Walterworks

I recently came across the Waltworks blog, written by Walt Wehner. He's a genius with a welding torch and a machine shop, creating all kinds of insane custom bikes and parts. Those include this '36er(!) that he's working on:

He's also put a serious ding on my grand master plan to one day own a Soulcraft custom frame.  I mean, 1200 for a hardtail mountain or a road frame versus 1700? Shit.

Thanks to Swoo at Constant Revolution for the link!

Mountain Magic - Shimano Di2

The coolest electronic gizmo for a mountain bike since the Cannondale Simon electronic suspension:

The Fairwheel Bikes Di2 mountain bike. The Di2 package has been reprogrammed for sequential shifting, so the rider only pushes up or down on the control and the next highest or lowest ratio will be automatically selected. It even skips doubled ratios.

Mountain bikes and electronics definitely go together

 Not only that, but the system has been put on a Titus titanium frame with a Cannondale Lefty fork and Enve tubular rims weighing in at about 16lbs (claimed).  Of course, it does cost about 12 grand without the sweet shifting system. But I'll ignore that in my dreams.

How I wish I could go to Interbike...

From Bike Radar

Brett Tippie Carving Gravel

Freeride pioneer Brett Tippie destroying a snowboard on gravel in 1993:

From Pinkbike

Oakley Icon Sender

Wicked little video clip of people doing big jumps at Red Bull Rampage events.







Also, as most people are finishing their race seasons off and putting away their bikes, mine is just getting started.  First race with the UofT mountain biking team is tomorrow! Pictures and a write up to follow next week.

Niagara Bike Tour

I headed off last weekend with a group of 5 other people from Bike Sauce to tour around the Niagara Wine region. I installed a rack and loaded up Millie, the thoroughly modern Fiori Roma, with panniers and a sleeping bag, then attached a cart and headed out. We took a train from Toronto to Burlington (to skip all the ugly suburbs) and took parts of the waterfront trail and parts of the wine road to maximize the beauty and potential alcohol consumption of the ride.  Here are some pictures of the trip:

Riding buddies (left to right) - me, James, Chris, Andrew, Michelle, Alex

Winery number one - look like you like each other!

I should point out that Puddicombe, the first winery we visited, had a fantastic merlot. I stupidly didn't buy a bottle, thinking that a) $17.50 is a little steep and b)I might be able to find something equal but cheaper elsewhere. Bad call, and they don't sell that one to the LCBO.  Oh well, next time...

After Puddicombe, we traveled up mountainview road, which really looked like the Sonoma County wine region I forgot I missed so much.

Grape vines and bicycles, who could ask for more?

Taken with a car's trunk as a tripod, hence the angle

The second winery also made mead, which I'd been dieing to try for ages.  Their cherry mead is very good, but I think their regular honey mead is better, I recommend.

We had been planning on enjoying the Organized Crime winery; however, when we arrived, it turned out that they only had whites, their fridge wasn't working, the bottles and tastes were expensive, and the name came from thieving Methodists, not the Ontario mafia, as we (or maybe just the royal we) were hoping. We skipped the hell out of there, and came upon our final winery for the day, the East Dell (I think) Winery, which had very good wine at bike tourer prices.

The happy lushes, many wine tastes down

After stocking up on our evening's supply and ogling the bride in a low-cut top taking pictures below the rear window, we headed to our campground.

Everything after went something like this:

Before wine

Before wine

After wine!

How much wine?

This much wine

The lack of pictures from dinner and the campfire until the next morning about parallels my memory for that time...

Riding back, some of us were a little floored:

Bikes keep left, Egyptians keep right

Total kms: 120. Total bottles of wine consumed: 9. Total horizontal trackstands: 1. On the whole, a fantastic weekend and definitely a trip worth repeating.

Oh, and a video of the journey made by Alex Baravyan-Gauthier:

Biking Niagara from Alex BG on Vimeo.

Life Cycles Trailer

I completely forgot to post this last week: the official trailer for Life Cycles has come out. And I'm excited.






From Pinkbike

All-City Nature Boy

I saw the picture on Constant Revolution of the new All-City Nature Boy about a month ago.

Photo taken by Swoo

I didn't really pay attention to it at the time, so I only just realized that I was seeing an awesome single speed cyclocross bike, and not a fixed-gear road bike like I originally thought.

Now I've read a great review by Prolly which basically described this as my ideal commuter bike with lots of awesome features (internal cable routing for the rear brake, what up!) And at $899 US for the complete bike, how could I go wrong? Too bad I'm trying to save up for a new 29er wheelset next spring... Oh well, congrats to the guys at All-City for making a fantastic looking bike.

Try a Du and Night Rides

Okay, I had things to say about riding last Tuesday, but I waited too long and I've forgotten.  Except that it was my first ride with the Magicshine mounted to my helmet, and it was awesome.  And slow.  I really need to start hitting these trails during the day to get a feel for the twists, bumps and drops.  I also finally got new batteries for the camera, so I'll be able to take pictures of some of the ridiculous trail features. 

I other news, I intended for a second try-a-tri last Saturday, but unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate, and they canceled the swim, thus making it a try-a-du (2k run, 10k bike, 2k run.)  Despite the last minute changes, it went really well.  I did the first run pretty quickly (maybe too quickly) actually beating my previous best mile time by about a minute.  I also came first in my category for bike time, even despite my size and the horrible wind.  My total time was 40:47 with a split of 7:35/22:47/10:26.  I couldn't believe how difficult the second run was on my legs; I'm fairly sure I got passed by at least 15 people in that section.  I guess that's why they call it the brick.

Official pictures haven't been posted yet, but here's a couple of my friend Jesse and me post-race.

On Sunday I made the mistake of taking a decent (~100k) ride in my cheap commuter shoes.  These have cleats, but the sole is rubber, not hard plastic (lets be honest here, I can't afford carbon fiber) and does not provide good support to the balls of the feet.  After the ride I could barely walk for almost a day.  I went into the bike shop in the biggest, most comfortable shoes I own and softly padded around for fear of tumbling.  Stupid commuting shoes.  Because of that, I decided to skip a Big Dirty Don Ride on Monday with the don rats.  I was pretty stoked for it, and was bummed to miss it, but it turned out that they hit 110km of the Don, which is ridiculous.  They ended up going for 9 hours.  Maybe I don't regret missing it that much...

I'm going on a bike tour in the Niagra wine region this weekend, which is going to be tons of fun.  Hopefully I can get some pictures with the Magicshine next week to do a full review

Brett Tippie on Breaking Bikes

I've got some things to say about the Donrats ride last night, but here's something from an interview of Brett Tippie at Ridemonkey until I get to it.

From: http://www.nsmb.com/2961-by-the-wayside

Excerpt:

Bikes in the early years of freeriding weren't exactly meant for such abuse. What do you think is the most parts you went through in a week?

Whole Bikes. I've gone through probably three complete bikes in a week. Frames, wheels, two bars, two sets of cranks, and pedals...and seats.

Damn, Brett.  That's hard-core. Also, if I wasn't so scared of regular cross country, I would love to try freeride.