I picked up a Santa Cruz Nomad from Bow Cycle last Feb.  It’s a freaking awesome bike…frankly it deserves a better rider than me to really take advantage of all it has to offer in performance.  I had a ton of fun on it last winter/spring, but a nagging elbow injury kept me from doing a lot of serious mountain biking in the late summer and fall.  One of the realities of becoming an old guy I guess!…=-)

I’ve sorted out my elbow over the winter and I’m feeling great now.  That means some mountain bike action for me and my Nomad.  Sweet!  I’m thinking of heading into BC to turn the clock ahead a few months and enjoy some spring riding before the mountain trails around Calgary shape up in June.

I’ve been using a Dakine Porter messenger bag for the last month or so.  I’m no bike messenger, but having a waterproof bag I can carry a decent amount of stuff in and get access to without taking it off is pretty handy.  I like a backpack when I’m carry really heavy stuff and I don’t need to access the contents often.  Most of the time I’m carrying lighter loads and the Porter is great.

It’s made out of uber tough waterproof nylon and has a padded laptop sleeve that will hold a wide screen 17″ machine.  I usually have a laptop with me and I appreciate the extra protection when I drop my bag or bump into something.  The shoulder strap is wide and made out of seat belt material. The strap is fully adjustable and has a built in pad to make heavier loads comfy.  The removable waist belt can be setup a few different ways and keeps the bag from moving when you are riding hard.

The interior of the bag is lined with light gray material to make finding stuff easier.  Besides the 20L main compartment there are two large side pockets with buckles and an organizer pocket for small items.  The bag’s dimensions are 16″ x 14.5″ x 6″.  There is a webbing strap sewn into the bag that will let you clip on a red blinkie for those night rides.

What I like:

• tough material and construction
• waterproof
• fits a large laptop
• padded laptop compartment
• easy access when running errands
• available in 4 different colours

I posted earlier that my attempt to use a Shimano disc MTB hub and a Surly Fixxer didn’t work out.  So I decided to go the easy route and use a Surly disc fixed gear MTB hub and a Mavic X717 MTB rim I had on hand to build up a rear wheel for my Surly 1×1 Project Bike.

As expected that worked fine.  I decided on a disc fixed gear hub vs. a flip flop hub for a practical reason - it’s the hub I want on the front of my Surly Pugsley.  When I built my Pugsley Surly only made a single speed disc MTB hub so I used that for my “front wheel” [Pugsleys have two rear wheels!].  The track cog on that hub isn’t held on with a normal lock ring so I have to be careful about back pedaling.  Not a big deal since that’s really an emergency measure I’ll only use if my Shimano Alfine IGH fails and the Pugsley has a rear brake. OTOH I don’t know if I’ll love the whole fixed gear thing enough to stick with it in the long run so buying a hub I can use on my Pugsley was a smart investment.

The Surly fixed hub is a nice unit with 135mm spacing for MTB frames and a 6 bolt rotor mount. My 18T 3/32″ track cog mounted up with no issues and the chain line to my Shimano LX Hollow Tech II crank is good.

First off - I’m just learning about fixed gear bikes so take anything I say with a grain of salt…I could be totally wrong! You have been warned….=-)

Picking the right gear ratio for a fixed gear bike is pretty darn important.  Not only do you have just one gear, but unlike a single speed bike you can’t coast so you really have to be able to live with the gear you pick going up and going down.

I may not know a lot about fixed gear bikes, but I am smart enough to consult Sheldon Brown when in doubt.  He’s published quite a bit of useful info on fixed gears.

My first question was what cog should I pair with the 44T chain ring I have on the crank I want to use?  Sheldon recommends: ~71 gear inches for general road riding and ~64 gear inches for hilly road riding.  With a 44T ring and 26″ wheel that translates to 16T and 18T cog.

Note the chain ring and cogs all have an even number of teeth for a clever reason. As Sheldon points out if you use an even number of teeth in your drivetrain on a fixed gear [also SS and IGH] your chain will last much longer because of the way it stretches.

So for my Surly 1×1 project bike I’ll start with the 44T x 16T [~64"] to make life easy on myself and get used to riding fixed downtown where it’s nice and flat.  I’ll have the 18T cog handy and swap it in when I’m ready.  I’ll setup the chain with two SRAM powerlinks so I can go back and forth between the two cogs as needed without much hassle.

Adventure Monkey has a great blog.  He takes super nice photos on his bike rides. You should check out his site.

