes tells people that his dad is Bob Ross and his brothers are Colin Kaepernick and Mo Salah.
He was born in Prague, Czech Republic. He's officially still Czech, only carries a Czech passport in his back pocket, but can’t speak a word of Czech anymore. Therefore he finds it absolutely hilarious that someone on social media once called him “Ikone des deutschen Radsports” (icon of the German cycle sport) which remains to this day as a running joke between him and his buddies.
As a child from Prague from Prague and living in Munich (the two world capitols of beer) it's at least unusual that he doesn't like drinking beer.
Every time he drops a tool in his workshop, he has to do 10 push-ups.
He can do backflip-tailwhips and 360-tailwhips but never learned how to pull normal straight tailwhips. Claims he "simply can't do them".
His wife beats him every time when they're playing ping pong and that pisses him off. When he's in a bad mood or stressed, he vacuums and cleans everything and suddenly all bad vibes are gone.
He has a hard time reading even the most exciting books because he always falls asleep after the two pages. The same goes for watching movies- they more the shoot guns or fight in a film, the quicker he falls asleep.
He wakes up and is out of bed everyday between 6-7 AM no matter what time he went to bed the night before. Sleeping till 9 AM feels like he has "wasted half of my day".
He is a firm believer that he holds the world record for the fastest MTB-tire change challenge (unbeaten the past consecutive 10 years).
He finds it embarassing to use tire levers when changing tires and would almost rather break his fingers before using one.
And last but not least, he is a complete and utter coffee nerd and needs exactly 20.5g of light roasted single origin fine ground coffee, extract 41g of liquid at 94 degrees in 35 seconds of time. And yes, he measures all of that for every shot he pulls because "life is too short to drink bad coffee".
We are stoked to have Rob on board and excited to see what the years will bring with him, his van and his love for coffee.
Photo Credit: Sandra Steh