Fresh Goods Friday 502: Bad Gateway, Resolved!

In recent weeks months we’ve all been riding closer to home, getting more familiar with our local area, experiencing our favourite trails in the dry, discovering new ones… and really getting to know which gates are hard to open.

My favourite ‘isolation loop’ has a couple of really great gates. The weight is sat in the right places for it to swing closed without being too hard to open, the latches don’t try to bite your fingers off, and they’re just a pleasant gate experience. Apart from this one gate, just before you get to the zigzag descent (which happens to be in our next Classic Ride). There’s a sign on it: ‘Shut the gate, idle get’. Chance would be a fine thing – I’ve never managed to open it! The welds have all failed on the structural bars so it’s flopped down on one side, long enough for it to have bent the hinges and blown a bolt out. It’s too big of a job for mid-ride maintenance – no multitool could tackle this mess.

Well I’m pleased to announce that just in time for Issue 131 to arrive and send you toward that gate – it’s been fixed! With a welder! By Dave, you know Dave. Everyone knows Dave. It must have been one of those jobs that you never get time for, until you’re forced to stay home for months on end.

So we have our new gate, and we also have a bunch of stuff to ride with, in, on, toward the gate! Here’s Fresh Goods Friday 502.

Wahoo TICKR Heart Rate Monitor

• Price: TBC
• From: Wahoo

This arrived last week and has been a great source of amusement ever since. Amanda is pleased to see her resting heart rate is in the low 40’s, and at maximum effort on a bike she’s around 165bpm… however, her main interest has been watching her heart respond to certain things – like a vegan Magnum (98bpm).

It connects to a Garmin in seconds and comes with its own Wahoo app too, and this new version of the Wahoo connects to multiple bluetooth devices at once so you can use both. The chest strap clicks on to the pod with poppers and is easily adjusted.

SR Suntour TriAir 3CR

• Price: €389
• From: Suntour

The TriAir is SR Suntour’s top of the range air shock and uses some clever design choices to offer high-end performance at a good price. Refreshingly, the shock is pretty simple to work on too with the only external adjustments being air, rebound and a compression lever with 3 set postions.

SR Suntour has built the TriAir with a large air-spring in the main body that can be adjusted using volume spacers. Adding and removing spacers can be done with the shock in the frame, and once inside you can add spacers to either positive and negative springs.

In the piggyback there’s a IFP that can be adjusted using a shock pump. Adding more air to the IFP adds more support to the rear suspension and also reduces the amount of bottom out. At the time of writing Andi hasn’t ridden the shock, but a squish of the bike gives the impression that small bump compliance will be very impressive.

Roval Control SL Team Wheels

• Price: £1950
• From: Specialized

As we revealed earlier in the week, Roval has introduced its new tippity top end race wheels, the Control SL Team. The wheels weigh a mere 1240g and yet are tough enough for trail riding and ‘down country’ as well as World Cup XC racing. We’re very lucky to have got hold of one of the 600 pairs for some testing under ‘Definitely not a World Cup racer’ Chipps…

Kenda Pinner Pro ATC 29×2.4in

• Price: £60 a tyre
• From: Moore Large

As famously co-designed by super-winning World Cup downhiller, Aaron Gwin, the Pinner Pro is designed for fast, dusty and ‘loose over hard’ courses – which happens to exactly suit the conditions right now… These are the more trail-friendly ATC construction. They’re 29 x 2.4in and intended for 28mm rims (though will fit 24-32 according to the packaging). Let the good weather continue!

Singletrack Beanie

• Price: £16.99
• From: Singletrack

Don’t let this lovely weather fool you. Yeah sure it looks great out right now, but it’s still going to get cold at night, and sometime soon you will be back in the mountains. Plus your riding buddy with the poorly maintained bike (we all have one, if you don’t have one, it’s you, you are the sod with the iffy bike) will still have you standing around in the cold while he attempts to bodge his gearing, again. Organic cotton, in four turbo fashionable colours. 

Bontrager Rally WaveCel

• Price: £129.99
• From: Trek

Hiding her lockdown hair nicely (though she’d be the first to admit it’s difficult to see the difference between that and its usual state), Hannah is modelling the new Rally WaveCel from Bontrager. The visor is adjustable, the helmet is adjusted to fit using a BOA dial, and the WaveCel technology is Trek/Bontrager’s answer to impact protection for cyclists.

Bontrager Jet WaveCel

• Price: £69.99
• From: Trek

Home school is off for the week, so Hannah has put her youngest to work taking a First Look at this new Jet WaveCel – a WaveCel equipped helmet for kids and young ‘uns – that was launched last week.

Cotopaxi Allpa 35l Travel Pack

• Price: €215
• From: Cotopaxi

One day we will travel again, and when we do, Hannah will be very visible, and organised. This 35l pack is designed to be carry-on compatible. With plenty of sections to organise your stuff, it opens out for easy access inside. There’s a padded laptop sleeve in the back, and the rucksack straps can be removed or tucked inside the back if you need to keep flappy straps neatly folded away. A rain cover is included, and the zips are fitted with anti theft webbing, making it trickier to open the pack once you’ve tucked the zips away.This one is part of the ‘Del Dia’ range, where the bag is constructed from offcuts of fabric chosen by the maker – so each one is unique. There are quieter colour options too, as well as smaller and larger volume versions, and all Cotopaxi products – with the company motto ‘Do Good’ – are made with the environment and social impact in mind.

Sennheiser Momentum 3 headphones

• Price: £349
• From: Sennheiser & John Lewis

And finally, a bit of non-bike related tech for you. In these times of seemingly continuous video calling and even podcast recording, a good comfortable set of headphones with all the wireless convenience we have come to expect is almost an investment. These ‘cans’ from Sennheiser are on Mark’s head every day in the morning staff meeting.

They are Bluetooth wireless and can connect to multiple devices at once. They have all the virtual assistant connections to Alexa, Google and Siri and they use active sound cancelling to block out the sound of your mobile phone buzzing on the desk, which is nice.

What’s nice though is there’s a graphic equaliser option via an app, which oddly is becoming something of a rarity these days.

These are destined for review over on our Tech channel by our resident headphones collector Mark very soon.

Here is Hannah’s favourite gate hook. Maybe we should do a feature on the gates of Calderdale?

Now we’ve got you all dreaming about far flung gates it seems a good time to thank the team at Trash Free Trails. As lockdown rules ease off we’re seeing people travel to our favourite remote spots and leave ugly reminders that they’ve been there. Join in, help spread awareness, or just offer encouragement if you can’t get out to help the clean up.

Amanda Wishart

Art Director

Amanda is our resident pedaller, who loves the climbs as much as the descents. No genre of biking is turned down, though she is happiest when at the top of a mountain with a wild descent ahead of her. If you ever want a chat about concussion recovery, dealing with a Womb of Doom or how best to fuel an endurance XC race, she's the one to email.

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