I’ll admit I have remiss in updates of late. It’s partly because I am really trying to find interesting/entertaining stuff to post here rather than the next latest thing from one of the ‘big S’s', and partly because in dealing with said stuff everyday, you realise it’s just not really that interesting; in some respects you learn that some of it is just plain daft.

This though IS interesting. As we all are victims to wanting a cool bike, which usually involves spending lots of money (once equated to $100/gram for components and $1000/0.5lbs for a frame) we loose sight of just why bikes are cool. I’m not talking about those twats on pimped out fixies in Sydney in skinny jeans who can’t ride up, and sometimes down, a hill, who think they are cool. I am talking base line cool, like when you were a kid and a bike gave you freedom and doing up your bike was not about the latest bit of machined cool for $500 but about some paint or other basic thing you could afford at the time.

This vid is about that. Watch it and reflect a little, it’s worth the effort.

Scrapertown from California is a place. on Vimeo.

So the total need as designer and product manager for a mtb company, to head to Taipei for what is one of the world’s largest industry shows and hit it up from a ‘we need to build bikes’ perspective, meant that the trip not only promised to be busy, but also rather interesting. What I was not prepared for was, how should I say this….. how much the industry seems to have peaked.

I’m pretty sure they were serious…

I had grand plans to do a photolog of all the cool shit I was going to see but instead I took two pics.* I saw a lot of stuff, two and a half massive floors of it in fact. Of those two and a half floors, I and others I spoke with felt you could easily bin 50% of it as it was made up of replications of the same thing (ie. same item, different colour, different name), blatant copies or just plain junk. Of the remaining 50%, I think there was some really nice stuff and maybe 1% of which made you think, ‘damn, that’s cool’. It was this that made me come away thinking that the industry has matured to the point that the achievements we are going to see from this point on will be either in the form of really well designed ‘solutions’ or really well engineered ones; the days of knock your socks off leaps and bounds are gone, as the technology that drives bikes seems to have finally hit the plateau.

So what did I see?

Well, overwhelmingly product design has entered the bike world in a serious way and there were many really well considered designs on the floor, both in the form of bikes and components. Frame wise, the little details are where it seemed to be at combined with carbon and hydroformed frames, technologies that allow designers to ‘sculpt frames’ much like they do cars and as a result, there were a lot of really nice looking bikes. I have no apprehension in saying that if a company is not investing in good design, its days are numbered.

Anodised is back (finally) but now included as part of the finishing kit as more than one company is using custom anodised hardware with laser logo etching – Lampierre had really nice custom cable guides that hold full length housings in a considered manner. The results are that a bike is becoming a complete brand package, such as a car, and self branded parts are almost a normality, which seems to be causing a lot of discussion.

We are all used to the likes of say Trek (and it’s million sub brands) and Specialized including a plethora of self branded parts on their bikes but this is no longer the domain of the big boys. With so many companies in Taiwan producing everything from pedals to seat collar clamps, sourcing something and slapping your name on it is a cheap no brainer. Where it falls down is when the parts sourced are not to the same quality as the bike to which they are fitted, which sadly is often the case. We saw more than one bike where a massive effort was placed into the overall design package but the ‘self branded’ parts, beyond their anodised finish and laser etched logo, were just cheap and somewhat nasty. The net result was that the parts pulled the bike as a whole down. Funnily enough, the quiet talk seems to be revolving around the actual value of putting your name on a part, when, if you have gone to a good supplier, the component’s brand actually adds more value to your package than you turning it into a ‘no name’ component by putting your brand on it.

Maxxis does shoes and very orange they are.

Component wise, Shimano was making noise about its electronic Dura Ace but wasn’t that called Mavic Zap nearly a decade ago? SRAM made lots of noise about everything it did and had an attitude to match. There was though serious apprehension displayed at SRAM when Shimano did not drop their 10spd system as expected and to be honest, I walked away from SRAM feeling they have become the company they once opposed so strongly. Personally I felt their products have gone backwards design wise, relying on basic ‘paint and graphics’ rather than ‘real’ design, while Shimano have shot ahead light-years (I never thought I’d say that) – the big S’ new kit is just so damn nice.

