I’m sitting here drinking a Guinness thinking about the time my friend Patty bet me a case of beautiful black tall cans that I couldn’t clean the Cardiac Climb on my single-speed. Oh, but were they ever delicious. I’m trying to strain through the mind morass to remember what rig I was riding at the time but drawing a blank. Maybe my magic-geared Robert’s repaired carbon Gary Fisher!? I loved that bike.
And I mean, I loved that bike. And not just because I almost (easy now, I said almost!) rode it to victory in a ($2) worst-conditions-possible XC race against Handsome-Matt on his multi-speed Specialized super-steed. It was a great old-school XC-geo 29’er Bridal Path rig. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder “Where are they now?” when it comes to my past loves. I retired the Fisher in favour of a Kona Raijin with sliding dropouts. Then I borked the Raijin and started my love affair with steel Kona Unit and Honzo frames.
Maybe it’s a coincidence, or maybe it’s just down to the time of year, but I’m feeling particularly nostalgic tonight (Thursday) as I lay out the bones for tomorrow’s SBTISAOAF. So be warned, I’m digging into the archives a bit for this week’s entry. Actually, I’ve had a bit of help this week from readers with questions about a piece from November ’22 and props for a piece from March ’20.
On that note, if there’s a series or subject in the MEATengines past that you’d like to see refreshed, updated, or brought back into commission, please always feel encouraged to drop me an e-mail. Likewise, if it was a reader-participation series (for example, About A Single-Speed) feel encouraged to jumpstart it back up with your own submission!
All Time Fall Time
After our ride on Monday, I loudly announced to Claire that it was probably the last day of all-time fall time. The rains a comin’! But, I was wrong. Fromme Friday today was glorious. Crisp air. Warm sunbeams were striking through the trees creating a cat-like desire to just stay in place and shoot the shit. The roots, rocks, and woodwork were mostly dry and the dirt was exactly the right amount of moist except for a few pebbly spots to remind me that The Clairebarian and I had intended to do some raking this week.
Stats wise the bikes were interesting. Four rigs. Three steel framed. Two suspension forks. One rear shock. Three dropper posts. Two rear derailleurs. One thumb shifter (indexed). Three pairs of push-on grips. One pair of clip-in pedals. A total of four 27″ wheels and four 29″ wheels. Three backpacks, one hip pack, and one full face. Three alt-bars, one titanium, and the other two Nitto-made Hunter Smooth Move bars.
I mention the Smooth Move bars specifically because I don’t know if there are two riders out there running more different extremes of Hunter-bar roll than Brian and myself. He has his low-rise Smooth Move rolled further forward than any photo I’ve seen, and I currently have mine, a high-rise version, rolled further back. He’s been riding the bar much longer and I am still bracketing. However, wherever I end up, it’s always interesting how positioning preferences can vary wildly even with differently ergonomic products.
The ATFT night riding has also been amazing. A few nights of heavy rain, but with the trails not being as baked this summer, and tons of effort by trail builders (thank you), the network seems to be handling the wetness well.
Have you been out? Are you going to head out? Haven’t even decided what lights to buy yet? You don’t need to bring the power of a thousand suns into the forest to have a great time. A thousand lumens on your helmet and a backup flashlight in your pocket (for hiking out), and go. Go! Heck, if you don’t have a commuter light to stick on your lid and are too uncertain to budget for a basic setup, you undoubtedly have a friend with lights who would lend them to you.
Try night riding this fall while it’s nice. You might hate it. It might change mountain bicycling for you. I know it’s the key to me arriving fit enough to get frisky in the forest come springtime.
Archive Excitement
If you want to take up single-speeding and are hitting the used market for a frame with sliders then no doubt you have come across a plethora of Kona bikes. Just the other day I saw a first-batch 2012 BlueZo for sale. This small batch of frame-only bikes had 1/2″ longer chainstays than the bikes sold as complete builds. Less stand over than the later rigs but I think I could ride a large with a -2° Angleset and still squeeze in my preferred 170-180mm seat post length.
Anyway, a bit of deep Honzo-nerding aside, it’s crazy to think that bike is twelve years old and what an impact it had on my riding by smashing together my single-speed and my ‘big bike.’ There’s no V2 rigid one-speed being ridden down black trails if there wasn’t first a Honzo in my life. I’ve tackled it here Going One Speed: The Kona Years and elsewhere.
