Earlier this year, Hailey Moore reviewed her True Love Cycles Heart Breaker—a steel-tubed drop-bar mountain bike made in Warsaw, Poland. The original build spec saw the Heart Breaker outfitted with a short-travel color-matched and refurbished RockShox RS-1 but, after a long review period with this setup, Hailey was keen to shave a little weight and see how a rigid fork paired with the frame. Read on for her update on riding the Heart Breaker with Whisky’s No. 9 MTN Boost fork.
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Dandy Horse Hyperion 30 GRX Wheel Review: Getting Wide in Warsaw
With a 28-millimeter internal diameter, a 30-millimeter rim depth and marketed for gravel riding, the Dandy Horse Hyperion 30 GRX is a unique offering in the crowded field of carbon gravel wheelsets. After riding these wheels extensively on her True Love Cycles Heart Breaker, Hailey Moore shares her review and writes about how they fit into the growing “niche-ification” of cycling trends.
Reportage
Hailey’s Crust Bombora: A Work in Progress
Part shape-shifter, part time capsule, Hailey‘s Crust Bikes Bombora has taken many forms. It’s the bike that she got when she first started really getting into bikes, and bike touring, and since then it’s the one she’s altered the most, always finding a way to keep it relevant as her preferences and bike collection evolve. In this somewhat unconventional review, she veers into the sentimental as she highlights some of the setups her Bombora has seen over the past five years.
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Variable Conditions: A Panorama Cycles Torngat Ti Fat Bike Review
This past winter, Hailey Moore got a primer in fat biking while test riding Panorama Cycles’s Torngat Ti. Her review assesses both the bike and the challenge of finding ideal fat biking conditions.
Radar
Q&A With Spruce Cycles and Jason’s Race-Spec 2016 Salsa Beargrease Fat Bike
Not too many people have ridden the Colorado Trail on a fat bike. But Jason Winkler has. Hailey Moore shares a Q&A with the maker behind Spruce Cycles and his race-spec 2016 Salsa Beargrease.
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Long Term Relationship: A True Love Cycles Heart Breaker Review
After spending nearly six months riding Polish builder True Love Cycle’s Heart Breaker, Hailey Moore pens a long-term review of this drop-bar 29er, and compares and contrasts two vastly different build specs.
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First Ride Review: Veolo Bike Trailer
After a successful Kickstarter campaign at the end of 2023, the Veolo bike trailer is moving to production—available for pre-order now with an expected arrival time of May 2024. Hailey Moore has been looking for an analog system for carrying more commuting cargo by bike and was intrigued by the Veolo’s lightweight build, modest storage footprint, and hefty carrying capacity.
Read on for her first-ride review of this German-made bike trailer…
Reportage
Mental Detours Part Two: The Italy Divide to Rome and a Dolomites Mini-Tour
In part two of her Reportage from bike touring in Italy, Hailey Moore writes about arriving in Rome and feeling the weight of history in the Eternal City. She and Anton Krupicka also tack on a three-day multi-sport tour in the Dolomite mountains.
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Wearing the Pants: Dovetail Is Making Workwear for Women, By Women
Started in 2018 by the two owners of a landscaping business in Oregon, Dovetail Workwear aim to make “top-to-toe, all-season, all-reason” utility apparel for women. Hailey Moore stumbled upon their work pants at her local hardware store and wanted to know more. Read on for her review of Dovetail’s workwear and thoughts on how the brand’s mission is having an impact beyond the retail space.
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A Happy Medium: Cedaero Fork Lift Pack Review
In this review of the Cedaero Fork Lift Pack, Hailey Moore writes about the benefits of hybridizing traditional touring setups with more streamlined bikepacking products, and assesses how Cedaero’s additon to today’s fork bag offerings faired in wet weather this past summer in Colorado.
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Hailey’s Favorite Products of 2023
As 2023 comes to a close, Hailey Moore shares the gear that she turned to again and again this year. Read on for the products that have become indispensable in her bike-touring setup, a couple of apparel recommendations, an off-the-bike surprise, and her 2023 Ride Playlist.
