Some Bicycle Things I’m Stoked About On A Friday, Sept 19th, 2025
First light, last light, all day. The North Shore forests are amazing this time of year. Amazing.
Yeah, so. That’s my excuse – along with work, Claire’s school, & hockey – for why this week’s SBTISAOAF is a little light on words. I had grand aspirations to jump back on the night-riding program this week, but the daylight was just right and I managed to squeak in enough pedaling to make it work.
Just a reminder that I’m planning to be up in them there hills {Fromme} on Wednesdays around 9pm if anyone is interested in coming along. Oh, a reminder that all Drew-Bob rides are friendly rides except for the solo ones. That guy can be a real dick when I ride with him by myself.
[Opening Aside]
MEATengines is built using GoDaddy’s simple but shitty blog-building backend. This is why we had the option for commenting on articles for a while, and now do not. And why our growing community of MEATheads is over on Reddit {r/MEATengines} rather than in-house.
The ‘why’ of using the GoDaddy software will be evident to anyone who’s been reading MEATengines for a while; I’m all but a Luddite. But I wanted to clearly state that, for all my well-maintained technological ineptitude, I still create these posts myself, sans the assistance of artificial indolence.
GoDaddy has been advertising the crap out of their passive blog creation software. So one thing that’s not fading around here is the dedication to making MEATengines myself. Even if that means someday I’m going to have to print it out and mail it to you in an envelope.
[/Opening Aside]
My Faded Hauser
I’ve written a fair amount about my tired-but-truculent Mission/Acre backpack over the years. Nina bought this bag for me as a gift well over a decade ago. HMPL repaired the straps a few years back. I’ve tried to keep up the waterproofing.
Look, any way that I spin it, the bag’s not as good as new. But it’s still great and in the spirit of this Friday’s theme, I often take a second to enjoy how faded the fabric has become. This pack is only outside for riding, hiking, or trail work, so all the colour-change is representative of hours doing what I love.
Custom Paint
Claire would have been about three years old when she pulled a pink-fade-purple colour swatch out of Toxik Harald’s look-book and exclaimed, “Oooooooooo pink and purple.”
It wasn’t the first piece I had painted by Toxik, but that Waltworks fork is hanging out on a shelf until one day Claire has a rig it can run on. My Waltworks V1 is the same colours, only a dirty fade rather than that not-enough-‘o’s-in-smooth* transition.
I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit lately, and my Cosmic Lilac V2, because, and don’t all shout at me at once, I’m thinking about painting my V3 black. The most boring shade of black I can find.
*{Along with ‘sports surface’, this is Terry Walker’s contribution to my vernacular.}
Back on topic, I was visiting Nice Guy Geoff at Essential Cycles, and he had this beautiful custom-fade-painted Yeti in the stand with art by Fresh Paints of Whistler.
Seeing this, my mind floats to a vision of black, fade purple, fade pink, fade orange, with crows flying out into the world from wherever their murder rests at night. Anyway, so damn cool.
My last entry under custom talk isn’t a fade but rather a ‘shade’ job. From the brand that’s serious about what they do, but doesn’t take themselves too seriously, check out Starling Cycles’ ‘Tribute To The Comments‘.
Starling has been fueling some interesting discussion lately about their next steps in terms of increasing production vs. current wait times, and overseas vs. domestic manufacturing – or more likely overseas & domestic manufacturing à la Chromag.
I cheekily asked a Starling super-fan I know why the brand didn’t just add another shed, and was forced to, once again, note that the ‘Starling Fallacy’ is not anything against Starling {clearly I am a fan of shed-based steel frame manufacturing}. But, rather, beef with the bike industry in general that the simple single pivot is ignored by so many manufacturers despite legendary examples {think Santa Cruz Superlight, Cannondale Prophet, etc.}.
*{My one criticism is that this should have been a Beady Little Eye (BLE) just to really twist the tire lever.}
Surly Corner Bar
Blurring the somewhere between an alt-bar and a drop-bar, the Surly Corner Bar has been living large in my brain since I first installed in on Nina’s renewed commuter rig. Heavy as they come {and could they not offer one size smaller?}, it offers a dirt-drop-esque format while being friendly to better & cheaper mountain bike brakes and separate shifters.
I’d love to see someone fancy offer a titanium version, and I don’t understand why Q’s Whisky Parts doesn’t have a fantastic-plastic version, but even then I’d probably just buy this sold, affordable, and as it turns out, affable, chunk of steel.
The most important thing is that Nina likes her Corner Bar. By any other scale, that would be a glowing 5/5 star review. Stoked! In hindsight, I wish I had tried one on my Bakfiets-style cargo bike, and I’m tempted to try one on my V1.
This is sort of an apology, because when Dumpster Bear first told me about his, I may have given him some squinty side-eye and a why-not-just-run-a-16°-to-20°-alt-bar. Hey, hey, what can I say? That Bear’s aware.
Marin SQ ‘26 Colourways
Wow, did Marin even hit it out of the park with the paint jobs on their SQ lineup (27″ & 29″) for their 2026 model release. All three price points (CA$2500 for SQ3 / CA$1800 for SQ2 / CA$1200 for SQ1) deliver fantastic-looking frames, with Friday-theme-friendly fades!
I know the website is a little confusing at the moment, but my understanding is that, going forward, the small frames will be sold with 27″ wheels and the medium, large, and XL will all be dual 29″. There’s probably an argument that the medium should run an MX setup, but I still think this pairing down makes a lot of sense.
Bonus Fades
A little fade in the shade on Karen’s Boundary Trail. With rain on the way, I figured I’d shoot a solo run while conditions were perfect. Not that Boundary isn’t a great #TrailForWeather, it’s just that it fades out of my solo-ride wheelhouse at some point in the coming season.
My long-held love for this line was helped today by the fact that I had one of my cleanest runs down it in ages.
So that’s a wrap on SBTISAOAF for September 19th, 2025. The coming week is a busy one by MEATengines’ standards. It holds a Shimano shoe review (GF6 vs. GF8) and a first impressions piece on top of Monday Musing and, of course, SBTISAOAF.
I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for reading along.
Larry Talker Tunes
I really tried to dig into Terry Walker’s recommendation for the week, but after playing the album twice and wandering through The Mountain Goats discography, there wasn’t a single song that truly grabbed me by the lapels. To be fair, my music tastes this week have been more abrasive, so I’m going to roll back to it on Sunday night. Anywho, here’s Model-T’s pitch.
Larry Talker Says:
A music suggestion the past couple of weeks has led me down the indie/rock/soft/rock path to a band (personality?) I was not familiar with: The Mountain Goats.
The Mountain Goats’ catalogue is intriguing, worth exploring for their concepts and themes over the past decades.
For this week’s Tunes, I’ve settled on their recent 2023 Album, Jenny From Thebes. Enjoyable production. Notable songs: Only One Way, Ground Level, Clean Slate, Fresh Tattoo, Murder at the 18th Street Garage, From the Nebraska Plant, Jenny III.
If you’re feeling inclined to roll through the lyrics and theme, do so at your peril.
Other albums worth checking out: Bleed Out, Goths, and the upcoming release, Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan.
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