I must admit I made up the stuff in the title about him loving a Rohloff, but when I was reading the following post I figured he’d be pretty stoked to have one on his bike:

“Out of the blue, my rear derailer started acting up –  bad. I tightened up the cable because it looked pretty loose, but something was amiss. It would jump gears and wouldn’t shift right. It didn’t matter if I was riding on a flat or a hill or where on the rear cog I was, the derailer had a mind of its own. I tried to adjust it with the barrel adjuster, but that didn’t help. I think they put that there just to make me feel like I had some control, but it didn’t do anything. This happened 22 miles away from home and began to ruin my day. I know we make choices and are in control of how we feel, and I gave in to the mechanical problem. I was not happy. I got off the bike and stripped down to my shorts and short sleeve jersey and ate a sandwich. I looked at the derailer.

The derailer. It seems like a very simple device. It should be. All it does is move the chain from one gear to the next, and yet mine mystifies me. It wasn’t full of mud and looked Ok to me, but it acted as if it was straight up broken. It jumped gears, rubbed and skipped for no reason. Adusting didn’t help. I could be riding without much pedal power on a flat stretch and the people in the next county could probably here its noise making as it skipped gears, sometimes up, somtimes down. I was in a area with sweet hills, curves, streams and vistas and I couldn’t do much real riding. So much for “Ride and smile” Salsa, I was riding and pissed off to be honest.“

If he had a Rohloff on his bike his post would have read:

“What a crazy muddy rutted ride today…bike worked perfectly…had such a wicked time!“

Hmmm…on further reflection maybe that wouldn’t make for a very interesting blog post!…=-)

If you like porn videos and are over 18 I highly recommend this one…so hot [don't open at work or with your wife around - you've been warned]!

Singletrack magazine from the UK published a great article about a 5 day ultralight bikepacking trip through Alberta’s K-country.  You can read the article on Aaron Teasdale’s great blog - click here.

It’s cool seeing some of our fine backyard appreciated by folks in Europe.  Aaron’s photography is stunning and worth a look on it’s own.

My girlfriend Sharon was keen on getting a new bike to replace her clunky mountain bike that I converted to a city bike.  She isn’t a hardcore cyclist so she just wanted something comfortable to ride around town to collect some groceries, commute to work on and maybe a weekend bike tour.

She had a long wish list:

• budget ~$850cdn
• needs moderate gear range [Alfine/Nexus 8 okay]
• wants low maintenance
• something she could ride 5-50kms
• can accept a front basket and rear rack
• chain guard
• fenders
• kickstand
• upright seating [but not uber laid back like a cruiser]
• comfort [saddle/suspension/etc...]
• step through frame
• needs to look stylish

We scratched the various cruiser bikes off the list pretty quickly on.  They are really stylie, but not that practical if you want to ride longer distances at any speed.  There are quite a few European bike manufacturers making cool city bikes, but they cost a fortune, are super heavy and aren’t readily available in Calgary.

That left 3 bikes in contention:

1. Norco Corsa 1 ST
2. Globe Live 2 Mixte
3. Electra Amsterdam Royal 8i

The Electra was a bit more than she wanted to spend. The Globe was not suspended and had a narrowish saddle that would have to get replaced right off the bat.  That left the Corsa 1 ST.

After a couple test rides she decided to buy the Corsa 1 ST.  Naturally she wanted to go on a long ride with her new bike on Saturday.  So even though I was feeling rough from a cold I ventured out for a 30km ramble on the bike paths from downtown to Bowness and back.  All that was needed was a little adjustment of the saddle height to dial in the fit.  Sharon enjoyed the ride and managed to cope with some challenging slushy snow and ice sections thanks to the stable steering, wide bars and sensible tires.  Her friend Tanya was getting envious of the fenders on Sharon’s bike as we splashed our way to Bowness!

Since I’m going have to do all the maintenance on this bike I’m glad she choose a bike with an internal geared hub [IGH]. They are super easy to keep running perfectly.  Norco did a great job specing this bike intelligently and keeping the price low enough to interest a casual cyclist.

I do think Norco could improve this bike in three areas:

1. fenders are a bit short and don’t provide as much protection as they could.  I’ll be making Sharon a long mudflap for the front fender to keep her cleaner.  The rear fender is too short to add a mudflap.
2. since there is no derailleur this bike could have a fully enclosed chain case which would keep the chain clean and mean it would need almost no maintenance.
3. I’d love to see disc brake mounts on the fork and frame for future upgrades.

If you want a less expensive version of this bike Norco offers a derailleur equipped Corsa 2 ST - shown above.

I love a fresh snowfall in the morning…makes me glad I commute by bike!  This is the Elbow River pathway in Mission last week after one of our seemingly rare snowfalls!

If you’ve been thinking about giving commuting a try I actually think commuting in the winter is nicer [on a lot of days] than in the summer.  You’ve got the pathways to yourself and it can be really pretty - especially in the AM.  If you just skip the bike on uber cold days or after a major snowfall it’s not hard to get started.