May 2012
10 posts
6 tags
The Smuggler's Trail
After two visits to the Chasseral I was looking for something a little different today. So I followed the Dinosaur Traces from last year, but then continued straight to Sonceboz where I started the climb of the Pierre Pertuis pass. The wide trail up to the top of the pass was easy, all on hardpack and not very steep. But things changed from there. The marked mountain bike route #44...
6 tags
A Variation To The Combe Grède Loop
Looking for a longer loop to the Chasseral with a nice amount of climbing? Look no further! Today’s loop across the Twannberg adds a couple more miles to yesterday’s loop while requiring about the same 6600 feet of climbing. I left a little late this morning because the Biocentic BB needed attention. On yesterday’s loop in creaked badly. No surprise there. The Niner...
6 tags
A Visit To The Combe Grède
After yesterday’s cycling break on Fivefingers, it was time to roll out the bike again and hit a loop in the local hills. I followed the same trails as on Wednesday only this time under a sunny sky. The Bise was blowing and kept temperatures in check; perfect riding conditions that a lot of other two-wheeled folks enjoyed as well. Three days ago I missed a really great spot - an...
5 tags
19T Cogs By Homebrewed Components
Waited for two months for these puppies, but the wait was worth it. Two cogs, both with 19 teeth, one steel, the other titanium, steel for the new bike, ti for the old bike.
6 tags
Visiting The Creux De Glace
My last mountain bike ride dates back to April 9th. I haven’t been lazy, though. I’ve logged a lots of miles since then, but exclusively on the road bike and the cyclocrosser. Today I had something different in mind. I wanted to head out and enjoy the warm yet cloudy spring day, have fun on big wheels and doing so also collect a good amount of climbing meters. The day started...
5 tags
Cyclocrossing The Montagne De Romont
On Wednesday I did a quick cyclocross ride to the Montage de Romont, which offers a fantastic, paved climb with a stunning view. I’ll be adding this destination to my out and back training rides on the road bike. Should make a perfect ride when time is tight on a weekday after work. I crossed over to the Stierenberg then went for another climb to reach the Montoz. I was wearing bib shorts,...
4 tags
Lizard Encounters Slugs
I love mountain biking, but when I’m out on the cyclocross bike and pass a group of mountain bikers, sitting on fullies and spinning a granny gear to slowly gain elevation, it feels like a brief encounter between a lizard and a group of slugs. Mountain bikes make it up everything, but they certainly aren’t the fastest doing it. The last couple of weeks, I haven’t ridden my...
6 tags
Of Mis-Shifts And Chain-Skips
Sometimes you work on your bike, get it clean and shiny and get the whole drivetrain perfectly dialed, then you’re out on the trail with mis-shifts and chain-skips. It all shifted smoothly in the work-stand and shifted smoothly the first couple of miles. As soon as the trail steepened, cog number nine on the already used 10-speed Shimano cassette didn’t want to be friends with the...
4 tags
Bikedays In Solothurn
This morning I jumped onto the train to meet friends at the Bikedays in Solothurn. When I arrived the sky was grey but unlike Biel, the streets were still dry. Well, that changed not much later in the morning as we walked through the expo area. It started with a light rain and ended in a pretty hefty downpour, that fortunately didn’t last all that long. While 29ers were still a rare sight...
5 tags
The Steererless Steerer
Introducing A New Headset Standard
Years ago, when I had access to machine tools, I used to design components and machine them myself on a CNC lathe or mill. One such project was a mountain bike hub set with radial straight-pull spokes; another was a set of direct-pull brakes years before V-brakes were born. As my professional path got me farther away from machine shops, many great ideas remained...
April 2012
12 posts
6 tags
Specialized Jett Expert 29
This year, my wife wanted to make the jump to big wheels, so we spent time online browsing a large number of bike manufacturer’s website to find out what they had to offer for 2012. She wanted a good mountain bike that was specifically designed for women without looking too feminine. Colors like pink were an absolute no-no. In addition, she wanted a bike with a low standover. She...
5 tags
Rotor Singlespeed Q-Ring 34T/104BCD
A set of compact Rotor Q-Rings have been on my road bike for a year and I would not exchange them for anything else. I do a lot of climbing and Rotor’s oval chainrings have made every hill climb less of an effort. Whether spinning seated or mashing out of the saddle, I’m faster and return fresher than on round rings. Currently, only my road bike is equipped with them. The...
