Dirtscrolls

Yeah, I know, it’s never too cold to ride your bike. Harden the core up, and stop the whining, right? But I’m a man with a different plan.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And when Ma Nature dumps piles of white stuff, grab the XC skis and go with the flow in the snow. Kick and glide—now that’s what talkin’ ’bout.

My local singletrack offers stellar XC skiing terrain, whenever the snow is too deep for mountain biking.

There is no doubt Mikael Colville-Andersen is pro-bicycling. A filmmaker and photographer, he is also the head of Copenhagenize Consulting, a firm that advocates for taming urban spaces, and publisher of a popular blog by the same name.

By Eric McKeegan

Maybe I have poor circulation, but cold hands are something I’ve always struggled with during winter riding. No matter what gloves I’m wearing, my hands end up cold when the temperature dips below about 15º. Sure, I could buy some lobster-claw-style gloves or mittens, but I don’t like the idea of having to use more than one finger to brake.

Maybe I have poor circulation, but cold hands are something I’ve always struggled with during winter riding. No matter what gloves I’m wearing, my hands end up cold when the temperature dips below about 15º. Sure, I could buy some lobster-claw-style gloves or mittens, but I don’t like the idea of having to use more than one finger to brake.

By Sal Ruibal

Shortly after receiving Jamis’ Commuter 4 for review the weather around these parts turned awfully cold and snowy. In fact, I had to swap out the brand new stock tires for some knobbies due to snowy roads on my mayden voyage. Not only that, but temps droppd down to 12-15 degrees Farenheight, which made for quite a frozen beard by the time I made it into work.

We’re getting spoiled here at Dirt Rag Headquarters! Two companies in as many weeks have stopped by to show us their wares. Sorry you couldn’t make it, but we’re going to share what we saw with you.

Today it was Zack from Mavic who stopped by, bringing an assortment of Mavic’s wheels, shoes and clothing for show and tell. If you’ve somehow been living under a rock or on Mars, you should know Mavic has been building wheels and other cycling parts in France for more than 100 years.

Custom bike builder Independent Fabrications, a long-time Massachusets icon, has announced it will move its operations to New Hampshire in the coming months.

Its new facility is a 200-year-old mill in Newmarket, N.H., about an hour north of Boston. The space will allow the company to include a showroom and a fitting area, said IF President Gary Smith in a press release.

Freeride Entertainment, an action and extreme sports filmmaking company, is taking freeriding back to its roots with Where the Trail Ends, a feature film based on natural terrain riding in international locations.

The project started deep in the Gobi Desert this year with riders Darren Berrecloth, Kurt Sorge, and James Doerfling. Freeride is keeping quiet about the other locations, but you can use your imagination…

The good folks at Airborne Bicycles stopped by at Dirt Rag HQ this week to show off their revamped model lineup for Spring 2011.

By Adam Newman

Why do we ride? 

Fitness? Transportation? Socialization?

I call BS. If you ride a bike and you’re reading this, I’d put money on the fact that you ride just because it’s fun.

And the Raleigh Talus Sport 29 I’ve been riding for the past few weeks is just that: fun.

The opening has been delayed indefinetly for the past few weeks, but it looks like they’re ready to open their doors to 2011.

Keep checking back here for updates or visit their site.

By Adam Lipinski

I’m glad to report that the Diamonback Sortie 3 is not the department store bike so many people perceived it would be. I’d be pretty shocked if a company tried to pan off department store bikes for $2749.95.

Intense and Dirt Rag have both been around for more than 20 years. We’ve somehow never tested an Intense. That is a problem, and I’m correcting it as you read.

Yessir, a Tracer 29, 140mm of VPP travel, made in the USA, already muddy.

That is a straight 1.5 head tube, with a Cane Creek tapered headset.

SRAM dispatched a full XO group, this is the 26-39 crankset.

Epic Trail threatened in West Virginia

From Kyle Lawrence of the Shenandoah Valley Bicycle Coalition:

Gregg Bagni

Hometown: Boulder, CO and Lake Geneva, WI

Current location: Trapped on planet earth

What do you do for/with/to bicycles? 

Sounds like a cool holiday gift to us. Ikea announced last week that all 12,400 of its U.S. employees would recieve a new bike courtesy of the Sweedish furniture retailer.

The company’s self-congradulatory press release cites all the benefits of cycling as its reasons for the gift, including excercise and sustainability. Certainly two great causes a company would like to be associated with. Though Ikea hasn’t always played nice with the cycling community.

by James Murren

In the Access column of Issue 151, we interviewed Ashley Korenblat, Director of IMBA’s Public Lands Initiative. She spoke about the ways in which mountain bikers can work with land preservation advocates, and why Wilderness designations, even though they ban mountain biking, are not always a bad thing for mountain bikers in general. In this issue, we have an example of the other end of the land use spectrum, resource extraction, and how it can impact mountain biking.

Does this mean the socks/sandals/beard look will be replaced with flat-brimmed hats and big shades? 

By Josh Patterson

Cyclocross season is in full swing!

