In contrast to most inquirers’ assumptions, I actually quite enjoy it when folks ask me when the next MEATengines piece will be up. Thanks for checking in! It’s not often that long stretches of inactivity are born from a lack of inspiration but rather from trying to juggle everything going on in my life. I don’t mean for M.e. to get the short shrift but as much as I enjoy writing here, it just takes a bit more than it gives back.
Now before any of my friends in the zoo start throwing turds at me, yes, a whole lot of my July has been spent out riding mountain bikes. Like, WOW! I have been riding bikes a lot. I’ve been riding by myself, I’ve been riding with my family, and I’ve been riding with many of my favourite local folks.
I’ve been splitting my time between pedaling to the river on my commuter, trying to regain my rigid & #1FG edge on a Banshee Enigma, reviewing a pile of interesting parts for NSMB.com on my Marin El Roy, and endless link, fork, and shock swapping testing three distinct versions of the same made-in-Kamloops We Are One Arrival.
*The two aMEGzing photos in this piece are by Meg Taylor of Tandem.Photography & Hardtail Life. The rest are by me.
The Clairebarian and I have been riding quite a bit with her cousin Anderson. Along the way we’ve run into some awesome folks I know out at Thornhill in Maple Ridge and on a couple of trips here to ride the North Shore. Today we spread our highly infectious strain of Bikeanthropy just a little bit further when Claire’s aunt came along for her very first mountain bike ride.
She brought the best attitude, Nina brought her teaching gift, Claire and Anderson took off down the trail and there I was coasting somewhere in the middle, like a bicycle for fish. I just put in a bunch of time tuning up the Enigma for our upcoming trip to Cumberlandworx and the bike simply sings. So I just cruised along enjoying it. Nothing new review-wise on that bike at the moment, except for the sweetest feeling brakes I’ve ever ridden. I know, tease.
As privileged, pragmatic, and plain living as my life is, like most folks I know, I’m grinding a bit more to cover the ever-increasing costs of everything. It’s hard not to be a little bit bitter. But heck, what’s a few more hours in the bike mine compared to empathetically helping those grocery stores as they strive to cover the massive inflationary pressures, of their CEOs’ wages? Ha. Ha.
That aside, I’ve been working through an endless stream of consciousness over at NSMB.com as the bike I definitely didn’t love – the We Are One Arrival 152 (A150) – came back like the title character in the Harry S. Miller song. I’ve been getting along famously with the A170 version of the same and I’m also quite delighted by the A130 build, and I feel like I’ve spent as much time swapping parts as I have riding it. Which in my case is not a complaint.
I’m going to leave it there for now. Cumberlandworx is only a week or so away and we’re really looking forward to that. Nina’s bike is looking so fresh right now with rebuilt wheels and a new handlebar, but I have that in my back pocket for ‘Bikes Of Cumberlandworx’ so I’ll have to sit on it for a bit longer.
Until the next post, thanks for following up to see how I’m doing. And, as always, thank you for reading and engaging.
Cheers,
Andrew
P.S. If you want to support an active cycling community organizer, up-and-coming frame crafter, and genuinely nice fellow and you like sweet t-shirts with rad graphics (dinosaurs on bicycles in reflective ink!), check out what F!rst L!ight Frames is slinging.
So soft. Living in mine.