NzoLand
Let's go bike camping!
A brief ride report: over the break I tried to ride as many different bikes as I could. One of them is the semi-fat tyred, fully rigid beast I acquired many years ago for a Tour Aotearoa I didn’t do.
An apology to customers from the United States of America
We are very sorry (and grumpy) to announce that for the time being we can no longer send things to the USA.
Say Gidday!
climb up Direct Road, a cruel and merciless grovel that is a necessary evil for anybody wanting to get the best out of a ride in the local patch.
The Old Ghost Road version 2
As reported previously, last autumn I finally got the chance to ride the Old Ghost Road. I liked it so much I organised a rematch a month later. It turned out slightly differently, but just as good.
Earthmoving, our way
What to wear for weeks in the bush
A funny thing happened
How to get sponsored
Even a small mountain bike apparel brand adrift in the South Seas gets its fair share of sponsorship proposals. None of them offering to sponsor us.
Work / Ride / Lie down
Top of the South
Almost two months since I reckoned I would report on a recent mountain biking trip in this blog, I am only now getting around to it. I am getting to it now because we are sitting in our little caravan in a tiny but excellent campground while the weather goes from bad to really bad.
Return to Taupo
This weekend, for the first time in a few years, I am going to ride around Lake Taupo. Covid and cancer got in the way of a 22 year run broken only once, when a sort of dance mishap resulted in a toenail being peeled off.
Mountain biking culture... is there one?
It just didn’t look ‘right’. The sight of this gang made both of us happy - they were out in the woods, on bikes, having fun. It also made us raise our eyebrows, and wonder what it meant for the ‘culture’.
Craters of the Moon
Mountain biking is a sport where some of the people who do it provide the facilities. Most other sports use places created for the purpose by authorities, or they operate in nature.
A deep dive into New Zealand mountain biking history
The history of New Zealand mountain biking could arguably start sometime pre-WW2, when races like Round the Gorges were almost completely ridden on gravel. Mountain biking as we know it today got started in the 80s.
Bike riding and the End of Civilisation
Usually this communication muses about something mountain bike related, and if possible there is some sort of connection to a product we would dearly love to sell. This morning the subject is wider, bicycle riding in general, and the mystery of why the very sight of people on bicycles is so annoying to some people.
Test flying a drop bar Krampus
Many moons ago, when giant lizards walked the land, I thought I would like to ride Tour Aotearoa. We had done some long bike packing missions before, camping our way around the South Island, and another time in Hawaii (highly recommended, will repeat if we are ever allowed to go there again).
Are you e-curious?
One of the phenomena that really became obvious in 2020 is the surge in the use of e-bikes by mountain bikers. Shops sell as many as they can get, and all sorts of people are jumping on to them.
The big lap
When I have got time, like three hours or so, and I have enough gas in the tank, I like to do what I regard as a big lap of the local woods here in Rotorua. There are endless variations that can be added in, but the basic touchpoints are the same.
Getting with the programme
One of our mates has started a ‘training programme’. He has a ‘coach’. He is thinking about his entry in a ‘race’. I use inverted commas for his versions of these things because they all defy normal definitions.
Three will do, thanks
Summer is still the flavour down here. We have been getting out on the bikes even more than usual, and I am really hoping that things do come in threes.
Growing MTB Parks
Last week we delivered a run of custom stuff for a special crew. They were happy with how it came out, we were very happy with how it came about. We made mountain bike tops and t shirts for a group of people working in forestry.
2020 and the state of the sport
During the festive season a mate penned a couple of articles for the local paper. These got us thinking about the state of our sport from where we sit… and it is amazing. And confusing, in equal measures.
Withdrawal Symptoms
I managed one bike ride during a fantastic lap of the South Island. Great friends to travel with, no major mechanical malfunctions, almost perfect weather and camp spots that defy description made it an almost perfect holiday. Even the sandflies were off their usual game.
Not spectating at the EWS
Crankworx Rotorua 2019 has come and gone - the highlight for us was the Rotorua round of the Enduro World Series, and we proved to ourselves that it takes as much focus and single-mindedness to spectate as it does to compete.
We've got all day
On Sunday I took the first ride in ages that didn’t have any constraint except my attention span, and I set off intending to run out of gas just after cresting the last uphill.
Like a road race, only crunchy
As the seasons roll by the motivation to enter stuff gets harder to muster. Unless there is a damn good reason, it’s easier to just go for a ride. The Dirty K is a damn good reason