The Biking Hub: Mountain

Around the 'net » Cory

From around the ‘net 2

I could have rolled this post into yesterday’s weekly roundup but I didn’t, so you get a double shot this week.

The 29″ers. Marketing hype? Grassroots explosion? WTF is a 29″er? Whatever your take on the 29″er, there’s plenty of talk about the big-wheeled bikes around the ‘net: there was an interesting discussion about the 29″er on one of the forums at NSMB.com earlier this week; Cycling News published the results of an informal field test that compared 26″ bikes with 29″ ones.

And for those of you who think 29″ers are the creations of marketers, I suggest you look instead at the huge number of ‘all mountain’ bikes that have made their way to market over the past couple of years.

Gear news. BikeMagic has an introduction to the 2006 Giant Glory. I’ve seen the Glory in the flesh, and I must say that it’s a ridiculously sharp looking bike although, if it were my bike, I’d be a little concerned about trail debris being flicked up towards the shock mount area. There is an aftermarket carbon-fiber cover available but it probably should’ve come stock on the bike.

CyclingNews has some more information (but no pictures) about the 2007 Shimano XTR group. What’s on tap for all you Shimano devotees? Trigger shifter options, separate brake levers, an XTR branded pedal, and a carbon / titanium middle chainring are all on the table.

Doping and cycling. PezCycling News has a good introduction to EPO. Cyclelicio.us points us towards some comments by Nathan Schultz about blood doping and Tyler Hamilton. Following Schultz’s entry, there are lots of really interesting comments from a pretty diverse range of individuals and the resulting dialogue.

Mountain Cycles shuts its doors. Portland-based Mountain Cycles has closed its doors after the company’s Taiwanese parent laid off its US-based employees. Relying on Jonathan’s comments below, this move has nothing to do with the legal dispute between Specialized and Mountain Cycles over the name ‘Stumptown’.

Trail building and politicians. Trail building in British Columbia is a refined art. Builders around the province continue to develop innovative, thoughtful, and economically valuable trail networks and, as the trails become more and more popular there are a whole host of increased demands on these volunteers. NSMB.com just posted up an interesting article by a guy who’s quite involved with the trails in my neck of the woods.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 24th, 2006 at 10:40 am and is filed under Around the 'net. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.