5 tags
Chris King i7 InSet Headset
It’s the coolest thing when you get home and a package smiles at you when you open the mailbox. Usually, you expect a yellow delivery attempt notice with a hand-written note stating how much you owe customs. A day later you can go pick up your package at the nearest post office. You just have to make sure to bring plenty of cash else you return empty-handed. Today, I found a small package...
5 tags
Fizik Antares 00 Saddle
Back in the early 90ies my mountain bikes were always equipped with the legendary Selle Italia Flite saddle. Later, I transitioned to the SLR out of the same house. In March of last year, I switched brands and gave Fizik’s Antares saddle a try. It was love on first contact. The commuter and cyclocross bikes got an Antares K:ium and in February an OO was installed on the Niner. Any...
3 tags
Old Wheelset For A New Build
When I built my first 29er back in 2006, I had Mike Curiak of Lacemine29 lace me up a set of singlespeed wheels using Hope Pro II hubs, Bontrager Mustang OSB Disc rims and DT Aerolite spokes. I rode this wheelset on my Niner One 9 for four years. They’re still in awesome shape, which is certainly more a testament of Mike’s wheel-lacing wizardry than my unspectacular riding...
5 tags
Blingy Rotors To Avoid Warp Speed
After many winter rides and a bunch of mud rides, the Formula rotors on my Niner dropped quite a bit below the minimum thickness recommended by Formula. The brake track was no longer flat so it was time to toss them into the recycling bin and put a new set on the bike. I found just the right pair on Ebay, bought them and got them in a nicely padded envelope from a vendor in neighboring Italy....
6 tags
Early Visit To The Goatback
Today I got off a late start and the afternoon looked very much the same as the past couple of days. I wanted to reach the Colisses-du-Haut and then head eastwards. When I approached the Twannberg, it started to drizzle and the Chasseral was wrapped in clouds. I continued on and decided that the ride would only be cut short if conditions got worse. Well, it didn’t take too long and...
6 tags
Visit To The Mont Sujet
On Saturday, Biel woke up under a grey veil just as it did the day before. The wooden floor on our balcony was not in its usual grey but a shiny brown. It must have rained during the night. Looking south the sky looked threateningly dark. The Jura in the north however was engulfed in a friendly looking haze. It seemed safe enough to spend a couple of hours on the bike so I left for the Mont...
6 tags
Les Goules Sans Neige
While a lot of folks escaped south for the Easter weekend in search of a couple sunny days, we avoided the gridlock on the highways and stayed home. It’s been foggy and wet outside but it hasn’t been raining. In other words the day offered itself for a nice mountain bike ride across deserted trails. I chose the Rondchâtel climb, as it’s a good climb in any type of...
5 tags
Christoph Sauser at Cape Epic
Bigger is better! Everything smaller is a compromise!
5 tags
Token TK-BB86 Press-Fit Bottom Bracket
My next frame will have a BB92 “Shimano press-fit” bottom bracket. BB92 refers to the nominal shell width typically used for press-fit bottom brackets on mountain bikes. BB86 on the other hand refers to a road shell. Both share the same shell inner diameter of 41mm and a spindle diameter of 24mm. In my search for a press-fit BB I ran across Token and decided to give their BB86...
6 tags
EHBE 2012
The European Handmade Bicycle Exhibition (EHBE) happened in Schwäbisch Gmünd this weekend. I used the opportunity to spend the weekend in this lovely German town for a bit of sightseeing, fine dining and a couple of hours at the show to check out some amazing handmade bikes by European builders. My absolute show favorite - Vanhulsteijn Bicycles - bikes almost to nice to be ridden. Next Dré San...
March 2012
4 posts
5 tags
Zaboo Tron29 Full-Suspension 29er
The Zaboo folks have been busy and just announced that they’ll be having a small number of their new full-suspension 29er in stock shortly.
6 tags
Trails To Cross Off The List
Once in a while you ride a new trail and you come home saying you won’t need to do that one again. Today I picked two such trails. I started with heading up the Rondchâtel climb, then popped into a downhill I often passed by. It looked interesting on the map. It killed a lot of altitude, had a few switchbacks, but turned out to be a rather boring narrow hiking trail. Neither...
