Joe_Dick profile

Just to play devils advocate here and to put a BC lens on it. The biggest buzz word in land use planning right now is Accessibly. Now that can be taken to mean many things, but one of the main barriers to entry is cost. especially among low income families. I realize this is deeeeep in the comments about a $12000 ebike. Mountain bike trails have always been open to all non motorized users as no charge. if you want to gain advocates, get the hikers, dog walkers and trail runners on you side. they out number ebikers by several orders of magnitude. 

Historically trails were volunteer built and maintenance. That is not as true these days as it was, but still most trail development comes from provincial funding in one form or another. To take infrastructure which has either been developed by volunteers or by tax dollars and to add a user fee to it is problematic when viewed in terms of accessibility. 

again just playing devils advocate.

@DWMS. The provincial government is currently navel gazing on how to manage recreation and what a new management policy may look like. Having had an opportunity to participate in this, one of my take ways is that an attempt to implement a Pay to Play model is coming to mountain biking, at least to sanctioned trails. It exists in other recreation sectors and it has long been talked about, both pros and cons, in local advocacy, but there is almost no mechanism in place action it. No one at this point knows what it looks like, or if it’s a certainty, but my guess is that in the next decade we will see an attempt at this model.

I am not saying I agree with it. But it seems like there is an appetite with in government to try it.

At the last MTB tourism symposium someone pitched the idea of 1% for trail to come from the sale of bike related goods from the manufacturer and go into a trail fund. Would it work? would the cost just automatically get passed on to the consumer? We will probably never know because like the overworked non profits and dirty hippies we are, no one has yet acted on getting this off the ground. Though ORCBC did but a pile of money from the provincial government for a trails fund. we will see where that goes… I do have concerns of the government being the only major source of funding for trails. 

Adding more people to trails does not automatically add more capacity to to organizations managing the resource. One side of the coin is that getting more people on trails is a net good, the other is that more people = more problems.

one of our trail networks is largely dual direction trails with a small handful of downhill oriented trails.  e-bikes riding up the downhill trails happens regularly in the spring when we get out of towners coming in for the snow free trails. is it an issue?, probably. I sure get a lot of email about it. 

analog bikes do ride up expresso. again, an issue, maybe, probably depends on the time of day. 

your car analogy is fairly succinct. the car lobby drove the policy on public land and we now have terrible un friendly infrastructure that requires people to own cars and nearly bankrupt citys because if it. there are a pile of studies on the is you can google.  now we are repeating that with letting manufacturers dictate public land use for recreation. I don’t know where it’s going to go, but the examples we have are not great. governments tend not be be very nuanced when they ban things. all bikes get lumped together. which to me is the big issue with e-bikes being labeled non motorized. I get a lot of questions from non cyclist about this. trying to explain to them what is and is not permitted always ends in the same response. “ that’s dumb, they either have motors or they do not.” let not even try to draw comparisons to the federal liberfailed attempt at update the canadian gun laws… I mean, that went well. 

I do get a kick of the kids riding full throttle ebikes, ripping around the sidewalks and roads in urban areas. no insurance no helmet, no cares. reminds me of growing up in the sticks and my friend with motos doing similar things.  though these days no parent would let their kid rip down a public road on a moto with out a helmet. but it’s an ebike so it’s all good.

There is a bit of a saga on how I found my way into an M5100 11 speed drive train. I am only a few rides in, but it’s very shimano and the whole drive trail costs less than and eagle cassette. probably less that a replacement battery for your trans

Where shimano, and perhaps others fall apart, is they do a big release for say linkglide, and you literally can’t buy it from your LBS. They barely know what your are looking for and they can’t get it from their distributor. You would think shimano would time the release with the ability to purchase the product. and maybe LBS education.

Yes you can, and I have, bought it from an on line source. but I am pretty sure it’s still not available at the  LBS.

I regularly build wheels with used spokes and nipples, cause I am cheap and pre inserts trashed rims on the reg. my last wheel build I broke down and bought new spokes and brass nipples. wow did those ever go together quickly. even considering that my time as a wheel builder is not worth that much, it was probably worth it!

I would bet that my V6 rav4 will blow the doors off a stock 60’s mustang, but if I had the cash/lifestyle that let me drive a classic car, there are a number of inefficient, shit handling cars I would drive over my Rav. 

my second thought about bikes like this, is that if you need to ask the price, you can’t afford it. nice to look at though.

“The meat is aware that some discipline applied to dedicated saddle time, diet and training would reap rewards and chop more time off that climb than any variation in seat angle or choice of tire. But the meat is also aware that the cosmic clock is ticking, and that no matter how hard it trains, it is going to get slower.”

I have no interest in doing the things I did in my 20s and 30’s. though I would like to get back to a few of those places. Age, and perhaps wisdom, dictates that the pace will be different. Doing the home work (diet, training, rest) and experience means I can envision how long and how much effort a ride will take and tick it off with out too much suffering, most days. some days I can hardly walk…

One of my riding partners is more than 20 years younger than me, and one is a few years older. the younger one had more raw power then I ever had, and the older one is freakishly constant. I am still learning from both ends of the spectrum. 

most days I ride by my self, homework.

On a trip where we flew to arizona for a few days, camped out of a rental van, rode bikes and eat at restaurants, I had the fuel bottle and pump for my Whisper Lite confiscated. Smart I know!. I bought a cheap butane stove a walmart for $30. while not as fancy as this Primus stove, I echo your thoughts, Its a great little stove for over night missions where you just want a warm drink and maybe a one pot meal.

Posted by: L.Hutz.Esq.

He further noted that mountain biking terrain varies widely in different parts of the world, and even within Canada. He opined that a rider in Ontario might race competitively in an expert class, but struggle with an intermediate trail in British Columbia.

this is an interesting issue. trail rating are relative only to the local network and not an industry wide standard. also interesting that styles of difficulty is seldom represented in the rating system. a jump line could be a black and a steep rooty rock section is also a black but pose very different challenges.

may as well kick the old can around here.

1. this fork would be swapped between a chromag rootdown BA and a Kona Process 111

2. Currently run a 2015 Auron 140mm on my rootdown

3. some where between intermediate and advanced. I could figure out how to do a full service on my fork but would rather send it out to be serviced by someone who does it regularly. I do the lowers and play with the setting on my Auron regularly

4.I am actually looking for a 160mm fork for my rootdown but for the riding I do most of the time this summer 140mm is just fine.

5. both. I flip full suspension bikes regularly but I keep my hardtails for years and replace parts as the break and wear out.

6. https://nsmb.com/articles/north-shore-billet-variable-tooth-chainring/

Discalmer, after I wrote that review I ended up forking for NSB for a few years but am no longer employed by them.