michaelbiker

New-old route in Hemel-en-aarde

Tokai, Boulders in bloom

Some new blue for the toolbox that doesn’t require batteries… 🙈

I'll take it please if someone hasn't already.

Have never shipped to SA before, but the site is legit and have ordered from them a few times but shipped to Singapore.

Back on the bike

No worries. Good luck with the search. They are amazing bikes.

I have a 2021 BMC Fourstroke for sale but not just the rear triangle...

My bike only had space for one cage and I rode with one of these: https://www.trekbikes.com/za/en_ZA/equipment/bike-accessories/bike-bags-panniers/bontrager-rapid-pack/p/14798/?colorCode=greendark You barely notice it’s there and I ended up riding with it for all my rides. Plus there is space for tools, phone etc. If the ride was particularly long, I would pack a full size bottle. The pack is very stretchy, so it hugs your body and doesn’t bounce around.

There is an audible warning and it does integrate into my head unit 100%. Like I mentioned go for the cheaper of the two. There is no discernible difference from a feature point of view. I bought the Magene because it was nearly R1500 cheaper at the time.

I have the Magene. It was a lot cheaper than the Garmin. It works flawlessly for me. Get whichever is cheaper since I don’t think there is much difference between them.

It is a lot of fun! Can’t wait to try it out on some WC trails this weekend… Leaving for SA tomorrow.

Rainforest riding near T15 on the way back from Mandai, Singapore.

These are hard to find. I had it shipped from a shop in Brunei to Singapore as a complete bike and then just switched parts over. 2022 frame is very different to 2021. This is more a mini-trail bike than an XC bike. It’s long, low and slack. Slackest setting is 65 degrees. I replaced a 2021 BMC Fourstroke LT. If anyone is interested it’s for sale… It was too big for me and I couldn’t get the integrated dropper any lower. Beautiful bike though.

New frame day! 2022 Rocky Mountain Element Carbon

Have been in Singapore and Thailand the last few months and have seen more snakes on trails here than I care for. I don’t like snakes. Largest was a 4m Burmese python on a trail run in the jungle lying right across the path. It was absolutely massive. Most deadly was probably a Malaysian Blue Coral snake. I thought it was just a bit of cable lying in the trail until it started moving. Also saw varying sized tree snakes and a huge snake (around 2m) which looked just like a mole snake back home. The weird thing is that the Thais don’t really bat an eyelid when you tell them stories of snakes. They have so many here. It’s also amazing how you react to the snake you before you realise what you are looking at.

It depends. How much travel do you have / want? Are you referring front or rear or both? I’ve found on rear, short travel - geo and linkage design is more important than the shock itself. Front makes a difference with regard to weight and damper performance between low-end and high-end.

Endurance. I haven't tried the regular one.

Nice thing about orange seal endurance is it’s really easy to peel off from the inside of the tire. Comes off in one giant piece. Works for road tubeless and it seems to last a lot longer than Stans or Joes.

Patches and if the hole is big enough, dental floss to sew it closed. Then use a good sealant such as OrangeSeal Enduro. But smaller holes should be sealed by the sealant. If they aren’t, it’s time to try something new.

Not sure if they are available in SA yet but I have a Hammerhead Karoo 2. I’ve had an Elemnt and a few Garmin devices but none of them came close to the mapping and nav functionality of the Karoo. Not to mention the amazing screen. We spent a lot of time this year mountain biking near Girona and I used a combo of Trailforks, Komoot and Strava to put together some amazing rides. The Karoo didn’t miss a beat. It re-routed when we needed it to and the maps are super simple and clear to follow - even on teeny tiny singletrack. The heatmap feature is genius for finding popular stuff the mapping apps may have missed too. I can’t recommend it enough if you do a lot of riding in unknown places.

Like all forks depends how it’s setup but I felt the small bump compliance was a lot better and the fork just felt smoother overall. I put it down to the needle bearing design. I also had installed a compression adapter in my Lefty 2.0. Servicing wasn’t any more expensive, just a pain because you had to send the fork away. Full disclosure: I went from a 100mm Scalpel to a 120mm BMC and I find the BMC overall a more capable and fun bike.

I ride a Fox 34SC 120mm with Fit4 damper. I miss my Lefty... 😅

I ride a 34 with 10-52. The answer really comes from where you ride. I had a look at some of my rides on the AXS app (rides were in different parts of Spain and one in Singapore) and I generally ride in middle of the cassette - which was surprising to me. So I tried to pick a few a rides that were varied in terrain as examples. Note, you really want to ride the majority of your ride in the middle to upper gears to save on wear of your cassette since the smaller rings wear faster. The first ride is approx 500m of climbing over 30km. It’s a lot of up and down but not much sustained climbing - none of the individual climbs are longer than 50m elevation gain. Probably more similar to riding in the cradle. The 24T is clearly the gear I like the most on flat trails. The second ride is more moderate climbing, maybe on average 50-100m per climb also around 30km and total elevation gain 650m The third ride was a 52km ride with a very long climb at the start - something similar to wapad up to Noordhoek peak. Total elevation gain was 1200m. You can see the 32 would probably move the ratio further down the cassette but it was still completely manageable. The end of the ride had a pretty nasty dirt road climb. The last ride here had a 450m 4km technical climb. It was really loose and very rocky. Probably one of the hardest climbs I have ever done. Total ride was 960m over 37km. For this ride I would have liked a 32 but it’s the only ride in the last 20 I have done where I have thought that.