bikes

i’ve been carrying that back pack for a while now, and i’m still very proud of the time it allowed me to bond with the goat (the greatest of all time – greg minnaar) – because i pretty much carry a medium sized bike shop right there on my back. sometimes, however, i feel it’s…

i’ve had my bike now for … pretty much forever. it feels like forever anyway; in reality it’s been five and a half years, which in mountain bike terms is actually almost forever. the setup has not changed either: i’ve stuck with the components it came with when i became it’s custodian. ok, the enve…

i’m still sad my old home-made bike rack was destroyed: that one was made from aluminium and i could easily lift it up alone – with one hand! the new one is super heavy duty, but also heavy af and i dread every time i have to install it or take it off. on the…

most states had to cancel their interschools mountain bike competitions (including nsw, where nat had raced before) for the obvious reason that few responsible school representatives would have wanted to underwrite a potential superspreader event. lucky for us living in tassie we don’t have any (known) covid cases and are therefore free to congregate, especially…

i’m still not sure whether the sentence should be finished with a ‘?’ or a ‘!’. when our prime minister uses the phrase, as he does whenever he doesn’t have anything really relevant or even mildly intelligent to say – i.e. quite frequently – it sounds like a ‘?’ but it definitely feels like a…

i will admit the last (or rather first) tas gravity enduro event nat and i attended was a bit of a shock to the system. in nsw similarly titled events are, shall we say: rather less exhausting and appear geared towards the not quite as ambitious crowd. the fact that one of our friends in…

they don’t hold back. 6 stages, 18 km and a whopping 1000 m elevation gain, matched by an equal, if somewhat more rapid, elevation loss, thanks to said 6 downhill stages. that makes for an exhausting morning. here is something i overheard while queueing up for stage 3 (called red wine, for reasons that are…

i’ve had the nomad for a few years now (almost five) and it did have a bit of a life before i became its custodian. no wonder then that a few of the parts are now at the end of their useful life. time for new parts: i needed a new saddle and a new…

i think every mountain biker enjoys just ripping down the best trails, staying in the flow. interruptions get in the way. walking back up to session a section is unwelcome. it’s also unfortunatly the only way to improve. when the trail just streams towards you the focus is always on solving that next challenge; practice…

there are so many religions and cults out there, almost one for every woman and man. obviously there is also one for cyclists: it’s called strava. strava is what gives us purpose, it’s what tells us who we are, and it brings us together with those other believers, via the invisible power of gps receivers.…

is there such a thing? there’s of course the king of mountain, and the queen of mountain, the fastest man and woman, respectively, on a certain trail. but what about the fastest young person on the mountain? the second fastest female on the mountain? nat would definitely deserve the title and of course wear it…