4 tags
Watson Cycles Parkarino Handlebar
When I started mountain biking in the mid 80ies handlebars were flat, had a bit of sweep and were maybe 60 to 62 cm widish. This is just a guess, in the era of roller cam vs. U-brake, handlebar width never really was much of a discussion topic. Years later bikes were taken on a low fat diet and my handlebars got straighter and a whole lot narrower. To offset the narrow, straight handlebars,...
4 tags
Day Six With The Flu
When my wife returned from the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, she brought home a mean little flu virus that found a second host in me last Friday. She ended up with an additional pneumonia, a visit to the hospital and antibiotics to fight it. I had a bit more luck if one can call it that and ended up with a bad cough and an extremely weak and aching body. We’re starting to run low on...
February 2012
9 posts
4 tags
Happy 29er Day
zoom
Sipping a cappuccino in front my MacBook Pro this morning I browsed through my feeds in Reeder and read “MTBR.com leaps into 29er Day” from BRAIN. The article mentioned that MTBR is featuring its first sponsored skin - an advertising background image that sits behind the main part of the site. The first skin was sold to Specialized. Curious, I hopped over to MTBR to take a quick...
5 tags
Spring Maintenance Schedule
Spring only begins with the equinox on March 20th, but with the warming temperatures and the quickly melting snow the optimist in me got a little bit ahead of schedule. In addition my bikes badly asked to be thoroughly serviced. The Niner A9C has seen its fair share of snow this winter. It has been out at some of the coldest temperatures, where the freewheel of its rear Chris King hub...
6 tags
A Long Hike With A Bike
Saturday morning I pedaled out of town with the idea of riding a long loop on that early spring like day. The mercury had jumped up a notch, the snow was wet and falling off the trees. Things were dripping and melting. I chose an easy ascent above the lake thinking I would have a good chance to find rideable trails, but little did I know that I’d spend most of the six hour adventure...
5 tags
Kermit Green Niner Air 9 RDO
While it’s raining into the snow outside, I’m sitting at my desk drooling over the new Niner Air 9 RDO. A light, “race day optimized” all carbon frame construction with slimmer tubes and a new dropout design that places the brake caliper inside seat and chain stay. Quite elegant that new, kermit green Air 9 RDO.
5 tags
Rondchâtel Snow Ride
I thought about heading to the Lac de Joux on Sunday, but changed my mind knowing that I’d be spending two and a half hours in the car just to visit a frozen lake. It quite often happens like that. There are many cool places to ride in Switzerland, but as soon as I’m looking at the prospect of driving several hours, more often than not I forget about the whole idea and just hop...
5 tags
Chilly Saturday Ride
Today’s ride was another far below zero cyclocross ride. While it’s lovely to climb at those temperatures they come to haunt you on the descent. For one it gets really uncomfortable to brake over an extended period of time wearing thick gloves and the clothes that have been keeping you warm ultimately capitulate to the cold. Today’s ride was fun going up, even while hiking...
5 tags
A Mean Green Riding Machine
First and foremost be warned, what follows is some 26er content. You know, those small-wheeled bikes we used to ride in the dark ages of mountain biking. Those bikes we look at today wondering how in the world we possibly rode them across trails. Yes, I still own not one but two of those museum-worthy off-road velocipedes. The mean green riding machine is a bike that I’ve now...
5 tags
Minus Thirteen And A Little Frosty
While January started with some awesome weekends to ride, the second half of January was lousy and offered not a single pleasant day. My bikes were screaming for some dearly needed maintenance and were happy to stay home. February arrived and with it a blast of Siberian air that dropped the mercury below minus ten and more degrees. I got up with the sunrise and looked at a blue sky...
5 tags
January 2012
5 posts
6 tags
An Epic Winter Ride To The Chasseral
After Friday’s reconaissance mission to the Métairie du Milieu de Bienne with the cyclocrosser, I knew that we had some very favorable snow conditions to conquer the Chasseral. Saturday morning, I left early armed with digital and video cameras to do just that. Well, I spent one of the most amazing days on the bike riding miles and miles of tracks that snow-shoers had stomped into the...
5 tags
Yippie The Server's Dead!
Our server at the office seems to mirror the business as a whole. It runs pretty darn crappy to say the least. Today, as many times before, one of its vital organs failed. As that single black box is our only hub to the whole universe and beyond, I shut down my now utterly useless desktop client and armed myself with pencil and paper. But there just wasn’t anything to do other than...
4 tags
Mountain Biking Bernese Alps Soon History?