Suspension too has seemingly tapped out. The bike industry can say what it likes but the truth is there’s no where really left to go with it unless someone figures out a totally new way to make it work;  and no, Cannondale’s electric valving is not a contender and there’s a good reason for that – the idea of putting such a system in the average punter’s hands and expecting them to keep it working for more than a month seems a bit far fetched. Again, like everything else, the design and details are becoming more refined but the tech has slowed right down.

So what really stood out to me in 5 days of show?

FSA. Material combinations such as carbon and aluminium (in a new and unique way) to achieve strength, weight, looks and best of all cost savings was really clever. The 2011 offering from them is  looking really great and represent a nice progression to an already good line.

DT Swiss…. just because they make such nice wheels… and know it.

TW based Aerozine, who’s cranks are to die for being beautifully engineered and look good too. Unfortunately they have missed the whole marketing thing and have not handled distribution very well, which has soiled their image somewhat. Believe me though, their cranks are industry leaders.

Gates’ Carbon Drive belt drive system. I will say that this is the way of the future – internally geared bikes with belt drive. Judging by the uptake, the future is not too far away. Enough said.

The 1%…

FSA’s ‘Metropolis’ internally geared cranks. Sure SRAM makes a big deal of their Hammerschmidt system, but at the price they are asking I feel it’s going to remain the domain of ‘true believers’ only. The FSA offering, while aimed squarely at the city market (for now), is simpler, better looking and a fraction of the price. Watch them in a year or so, I feel they will do more than they want to let on with the system.

The Ashima PCB brake system really knocked me over. Pistonless brakes so simple in design, thus maintenance, yet so bloody powerful and progressive, you came away thinking “why did it take so long?” (this needs to happen in the suspension area for it to move out of it’s current funk). Not only that, add that each and every brake is tested and serial numbered to ensure quality and performance, and they have by far one of the best engineered and produced disc brakes on the market. Judging by their rush to put together OEM pricing, something Ashima had not anticipated nor intended, a lot of other companies also thought the same thing. Can’t wait to test them on the bike.

So in five days, that was it. We missed some things we wanted to see, not through lack of trying, it’s just that I am sure they had the magical moving booths (ie. we saw them on passing and could never find them again). We saw lots, and lots of carbon and we achieved what we set out to do – specify builds for late 2010 and early 2011 and sort out our factories. Overall though, it’s was just lots of bikes most of which are becoming more evolutionary rather than revolutionary (and sometimes just totally absurd).

On to Interbike….

*Disclaimer: There was a bunch of stuff people might have found interesting, just to find interesting, such as the huge variety of folding bikes etc. but I was interested in finding products that pertained to mountain biking only. I am sure there is more than enough stuff on the web that will cover off the plethora of stuff on display.

Even by current standards it was a bad day. Damned computers. Some days things just refuse to work. Odd things happen: things crash, things won’t talk to each other – and hell, the whole job is pretty pointless anyway. I’d had enough. I was seriously wound up and everyone else in the office knew it. The mouse had already been hurled across the desk, the muttering under my breath had increased to an audible growl and the growl had turned into outbursts of swearing. A frustration with the job in general, combined with the acute annoyance with the PC, was a potent combination. I managed to prevent myself punching the laptop keyboard, knowing it would probably take out the hard disk with all my files on it, so instead I packed the machine into its bag, like an abused ventriloquist stuffing his belligerent dummy away at the end of a gig.

I stormed out of the office, got in the car, slammed the door and sped off out of the car park. My commute is 40 miles of motorway, most of which was spent rather too close to the car in front, fuming at the fact that I couldn’t just put my foot flat on the floor. If anyone’s car so much as twitched near me I had half a mind to crash into them. The stereo was blasting out Senser at a volume which was abusing the speakers as much as my right foot was abusing the car’s engine. I was not a safe driver that day. I wasn’t even sure I was myself at all.

