About BIKES.

The abbreviated guide to bicycle dynamics
i am gerard thomas bycycle dynamics

Reading Time: 18 minutes Marketing departments like to tell you how bikes work. This is how they REALLY work…

Box 2 Prime 9
box 2 prime 9

Reading Time: 6 minutes Paired with the right chainring (duh!), you just don’t need 11 or 12 gears…

160mm…. San Andreas Mk II
mountaincycle san andreas II

Reading Time: 5 minutes And hanging there, next to the Zen, it goaded me EVERY. SINGLE. TIME, I pulled the Zen off the rack until, finally, for some shits and giggles, I gave it another go; you know, just for the hell of it.

Mountain Cycle San Andreas Redux
Mountain Cycle,San Andreas

Reading Time: 6 minutes I am more than amused about my thinking at the time. Why?

To the fuckwit who called me a dickhead; Or entitlement and mountain biking do not mix.
mountain bike

Reading Time: 3 minutes I called him out on not being sharp enough, and his response was to be rude.

Talking the 9 Speed drivetrain
9 speed,9spd drivetrain,9spd gearing

Reading Time: 5 minutes What better way to mark a sporadic comeback to writing about bikes, than to write about something totally foreign to many in this, the age of 12x gearing.

CX’s growing success is Mountain Biking’s failure.

Reading Time: 5 minutes Originally I was going to sit here and bash out a piece about my bewilderment of the growing CX (cyclocross) craze here in Australia. As with most things, somewhere in the dark during one of my morning rides I had one of those epiphany things and realised I was looking at it all the wrong way. I won’t deny that seeing my IG feed filled with pics of guys who are clearly ‘dedicated followers of (road) fashion’ (yes that’s a line from a Kinks’ song), trolling up somewhat gravelly dirt roads on their CX bikes all rather amusing – even…

Data Overload.

Reading Time: 5 minutes I had a new lust… a gleaming new Polar ‘device’ that is due out, the V650. A long time fan of Polar, as their HR kit is some of the best going, so the idea of bundling that with a good GPS and barometric elevation tracker was too good to be true. Bliss! Then I thought about it. The past few months has seen me back on the bike in anger. ‘Winter’ was a write off, three months of being constantly sick wiped out any form of riding, so when I finally got back to riding, I said to myself…

Fold That tub!
tubular tyre

Reading Time: 7 minutes “35 years on tubulars and I’ve never seen one folded the way you did. Share with us the techniques, please?”

SIT – Sprint Interval Training
sprint interval training

Reading Time: 10 minutes I, like many out there, have been riding for far too long and have always worked to the accepted basics of mileage establishes base fitness and targeted sessions build strength etc. etc. Nowhere, in all those years, did I ever hear or read anyone saying sure, 2 minutes a session is all you need.

Pivot Point

Reading Time: 4 minutes Quite literally when this frame, a pre-production sample, was being welded up, frames for 27.5″ were already in production. That meant at least a year and a half prior, the ‘industry’ had already decided that the 26″ wheel was dead.

Cycling with diabetes – an exercise in calories
cycling,diabetes

Reading Time: 8 minutes Cycling with diabetes, with cycling being an aerobic activity and all, is high on the list of activities that don’t play nicely together.

Wrapping bar tape – MTB edition
bar tape mountainbike

Reading Time: 4 minutes To all those young spuds out there, you probably have never known anything other than ‘grips’, regardless of the shape or form. But back in the early to mid 90’s when mountain biking was making its mark, using bar tape on your bars was not unheard of.

Wrapping bar tape – a guide
bar tape wrapping

Reading Time: 7 minutes I thought I’d add my tuppence with this photo sequence of how I wrap mine…

How To Tidy Cabling
bicycle cabling

Reading Time: 6 minutes G’s Note: This is NOT one of the articles that I have written, rather it was penned by my friend Rich. Rich wrote some great ‘how to’s’ for the old company blog, so I’ve put it here rather than loosing it to the ether of time and space. A little while back, my good lady wife’s bike was in need of a spring clean so I took the opportunity to finally cover something I’ve been meaning to do for ages – cables. But this is not so much a ‘how to setup and tune your brakes and gears’ and more like…

Bicycle design… is boring
bicycle design

Reading Time: 5 minutes Bicycle ‘design’ is boring and I mean both in terms of visual appeal and in terms of design and designing…

Enclosed Ecosystems
bike standards

Reading Time: 4 minutes Does the bike world need another half baked ‘standard’?

