History; Mystery; Gift
The first piece ever published on MEATengines.com is called Dave McInnes Was Bicycle Hub* and it went live on November 3rd, 2019. I had already owned the URL for a time before that, and I’d ruminated about creating a journal, site, blog, internet-mag, etc. going back almost to the time when Pinkbike had a hard “mountain bikes are a form of human locomotion“** policy. In the days when many MTB-folks were still rearing up over a pedal-assisted-motor culture conflict my friend Alex plainly recognized the inevitability of ‘the easy way’ and I recognized the truth in what he was saying. Mountain bicycling has been a huge part of my life since I found it as a teenager and at it’s primeval simplest, MEATmag is an homage to that. In some way this site’s existence is down to recognizing the e-gate was open, before it was open.
What happened next, the short version, and I’m trying not to trip over my own feet here, is down to my writing process. Dave, someone who I really appreciate, was closing up his successful service-forward shop and moving to ‘loops land and I needed to write something about it. I could not create anything else bicycle related until I finished the piece and then it was rejected by my editors at the time for being too local. The notes where along the lines of “Maybe you should write a blog” and, as I’m fond of saying, wherever I go, there I am. Many early pieces of MEAT where rejects that I absolutely had to write to move onto the next things.
For years now MEATengines has been my little passion project and I can’t overstate how close I’ve come to shutting it down recently. Not because I don’t enjoy it, or because this little community we’re building isn’t awesome, or because I don’t think it contributes to cycling culture, at least for the tens of readers who find there way here.
No, it was because of the epic enshitification of my, past, CMS and hosting provider, GoDaddy, and the overwhelming endeavour of trying to migrate the site elsewhere. It had come to the point of making a fully start fresh sans archives or letting it die trying when Geof stepped in, and stepped up, with his knowledge, and his scripts {so many scripts}, and his patience. He moved the photos, and the archives, and fixed all the backlinks pointed to places that don’t exist anymore, and helped this lucky Luddite move everything and I’m so happy {and relieved} to say that MEATengines is now 100% GoDaddy free. Not another dime or minute of my time to that piratical clownshow. Thank you, Geof.
What does the future hold for MEATengines? Well, to quote the infinite knowledge of Master Oogway “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present...” but here we are, and folks, we have purple links.
*{Note that links no longer open in a new tab. This, along with the purple covered links, improves accessibility. I’m always learning. Thanks, Geof! If you’re curious here are a couple of links that Geof shared:
https://equalizedigital.com/accessibility-checker/link-opens-new-window-or-tab/
https://www.washington.edu/accessibility/2025/11/06/color-contrast/}
**{“I sincerely hope that there are enough riders in this, the third generation of mountain bike trail users, who understand and respect the efforts of those who helped found this sport and who have the courage to shout down electric mountain bike makers. The way I see it, mountain bikes are a form of human-powered locomotion with which to experience the wonders and the challenges of the natural world.” – Richard Cunningham for PinkBike.com}
SBTISAOAF, Sept 28th, 2026
We, I, missed this week’s Some Bicycle Things I’m Stoked About On A Friday as part of the changeover, but I wanted to mention a couple things that I’m really stoked about:
Fall Forward Bike Swap
I almost experienced the falling forward {and to the side} on my way to the bike swap with my Omnium Mini-Max* carrying the most stuff I’ve strapped to the front yet. Even bagged and boxed, bike parts can be awkward. I also chose things to sell basically at random, and came home with notably less stuff than I pedaled there with, but I’ll do better next time.
Actually, I’ve talked to a couple of friends about trying to organize something similar on the North Shore, but with more of a mountain bike bent. It’s hard, the FFBS crew would agree that the challenge is attracting as many buyers as sellers but the prices were more than fair and there was quite a bit of great stuff changing hands so I think if we build it folks will come.
*{I’m convinced that Omnium has min-maxed the best human-powered cargo bikes in their magic balance of handling and pedal-ability vs. absolute load. It’s a lovely bicycle to cruise around on unloaded, but it can carry a ton of stuff as well. I’m not the only one, in addition to a bouquet of rad reborn ATBs, there was a bounty of Omniums hanging out at the swap.}
Watching Them Fail (Parenting on Pipeline In The Snow, In Short)
I’ve been spending some time scrolling through the MEATengines archives. You may have noticed the categories are at the bottom of the page now. The piece I was most stoked to rediscover is Watching Them Fail (Parenting on Pipeline In The Snow, In Short) from 2020. Under the proGROMing category, this was the first MEATengines piece that earned me correspondence from readers I didn’t know from the local cycling community or from my writing work at NSMB.
It also harkens back to one of my initial goals, which I’ve failed at today but am committed to revisiting, which was to keep pieces short rather than the wandering musings that I usually drag folks through.
Fresh Kicks
If I ever win the lottery you’ll know because I’ll be wearing a fresh pair of mountain bike shoes every week. I’ll make up for the extravagance by having an auction that site that sells my one week old shoes for dimes on the dollar with any monies raised going to the local food bank.
There’s just something about the power-to-the-pedals stiffness of a fresh pair of Shimano GF6/GF600 shoes when it comes to powering the one-speed up hills. Plus, the grip of those unmolested soles before they meet my Pendulum pins.
Until someone {Shimano?!} makes a similarly awesome shoe with a wider toe box, expensive though they are, the GF6 is going to perpetually remain my future flat pedal shoe.
Here’s a litany of GF6 linkage if you’re shoe curious:
Some Random MEATmemory Photos
As part of the relocation process, I came across a few photos that I haven’t seen in a bit. One of my winter projects is actually going to be digging through the archives, naming pics, and sharing some solid pyrite.
Squirrels X Mountain Bikers
With recognition that the activity vs. animal correlation is a little cloudy, my thesis is that of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, squirrels are the closest to being mountain bikers. And sure, they poorly hide food stores the way we poorly hide unsanctioned trails but I mean more the silliness of it all.
Mountain cycling isn’t pedaling with purpose, it’s playing bicycles in the forests. Adults climbing, pumping, jumping, and risking injury for no reason besides the thrill of the chase and the force of {our} nature.
Queue my photograph of these squirrels I-don’t-know-how-many stories up in the urban jungle running up and down the vertical wall of this building. No food or shelter in sight. Just running up, and down, and up, and down. For fun?!?
Sweet Solo Rides
The combination of my current funemployment status {thanks for the best wishes!} and the routine of The Clairebarian being back at school has meant a bit more time pedaling bikes. The trails are dry but we’re slowing rolling into that part of the year where the light is its most incredible and the forest is, as always, beautiful.
Climbmax
So, welcome to MEATengines 2.0 and, for better or worse, the motivation and momentum that is going to be mean more MEATmag, at least in the immediate future. I can’t thank Geof enough for essentially keeping this little place going.
I’m going to wrap it there with some random photos and skip Larry Talker Tunes for this week. I didn’t know-know until yesterday that there’d be any SBTISAOAF action for this week, so that’s my excuse.
If you’re interested in supporting the MEATengines community there are multiple ways to help out. You can submit an About a Single Speed or Bicycle Valentines piece, or fire me an e-mail if there’s something else you’re passionate about writing about. If you have a couple spare bucks {ha!} you can also buy me a coffee.
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