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.
Mountain is dirty and dangerous. Until it isn't.
There are numerous things to note about life in a bike town. Many you might expect. More bike shops, and better ones, than you would normally see in a regional town.
It's not about the bike
The Forest Loop is a thing that has been developed in my home town of Rotorua which gives more or less anybody a decent serve of the splendours of the location without being particularly challenging.
Grab a bike. Any bike.
Insert here
A minor part of a recent project was extending a wifi network. I bought a device which has no other purpose for its existence, and put aside half an hour one evening to give the little unit its opportunity to shine.
Weather forecasts and reality
Mountain biking. It's awesome.
Bikepacking and hitch hiking
The History of Dobies
While fossicking through some archive folders in a search for something - I don’t remember what - I found two interesting relics from prehistory. One is the original drawing outlining what would become Nzo Dobies. I will come to the other in a few hundred words’ time.
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.
Swapping bikes for carpets
During the early nineties we spent a couple of years living in a VW Kombi. That little bus took us from San Francisco to eastern Turkey, before we doubled back to Germany where we parted ways.
What I reckon
A new year, same old stunts
Probably the highlight of my summer break was a visit from our son. I showed him around the new trails that have been created since his previous appearance, staying off the especially rowdy ones
2023 Report to Stakeholders
It has taken most of this year to get a new version of our favourite all-purpose shorts to market, and get a few more lined up for the New Year. Whatever it is about Nzo that appeals to people who become our customers, the durability of our products seems to figure in it.
The awesomeness of bicycles
There are lots of cool things about bicycles. I am probably preaching to the choir, but bikes are really amazing things if you take the time to think about it.
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.
The Pearl Pass Tour and me
We rode SlickRock several times, including one lap after midnight under a full moon. No lights, just following the white painted dots on the rock that mark the trail.
Marlborough Sounds Getaway
Picton is a town most people like passing through. As the ferry terminal for the South Island, travel in either direction involves Picton. If you are a lucky Northerner arriving in the South Island, it is a sort of welcome sign that flashes past as soon as you can hit the road out.
Us and them
Here is a snapshot of what separates us from the normal people. By ‘us’ I mean people who ride bikes - doesn’t matter for now what kind or where we go - and by normal people I mean that grey horde living sad, meaningless existences without bikes.
The Staycation
Every so often we discuss how to turn a regular old outing in your local hang-out into something more memorable. Well, here’s another way we discovered over the extended weekend: the Staycation.
Dirt... the new sand
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Here is a little test to help you feel better about your obsession with mountain bikes. Give an average couple the choice between three nights in a deluxe apartment with a balcony overlooking a popular east coast beach, or three nights in a cramped economy motel unit in Rotorua. |
The life cycle of a t shirt
Part one: Mid-ride, mid-shower, mid-life; take your pick. An idea pops into being. It gets drawn on whatever comes to hand, in the sort of short hand usually used by doctors.
The never-ending N+1
A couple of weeks ago the stars aligned and I added two new bikes to the stable at once. By a combination of circumstances that are best left unexplored, I stepped up to a brand new trail bike. Part of that exciting transaction was keeping all of my previous trail bike except the frame.
How to feel like a 12 Year Old
Method 1: Get a new bike. Nothing creates the feeling of being twelve better than swinging your leg over a bike for the first time, and riding it around the carpark outside the shop.
The big bad Rail 9.8
A recent Nzo newsletter (you really should subscribe) referenced a review produced for NZ Mountain Biker magazine. A flurry of responses from readers asked what the bike was we had reviewed. By permission of the magazine, here is what we wrote:
The Nzo T shirt project
This week we slapped together a clip featuring a fraction of the t shirt graphics we have had the fun of producing over the last quarter century.
25 Years of Dirtwear
This week marks the 25th Anniversary of the day Nzo opened for business. More or less. There is always plenty of wiggle room in discussions about when we got started, because we actually started thinking about something along the lines of Nzo when were wandering around the planet during the early nineties.
