I’ve got a car, I’m pretty jey so looking for lots of all mountain type stuff that I can ride without a guide.

Put the Monarch Crest trail on your list. Its a shuttle-able 40 mile downhill, leaving from Salida. Absolute Bikes in Salida is a fantastic shop, and the trails there are the unknown gems in Colorado. Fantastic riding. Salida is also only 1.5 hrs from Crested Butte, and together those two towns would keep you occupied for your whole stay.
Not sure how to recommend rides in Crested Butte, as I’ve never done a bad one. I think the iconic 401 trail should be experienced, as its a classic, but perhaps my favourite is Doctors Park.

Hopefully that will give you enough info to google with, but if you need more info just ask.

There are plenty in and around, like the “Flatirons Vista” trail for example, not exactly ‘all mountain’ riding though so probably not appropriate, however you wouldnt need a guide.

I really hope you’ve just pulled that map off the internets, because if you’d ridden that trail, you wouldn’t be recommending it as a worthy way to spend one out of 6 days in Colorado. (I have lived in Boulder for three years!)

Ride the Flatirons…..Boulder is such a cool town.

There aren’t any Mountain Bike trails on the Flatirons.

Do you want Lift accessed or self-propelled? I’ve lived in Colorado for the last three years, so I can give you plenty of recommendations should you need them.
Lift accessed:
1. Winter Park
2. Sol Vista
3. Keystone

Self-propelled:
1. Salida
2. Crested Butte
3. Breckenridge

(not necessarily in that order)

As much as I like a bit of spannering I’ve got too much going on in my life to devote a seventh of it to my friends’ bikes.

9-5 is actually 1/21th of the week, but I get your point. When I say a ‘day’ I mean roughly 5 hours or so, which is the most I ever work during the day. I don’t rush at fixing bikes, because I enjoy it, hence why I’m trying to find a hourly rate which will allow the current status quo to remain without anyone feeling like they’re loosing out.

Thing is it sounds like this is far from just an odd helping out a mate situation (which I think most of us would do for free). It sounds more like a case of lazy mates that prefer you to do stuff rather than learn it themselves, in which case I’d either say no or expect them to pay something for my time

You’re pretty close there. One mate is so uncoordinated that any kind of spannering is outside of his comfort range, and thus the few times I’ve shown him stuff has ended in me fixing the same problems, and his mistakes, the week after.

I now spend about a day a week doing mechanic work, and I love it, but I also love to eat and pay rent, which free work and beer-payments don’t really help with.

I wouldn’t charge them if they were my mates. Few beers would do nicely if even that.

We’ve been at that stage for the last year or so, and it’s at the point now where I’ve spent quite a bit of time working on their bikes. If it was occasional, I would be less concerned. Everyone agrees that I shouldn’t work for free, but I wanted an idea of a ball park rate. I still do the odd gear tune etc for a couple of beers for other people, so it’s not like I’m trying to make myself rich or anything :-)

There might be some places that can retread them? But I don’t know whether it would be worth it economically compared to just buying a new tyre.

Hey guys, struggling to find any info online about the Boulder, Utah ride, but I can give better instructions to anyone who’s interested (mail in profile). Roughly: We rode it as a shuttle, leaving one car in Boulder town, and the other driving up to Roger peak on ‘salt gulch road’. From the last point you can drive to, it was a couple of miles on to the top of the mesa at ‘bur top’, and then the trail drops southeast past a big lake, crossing back over the road you drove up, and then continuing into a canyon on its way to meet back up with highway 12.

Other don’t miss rides:
Dark Hollow trail at Brian Head Peak. Great 22 mile shuttle ride. Super techy and steep. Make sure you climb the last 300 feet to the peak once you get to the trailhead, because the views are astounding.
Good water rim trail outside of Price is also excellent, with some great canyon-edge exposure on the way around. Its also a great ride to break up the drive between Moab area and Salt Lake area.

A great website with gpx files of some the classics: Utah Mountain Biking[/url]

Yeah, September is the perfect time for Utah, and also the best time to ride in the Aspens as all the leaves are turning bright gold.
Post up any more questions if you have them and I’ll try to answer. I know there are plenty of other forum regulars who have spent some time over here, so maybe someone will be a long with some more suggestions.

Hi finfhan,

I’ve spent a lot of time riding around Utah so hopefully I can be of help. I would suggest hiring a car and doing your own thing, but booking a few guided days when you get to the hotspots. A lot of people go to and from Salt Lake, but if you can sort out the flights, it may be better to fly into Las Vegas and out of SLC, or vice versa. Although a lot of people head straight for Moab, I think there are some other essential places to put on your list too:

Have a google for trails around Hurricane and Virgin in Southwest Utah. There is a good shop in St. George called ‘red rocks’ or something similar, and they can point you in the right direction.
Boulder, Utah is a tiny town on highway 12 near Escalante national forest, and it has a ride that descends from the high alpine right down to the bottom of desert canyons. I’ll see if I can find some more info for you.

