Issue 160 of Singletrack World Magazine has a story by Petor Georgallou about a ride around Morocco – and the connection between downtime and creative capacity.
The full magazine feature is a fabulous piece of writing that manages to be thought provoking and funny, insightful and surreal. To read that story, you’ll need to get yourself a copy of Singletrack World, either by subscribing, or ordering a single copy of Issue 160. Details below.
To give you a bit of a taste of the article, we’ve got a bike check of the Sturdy Cilla that Petor rode on this trip, as well as the gear he took with him.
Over to Petor…
I took a custom-made Sturdy Cilla, with a deep design connection to the X-Wing from Star Wars, which was appropriate in the landscape. It’s a weird geometry (a luxury of a full custom build): long, low and slack with a road bike fit. My theory being that it’s comfortable on paved roads for long periods of time, and relatively aerodynamic at speed, although the handling is not ideally suited to road riding. The trade-off being that I can ride much, much harsher and sketchier trails on it than I would normally be confident riding on a gravel bike. It’s stiffer than you’d expect from a titanium frame, because Sturdy can tune the flex through the use of printed parts, rather than relying on the properties of tubes and just increasing tube diameters. This makes it handle beautifully with just the perfect amount of flex loaded up.
- Frame, fork, headset, bottom bracket, stem, bars, brake levers, seat post, jockey wheels, crankset, chain ring, and disc rotor lock rings were all made by Sturdy.
- Gearing: SRAM Force AXS (because Star Wars).
- Wheels: Zipp 101 laced to Onyx Racing rear, and Schmidt SON front hubs
- Tyres: Schwalbe G-One R (my favourite tyres ever. Although mine were 45c because that’s what was available, I’d use a 50c now).
- Pedals: Hope XC
- Saddle: Posedla Joyseat, printed to fit a scan of my bum!
- Feed bags, camera bag and bum bag were all Wizard Works.
- Frame bag: Custom made by Shaggy John to look like the rebel fighter uniforms.
Rear racks: Ballern Cycle Works and Tailfin. The carbon Tailfin was a revelation – just super light and ridiculously solid, especially off-road. It has to be the best rack ever. I used a traditional pannier configuration on this trip, rather than the top bag. Panniers and fork packs were all made by Tailfin.
Navigation: Gen 2 Wahoo Elemnt Roam – which was a very subtle upgrade from the first generation but works much better with software updates.
I had a weird light/charging set-up with a Sinewave charger linked to an Ledlenser power pack that takes large replaceable lithium batteries, so you can swap them out when they die, without having to replace the whole power pack. On the front, I used an Olight Baton 3 Pro because it’s available with a warm, white LED and it uses the same batteries as the power bank, so it adds a battery of capacity to the system when I’m not using it. I also carried one spare battery. The rear light was an ancient Exposure Flare, which I love because it uses the same replaceable battery as my camera flash (CR123).
I used a Hyperlite Mountain Gear Ultamid 4 tent, which was way too luxuriously spacious for two people and all our stuff. I wish I’d got an Ultamid 2 instead because it does genuinely comfortably fit two adults. I also used a Hyperlite Mountain Gear 2-season quilt which was plenty warm and light AF.
I took a Daysaver multitool, as well as a couple of quick links, and a Dynaplug Pill which I fitted with extra plugs, as well as a Dynaplug racer, and Dynaplug Covert bar ends which I forgot about when I was packing the other two Dynaplugs. Plus a small bottle of Schwalbe sealant and a couple of TPU inner tubes.
Clothing was Albion everything – the mountain jacket was amazing, the waterproof jacket is breathable enough to use as a windbreaker when it’s not raining, and the bib shorts are second to none.
I love my Quoc shoes. They have silly dial fasters which are nonsense, because you know what doesn’t come with or need a warranty? Shoelaces. The dials broke ages ago, but they’re good shoes and I like them so I cut the dials off with a grinder and a cobbler riveted in hiking boot lace eyelets. I consider this an upgrade; it only cost £12. They held up almost three years like this, the original dials lasted a few months.
For the most part, I wore Oakley Clifdens with dark red snow lenses. I wish they had brown or neutral lenses but just as dark. Red is a lot in the heat.
It was a great set-up. The Sturdy travels well because it has no paint and can flex much more than basically anything else before it gets damaged in transit. It also comes with a lifetime warranty, which is ridiculous. I’d recommend bigger tyres. I wish I’d ordered a custom drop bar Tara from Sturdy instead, for the additional tyre clearance, and then I could have run Thunder Burts. Just something bigger and fast rolling to soak up some more stone hits – although the Zipp rims took it like a champ – and make the most of smaller tyres off-road.
Subscribe before midnight tonight (24th March), to get Issue 160 as part of your subscription.
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Cool bike