Pumped, Silverstar vacation.... yes

Winter is slow and boring

My schedule is now work, exercise, sleep with some video games thrown in. At least i have a few bike things on my mind.... Vital and PB have been doing a great job keeping content flowing PLUS i bought a new lid for the season. I snagged a TLD Love/Hate carbon lid for a great deal on BikeBling of course i just found an even better deal here. Oh well, missed out on a savings of $20.00. Regardless i got to use their HOLIDAY10 coupon code and it'll arrive tomorrow.

I was thinking about getting the beta blue or the SuperStar Red/Blue TLD D2 helmet but everyone has one now and every time i had either added to my cart.. i just couldn't pull the trigger.

you won't see a lot of love/hates anymore because they are being closed out and according to the TLD site the D2 Carbon = on a hiatus.. maybe permanently... i don't know. Anyway here is the lid that will be on my doorstep tomorrow. I think the name of this helmet is great because you either love it or hate it :)

Anyway other good MTB things to look forward to: 17 questions by Steve Peat will be out on Xmas Eve... be sure to check it on Vital. Life Cycles BluRay has supposedly been shipped by PB That should be in my mailbox soon and I'm going to start stockpiling parts of a new Rune Build.... stay tuned for that as i'm just about done putting together my preliminary build list. Will share when i'm done. Have a Merry Xmas and I hope everyone gets a lot of rad bike related gifts.

Good Old Fashion Family Vacation

Family Vacation to Whistler - More Mountain Bike Videos

I want to say something about buying bike related stuff

Now more than ever we have amazing choices for cycling products. Awesome frames, forks, cranks, shocks and so much more... the problem is.. where do begin to decide what to get?

well you can jump on mtbr.com or god forbid pinkbike.com and ask the "experts" but you'll soon find out the only answers you'll get are a bunch of crap biased answers.. even from me. More recently i've been buying from shops and company's directly that have treated like their business depends on my $. I'll name 2 real quick... 1 shop and 1 company.

Shop: Universal Cycles... this name probably rings a bell even if you don't live in Portland. Universal Cycles has a big online shop w/ multiple warehouses. They carry a shit ton of goods at reasonable prices. I've bought many of the finishing touches for my Legend at the shop and Aaron at universal even put the whole thing together for me. Sure the work they do there on my bikes is great and they get me products real quick.. but whats best is that they take the time to answer my questions, they call me by name and they help me out with problems i have w/ certain components *cough..el *cough*..ixers.. uh* even though i didn't buy it from them.

I know they might not do this for everyone .. but i was in a bind and needed some work done on a Friday so i could ride on Saturday morning... i can't remember what i needed done but it was probably something time consuming and.. well long story short.. i explained that i needed to ride on Saturday and they had the bike ready Friday afternoon when i dropped it off that morning. These guys do a great job of treating everyone great and staying approachable... if you're in portland .. drop by their shop at 1820 NW 18th Ave. If you're not in Portland go to www.universalcycles.com to check out the massive amounts of inventory they have.

So that leaves us with the company..

Company: Deity - Holy crap, what can i say. Super fast, very personalized experience to say the least. I met Sadie and Eric at Sea Otter in 2010. Ever since i've bought, bars, 2 sets of pedals, 2 sets of grips, a stem, t-shirt and Sadie sent a t-shit out for my girlfriend. Its funny that i've bought all this (and plan to my exponentially more from them) when the first experience i had with their product wasn't the best. I bought some grips from an unnamed retailer and for some reason i only got a couple of screws for the clamps. It was a bitch getting the replacement screws from the retailer.. and they said they weren't accusing me of trying to get free shit but it sure felt like it. .. Well I just about gave up then i ran into Sadie and them at Sea Otter.. i told her about it in more about it and when i got home from the trip she called me at work and got my info to send everything out. In like 2 days i got my grips on and ready to roll. What a great experience (or as we say in my industry.. service recovery). Every purchase since has been rad... did i mention they are fast at sending stuff out... if they have it in stock it'll get to you quick. Beyond their service.. their product is amazing... i saw a guy w/ a mid-20lbs Ibis Mojo at blackrock recently.. and it was equipped with the new Decoy LT pedals.. nice choice if you ask me.

So all in all when you're buying bike gear.. go somewhere that is going to treat you with respect and not make you feel like a you're inconveniencing them. You're spending a lot of money on something you're going to break.. your business is important.

Man these are wide bars.

Yes they are. . . . pink too.


Julian from Race Face hooked me up with the pink bars for my Legend build.



Originally i had decided on the red ones, then I thought i'd go with black. The problem with black is... I already have black for my Wildcard. Well i dropped into the Race Face tent and was super stoked on the pink bars for sure.



Heres Julian talking about all the goods.

I love this place

Grant's Getaways - Black Rock Mountain Biking from Travel Oregon on Vimeo.