Sometimes you just want to ride a bike. You’re not looking for a leg-crushing singletrack jam on a full suspension tank. Nor a lung-busting sprint on a greyhound-inspired road bike. Just a bike ride. Maybe on pavement, maybe on a dirt road. Maybe a bit of both. You don’t want to be overbiked, don’t want it to be complicated, but do want it to be fast and fun.

That’s right about where the Doggler, from new bike company Hudski comes in. Simple, well-designed, well-built, and fun. You know, a bike.

We’ll get to the bike in a second, but first, meet Hudski. It’s like many companies these days, small and direct-to-consumer. It’s composed of two friends, Brian Szykowny and Will Hudson (Hudski is a portmanteau of their names). Designers by training, they’d already been building custom-fabricated lamps and other odds and ends from a mad-scientist-lab-looking warehouse space in Sausalito, California, when they decided to turn their attention to bikes. Szykowny had worked at Specialized for years, designing components and road bikes, so he had a good feel for what went into good bikes.