NzoLand
Aug 29, 2023
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.
Aug 22, 2023
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.
Jul 12, 2023
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’.
Jun 27, 2023
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.
Jun 21, 2023
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:
May 26, 2023
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.
May 19, 2023
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.
Apr 14, 2023
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.
Feb 24, 2023
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.
Feb 10, 2023
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.
Jan 27, 2023
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.
Dec 16, 2022
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”.