PhilipV

The ideal bike for bike packing is the one you have. I can confirm that my carbon hardtail was effective for bike packing.

Must be an Isuzu driver, not having a back-up Camera. As a Ranger driver, I do not deny using the reverse camera. All the time. Makes hooking up trailers daily a breeze when going solo. Side note, I took off the canopy last week to load a flow bin, and now that canopy will be parked in my warehouse until winter. No blind spots, easy loading of stuff, chuck a blanket over the back and shuttle. So much room for activities.

I got my T25 screwdriver to work on disc rotors. But in the meantime Scott has adopted it and it’s used on a lot of bolts on my Genius. Convenient. Torx can supposedly handle more torque before rounding, but I’ve found that quality bits is key.

I love Wera. These are 👌🏻 if you don’t have one yet, you NEED this in a t25 as well.

Connections and results to get you noticed. The pool of sponsorship spend is very small, and the split for ladies is tiny. You either need to know the right people, or beat the right people. So go race, race hard, prepare a sponsorship CV and start introducing yourself to the right people.

I should rephrase that. not Lourensford the farm. The Clay Pigeon/MTBing on Lourensford at $$$$$ crowd is what’s wrong with mountain biking. It’s the school kids on S-Works, the C-Suite doing Epic. The illusion that MTB needs to be expensive to be fun. Maybe I’m just disillusioned by how crap the riding vibe has become, or maybe I’ve just become an acerbic old man who wants these kids to get off my lawn. Nevertheless, I’ll go back to riding my singlespeed around the corner from Lourensford, and enjoy the little oasis of trail running on the other side of the same mountain where a year permit is R200 and trails are built and maintained by volunteers.

Lourensford is pretty much mostly everything that’s wrong with MTB right now. fortunately, we can still enjoy riding wether they are operating or not.

Running is like an STD, if you are not careful you will pick it up.

my bakkie was built in Pretoria. QC issues have now nearly cost it a second engine. hopefully for you the bike QC guys are better.

Chris, how are your knees holding up to walking? I hope it’s painless? Blouklip trail run (21) for 9nov, and George MUT (45) end May again. I pulled a calf muscle and have been riding instead of running for two weeks. I have to be honest, mountainbiking is still my first outdoor love.

https://www.news24.com/sport/rugby/springboks/springbok-world-cup-winner-nkosi-handed-3-year-doping-ban-20240909

Has anyone used airless paint sprayers? I have a medium sized compressor, but I can buy an airless gun for the price of a water trap and spray nozzle. I want to respray a bunch of cupboards, a few photo frames, and whatever my wife can think of on the meantime.

For me it’s a toss up between my “current” hard tail, a 2006 On-One 456, and my previous trail bike, a 2016 Giant Trance 2 (27.5.) The On One is one of the bikes I dreamed about as a school laaitjie, and is still serious fun to ride. It’s done big day out rides, bike packing, faffing around in mud, pump track rides, jump trails and is now on SS guise, reminding me why I love bikes every time I ride it. It was slapped together as hand-me-down parts from the trail bike and 2nd hand bargains I hunted. But the Trance is the bike that opened big mountains, gnarly enduro and allowed me to explore my love of rocks. It showed me what side of riding I love I love most, and showed me how fast I can really be. I even rode it on long gravel roads just for the sake of riding, because riding is lekker. I replaced everything but the front brake and the crank over its 5 year lifespan. And I was genuinely sad when I broke that (the second) frame and retired it for a 29er. The replacement (Scott Genius) is a better bike in all aspects, but the Trance will always have a soft spot in my heart.

Never say never. it seems that Evolution has a few caveats.

Oh wow, what a bargain. I’ve got the original and the Go, would definitely recommend it.