Anyway, I mine my old material quite often for article ideas but I am stoked that I am not the only one reading (hopefully, enjoying) it. Many of the reader questions I get reference something I’ve written in the past, often years ago, and I think that’s very cool. The fact that a lot of them are Unit or Honzo-related is nifty too.
Used Hardtail Of The… (Week?)
Sadly, this ‘Used Hardtail Of The… (Week?)’ entry had to be removed because it was a scam. Thanks to a reader for sharing this information and I apologize if anyone followed up on this entry.
If you come across any UHotW? entry that doesn’t pass the smell test please fire me an e-mail and I’ll pull it ASAP. For now I’ll pull the feature while I consider ways to mitigate the chance of this happening again.
I’ll share the reminder here that when I share a used bike here I have not seen the machine and do not know the owner but rather the goal was to highlight more reasonable used bike prices on interesting bikes as part of normalizing a view of more affordable mountain biking.
Sorry.
The ‘Gem’
After I had already been dumped by BikeMag, Cy received a nice chunk of textual tourmaline to pass on as a parting gift. I suppose that someone actively working on improving their dad humour might say I was ‘tour-maligned’ by this particular gem. And I quote:
“Could your writers please refrain from all the fancy jargon, poetry and other useless wording and just get to the point?
Example: Mr. Major’s piece on motorized vehicles.“
Lovely. But, you know what they say? When the universe gives you rough gems, then cut them, polish them, hoard them to create scarcity, repackage them, market them, and finally sell them on for many times their base value. Heck if you can tie their acquisition to a holiday or other strong sentiment then people will absolutely buy what you’re selling.
As much as it can sometimes be hard to hear or read that you suck (and I do occasionally come across the combination of my name and that opinion) it’s always quintuple-nice to hear from a friend that they think you’re “original, thoughtful, entertaining.” Thank you, Cy. You’re a jeweler. Blushing.
Anyway, not to go all PDA with the affair between MEATengines and About The Ride, but if you’re against Less Poetry In Mountain Biking, that link takes you to Cy’s latest piece over at ATR.
Hardtail Happy Place
I suppose this could be a Tunnel Talk topic, but it’s something I’m stoked about and hey, while the Toucan is away the lizards will play. Did you know toucans are omnivorous? They eat lizards, rodents, small birds, insects, plus fruits and berries.
Anyway, while we’re not living a Counting Crows song at the shop everyone (everyone) is slowly drifting to the dark side. Instead of deluxe eebs and atbatt*-equipped carbon super-bikes there’s a general obsession with over-forked steel hardtails and plenty of talk about Shimano LinkGlide inter-compatibility. We even managed to bust out a four-person shop employee ride with all steel hardtails.
I have no illusion that this will impact what we sell and service in any notable way. As Larry Talker famously said, way back in the last century of the previous millennium, “We’re here to stoke the fires of our [customers’] desires.” But if nothing else, there’s a counter-culture fun factor that reminds me a bit of any movie about a record store ever.
*{All The Batteries, All The Time}
{Above Photo: Penny Deck}
About A Hardtail
I’ve been asked, so, yes, I am keen to relaunch ‘About A Single-Speed’ but instead I think we’ll open it up to folks pedaling multiple ratios and call it ‘About A Hardtail.’ And I mean, read that to include ATB (any type of bike) rigs and anything you think is MEATengines adjacent.
The original rules called for a few photos and a Haiku. Check out James’ Honzo for an example. I’m happy if folks want to follow that template, but fewer or more words are great too. Basically, share your bike by sending a few photos and some words about it, in whichever format you prefer.
Yeah, so. This week’s SBTISAOAF was even more hardtail-heavy than usual. Hopefully, it wasn’t too long to be enjoyable. I tried trimming, I swear. For next week I have a few skeletons laid out already looking to be dressed and I also plan to have a more concrete piece about the Hunter Smooth Move bar and Stooge Moto bar that I’ve been riding. Since folks have been asking about them.
Cheers,
Welcome to MEATengines, I hope you enjoyed this piece. If you did, please consider buying me a coffee. Any questions, concerns, or comments – or to order a MEATengines water bottle – feel encouraged to drop me an e-mail, or join us at r/MEATengines.