Search Term – Change
Are you ready for the next paradigm shift in drop bar bikes? In news that will come with little to zero surprise, this same shift began in the mountain bike world nearly a decade ago. It took a while for people to jump on the bandwagon, but once they were on, the entire industry figured it out. Now it’s drop bar’s turn. Here we go with the titanium Knolly Cache.
“Right now, protecting each other is more important than mountain biking. Staying home is essential to safeguard our communities and slow the spread of COVID-19. Our trails will be waiting for us. IMBA wants to make sure we will all be there for our trails.” —Dave Wiens, IMBA Executive Director
IMBA has released an updated number of safety measures to help us fully comprehend the magnitude of this pandemic we’re all in. Read IMBA’s updated procedures for how to safely ride in the current environment.
Riding on the road still maintains many of the same principals. Avoid crowded bike paths, or routes, take the road less traveled. Ride solo if possible, or with a household partner. If you must ride with a friend for safety or other reasons, maintain social distancing. Be safe out there, y’all. Remember, the safest place to be is indoors. Wash your hands!
There have been a lot of discussions surrounding how to behave socially during the Covid 19 pandemic, yet a lot of the basic precautions are being ignored, and certain actions are affecting smaller communities across the globe. While we all should be self-quarantining, socially isolating, and staying at home over the foreseeable future, more importantly, we need to acknowledge that this pandemic is not a vacation.
Now, I’m not a religious person, but I did grow up in a Christian church, so I am well aware of the characters, entities, and symbolism that exists in the Bible. Using the word “Antichrist” in the title of this review will ruffle some feathers, but hear me out. If we look at the phrase metaphorically, the Antichrist is opposition to the status quo, said to appear before the end of the world. Now, reading the reactions to this bike online, many would have you believe it is the harbinger of doom for the gravel world and ya know what? If that is the case, burn it down because the Chamois Hagar is exactly what the gravel world needs…
Last year, my partner Karla and I rode the northern half of the Baja Divide which soon, and as expected, became the hardest pedaling we had ever done, but also one of the most fulfilling experiences of our lives so when we went home we just kept on dreaming about going back for the second half of it.
There’s a lot going on in the world right now with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has upended many people’s lives. Unfortunately, this falls right in the middle of our relocation to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Yet, I can’t complain because people are dying from this virus. Our minor inconvenience is nothing compared to that.
It’s obvious that California has been a great host state for our operations over the past five years but I’ve been feeling the draw to move out of the Golden State for some time now, for various reasons, both related to the content of this website and my own personal sanity.
Our move to Santa Fe mostly stems from the fact that recently I’ve found myself gravitating toward smaller-towns, rather than big cities. Cari, my partner, who plays a huge role in the admin side of this site, has family ties to New Mexico. We both wanted to live somewhere at a higher elevation, with easier access to the activities we love and a greatly reduced population. Our road trip through Santa Fe last summer, plus various trips over the years solidified our decision.
Los Angeles’ riding is unparalleled when compared to other major US-cities and hopefully, we’ve shown that over the years. You can’t get much better than the Santa Monica, Verdugo, and San Gabriel mountains, our three major ranges in the area. There are hundreds of miles of easily-accessible dirt roads, singletrack, and doubletrack in the area and it’s been a great community to be a part of.
That said, I personally just get inundated with the constant hustle. Over the years, it’s just gotten to me. Everyone is always moving at 110% and both Cari and I are looking for a calmer environment to live in. What I’m personally looking forward to is documenting the cyclists in Santa Fe, working with the local organizations, and being in the Four Corners. I’ll miss the Sierra, the Mojave, and everything in between, but I look forward to all the Southwest has to offer.
We’re moving as soon as we can, which will probably happen in the next week or so. During this process, we’ll be closing down webshop shipping but continuing the site’s day-to-day content schedule. Please, during this crazy time, be safe out there!
If you’re in the Santa Fe area, be sure to holler, I look forward to riding bikes with you all.
Recently, we got back on an old trail that we used to ride, especially during lunch breaks. We used this trail to train in view of a multi-day bikepacking trip. Over the years, wind and snow have broken and even uprooted many trees, resulting in an unpassable section of singletrack that crosses the coniferous forest. So we decided to clear the passages obstructed by the trees. That’s when we noticed that on some of these trees there were bird nests. From time to time, the characteristic noise of the woodpecker at work could be heard in the distance. At that precise moment, the idea was born to “recycle” some sections of these conifers and create birdhouses with them, letting the rest of the logs follow its natural cycle as humus.
Ventura is one of the last remaining quaint little beach towns in Southern California that is known for its surf. I know I’ve said this about Santa Barbara before, but compared to Ventura, the city just north has seasonal waves at best due to the Islands that block South tropical swells from barreling into its beaches. Plus, some go as far as saying that the Santa Barbara county line was, in a way, gerrymandered to include Rincon, the only break that really puts it on the radar. This is a tangent, but who cares, right? I know this is the Radavist, and we’re typically mountain people. Hang in there. The mountains are coming. Ventura has its unique point break right off the California St exit and next to the fairgrounds where I’d go to watch the Van’s Warped Tour as a kid in the 90’s. This point break is known as C-Street. I would argue rivals Rincon at certain swell angles, with its many take-off points that lead into a long, smooth yet punctuated ride requiring you to navigate sectioning walls through a sea of people and of the literal sea, making your way down the beach.