Depending on what time of the year you’re thinking of going, the south of the state may be too hot to do some epic rides, in which case I would strongly recommend going north to Park City. There’s some good shops in town who can show you the maps. Everything is so well waymarked that you can easily self-navigate if you get some sound advice before you set off. The singletrack in the Aspen trees is to die for, and there’s uplifts open during peak season.

The other place would be Fruita, Colorado. There’s endless info online, but just make sure you hit The Edge loop at 18 road. You wont regret it!

Moab is worth heading to, and Poison Spider bike shop in town is a good first stop to book guiding, uplift, or just pick up some maps.

If it was me, I would start in Denver, and take in the Rockies on the way through, but it all depends on how much time you have!

Pop down to your local travel agents. They’ll do all the hardwork for you, and tell you whether what you want is possible.

Schladming fulfills all of those criteria. Its a lovely town and the biking lasts for days and days, no matter what kind of riding you’re into

Anyone else tried cutting the circular corner knobs on the crossmark?

I’ve been doing it for a couple years and I really notice an improvement in cornering grip, whilst retaining that nice fast centre ridge that makes the crossmark so fast. If your old crossmark isn’t completely beat to shit, it might be worth trying.

36/46 with 12-28 in the back, on 175 mm cranks (same as MTB and Road bike).

I mostly race in the 46 chainring, most CX courses are flat enough that you don’t need to shift down.

Wow, that place is about a mile as the crow flies from my house! and I’ve never heard about it before….

If you want the low-down on the best cheeky trails around Combe Martin, send me an email. chrisbaddick AT gmail DOT com

Saw this one over in Moab last weekend. Almost more exciting than the bike race!

closing day at Obergurgl in Tirol yesterday. Thanks for a great season STW, I’ve enjoyed keeping up with this thread!

I assume us freeloaders will be subjected to advertising in due course

They’re already doing advertising. You just haven’t worked out it is advertising yet… :wink:

A sunny sunday exploring the Stubai valley here in Tirol. Still lots of snow about though, so I was limited to playing around in the valley bottom, with a couple ventures up onto the quicker drying south facing stuff. Proper lovely.

b r – Member
Fly into Bristol Airport

Would love to be flying into Bristol. Great little airport, but limited options meant I had to go for Gatwick.

I decided to go for the through London route – I’ll update you all later if I make it to Devon safely!

Try to get a hold of these guys:

Fully Sussed[/url]

This lot seem active too:

PLymouth CX

Combe Martin, North Devon. Made this a couple years ago now on a rainy day. My ‘home’ has changed a few times since then!

Backdoor ride here in Innsbruck:

My respect for Cannondale just shot through the roof if they had a say in the Sho-Air teams decision.

I don’t know if they did or not. I say this based on reading about the Aaron Gwinn/Trek Racing split. I always assumed that Trek (and other bike companies with teams named after them) ran the teams. I was surprised to find out that the team was run by another company, and Trek was just a sponsor, though a big one no doubt. I’m not involved in the racing scene at all, so I don’t know whether this is the norm or not.

The Sho-air team is run by a guy called Scott Tedro, and he’s been affiliated with Specialized for the last 13 years. Cannondale only came on board this year, and I’m pretty sure they are not an integral part of the team organisation.

As above, much much better for trail riding than DH stuff. The natural trails around the valley are some of the best I’ve ridden, but you’ll need either a guide or be happy with a map. And, also an uplift if you’re on DH bikes.

The Kona bike park just refers to the north shore type stuff and the jump lines. Its well kept up, but not extensive.

From what I’ve heard, there’s a really good DH track in Martigny, which is just down the road.

74 at the last count

Very. I’ve been racing Elite XC for the last three years. I’ve been MTBing for ages, but only got into the racing a bit later. I love it. I love the community that is built around Mountain Bike racing. A really good bunch of people that would be missing from my life if I didn’t compete.
My dream is to compete in a World Cup. Another season of collecting points, and I hope I can get there!

I guess in that case British Cycling should probably offer up a clarification as to who this actually affects.

njee20 – what does the UCI number look like? Is it [three letter country code][date of birth]

in or is it something else?

You do have them taped up right?

British Cycling works slightly differently in that you can buy a Membership and get the usual benefits (insurance, various discounts etc) but then you pay extra to buy a Full Racing Licence. That’s international by default and has your UCI number on it.

Thanks for that clarification Crazy-legs. Its been a few years since I have had a BC licence. In that case, I guess I’m less sure where that leaves racers in the UK. In the USA (and Austria where I am now), this will only affect Elite level racers.

Mark – Resident Grumpy
Some more details in our front page story

Mark – your front page article is wrong. It doesn’t affect all licence holders. Just UCI licence holders. Big difference.