Reportage
Mental Detours Part One: Bike Touring the Italy Divide(ish)
Travel is routinely romanticized. And it is romantic—how could having the privilege of “checking out” of the daily drum of work, family, bills, etc., and the attendant stress in favor of experiencing a new place not be? The word vacation is, of course, derived from the verb “to vacate,” and while going on vacation is about the act of leaving, it’s also about finding. Finding new culture, new landscapes, new experiences, but maybe just as importantly it’s about finding new perspective on what it is you’ve placed on hold.
After two weeks spent bike touring in Italy in October, Hailey Moore reflects on what she found while away and the paradox of trying to experience more than the Trip Advisor-version of a place without missing the five-star sights. Read on for part one of her Italy Divide reflections while riding from Trento to Florence.
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On Growing Up: Swift Industries Celebrates 15 Years of Making Bike Bags
Based in Seattle, Washington, Swift Industries is a bike bag company known for blending classic randonneuring aesthetics with modern functionality. Co-founded in 2008 by Martina Brimmer and Jason Goodman, the brand has grown from a basement DIY passion project to a mainstay in the bike luggage space. In celebration of their 15-year anniversary, Hailey Moore writes about Swift’s journey over the years from its founders’ punk roots, to landing shelf space in REI.
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Welcome to the Neighborhood: Treehouse Cyclery Opens in Denver’s Five Points
The door is freshly painted on the corner of Downing Street and 30th in the northeast Denver, Colorado neighborhood of Five Points. Behind the new blue facade, light washes in to reveal high ceilings and smooth wooden floors—heavily polished over time by both varnish and foot traffic. The rest of the space has that just-righted tidiness of a host’s house before a dinner party: intentional, inviting and immaculate. It’s an old building with a new idea, but Treehouse Cyclery isn’t its first bike shop.
Read on for Hailey Moore‘s shop visit to Denver’s newest, community-focused, bike shop: Treehouse Cyclery.
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Sharing Time: Riding the Komoot Slovenia Women’s Rally
I’m a sucker for movies like Love Actually and novels like Let the Great World Spin that seek to capture how, taken as a whole, the paths of individual lives become interwoven to create a meaningful story. During my time riding in Slovenia at a recent Komoot Women’s Rally and hearing snippets of different rider’s journeys to the start, it felt like I was living in one of these tapestry-like narratives in real time. The thing is though, we’re all doing this all the time but we just can’t always see it. Having the common thread of the bicycle and a shared destination to ride brought our collective overlap into sharp focus but this is a story that runs off the page in both directions—each woman in attendance has a rich history that predates these words and one that will surely continue long after. But, I felt grateful to experience a shared, if brief, chapter during our time in the saddle in Slovenia.
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A Familiar Feeling: A Review of the Sklar Bikes SuperSomething
Adam Sklar has been building custom bikes for close to a decade—and we’ve featured plenty of them on this site! But, in 2022 he decided to move production of a new model overseas to Taiwan. Dubbed the SuperSomething, this first production Sklar has road bike bones while still (subtly) paying homage to Adam’s mountain biking roots. Hailey Moore has been riding our signature Radavist edition SuperSomething all summer and, below, shares her review, along with insights into Adam’s design intent for this all-steel gravel bike.
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Bodywork To-Go: Wave Tools Therapy All-in-One Massage Tool and Arete Scraper Review
Created by two climbers turned Physical Therapists, Wave Tools Therapy offers two portable soft tissue massage and myofascial release tools that lower the barrier to entry for routine bodywork. Hailey Moore has been using the original Wave Tool for years and, below, shares a brief review on why it and its successor, the Arete Scraper, should be essential for every cyclist.
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Circumnavigating the Sawatch Range: A Classic Colorado Bike Touring Route
With numerous high summits along the Continental Divide and over a dozen 14,000′ peaks, the Sawatch Mountains are the heart of central Colorado’s alpine riding. Below, Hailey Moore shares a 340-mile bike touring route that circumnavigates 14 of the 15 Sawatch peaks by linking together a few of the region’s classic high passes and resupply options in iconic mountain towns. Read on for Hailey’s inspiration behind crafting this classic Colorado cyclo-touring route, detailed information for each section, and an optional extension that loops around Mt. Holy Cross to make the route a complete circumnavigation.