Only the French ...

would make a bottle opener/corkscrew such as this. We Americans are way to prudish to even consider something as artistic as this. I found this in a Web Album for a French 29er Race/Gathering called French 29"ers meeting at the 24h of Bonnac la côte. Of course what drew me to this was a Qball that is in France that I will be posting next week. This work of art sits atop a French made Ti 29er made by SkydeComponents (from what I can tell - mon Francais c'est tres terrible).

It appears this bike is called the Skyde Veintinueve Tomillo from reading the order sheet(?), formulaire de commande cadres.

If French is your second language then here is a nice YouTube clip/sales pitch from the company glorifying their 29er.



Not much out there on this bike. I found some pictures someone put up on MTBR in the Ti SS archive and it's a very interesting frame design:

Eccentric bottom bracket. I wonder what the rear tire clearance is? Looks similar to this Sinister in a few ways.



Not sure who did what first and it could be that these ideas were just borrowed from some other bike anyway.

Check out the shaved seat tube in order to accommodate the rear wheel, which means that the designers are trying to shorten the wheel base in order to improve performance in handling.

Other 29er manufacturers have done this as well, namely Surly with the Karate Monkey or Ted Wojcik's preproduction Monkey Butt only in Ted's case he brought sloped the seatpost instead of bending or shaving it. Here is a shot of the Sinister. By the way, only 6 of these Sinisters were made, and this guy has two of them! Here is his bike built up.

Le P'tit Train du Nord

I am sure that if you are a regular reader of the Snack you already know that I love rail trails. I have always been a train buff and now that I am riding bike, combining the two is a great way to get exercise and to learn more about trains. The last time I was up in Mont-Laurier for a fishing trip was 2005 which was when I just started riding again and never really gave it much thought back then but on this past trip to Quebec, I was drooling over the possibility of riding this trail. I have been coming up this way since 1980 and can remember seeing trains on this line, box cars sitting on sidings and at Mont-Laurier a nice rail yard with a few tracks. Now the tracks are gone and it's a mixture of paved and finely graveled trail bed stretching 200 Klicks (120 miles) from Saint-Jérôme to Mont-Laurier.

You would think with all the push towards eco-tourism, exercise-tourism and how Canada prides itself in this arena compared to the lower 48 that there would be many online resources about this trail but sadly there are not. I did happen to find this excerpt that describes the trail pretty decently:

The P'tit Train du Nord is built on an abandoned railway line which started in Montreal and headed into the Laurentian Mountains to the north The trail runs from St. Jerome in the south, through cottage country to Mont Tremblant Village then on passed the Ville du Riviere Rouge to it's terminus in Mont Laurier. The lower section of the trail is surfaced with crushed gravel, while the upper section passed Labelle is paved. The trail has little in the way of a grade but you'll find yourself on an incline into Lac Saguay from either Mont Laurier or Nominingue, from Mont Tremblant south to St. Faustin-Lac Carre and from Mont Rolland (Ste. Adele) north to Val Morin. There are over 20 designated access points with parking. The trail is open to cyclists, hikers and backpackers in the summer season. In the winter the upper section above Val David is used for snowmobiling while the lower section is reserved for cross country skiers. The trail connects into two other regional bike paths, the Aerobic Corridor and the Lower Laurentians Linear Park (paved).

And there is a good description of what it's like to ride the whole trail in an on-line article called Riding That Train. The one thing I couldn't really find is a decent map of the trail. The New York Times did a travel piece on the trail called Easy Slopes Please: Biking the Mountains of Quebec. The times article does have a good overview map of the trail.

The quandry I find myself in is that I really want to ride this trail, apparently it takes three days, but I can't seem to get over the fact that if I am going to travel 90% of the way to the place that I have been going to for fishing since 1980, I need to some how figure out a way to go fishing as well. I guess it's something that I will have to keep thinking about until there is an opportunity to make such a trip.

In the meantime, I took a few pictures at the northern terminus in Mont-Laurier. This section is paved but most the sections are not. Seems they are paved when going through the towns so that they can be used for roller blading, too.

