Went out for a quick rip yesterday morning on the Red Mountain cross country course in Mission, BC. The trail conditions on the mountain are really influenced by the weather, but since it’s been sunny and cool for the past five or six days, the trail is really dialled.
The xc course on Red isn’t that demanding, but it does have a couple of spots that keep you on your toes.
Sorry for the relative lack of photos, but we didn’t spend a whole lot of time snoozing on the side of the trail.
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There are three seasons in a cyclist’s calendar – riding season, off-season and trade show season. There are hundreds of bike shows across North America each year, but only a handful register on the radars of nearly every rider out there.
With Eurobike already out of the way and Interbike less than two weeks away, the Canadian cycling industry held its annual ExpoCycle trade show in Montreal Sept. 10-12. Most of the 3,000 bike shops across the country sent some sort of representation to the show, which gives dealers and media the chance to see some of the new products that will be on the market for the upcoming riding season. I had a chance to cover the show once again for Pedal Magazine (see the stories at www.pedalmag.com) and it was as bling-blingy and fun as ever.
Where the 2005 shows seemed to be the year of the all-carbon-all-the-time attitude, 2006 seems to have manufacturers classing up their use of carbon with more dramatic and artistic molding, more paint-covered designs and mixing the weave with exotic materials such as carbon and magnesium.
The show this year also showed the increased popularity in triathlons, with dozens of manufacturers making components, bikes or clothing specifically designed for tri events. Triathlons are a fun alternative to just biking, and you’ll read more about these here on TheBikingHub in the future.
Anyway, after hours and hours of walking around the ExpoCycle show at Place Bonaventure in downtown Montreal, I’ve come up with a list of companies with products that really blew me away. Here’s my top 10 list of favourite items found at this year’s show. Read the rest of this entry »
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I don’t spend too much ride time on Vancouver’s North Shore but, a couple of times per year, I throw my bike on my car and make the 45 minute drive to one of the Shore’s main mountain bike destinations (Seymour, Fromme, or Cypress). On a whim, I headed out to Fromme this morning to ride Seventh Secret, a technical singletrack line that winds its way through some pretty steep, rooty terrain.
The day was blessed with classic Shore weather — light rain and low cloud — and I passed a bunch of riders on the way up who were looking for the same type of day as me. After I got over the fact that my Crank Bros. Egg Beaters and my shoes didn’t get along, and there wasn’t much I could do about it (the wet rubber on the soles of my shoes squeaked every which way but loose whenever they were in contact with the spindles on the Egg Beaters), I settled into the 35ish minute climb up to Seventh. Read the rest of this entry »
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15 September »
Gear shots »
Dan
There comes a time in every rider’s life when they suffer what is known as traveler’s regret. It usually happens when a cyclist is on vacation somewhere without their bike and they realize they’re in a city that has either some spectacular singletrack or great road riding opportunities.
Traveling with a bike can be expensive, cumbersome and a huge headache, yet it can also be incredibly rewarding. Having ridden in cities all over the US, it seems like I’ve tried every option for traveling with a bicycle – from shipping it ahead of time to using a $500 hardshell case. But a new option has made it easier for more people to move about the world with their favourite rides, without spending $500 on a case.
American company Crate Works starting out producing bicycle travel cases that were slightly more permanent than a cardboard bike box. They were cheap in price and meant to be used a few times before being replaced. Then they came out with corrugated plastic versions of the box, and today they’re using corrugated high-density polyethylene.
The Crate Works Pro XL-C World Traveler is a $265 CDN bicycle carrying case made from CORR-X, a 6mm high-density polyethylene. It has five pieces of compression foam and lots of tie downs to secure any time of bike quickly and easily. Read the rest of this entry »
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Located inside Golden Ears Provincial Park in Maple Ridge, I’ve been doing this ride for years and it never seems to get old. It starts out with about 12km of single- and doubletrack climbing and finishes with a mixed-bag descent that is close to 5km long. Depending on the pace for the day, it’ll take between 1.5 and 2 hours for the loop.
The biking trails at Mike Lake are moderately technical for this area and are not maintained by the company in charge of park management (and that’s a story for another day). That means there are some pretty chundery areas and there are a number of loose areas that could cause problems at any point during the year.
One more pic after the jump. Sorry for the lousy exposures. Snapshots and sunny days don’t usually go well together under the canopy. Read the rest of this entry »
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