Too Much Bike, or Not Enough? How to Bet on the Over/Under Media theory giant Marshall McLuhan famously asserted that “the medium is the message.” What that means in terms of mountain bikes, is essentially that the bike you choose to ride really determines the nature of the ride more than anything else. If we take this for granted, then you can appreciate why the subject of under-biking vs. over-biking engenders such passionate debate in the mountain bike community. The old adage that “it’s not the bike, it’s the rider” was probably more accurate back in the day when most bikes were pretty muc ..read more

3 friends, 3 Mayors, 2 Lofty Goals The old saying goes that “charity begins at home.” Well, sometimes it begins there and ends up far, far away, at the end of a long and winding road. Earlier this year, way back in March of 2020 (seems like forever ago now!), three expedition teammates – Buck Miller, Eric Batty and Ryan Atkins set out from Peawanuck First Nation, on the coast of massive Hudson Bay, with two big goals to achieve. One was to raise $10,000 to support local Indigenous youth to stay active, and the other was to become the first athletes to take on the Wapusk Trail under human power ..read more

Quality vs. Quantity Debate – Mountain Bike Edition I once stood in a golf tee box up in the Laurentians of Quebec with three pals, one of whom had been playing this landowners-only course since his family built their modest cabin decades ago, when a question was posed. The question was – Would you rather keep playing one course and get really really good at it, or play a new course every week just for the thrill of the novelty? Our homeboy who grew up there was definitely in camp A – he wanted to win the club championship one day, and he eventually did. I was firmly in camp B, like our pal w ..read more

Assorted Nuts Fork steerer tubes are generally made from aluminum and use a star nut, which is part of the headset installation assembly. The star nut is pressed into the steerer tube and is used to allow the headset to be compressed or stacked. It’s been used for the last 30 years and to this day, the same system and standard persists, which is kind of amazing in itself. Sometime in the last couple of decades, when carbon fibre emerged as the raw material of choice for those looking for a better strength-to-weight ratio, some high-end fork manufacturers started making carbon forks a ..read more

​So You Wanna Buy a Mountain Bike Online or in-store? There are several good articles here on the interweb with advice on how to buy a mountain bike. They will include breakdowns of the different kinds of bikes, or what you should look for when you’re shopping for one. And of course, you’ll have to decide whether you’ll actually buy a bike online from a consumer-direct company, or walk into your local bike shop (LBS) and kick some tires. If you shop online, you may well get a deal that’s too good to pass up. Consumer direct cuts out the ‘middle man’, but of course you’ll have to consider that ..read more

Hardtail vs. Full Suspension – Battle for the Soul of Mountain Biking   When hardtails were just “mountain bikes” For many years, before proven suspension designs went mainstream, the only mountain bikes were hardtails. And we loved them, warts and all. Author’s notes: my first mountain bike was a fully-rigid steel Ritchey that I got from a guy who sold weed and settled a debt with someone for the bike. That bike was so much fun – we rode with no helmets and were hooked from the start. There were no social cliques in the sport then, we were all just “mountain bikers”.   Wha ..read more

Handy Guide to Fat Bike Maintenance We all know that regular mountain bike maintenance is a necessary evil, but when you have a fat bike in your quiver that’s capable of riding in all four seasons, it becomes even more necessary and requires that you perform it at regular intervals all year. This is your rig for riding on sand, snow and loose terrain where good grip may only be had with fat tires, and these conditions are typically the worst for all the other parts of your bike. While we all get a little lazy during the dry summer season and just roll our bikes in and out with barely a spot of ..read more