I’m not sure what your experience has been with bike riding in Vancouver this spring, but I know that mine has been almost unpleasant.  It seems like every day that I have off it has been pouring rain. If I didn’t like riding my bike so much, I might even take up golfing.  Oh right, I suppose it is just as miserable golfing in the rain.

As could be expected with a wet spring like the one we’ve had, the 17th?? annual ritual known as the Test of Metal occurred in the middle of a downpour.  I think this is 8th TOM that I’ve done, and this one had to be the wettest, most slippery of them all.

TOM 2012 Mud Bath 

I woke up at six o’clock on Saturday morning, looked out the window, and basically made up my mind to be … Read More »

Time for some love. Broken and rotted rungs stop the flow of a trail.
We spent this June NSMBA Trail Day to fix one of many damaged structures.

Anyone who regularly rides on the North Shore trails will agree that ladder bridges are an integral part of our trail network. We use them to connect sections of unridable trail, to ride over mud bogs, streams, fallen trees, and across ravines, not to mention to reduce erosion in sensitive environments. In the case of Boogieman there are numerous sections that require a bridge to complete parts of the trail. We selected one bridge in particular that was becoming unsafe due to rot and did not have a ride around as an option. Our focus: to re-build a new bridge that was safe, would sustain at least a decades worth of mountain bike traffic, … Read More »

><p><p><p><p><br><br>As</p></p></p></p>(Video by Connor Macloed) As it was brought to my attention, building a ladder bridge is much more time consuming that you would think. Part of what added to the challenge, was using all natural wood from the fallen trees; trail side. Going so far as to splitting cedar logs to make the planks to complete the runway for the ladder bridge, added to the craft of the process.

Over the years I have ridden miles of ladder bridges without the slightest idea how many pain staking hours it takes to build just one of these things! Spending the day building one was a real eye opener and was incredibly interesting and an educating experience.

Here is a 3 minute video speeding through the steps of the 8 hours of how this ladder bridge was built by Sean Gerke and … Read More »

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Race day started off with delicious homemade skillet compliments of the “ledged” Mike Chan.  The Cumberland DH “brogram” consisted of me, James “Billington the 3rd”, Steve Chan, and Chris “toe jam” Fisher.  

After a lengthy registration we “kitted” up and loaded up the Budget cube van – classic BC cup style.  I decided to skip the shuttle and pedal the D8 up the road – the thing climbs as well as it descends. A late snow pack had us pushing through slush and slop. 30 mins later you arrive at the top of the course overlooking Courtney. 

The course is built on “hero dirt” – that gold dirt trail builders jump through hoops for. There was an unfamiliar object in the sky, the sun, making the course quick and tacky. 

The top of the course was wide open pedally … Read More »

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With such a beautiful day and such a tough job (testing the Santa Cruz’ Driver8) we rallied the troops in search of dirt. After a solid 40 mins of late March knee deep snow we threw a couple pedal stokes into a great ride down Roaches, Stupid Grouse, and a little golden nugget called “Tall Boy“. Scott Pelecki was behind the lens of his Canon SD550 churning out some nuggets even Derek Dix would approve of.

-Connor

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With 2010 Olympics around the corner I decided to check out what all the fuss was about.  Whistler is known for its world famous bike park and to our amazement offers winter activities in the form of skiing and snowboarding. If you haven’t tried it – give it a whirl, its actually fun- especially on days with POWDER!

Thanks to the good folks at Subaru, and Peter Kewit and Sons Derek Dix carefully transported us to the base of Whistler in just over an hour! Despite F1 g-forces and DJ Khaled coming through the wires I managed to find a photographer for the Santa Cruz Driver8 review – Derek Dix – expect some “BOSS” work when he returns from school in Calgary.

The conditions were great with something like 40cm in the past 48 hours and more to … Read More »

In true Christmas fashion all the festivities are out! The Christmas bear hung on to Dave’s headtube the whole ride in from Vancouver. On second thought he might have been frozen on…With temperatures plummeting our usual wet December is all about snow. The snow started falling early this morning and by the time we arrived at the store we had a good 8 inches of snow blocking the front doorway. Not being the best commuting weather, I was very impressed to see Dave and Danu still managed to ride their bikes to work. Not sure if it was the safest way to get here, but impressive none the less!

Yes we still open and will be open every day rain, shine, or snow up until Christmas!

-Kimbo

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With winter fast approaching, it’s time again for the dreaded indoor trainer workouts for anyone looking to keep the legs sharp for next season. My weapon of choice is the CycleOps Fluid Trainer. I will generally do just about anything to avoid trainer time but inevitably I’m forced to spend some indoor time on the bike when the weather is just plain ugly.

The CycleOps Fluid is extremely quiet; in fact the loudest part of riding the fluid trainer is the actually mechanical noise of the bike in motion. This has not always been the case with resistance trainers from yesteryear. It wasn’t too far back that I remember cranking the TV up to “11” or strategically positioning a ghetto blaster pounding out the latest Metallica or Whitesnake offerings as the only way to drown out the drone of the resistance … Read More »

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(By Graham from Kintec) Day 2 was our longest day by far. My Giant Reign was the perfect bike. It would consist of huge climbs, long alpine meadow rides and fantastic views. The initial weather forecast called for sun and clound, but the day started with beautiful sunny skies. Looking at the weather at the start of the day I re-evaluated what I was going to bring – neoprene gloves, nope don’t need those. Goretex pants, gone. Wow could I have made any worse decisions.

The peak that you can see to the right in the picture above is Tullin Mountain. This is about 1/3 of the way that we would be traveling today. The day started with a 12 km road ride to get to the trail head. From here it was almost instantaneous hike-a-bike for over an hour.

Shortly … Read More »

>Steed Cycles owned the podium at the Sun Peaks BC Cup DH!

With two master 30+ racers on the podium Steed cycles shows they have the experience! Bryon was on the top step and Tim Graversen was third after having a big yard sale in the second last corner. The course was super fast and loose with plenty of bermed corners to help keep the speed up. The track conditions were near perfect with rain falling in Kamloops during the week to help settle the silt and dust that Sun Peaks is known for. How close was the racing? How does 0.58 seconds separating the top three (and remember that yard sale) and eleven guys within eight seconds of first place! All I can say is you gotta be good to be lucky. Maybe it was lucky I drew the … Read More »