We found a love letter
We went looking for an email about something or other, and accidentally found this entry, from one of our first customers. He penned it back in 2005, i.e two years before the first iPhone, when Nzo was still N-Zone.
How not to win friends, nor influence people.
During a short spell between cyclones, we went over to the coast to do a few errands. I had a spare half hour so I went to the sat in a cafe to watch a heated altercation.
First World Problems
We currently share a house with my very inspiring brother-in-law. He is 84, and right now he is training for a South Island bike trip he has signed up for. In general he is one of the more positive people I have ever met, but he is also given to being glass-half-empty on certain subjects.
To E or not to E?
Elsewhere in this very magazine (er, blog), I wrote a piece about my time aboard the Trek EX e, my first extended period atop an electric-assist machine. I finished by saying “when I get one”.
The mountain biker's E bike?
This is a review of the Trek Fuel EXe, a great example of a new category of mountain bike. It will not be like any review you have read before.
Earning (and previewing) your turns
I posted a photo on the Nzo Facebook page the other day which has received more than the usual amount of attention. I wouldn’t call it viral, especially after contracting COVID a few weeks back...
Spinners and Stance bikes
Following on from our last post about how lucky kids in our hometown get to roam around the forest on their bikes as if they own the joint, here comes another example of a bicycle-based subculture liberating youngsters from their day-to-day lives. We found an excellent report from Soweto, South Africa this morning while we imbibed our morning joe.
A great place to be a lucky kid
When we were kids in Auckland, we got the keys to the city on the day we got bikes. Our home range of a couple of blocks became anywhere we could reasonably get back from by dark.
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.
Don't try this at home
When Nzo got started we had a shop of our own. It was a long shot, there were nowhere enough mountain bikers to support that idea at the time, but we learned a lot. One of the very good things about that proto-shop was the opportunity it provided for yakking with mountain bikers about mountain biking.
The Photographer's Day Off
The man behind most of the decent photos in the Nzo story is Graeme Murray. We met on a mountain bike ride, shortly after we moved to Rotorua, the town we chose as a base to start Nzo.
Outrunning a deluge
It’s Thursday, which on my planet means the day after Wednesday. Hump day. It’s the day we generally do a trip to the coast for various reasons, and usually run out of time for bike rides.
Thoughts on trail muntage
Here is a snapshot of the way my brain operates. Well, not the whole thing, a blogpost isn’t long enough. Just the bit that is in charge of my emotional response to the comings and goings of mountain bike trails.
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.
Gravel - its a thing!
Gravel. It’s a thing. Tickle your wanderlust on the road less travelled, hunt down unsealed routes in the backblocks, and intersect with places and lives you may never have guessed existed. It is the bike world’s newest and most exciting thing that doesn’t have a battery.
Nzo Annual Report to Stakeholders
2020 is almost over. That is a sentence I quite enjoyed typing. We can finally reveal what we have been up to for the last few months, and what we have planned for 2021 and beyond.
Why is Nzo closed for now?
Excellent question. The new world of COVID - 19 has presented the single weirdest period in our long and complex history as a small apparel brand adrift on the high seas of global commerce.
Pointless bicycles, and why we ride them
In case you are feeling less than optimal because of the weather, virus, politicians, current radio, or anything else really, this may help you beat those equinoxial blues.
Saving birds and dropping trails
Last week’s highlight was a chance meeting in the woods. I took a visitor for a big lap, showing him a side of the local trails he had not seen previously. One was a dotted line through the primordial jungle that survives on the wilder side of the fores
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.
Weird times: are they here to stay?
2020 has so far been the single weirdest year of our existence as a company. We are sure most of you will have a similar story, but in our case its has been so weird that we had to shut down for a while.
Beating boredom
Hi there from Lockdown! We are entertaining ourselves by keeping an eye on your orders, and reading the discussions on social media about what constitutes responsible outdoor exercise.