In fact, Cyclocross Nationals kicks off today in Bend, Oregon. Like most people who race ‘cross, I can be pretty fanatical about it. Our Web Editor, Adam Newman joins me in this obsession. I’m not sure what it is about racing bikes with skinny tires in bad weather that make this sport fun, but there’s something special about cyclocross.

By Sal Ruibal

I love to ride in the rain, snow …

I’m really sorry I wasn’t able to ride the Punk Enduro this past weekend, but don’t think I’m afraid to ride in a little Pittsburgh precipitation.

I love to ride in the rain so much that I wrote a song about that passion. When the skies open up and the cold, stinging water splashes my face, I sing my song loud and proud in defiance of the weather.

By Justin Steiner

Orbea started from humble beginnings in 1847 as a family-owed gun manufacturer. From there, the company evolved into producing bicycles by 1930, and transitioned to a worker-owed cooperative in 1965. In 1998, Orbea began a major initiative to internationalize and push their presence throughout the globe.

Planet X, a U.K. Internet-based bicycle manufacturer and retailer, aquired Titus and its assets last week in an auction by its former major lender, Factors Southwest.

The brand’s future was uncertain after it could no longer keep up with loan payments. Planet X won the bidding after two rounds of auctioning.

Planet X sells bikes under its own brand and its mountain bike brand On One.

No word yet on if the Titus name will live on.

By Adam Newman

Last week I heard about a new project from Renissance Bicycles in North Carolina, The Bicycle As Art, a blog highlighting user-contributed artwork and cultural artifacts inspired by bicycles.

By Sal Ruibal

I’ve been getting lots of emails and calls from my mountain-biking friends this week, looking to ride my neighborhood trails.

I’m lucky to live in an area that’s just outside the Washington DC Beltway, but also rich in singletrack. And not just any singletrack, but sweet-flowing, banked and bermed vintage IMBA Grand Cru that makes up in smiles what it lacks in miles.

When I first began riding here in 1994, there were two kinds of trails; sidewalks and bushwhacked ruts with shin-bashing rocks and ankle-deep mud bogs.

Allow me to introduce Yeti’s redesigned-for-2011 575. I’ve had the pleasure of riding this 146mm-travel beauty for the last couple of months, and I’m happy to say it’s a mighty fun bike. Yeti did a ton of work revising the 575 for this year, so I’ll let the video at the end of this post fill you in on the details.

Who do you ride for? 

This weekend you can ride for 5-year-old Tyler Blick at the seventh annual Le Tour de Tryptophan, a 24-hour mountain bike ride (not race) in Fullerton, Calif.

By Matt Kasprzyk

After we gave them a fairly glowing (hehe) review in Issue 152, we were a bit dissapointed to hear that the Magicshine light batteries have been recalled.Their main US distributor, GeoManGear.com, has issued a satement on its web site that their use should be discontinued immediately.

By Adam Hunt

It’s a safe bet that every time Danny MacAskill comes out with a new video it’s only a matter of hours before it goes viral, clogging the interweb and your social media feeds. And for good reason, Danny’s got skills.

Can a bicycle change someone’s life? Crankbrothers and Performance Bike think so. They’ve teamed up with Wheels4Life to auction off some top-of-the-line, custom-built bikes with 100 percent of the proceeds going to put bicycles in the hands of those who need them.

Editor’s note: Sal Ruibal covered endurance sports for USA Today for more than 20 years, including more Olympic Games, Tours de France and other sports than he’s probably like to admit. In 2007 he was inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame for his coverage of a sport that had previously been considered too far outside the mainstream.

The International Mountain Bike Association has developed a new series of web pages to organize and highlight advocacy efforts across the country. Part of IMBA’s Public Lands Initiative, the web resources are just one component of a comprehensive effort to provide enhanced tools and staff support for critical hotspots where mountain bike access is at risk.

The pages provide a format for posting comments, contacting IMBA staff and sharing links to other web resources, IMBA says. 

The New England Mountain Bike Association is locked in a heated battle over plans to improve riding in the Fells, an urban park just outside of Boston. 

The state agency managing the Fells has proposed a Trails Plan that, among other things, would provide for more bicycling opportunities, but the Sierra Club, Audubon and others are lobbying heavily to prevent any improvement for cycling. 

As many readers may have heard, things are not looking good for Titus Bikes.

The company has been taken over by its primary lender, Factors Southwest, who is now shopping for a new buyer, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News is reporting. Factors Southwest says it is not expecting to break up the company or sell of its assets.

Retailers were notified last week that all remaining stock would be liquidated, but that has not yet happened and most are still waiting for news. 

We got word today that the latest indoor mountain bike park from Ray’s will not be opening this weekend as scheduled. Despite a furious pace to construction, it couldn’t be completed in time to secure the needed permits from the city. But have no fear, it will open so, and it will be awesome, we have been assured. 

By Shannon Mominee

By Eric McKeegan

By Karl Rosengarth

November Special! $8.00 Regular price $12.00

Oh Yeah! The comfort of Merino Wool. This Dirt Rag wool sock is made for us by SockGuy and manufactured in the USA in a blend of 50% Merino Wool and 50% polypropylene. It features our Dirt Rag stacked logo in olive with an orange flame. Available in size XS, S/M, L/XL, and XXL.