(UPDATED! 22/12/24 to add Talker Tunes)
It’s been a tough week in the outdoor community here on the North Shore. First warm temperatures and precipitation wiped out earlier hopes for a fantastic early sliding season in the local mountains. I don’t ski or snowboard but I’ve been drilling holes in expensive planks to earn my dinner for the last couple of months and it has definitely slowed way down.
Yesterday, we said so long, and thanks for all the bikes to the North Shore culture combine and 43-year-old Vancouver, BC mountain bike brand Rocky Mountain. I’m sure the logo will live on and the future marketing machine will ride that brand history hard like they’re climbing DH-only directional trails on an e-bike, but that’s like me badging some catalogue frames as Barracuda Bikes and claiming I’d been in business since 1992.
So look, I’m not suggesting anyone go out and spend money they don’t have. Many of us are staring down the barrels of some level of economic uncertainty as the twin titans of unforced economic errors and an ever-expanding wealth gap circle each other worldwide. But if there’s a brand you really like, with great folks working there, maybe think about buying a hat, or a t-shirt, or another widget they make that’s captured your fancy. Every dollar counts for a lot of companies right now. Heck, why not get way, way, out in front of that spring bike & suspension service?
And if you’re tapped out, take a few minutes to leave a review on their site or elsewhere, of a specific product you love or in general. That stuff really does help, especially in a game of dollars and cents.
The Doers & The Builders
This week I’m feeling, well, a bit worn down by crappy tidings in the cycling company cosmos and I’m reminded that as much as any activity or equipment-heavy sub-culture, mountain bicycling is driven by the people doing it. None more so than those who are getting out and clearing drainage, stacking rocks, throwing dirt, building bridges, and otherwise burying hours of their time into maintaining sections of trail we float over in seconds.
Whether you put wheels on dirt, reached into your pocket to donate some cash to your local association, and/or went out and freshened up some single-track, thanks for keeping mountain biking awesome.
{Above photo: Ride Ritual}
A ‘Freecross’ Racing Dream (AKA Dan’s Super-XC Short Course 4X Racing)
The other day I was thinking about Dan-In-Japan and this explosively excited conversation we had in 2007. I remember the year because FSA had just released their 800mm wide Gravity Light bar and we were talking about mounting one on Dan’s Cove Stiffee hardtail with fast-rolling rubber and inventing a whole new category of racing. Think downhill-biased sprint-length courses with cyclocross intensity, four-person start, super technical sections, and limited non-crash-to-pass passing options uphill and downhill.
{Drewitors update: Dan reminds me that the name for this exciting new racing event is Freecross.}
Sprint off the line and you have 100m to drag yourself into a pole position before surfing a greasy rooted descent on the fastest rolling tires you can bring yourself to line up on. Full-face helmets and knee pads are mandatory. Wow, it sounded like fun as we excitedly sketched it all out in great detail and it could happen anywhere with a few shorter sections of technical trail.
The state of racing is, well, it’s in flux like the rest of the bicycle world. But here I offer a solution that can be set up almost anywhere and would showcase the skills of the fastest riders and the efficiency and composure of any competing bicycle. Oh, I’m stoked to think how fun it would be to participate and also how spectator-friendly it could be at the track and on video. Freecross Racing!
{Photo above: Mr. Lungtastic}
Stapler-Effect-Free Hardtail Forks
No, it’s not a sneaky plug for rigid mountain bike forks. Or, is it? My friend Naked-Nick has a sweet Formula Selva fork (with quick-swap damper re-valving) and we were talking about his setup on today’s Fromme Friday. He’s running a valving option with very light low-speed compression and firmer high-speed compression that keeps things comfortable in smaller bumps and at slower speeds but does a great job of resisting the stapler effect when he’s shredding.
I haven’t ridden the Selva beyond parking lot loops, but Nick’s feedback has me thinking of how much I love the DVO Onyx 38 – plushier, supportier, happier – on the front of (my) Will’s Chromag. I’d say similarly favourable, though functionally different, things about the Manitou Mezzer or Mattoc Pro with their IRT air system. Nice and smooth in the small stuff but somehow tall and balanced with the rigid rear end when the trail gets spicy.
The Mezzer and Onyx changed my thinking about hardtail suspension. Where previously I didn’t pine for more than 140mm fork travel, or so, the ability to have top traction, smooth and supple initialization, tons of support, and a get-out-of-trail free card on the roughest trails really does make these bigger travel platforms worthy of the effort of pedaling them uphill… at least, in some use cases.
