March 18th, 2007
To The Trails!
dRj0n is looking for a bike to cover long distances and handle some trail. “purpose: covering long distances with possibility to ride rougher trails.” A typical ride might cover 60 miles 30% rolling c road, 15% singletrack, rocky rooty and minorly technical, and the remainaing 55% rail grade cinder and gravel path.
My take on the requirement would be a suitably fat tyred (32mm or wider) cross bike such as an On-One Il Pompino with suitably stiff gear for the off-road but good to go on the tarmac, or if I wanted gears a Surly Cross Check, tyres pumped up hard. Should roll well on the road and cinder gradients and j0n can use the other 15% to really practice his technical skills.
At least one other person has suggested a Voodoo Aizan gayer built up with proper drops, and having seen the result I’m inclined to agree.
On the other hand the monster cross bikes heavily featured on MTBR forum thread “monster ‘cross bikes” creeping towards world domination? just don’t cut it for me. They feature a worrying amount of excessively flared drops and silly high stems needed to compensate for the lack of drop. These bars offer less hand positions, and hence long distance variety and comfort, than true drops. Don’t give me the wrist position and ergonomics argument either, because flat bars with bar ends or Jones bars answer that one. The only thing these stupid bars have going for them is a “Hey Look At Me!” twattishness that allows you to avoid the nerd (sorry Raoul!) riding them as you see them on the road and trails. Their riders should just acknowledge that they are too crap to ride drops but don’t want to be seen using flats.
After picking up my jaw in amazement at some of the abominations on the thread - and I’m thinking of the Serrotta here - I figured, why compromise. A couple of years ago I needed to cart a bike around by bike, so I ordered a flatbed fork mount and bolted it into the bottom of the BOB trailer.
Long Vehicle about to haul ass
The beauty of this method is that you can choose both the towing bike and the trail bike according to your route with no compromise when you get there. Tarmac to the trail? Take skinny slick tyres. Fireroad and cinder? Use a cx bike to pull it. Then ride your choice of 26/29/singlespeed/gears/rigid/hardtail/full bounce when you get there.
Of course I’m not being too serious - though the whole rig was originally put together for a serious purpose while I was car-less. Using a bike to carry a bike isn’t a new idea, Chainsaw Panda carries a bike on her Monkey Xtra.
For the full effect I wanted to set it up behind the tandem but there wasn’t time. Some day maybe.
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March 27th, 2007 at 9:03 am
FGG#4405
Hey, don’t give up on the Cross-Check. Swing by the Fixed Gear Gallery http://www.fixedgeargallery.com/ and http://valla.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/fgg.pl?string22=surly&submit222=fix+me+up.
My x-check is FG and I still pull a B.O.B. Give it a thought. With a Dingle cog and a fixed/free hub, you could have a “light” steel bike with plenty of options for road or trail.
wind,
Ike
http://ikes-adventures.blogspot.com/
Hikerd@gmail.com
October 29th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Hey Nick,
i am a belgian mtb fanatic, guiding mtb tours for a belgian organization specialized in mtb adventures throughout Europe (www.elcaminoloco.be)
We would like to start organizing an alternative Coast to Coast in the UK, visiting the best places in this wonderful biking country.
The idea is to pass 2 days in the lake district, move to the northern penines (dufton, alston, garrigil) and then move up to the northumberland national park via greenhead.
We should then try to hit the east coast via kielder forest and the cheviot hills.
For the moment we are looking for some (digital) high quality mountainbike pictures of the places we want to pass by, that we can use use in our starting leaflet. Ofcourse, once we start tracking and riding the trails we will have our own “footage” that we can use.
When surfing on the net, i bumped into your profile, with some great mtb pictures in it. Could you inform us whether it is possible for us to make use of these pictures in the leaflet? We would ofcourse mention the source of the pictures.
If not, could you be so kind to pass this question through to people/organizations that could help us in this matter?
Many thanks beforehand.
Jeroen De Zutter
October 29th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Jeroen,
I’m afraid that I don’t let anyone use my photos for free, even with attribution.
Photo credits don’t pay the bills, and it would also undermines the living of professional photographers, so I’m afraid I must refuse permission to use my images.
If you do want some great images you could do worse than check out Seb Rogers, or try a photo library such as Alamy.