According to Swiss Ride Magazine, the Canton of Berne wants to ban mountain bikes. Their reasoning: mountain bikes cause permanent damage to the ground, especially when riding in wet conditions. What a bunch of bullocks! Whoever wrote this legislative draft, must have never set foot in a forest. If they really wanted untouched forests, they should start with a ban of all forestry machinery.
A 20...
6 tags
Saturday's Snow Excursion
Living at about 440 meters above sea level everything outside is currently green and brown. A few snow flakes managed to travel all the way to us, but they pretty much melted on impact. It rained a lot the past few days. Trails are wet and muddy up to an altitude of about 900 meters. Rain down here though meant loads of snow higher up and I was itching to check it out. I easily climbed to Evilard...
6 tags
Welcome In 2012
Well, hello 2012. I left the land of the holey cheese for Christmas and New Years and spent it in good old Northern California, which for my taste buds, makes much finer cheese than alpine Helvetia. The bikes had to stay at home and 29in.ch went forgotten while I overdosed on GT’s Kombucha, Maine Root Ginger Brew, Chai BaBa Chai and an occasional Zin. Yes, I was a regular at Whole Foods and...
December 2011
3 posts
6 tags
Last Ride Of The Year
Sunday already marked my last ride of the year, at least on Swiss soil. It had been raining a lot all week so trails were both super slippery and extremely muddy. It didn’t deter me to head out for a short loop, and surprisingly it didn’t deter hikers to head out in droves. I received some flashlight mounts from DealExtreme last week, which will be used to mount my Replay XD1080...
6 tags
Firefly Rigid Singlespeed
A titanium masterpiece by Firefly.
5 tags
Cyclocrossing Up To The First Snow
This week I ordered a new microSDHC with the huge capacity of 32GB for my ReplayXD1080 action cam. If I think back at my first home PC, a Gateway desktop PC running Windows 95 on a dinky 6GB hard-drive, it’s pretty amazing to see the progress that has been made. This tiny Kingston microSD fits on top of a fingernail and is less than a millimeter thick. Pretty soon a cellphone will be no...
November 2011
8 posts
7 tags
Lake Loop Redux
Well, not losing many words about today’s ride other than it’s been another several hours of spectacular cyclocrossing. Truly blessed to live in such a wonderful country, have enough disposable income to afford two new bikes in one year, a wife that lets me buy them and ultimately have good legs to go climb some of the finest trails. Thanks!
Distance:78.6km (48.8...
5 tags
7 tags
Le Tour Du Lac
The sun was already poking through the hazy sky when I left for a cyclocross ride to the Chasseral. I spent the first half of the ride under blue skies, rode mostly dry gravel roads and passed some frosty spots on the shaded slopes that don’t get much if any sun this time of the year. The last pitch to the Chasseral antenna was as icy as last weekend and provided no conditions to...
6 tags
Chasseral Mudfest
First thing on my todo list this morning was a visit to the post office to send some goodies to the friendly Ebayers who bid and won. Three items, two buyers, both won and paid yesterday so now it was my turn to deliver. A front and rear Ultegra 6700 derailleur go to Italy, a set of Ultegra Dual Control levers travel all the way to Folsom, California.
After that was out of the way, I left home to...
6 tags
TRP CX8.4 Mini Linear Pull Brakes
After a couple of long rides with lots of climbing and descending the Avid Shorty 4 cantilever brakes quickly reached their power limits. The Shorty 4 is a decent, low cost cantilever brake that stops sufficiently well on flat land, but alas I’m a mountain goat. The best to cyclo-cross the Swiss Jura would disc brakes, but as long as Shimano or SRAM don’t have hydraulic road...
6 tags
Mavic Tempo MTB Shoes
•
I’ve been singlespeeding either in Shimano sandals or trail shoes but have not owned a racy MTB show in over a decade. Cyclo-crossing, my feet demanded something more akin to a road shoe so I consulted the web to get an idea of what the market has to offer these days. I stumbled across Mavic, who has some very good looking shoes that most importantly don’t break the bank. I opted...
6 tags
Mellow Chasseral Cyclocross
After I’ve only found the way to bed past 2AM last night, I wasn’t feeling all that fresh for a long ride this morning. It was a bit hazy, but the sun was already busy slicing a clear message into the haze that a great day lay ahead. A bit tired, I pulled the Focus out of the basement and decided to take an easy spin up to the Chasseral. I climbed the Psycho to Magglingen,...