From the same link in your article:

Clarification on affected riders: The letter from the UCI confirms no UCI licensed rider, in any discipline, may participate in an event not sanctioned by a national federation recognized by the UCI (USA Cycling is the sole national federation in the United States). Originally, this was described as only affecting those UCI-licensed riders on UCI teams. The UCI has subsequently clarified that the rule extends to ALL UCI-licensed riders, even those not associated with a UCI team. This rule only pertains to those riders holding an international/UCI license.

No one applies to the UCI for their licence surely – everyone has a UCI number on their licence, but obviously only a very few will ever get UCI points. Do you become a UCI licenced rider when you get UCI points? Is it the intention to get them? Ie those racing Elite in NPS 1 where UCI points were on offer? Those racing in all categories because there were UCI points on offer?

njee20

– If you are an ‘Elite’ categorised racer, you still apply for your licence through British Cycling (or your National federation), but your licence is issued in partnership with the UCI. This normally means an increase in price of about 50%, and the privilege to race in any UCI race worldwide in your discipline.

UCI points are a little separate. You can only gain these by racing in UCI races, and gaining a certain position. NPS races give points for the top 10. 10th place (if its the same as the USA) gets 5 points, and you need 20 points to race a world cup. Points are valid for 18 months from when they were achieved, meaning you need to keep topping up your pot to keep racing world cups.

If anyone is interested in a very good perspective about why we should be concerned about all this, please read Chloe Woodruffs’ take on it all:

http://www.chloewoodruff.com/2013/04/06/mountain-bike-politics/

She is an aspiring world cup racer in the US, and will really suffer if these things dont change.

‘Cause the UCI are ace at stopping doping, obviously.

No, the UCI are terrible at stopping doping.

But do you really think a new governing body, set up because Enduro riders and disillusioned mountain bikers don’t like the UCI, is going to have a priority to set up a robust anti-doping program?

Best option overall is to let the UCI run the kind of races they really want to run – drug addicts riding 1930s racing bikes over the Alps – and set up a proper professional modern organisation to take care of all the other bikes.

So who is going to fund anti-doping controls in this amazing new UCI-free world? Or do you just think people will not dope when the UCI disappears?

This rule only applies to riders holding a UCI licence. If you are a BC member, with a BC racing licence, and you do not race internationally, you can still race anything you like.

If you are a UCI rider licenced through british cycling, or any other national federation, then it will effect you. (so, thats me then.)

There’s so much good riding in other parts of Europe that are easily accessible, so why the infatuation with France? Its not like they make an effort to promote themselves to us.

I say this as a permanent resident of Austria, but one of the reasons I ended up here is after exploring further afield than Franceland.

15 – 20 punctures in the last 4 months does sounds ridiculous, no matter what tyre you’re currently running. Seriously, check your rim strip is actually intact, check the tyres again for thorns, check the bead of the rim for sharp bits.

Are all the punctures happening the same place on the tubes? I would do these checks before blaming the tyres.

I ride Clement Strada 700x28c everywhere – mostly dirt roads, gravel trails, normal roads. They aren’t advertised as puncture proof and I have a pretty good puncture/miles ratio (roughly 1 per 600 miles).

Oh yea, and you do bunny hop the potholes, right?

…where there are as many German speakers as Italian…if not more…

I think saying they speak German is an overstatement :-) but they give it their best shot! South Tirol is certainly not Italy, and I think you’d get a shock if you went there expecting it to be!

Hey Alpin,

Thanks for the Lake Garda advice from last week. I headed down there by myself from Innsbruck for a long weekend. Its always a bit strange travelling alone, but I don’t mind it too much. Riva del Garda is full of riders too, so you could for sure find someone to ride with, or if you’re like me, just be happy going exploring by yourself.

I stayed in the Ostello gioventù in Riva. For €18 a night its pretty good. Clean, hot showers etc. They also do pasta dinner for €5 which was terrible (quality) but awesome (quantity!). Also, if you get the train to Rovereto, you can get a bus with your bike for €2,90 to Riva. Dead easy.

As for Vinschgau area, I was down in Latsch last week (my housemate is from südtirol), and there was still a fair amount of snow on the northern slopes, right down to 1000m. I didn’t have a bike so I couldn’t explore, but I would guess that Garda would be a safer bet!

Also, if you’re in Innsbruck at any point, send me an email and we could go ride/drink beer!

Thanks Grum, thats a really interesting article!

The lens is kaputt, so it cannot take photos. I do think it would be possible to wire in another lens, though I would have to do some reading first. You’re right that I would be limited on the size of the lens the sensor could drive.

I was thinking of non-photo applications for the rest of the parts. I already had fun making some loud bangs with the flash capacitor!

maccruiskeen – Member
Paper weight?

Its been sitting on my desk as a paperweight for the last two weeks!

It seems such a waste to throw away/recycle such perfectly functional equipment.