I made it home in one piece, probably more due to luck than judgement and within five minutes I had changed into shorts, grabbed the camera and a bike and I was off into the evening sun, determined to forget everything about the day so far.

—

Telegraph Woods isn’t much of a biking destination, but it’s a small oasis in the city – tucked between the motorway and the suburban residential sprawl, it’s a small hillside covered with vivid green foliage. It’s a quiet place with simple paths through the ferns, where the evening light picks its way through the branches and leaves and settles on the rich, auburn ground and the silvery-golds of the birch trunks. Every town has its own Telegraph Woods, a place where the houses and the cars seem a hundred times further away than they actually are.

There was only a simple crunch of twigs under my tyres as I rolled through the wood. No sliding of tyres, no jumping and landing, no rush of air past my ears, no adrenaline-fuelled hollering as I carved the turns: I was simply riding along, drifting gently through the undergrowth. I wasn’t being a hero, I was just being there.

The smoothness of the fat tyres rolling on soft woodland trails was perfect: a graceful motion, no bouncing off rocks or flying off roots, just rolling. The ‘whirr’ of the wheel revolving brought a smile to my face. Even pedalling itself was beautifully minimalist: I’d picked up the singlespeed, just turn and go, just ride. I had no helmet, no gloves, no Lycra, no Camelbak, no glasses, no tools, no pump; it was just me and a bike. Like it was when I was a kid: before jobs and mortgages and motorways.

It was the sheer simplicity of all this that opened up everything else. The scene around me, of the light falling through the trees, of the mottled blues, whites and golds of an English summer evening’s sky. The same sky as it ever was and always will be, unaffected by jobs and mortgages and motorways. My mind had been swamped earlier in the day, now it was wide open and fresh because the important and beautiful things were clear: the job and the mortgage and the motorway didn’t matter, they were things I could put up with just for an hour or two of sitting in the dappled woodland light and rolling around on two wheels.

And that’s the beauty of riding bikes. You don’t have to be the fastest, you don’t have to launch off every drop, nail every descent, conquer every climb. You don’t have to ride hard all the time. It’s ok to sit under a tree for a bit. You can relax and take in everything around you, let your troubles out, take your time and find the good stuff.

I returned home a while later with a smile on my face. One of the worst days I’d had in ages had turned into one of the best. Bikes do that. Bikes are great.

Stewart Pratt (words and images) – UK

Stewart, or Bez as he is sometimes known, is a lanky English bloke who has roughly equal experience in biking and drinking. Unusually for a Briton, he likes nothing better than being in France, spending a sunny morning cycling up into the Pyrenees, resting before a long technical descent and then returning in time for plenty of wine and cheese. A devoted fan of Kona bicycles, he seems to have about 67 of them at any given time, but suspects it’s rather less than that.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have been out on the track and “someone” in the group has been left stranded in the Black Hole of Calcutta without a cracker of light shining from their handlebars. It seems that it doesn’t matter if you are using your Mk I, or a more advanced Mk V home made version, as there are a myriad of things that can suddenly make the bush turn blacker than a night in downtown Baghdad during a Gulf war bombing raid.

While I have been a staunchly religious devotee of Blutak, I have got to say that at times my use of that wonderfully sticky product as an integral part of my lighting system has left me reconsidering. The God of Blutak can be an unkind deity at times, particularly when the carefully applied blob that normally holds the halogen bulb in place decides to melt and ooze into a useless puddle. There’s nothing worse than leaping off your favourite water bar only to find the bulb pops like a cork on landing, rolling away into the shrubbery. Of course, upgrading to duct tape is one option if you are really after a poofteenth of an inch of performance advantage, but hey, there are more conventional hose clamps that can be used if you feel like complying with the laws of sensibility.