40 Minutes

Reading Time: 4 minutes The crisp, fresh smell in the air, the early morning light and knowing that the chance of bumping into any of the interstate interlopers I saw heading in with bikes strapped to their cars would be nowhere in sight.

Road Raging

Reading Time: 8 minutes Lately there has been a lot of hoopla about the supposed war going on between ‘cyclists’ and drivers…

Bike Shops

Reading Time: 5 minutes Now this might come as a shock to some retailers but I have a theory about just why you might be loosing business. The theory is simple and goes something like this – you suck.

Bike Snobs
bike snobs

Reading Time: 6 minutes The sort of stuff I see on a regular basis is a lot more passive but every bit as insidious.

Old Skool Warbirds

Reading Time: 3 minutes I started thinking though, why don’t we just (and others with a similar love affair for older bikes) upgrade to something modern…

The cost of weight loss

Reading Time: 4 minutes I have a question for you – what’s the best way to make your bike lighter?

I’m going back to heavy

Reading Time: 6 minutes The 55 is a great fork but it’s bloody heavy, it truly is. All you have to do is pick up the bike to realise this…. or even just the fork alone. I wondered if I could stick a lighter fork on the front?

Advertising?

Reading Time: 3 minutes Yet despite this many of today’s adverts tell you that it should be, and is mostly about, victory and winning.

And that’s where I have an issue.

650b, placebo effect or something more?

Reading Time: 11 minutes Unless you have been living in a large hole of late, there is a new wind blowing through the mountain bike world…

The Bog Standard

Reading Time: 6 minutes Put up your hand if you remember what it was like to ride a mountain bike in the early to mid 90’s. Remember all those must have, lust worthy boutique parts?

That Place

Reading Time: 3 minutes I think it’s one of those things that every one who’s ever ridden a mountain bike has

The Brand

Reading Time: 8 minutes How it started was one of those strange stories, perhaps best left for another post about how the internet works. What happened though was I found myself working in the bike industry (in a way I had not before, just to clarify) and for one of the great names in the annals of Mountain Bike history.

The abbreviated guide to bicycle dynamics
i am gerard thomas bycycle dynamics

Reading Time: 18 minutes Marketing departments like to tell you how bikes work. This is how they REALLY work…

A retraction, tyres and an old school attitude to gears… in that order

Reading Time: 6 minutes After putting them on the bike though, my elation turned to confusion as it seemed they were to softest wheels known to man.

Off into the wild

Reading Time: 5 minutes I’ve never done unchallenging and I am not about to start.

Wait! The MTB weight conundrum…

Reading Time: 5 minutes The prototype bike came off the line, ended up in a box and was in my hands within a day. A few days later I was out riding on it, working out all the little things that needed correction – hardly anything.

Wider is better, yes it is.

Reading Time: 2 minutes When it’s wider, it just feels better.

Got your attention you dirty minded folk, haven’t I?

Old dog, new tricks?
San Andreas

Reading Time: 6 minutes The frame was called the San Andreas and was the first true mountain bike full suspension frame. With a solid background in designing MX machines for the likes of Kawasaki, Reisinger applied a thinking to his design, that up until then (and even now to some extent), was foreign to the bike world.

Reviving the classic Proflex 855 and 955

Reading Time: 4 minutes I’ve often wondered where do old Mountain bikes go? We’ve all owned bikes only to sell them and sometimes wish we hadn’t. The thought had crossed my mind a few times as to how some of these classic old bikes would stack up today.

Welcome to the Dark Side my son…

Reading Time: 5 minutes But I have this theory. No, really I do. Just hear me out.