Not having a full suspension bike, the long-forked Marinster Truck (El Roy) and now (my) Will’s Arcturian are a nice ride-most-anywhere sibling to my rigid single-speed. Anywho, the Formula Selva seems like a rad addition to the easy-setup hardtail-friendly long-travel fork list.
Some Superb Single-Speed Suckage
I felt the worst I have in recent memory grinding my #1FG rig up No Quarter today. The ground was soft, and so was I. It all started to burn on the second tranche, and I was roached and begging for oxygen when I reached the Baden Powell. By the time we reached the D’Yer Mak’er I was singing in my head:
Ay ay ay ay ay ay
All those tears I cry, ay ay ay ay
All those tears I cry, oh oh ah ay
Body please don’t go
To think, Nick had ridden us down at that point despite a ten-minute or so lead. After just coming off his night shift. Ugh.
That there’s the thing about one-speed-life, there’s nowhere to hide when you have that same one gear and you’re riding up that same one trail. Familiarity breeds honesty, and I honestly need to put some more miles on two feet and two wheels. I’ve been too sedentary lately. My bike is happy to call me out on it.
It sucked today, no word of a lie. It hurt. But it sucked superbly and it hurt so good and in the end, as I departed Mt Fromme I felt awesome (happily destroyed). I can’t wait to rip my own legs off a few times this coming week.
Paragon Machine Works
It’s hard to imagine the world of small bicycle builders without machined frame parts (dropouts, bottom bracket shells, disc mounts, headtubes, etc) from Paragon Machine Works. But, it always surprises me how many cyclists sniffing around custom frame options have never heard of them. So, here’s me doing my part to rectify that.
I use, or I should say, Walt used, their stainless steel rocker dropouts (aluminum inserts) on both my V1 and V2 frames, and WZRD Em attached one of their machined headtubes to my truculent V2 this year. I also have a few of their axles on bikes.
Anywho, bike nerds will bike-nerd, and if you need a break from trawling through Sheldon Brown‘s sea of bicycle information then Paragon’s is a fun rabbit hole to discover. And even if that’s not your cuppa, they’ve been supporting small builders since 1983, so I think they’re a brand worth knowing about.
NSBillet Bottom Brackets
There’s this old joke that single-speeders don’t need to grease their bottom brackets when they install them because they swap them so often there’s no opportunity to become seized. I still like to put something heavy on those threads but it is true that I have killed a lot of bottom brackets on my one speed.
I’ve killed less expensive original equipment BBs, and I’ve killed premium-level bottom brackets that cost, well, a lot of money. And, I’ve killed, the bearings, a couple of times now, in the North Shore Billet CA$155 bottom bracket on my #1FG bike. But they’re 6806 units that are easy to find and easy to change (stock bearing: Enduro 71806 LLB ABEC-5). The machined-in-Whistler 6061 aluminum cups don’t seem to have any complaints about having fresh bearings pressed in multiple times.
My beaten-up 175mm RaceFace Turbine cranks have been spinning in this one for ages. I’m just thinking about it today as I’m due for some fresh cartridges.
Installed, the bottom brackets spin as smoothly as anything on the market and the bearings last a surprisingly long time compared to OE units. There’s no 24mm model to date, but your 30mm and DUB needs are covered.
So, that’s the last SBTISAOAF before the holidays. I’ll say a quick Merry Christmas and wish you and yours all the best. It’s hard to believe there’s only one more SBTISAOAF before New Year’s! Just a reminder that starting on the 26th we’ll have the MEATengines Awards for 2024. That’s my effort to jump on cycling-content-creation’s lowest-of-low-hanging fruit.
Cheers,
Larry Talker’s Tunes For The Week
Follow me down into the rabbit hole – previously on SBTISAOAF I featured Ozzy’s Patient Number 9 from 2022, and here go again with another artist from the “70’s” dropping a recent release from 2022: The Boy Named IF (Elvis Costello and The Imposters). Two years later, it is still worthy of a spin especially if you’re feeling like shit after a road ride through endless traffic.
Recruiting The Imposters for another session, the album kicks off with Farewell OK, a strong number reminiscent of Costello in the ‘70s. At least eleven of the tunes will have you tapping. Satisfyingly familiar yet inventive and fresh. Always a great songwriter, Costello and the Imposters once again hit big with another solid record.
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