The wiring loom is also a decidedly simple thing that warrants a modicum of attention before each ride. I’d need more fingers and toes to count how many times that either the porcelain bulb connection, or the battery terminal leads have elected to part company from the electrical circuit, either as the result of rough terrain, trackside overgrowth – or just worked free because of vibration. Riding Linden Ridge one night recently gave me the taste of fear for precisely this reason. Launching off one of the biggest water bars at a speed intended for huge air with 40 watts onboard, I suddenly found myself mid flight in complete and utter darkness with absolutely no idea where the drop zone was. The lesson? Check those crimps!

Battery mounting can also end up being a win or lose thing too. While a lot of riders ideally prefer to mount the gel cell inside the frame triangle (in a modified bidon carrier), on some frames this is an impossibility. On one of my older duallies, I needed to carry the battery on a seat post rack, which put the weight up high and had an adverse effect on bike balance. Metal fatigue caused one of the racks to snap off on the Oaks trail one night, swinging by the wiring loom into my leg before tearing off at 60kph… and again plunging me into darkness. So if you are carrying a 7-amp hour battery on a rack, make sure you buy a good quality rack with an appropriate load carrying capacity – or alternately carry an extra length of wiring loom so you can stow the battery in your hydration pack if needed.

Switches? Yeah, they sound like a good idea, but the more connections, the more potential for problems. There’s nothing worse than knowing that you “could” have ridden with lights, if only you had bought waterproof switches before those misty winter night rides; or remembered to actually turn them “on”, if you are the type of person who enjoys too much singletrack sherbet! And of course, the more sophisticated your electrical components are, the more chance for you to be standing trackside with a Mag Lite in your mouth, trying to sort out why the voltage regulation on your Light Brain doesn’t seem to be working as you cycle the switch through its settings.

It ain’t all bad news though. The joys of night riding can be splendid. Just keep your expectations to a minimum and occasionally… just “occasionally”, you might be rewarded with a powerhouse all-seeing, all-conquering blatt through the bush. The more light you can shine on the subject, the broader the smile on your face.

Hodgie

If you’re out on the trail you really ought to be carrying a few spares. At the very least a tube, pump and tyre levers, and the knowledge to use them, even if you’re on the road. As soon as you head off road it becomes a lot harder to bum a lift home, so it’s worth carrying a basic toolkit – a few allen keys, a chain breaker (or a multi tool), a few spare links and maybe a handful of zip ties is all you really need. On longer trips you may want to carry a few extras, like spare jockey wheels, and you’d be surprised how often a small roll of gaffa tape can be useful.

Park tool’s website offers good advice on how to use most tools and perform most repairs the proper way. You can also get really detailed information from Barnett’s manual, and you can get a chapter each month from Specialized.com . Generally following the advice of experts is a good idea, but what if you don’t have the right tool, or the right part?

The most useful trail tool is ingenuity. Broken the clamp off your seatpost? Drop it right down, zip tie the seat on top and wrap a bit of gaff around it, and at least you can get home without having to worry if your bum hits the bike. How about ripping the bead away from the sidewall of the tyre? Well, a whole lot of gaff and releasing the rear brake (or having discs) will hold it together to ride back to the trail head. And if you think those are unbelievable, I’ve seen both happen on list rides, as well as one idiot who broke his derailleur hanger midway through the Xmas ride, so zip tied the derailleur to the chainstay of his duallie so he could singlespeed the rest of the way.

If you don’t have a part in your toolkit, you may be able to scavenge something useable from somewhere else. The bolt from a rear LED clamp has been pressed into service as a jockey wheel bolt before, and sometimes you can use one bolt out of a twin bolt stem in the seatpost. Another interesting point is that a 3mm allen key is just the right size to fit the hole left when the pin holding the derailleur parallelogram falls out. Remember that you have to be very careful after this kind of repair – You’ve probably weakened the bit you’ve nicked the part from – but at least you can ride home.

