This is a great Blog by the President of Trek Bicycle Company, a bike advocate and avid rider. A Great Ride, by Trek’s President, JB

Bike season is here and we are ready to go. Bike repairs will be a 24 hour turnaround this week. Get in early and beat the rush. We have over 450 bikes in stock and waiting  for you. Free Agent BMX race bikes are now in stock.

It is that time of year when I squeeze those last minute summer activities. I just finished a fun tandem bike ride with my son Luke.  The Ester Dome Single Track is quite a challenge for a tandem.  We had  a little trouble in one spot but managed to stay up right. Sharp steep turns are not easy to do on a tandem.  Needless to say the T&T was not possible with the tandems long wheel base and I had to skip the jumps. Luke said he wanted breaks and did not like the fact he had a large blind sport right in front of him, me. Thanks Luke. When we finished riding there we 8 cars in the parking area. Good thing we are adding trails next year.

Go Whitehorse! The other northern city is ahead of us in terms of a diversity of places to ride bikes. We’ve got some catching up to do, and it’s really encouraging to see it happening. Here’s their latest development, a bike park and skillz development playground. Have a look at that sweet sweet dirt. And start asking your friends to help you make one, too!

City Ian Stewart/Yukon News

After about five years of talk and planning, Whitehorse will soon be the first in the territory to have a professionally designed and developed bike-skills park.

There’s still much to do, with no name chosen and wooden structures yet to be built, but BMX and mountain bike riders may be enjoying the new facilities as soon as this week.

And it was a big community effort that got the whole thing together:

Construction on the park, located on Mount McIntyre off Sumanik Drive, began last week with the arrival of Jay Hoots, owner of the BC-based company Hoots Inc., a mountain-bike clothing and safety equipment manufacturer that has designed more than 30 skills parks throughout BC, as well as in Alberta and the US.

Although his arrival is recent, finalized plans for the park were developed almost a year ago in conjunction with the Contagious Club.

“What’s on the ground is awfully close to what we had in the design,” said Hoots.

“It actually turned out to be better!”

As you pull up to the skills park, it may look a little intimidating, but despite an usually steep incline under much of the ramps, the park offers something for riders of all levels, said Hoots.

“This grade is pretty steep; it’s about the limit to what I would normally build on,” he said. “What we started at is one, one-and-a-half foot high jumps and then we have two-and-a-half foot, four-foot and five-foot jumps.

“The hill itself has been adjusted to give you the exact speed you need to be able to do the jumps. When you show up, you don’t have to be afraid that you don’t know anything about jumping; this place really holds your hand through it.

“With the beginner jumps, the platform for the jump only allows you to go so far up, so you can only go so fast getting into the jump—you can’t get into too much trouble. To get the speed for the big jumps you have to go through the trees and take the tree-line to get into them.”

Normally a project of this size could come with a price tag in the area of $150,000 to $200,000, but about 80 per cent of costs have been eliminated through volunteer hours, plus material and excavation tools donated by local businesses, said Hoots and McDiarmid.

“This wouldn’t have happened without the support of the city’s Park and Recreation Department—they were huge—Icycle Sports and the people who have donated the machines, the dirt, the volunteer time and things like that,” said McDiarmid.

There’s more to the article here http://www.yukon-news.com/sports/14077/

Check out the Joplin seat post. It features adjustable height on the fly. I found myself adjusting it almost as much as I shift. One of those things that when you get used to it it will be hard to live without.  At least on the Ester Dome Single Track.  Three inches of  adjustment. I set it high for the climbs, a little lower for the rough areas and most of the way down for the jumps and drops.

Here are a couple more bikes that were cool and kind of fun to check out:

sweet frame

cool bike with massive hauling ability in plastic bin on back

Nice colors

Orange fixie

nice looking steel bike

how much can you carry?

good bike hauling trailer

Nice parts from SRAM

Alright that is all for today.  More photos to come later-Tyson

Cross Racing looks sweet

Over the last couple of days Joel and I have seen some amazing racing and some very cool bikes and components.  We both got our first dose of cross racing and are hooked and want to get into it as soon as possible.  Cross racing is about going very hard and then around a few tight corners and then hitting a couple of barriers where you have to leap off your bike. Once you leap off the bike you throw the frame over your shoulder and sprint at full speed up the hills and over the barriers.  At the end of the barrier section the rider then has to remount the bike with a flying leap that lands them back on the saddle again and pedaling at full speed.  We had a great time watching all of the races and trying to figure out a new sport.

For the future it would be great to do some cross racing in Fairbanks.  We have the fall bike season before the ski season that we could have an amazing season of fun action.

Check out the crowds...

Check out this amazing looking cross bike if you are into a carbon and bamboo mix.  I saw a couple of really amazing bamboo bikes, they were light and supposedly have a very smooth ride.  This one below has a full bamboo frame and all the joints are wrapped with carbon to hold all the tubing together.  In the end it is stunning. I wish I could have ridden one. just to see how Bamboo actually rides.  I guess I will have to get a cross bike now to be able to ride in our cross series.  I don’t think you will be seeing a lot of bamboo frames out and about since every single frame has to be hand built one at a time and totally custom they are not cheap.  At least some lucky people are able to make them and allow the rest of us to look at and admire.

bamboo single speed.

This is a single speed belt drive bamboo bike. amazing…

Bamboo steel lugs, this has steel lugs, bamboo tubing, and a drive shaft to totally get away with a chain or belt.

More to come later…Tyson

Well today was our final day of riding before the 3 days of indoor trade show.   We found it a bit harder to test everything that we wanted to today since we had to fight a billion people in long lines to wait for what we wanted.  Even with all the extra people on the trails today we were able to ride some full suspension bikes from Yeti.  After getting warmed up on the Yeti we mooved on to the Trek/Fisher tent because we both wanted to play around on the new Superfly 100 carbon 29er and the Rumblefish 29er.  Both of those bikes have the ability to blow your mind for how well they handle and how much fun you can have.  We finished off the day with trying out some Specialized road bikes to confirm that Trek is by far the best road bike you can buy.  Next up is the tradeshow and all the new stuff.  I will try to get some more pics from what we see over the next couple of days.

Later, Tyson

Me on the Superfly 100...fastest bike in the world on the dirt...

Following BossMan on the singletrack...

Joel trying out the Yeti and getting dusty