It is already July 5th and I feel like the school year ended yesterday. All my routines have imploded with the Clairebarian and NJP hanging out and the start of my (Toucan’s) parental leave from turning wrenches at Comor NV. 

We have been riding bikes quite a bit as a family. I’ve been getting out on V1 running errands. I have a couple of (used) bike projects on the go aside from wrapping up the first part of Secondhand Postilions. It’s only a month until Cumberlandworx. 

With all that in mind, here’s a relatively short edition of SBTISAOAF. 

{Cover Photo: Hardtail.Life}

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Mea culpa District of North Vancouver. When I heard that you were putting bollards in along the Seymour Parkway, I assumed that meant the same ‘vertical paint’ used many other places. A visual assurance that actually offers no protection at all to cyclists. Wow, was I ever wrong, and, all past experiences aside, I apologize for doubting you so. 

The full-on, f*ck-off, concrete barriers in the highest-risk areas and obvious concrete curbing in the lower-risk areas is an impressive turnaround. We’ll see if there’s any enforcement of the new 50km/h speed limit but even a grungy old cynic like myself has to be a bit hopeful. 

I am looking forward to riding to school with Claire in September and further documenting this change, but in the meantime, thank you. 

{Photo: Langley Concrete Group}

On the subject of being stoked about municipalities doing the little-big things, it was a pleasant surprise to be riding home from doing a teardown the other night and discovering that the tunnel under Mountain Highway has been power-washed clean of any graffiti. It was a nice throwback to the start of Tunnel Talk. 

I love street art. For example, the amazing paint work done, and redone, up at the Braemar Tennis Courts access point to Fromme. But the tunnel was just full of shitty tags.

I have not forgotten the plans for a Tunnel Talk summit in the tunnel. It is on my list of things to make happen if I can get Dumpster Bear and the Squidulous Toucan on the same schedule as me for thirty minutes one evening. 

Floated a little section of trail on Fromme, caught the crotch of my favourite Rivbike MUSA baggies on my saddle, and whoosh… next thing I knew everything was breathing a bit more bountifully than I am used to. 

My local connect for clothing repair is closed for summer vacation, so my mom was kind enough to stitch things back together for me. It’s a testament to the quality of the materials that Riv uses that the fabric itself wasn’t damaged despite the double-row stitching being massacred. 

That’s mountain biking. Thank you, mom!

With ample braking power, it’s neat to see the focus on lighter action and lever consistency. I am excited to see the new Gustav Pro brakes from Magura when they start showing up. I am cautiously stoked to see Shimano’s new Saint brakes, which should drop in 2025 sometime. I can’t imagine where Hayes and Hope go from their current products (other than Hope adding a made-in-house super organic carbon lever blade as good as the Reynolds one on my T4). I think it’s fantastic, for everyone but small-hand-rippers, that Formula has updated the Cura4 to add significant power. And, I wrote down some imaginings for the next-generation Maven 1.1 brakes. 

I have not put together a ‘Selling Out’ piece for a while. Because I am behind on all things. But if you’re interested my predictions on where braking is and is going, especially when it comes to the ‘S’ duopoly, are live on BikeMag.com/gear.

{Photo: The Inside Line}

The Clairebarian is slowly but quickly outgrowing both her bicycles at the same time. I’ve documented the lack of a new-size-up hardtail option and as I write this Nina’s old Chromag Sakura is sitting at WZRD bikes waiting for THE SLACKENING (dun, dun, dunnnnnnnn). I need to lace the rear wheel but otherwise, I think everything is now accounted for in terms of getting the WZRDxChromag rolling. 

The final key component in transit is another pair of Canfield cranks. This go around Claire will be bumping up to 160mm arms. I love the short-crank-craze, for her. Personally, I am back on 175mm arms for all my mountain biking. 

We looked at several options for Claire’s next commuter but we wanted to run 26″ wheels – maybe 27″ – and it’s quite realistic that, with raising the saddle and swapping to longer stems, this could be her last commuter bike with neither Nina or myself being particularly tall. So that was a factor as well. 

Anyway, it’s a work in progress that is currently awaiting the arrival of a relatively uncommon 25.4 (rather than 22.2) quill-to-ahead adapter so I can take advantage of the stems we have on hand. Claire will start with a 30mm and we’ll go from there. 

More in the future, but for the meantime here’s a photo of her 1992(?) Rocky Mountain Equipe. You have to imagine a smaller saddle, significantly shorter stem, etc.

My Wolf Tooth Resolve dropper post is ticking along towards three years old. I’ve done a quick basic lube-service a couple of times and fully rebuilt it once for MEATengines. It has hundreds of hundreds of hours on it. 

I just did a complete teardown, changed out one (just one) pin, and updated the cartridge fluid to Wolf Tooth’s new(er) Dropper Post Fluid. It’s crazy how, as with a BikeYoke Revive, putting in the work results in a post that is as tight and as smooth as new. It looks as-new inside as well. 

The teardown photos will be in a piece on BikeMag next week, but I borrowed a bench at Essential this week to do the teardown so I figured I would give the post a shout-out which wrenching on it is fresh in my mind. 

And that’s a wrap on SBTISAOAF for the first week of July. 

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