Dave Hughes

If you’ve ever had you bike receive a five finger discount, you’ll know just how crappy the experience is. At the same time, it does not prevent us from buying cheaper bikes, just because some scum might steal them. How to mag – Make, has a great article about how to ‘ugly’ your bike to prevent potential thieves from noticing it all that bit too much.

Check out the article here

Ok, firstly power to weight… this is the ‘simple’ bit. Two things I can do here, (a) increase power or (b) decrease weight. Now both of these are going to be good but I thought that I’d get serious about tackling the weight thing and see someone about what I should be doing (who’da thunk that learning to eat would be so difficult?).

Based on a recommendation from my cycling club I went to see Dr Naras Lapsys (http://www.thebodydoctor.com.au/) who is a sports dietician – what this means is that he specialises in not only helping in working out what to eat but makes sure that this is in line with the sort of training that you’re doing. For me, I need / want to loose about 10kg (currently 176cm and 90kg, want to hit 80kg ish) but I want to do it in a way that enables me to still have the energy to train.

So, this is what an ‘average’ training week looks like for me:

· Monday AM: easy ride, approx 30km, focus on cadence HR <85%

· Monday PM: Ride home, ANZAC bridge evening race J, approx 15-20 min hard

· Tuesday AM: Easy ride (5km), spin class 50min, ride to work (5km)

· Tuesday PM: Ride home, ANZAC bridge evening race, approx 15-20 min easy

· Wednesday AM: easy ride, approx 30km, focus on cadence HR <85%

· Wednesday PM: longer ride home, approx 18km, varied terrain

· Thursday AM: Hill repeats – New South Head road * 3, Cranbrook Rd * 3 (big chain ring – Heartbreak hill in 50*11 – ouch!!!!)

· Thursday PM: Straight home

· Friday AM: Easy ride (5km), spin class 50min, ride home (5km)

· Saturday / Sunday: One long MTB ride – 3-4 hours or hard road session with club, other day off.

All up this works out to be about 12 hours or so.

The analysis of my nutrition actually showed that my basic eating habits weren’t too bad but there was some unpleasant news L. We were doing quite well until the discussion of booze came up… did you know that having the odd alcohol free day is counterproductive to weight-loss (and fitness training in general)? So, mid week drinking is to be severely curtailed. Apart from that, it was mostly tinkering and putting something together that reflected the emphasis that I have on doing longer endurance work on the weekends.

So, roughly the eating plan is:

• Get up, have piece of fruit to kick-start metabolism (nothing you eat now is going to fuel the ride but it will trick your brain into metabolising food from the night before)
• Once at work, wholegrain bread, cream cheese & jam or baked beans on toast – good carbs and protein to aid recovery of muscles.
• Lunch, alternate between a carb and non-carb lunch – for me this is either a tuna sandwich or some sort of packaged salad (coles or woollies – Sumo etc are chockas in fat and a bit of a rip off!) and add some form of protein on top
• Afternoon snack – some sort of yogurt or protein drink
• Dinner – pretty much anything I want but making an effort to reduce the amount of carbs – i.e. if we have spag bol then more mince, less pasta. This is what is going to fuel the ride the next morning.
• Weekends… anything goes (my favourite quote was ‘if you feel you need a burger and chips after a big ride then go for it’)

There are some other principles as well, firstly eat at home 5 nights a week. This one is TOUGH – you know how it is, working in the city, late nights, can’t be arsed cooking, Glebe Point rd less than 5 mins walk away… not doing so well on this so far. Other big one was mid-week alcohol, this is allowed but no more opening a bottle with my wife and then finishing it off – one glass of wine or one beer only. Again, a tough one – how long was it that you got home after a long crappy day and were happy with _a_ beer?!?!?!

Well, been following the plan for about two weeks now and it seems to be working. I feel like I’ve got enough energy to ride strongly which initially I was worried about as it’s a lot less calories than I have been eating and my guess would be that I’ve dropped a kg or so.

Next time, more on the actual bike training bit!