The seed was planted last summer during a weekend visit to Cameron Falconer’s compound in Quincy to ride singletrack in Plumas National Forest, one of my favorite local playgrounds. I already had a 5-year-old Falconer hardtail that I loved and rode everywhere, and there was nothing wrong with it.
Well, there actually was something wrong with my bike on that Saturday (a component failure), so I borrowed one of Cameron’s personal steel hardtails to ride on Sunday. Luckily for me we ride roughly the same size bike. Cameron has experimented with quite a few geometries over the years since he made my last bike, and the loaner I was on happened to be one of his latest designs. We were riding big chunky rough stuff in the Lakes Basin area and I was bouncing through big rock gardens more comfortably than with my old bike, feeling a lot more stable, and by the end of the ride I was like, “BUILD ME ONE LIKE THIS.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild geese jaguar, harsh and exciting
Over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.
-(modified) Mary Oliver “Wild Geese”
The weather matched the event in challenging the assumptions of what a desert landscape or a gravel race should be for most of the riders of the Ruta Del Jefe this year which was hosted at the Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch in Elgin, AZ. The imagination of a desert as a dry and sunny landscape dotted with saguaros, prickly pears, and cholla was expanded for those who held that thinking. Home to the Madrean Sky Islands ecoregion that includes the Santa Ritas, Whetstone, and many other mountain ranges, this area is a treasure trove for those who eat gravel for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sky Islands refers to the unique interplay between the low lying desert grasslands and the dramatic wooded mountains that become islands in the sky for their residents. Natt Dodge introduced this concept as “mountain island in a desert sea” back in 1948 which was then cemented by Weldon Heald’s book Sky Island in 1967. In the lowlands, this area is home to many unique varieties of grasses who abundantly glow their sunshine and straw colors to her visitors.
It’s been almost a year since NAHBS. I was pretty nervous about going to America, but just before I left I heard that the Dynaplug people; who I’d developed a vague online relationship with, were here in London so we met up for fish and chips. Long story short, they were awesome, we really hit it off, and they totally put my mind at ease about my trip. We made plans to meet again in Chico while I was there, but my whirlwind schedule around NAHBS and subsequent road trip with the legendary Anna Schwinn (which was probably one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life) didn’t allow time-wise.
Up to this point, the route-finding came easy in Kyrgyzstan. The North-Eastern zone of the country has seen its fair share of bikepackers floating along its gravel tracks to weed through the wealth of options available. As we made our way south from the small oasis city of Baetov, our direction was less clear. We knew we’d be heading for Northern Tajikistan, but had no real idea about how we’d end up there or what type of riding we’d be in for along the way.
From the shadow of mount Tam to the coastal plains of Santa Barbara exists a quilt of broken earth. An underlying structure of torn apart geology transported hundreds of miles from where it was originally emplaced. A Mediterranean climate of warm summers and cool wet winters that becomes progressively drier towards the equator. A diverse floral assemblage stemming from the eroded remains of rocks past and present harboring condors, salmon and mountain lions. From North America’s largest estuary reflecting pastel sunrise to the sandstone peaks of the east/west transverse ranges gleaming pink and orange as the sun sets over the pacific.
Author’s Note: This article was originally written almost 4 years ago, but was shelved after thinking I had lost a majority of the photos to a failed drive. After I managed to find many of the lost photos on an old SD card, I figured it was still worth sharing the last trip that inspired me to quit my job and travel the world by bike…
This is exciting! Jan Bennett and Bikepacking Roots have been working on a few new routes, including the Pony Express. This past summer, Jan became the first person to pedal the old mailing route, officially and now they’re working on making it an official route but they need your help. Read on for more…
Wow! It feels like yesterday I was still calling Austin my home, riding the rolling hills and ripping around on the limestone and cedar tree-lined singletrack. Those were some magical years for me, filled with a lot of amazing memories, solid friendships, and watching my friends open their own businesses, only to have them bloom and grow when I left town.
I’ve been back through Austin a few times since leaving in 2015 but never really had enough time to settle in and document the spaces of these businesses. This past trip, we had all the time in the world, so I got to work documenting my favorite of the Austin scene: the space at Cycleast and Flat Track Coffee…
Before I go into the story of Single Speed Arizona 2020, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nate. I’m from Tucson, Arizona and I own a bike shop called Blue Dog Bicycles. I eat, sleep, breathe, shit, and fart mountain biking. I’ve been making unique and challenging routes around Southern Arizona for 11 years and heading out with my friends to try to push ourselves. I host 10-15 bike events a year around Southern Arizona. Everything from taco scavenger hunts to 400-mile gravel epics. Bicycling and the Southern Arizona cycling community are almost all that I care about at this moment in my life.
When someone makes a big marketing claim, one that promises “compliance”, superb strength, and a ride quality unlike anything else on the market, I can’t help but roll my eyes. This reaction is a sentiment that I’m sure you, the readers of this very website, also feel! The cycling industry is always coming out with the next best thing and trying to get you to buy it. That’s why when I take on something to review, I like to really give it a go because if I’m going to tell you something is worth your hard-earned money, it damn well better perform.
Please don’t mind this introduction, I just wanted to explain how long I’ve been thinking about writing this review and how it’s going to seem that I was paid to sing the praises of these wheels. Spoiler alert, I was not and yes, these wheels really do live up to the marketing hype!
For the past 10 months, I’ve been riding the Zipp 3ZERO MOTO 29er wheels on my hardtail and I am a firm – pardon the pun – believer that these wheels are the best thing to hit the MTB market in some time.