This caught my eye, a full squish Special-Ed Epic FSR pulling a trailer. Talk about overkill!

After taking this picture I asked the couple about their trip and they said they were dropped off here by a service that caters to bikers from Montreal. They were going to make the three day trip and camp along the way. Apparently, his companion's pannier got messed up in transit.

Upon closer inspection of her bike, it looked like she was riding a Cannondale F700, with 700c wheels and cycle cross tires. Combined with a headshock, this bike appears to have more aptly suited for this type of riding.

At the terminus there is a parking lot and picnic area. While eating lunch this group of riders on road bikes came in, got lunch at the nearby McDonalds and then reassembled to ride back to where they came from.

All these bikes were top of the line road bikes with carbon forks and STI shifters. Again, maybe a little overkill for this type of riding, especially on the unpaved sections.

This is a trip definitely worth making. The sights along the way are breath taking, especially as you get into the Laurentian Mountain Range and in and around the Mont-Tremblant area. I wonder if anyone has ridden the whole trail single speed or on a fixie for that matter? Now that would be an adventure!

Qballs: Cali Build

This bike resides in California and from the owner:

I had a nice Seven SS that I sold to build up a full suspension, mostly due to weight gain (mine). It was getting too difficult to go uphill. The bike itself was superb but I hadn't the time to keep up the fitness required to SS in SOCal. After building up a sweet SC Nomad and going on a few rides with it I really missed the quickness and simplicity and above all quietness of SS. A buddy swore by his VooDoo Dambala so I decided to give it a shot. Got a sweet deal on the frame and wheels from DEEZEE and threw the rest together. Had it rigid for a few days which was much nicer than expected but the BW .8 really made it a downhill speedfreak. I haven't been riding much at all and my first few rides in my backyard loop went really well. I have a little loop that has everything built into 4 miles-steep up and down, singletrack, mildly technical, sand, you name it. Coming from a blinged out Ti Seven to this was a huge surprise. I had a Unit that was nice except for the lateral flex-I weigh 250! The Seven had none of it and great vertical compliance. The big surprise was the Q Ball was as good laterally and better vertically-probably the 29er wheels. The handling was excellent. both stable on decents and nimble in the tight singletrack. The climbing ability and traction were phenomenal, it's like a tractor. It hasn't slipped once. I have to say I am extremely pleased with the setup and have noticed none of the typical complaints about 29ers. I've been lurking here for a while and thought I'd add a little, especially to anyone thinking about 29ers or the Q Ball. BTW, Scott is extremely friendly and helpful with regard to his products and riding in general. The rear brake design is fantastic, maybe a little bulky but it definitely works well and is very stiff.

Just in time!

Rode with a friend from work this morning. We started out doing the Echo Valley Loop at 8 AM and besides a little fog the weather was perfect. The forecast was for a chance of thunder showers but it wasn't until I got home and cleaned up did the thunder roll in and we got a deluge!

I added another trail to the loop to pile on some more miles. Did a little work on the Gussy Trail. There is one section that I never cleared and finally decided to do it. There are some pictures on the Upper Gussy Blog of the work that was done.

Took some clips along the way. Me hitting one of the Sisters and if look closely you might get some plumbers cleavage on me. Rob cleaning the Wet Spot and then doing the Blue Cross Roller for the first time, and very well could be his first time rolling a rock this size. I will have to ask him. He did it rather well. The last clip is of me hitting this one rock but I got absolutely no air on it when in the past, I have gotten much more. Guess I just choked!



We still had some time so we headed back up the horse trail, which by the way was not too bad! Once we hit the Brody Road, took the connector down to the Mulikin Trail and rode that to the Trailway and back up the Gussy Connector to the Brody Road. Then it was the long climb up, which I hit every stage. Then we bombed back to the Echo Valley Lot. 7.2 miles the total ride length, not bad for a Saturday morning.

The Friday Fix

It just dawned on me that I haven't posted about my new (to me) but older model Bianchi Classica single speed/fixie commuter bike I built a couple of months ago. I thought I would make it the feature of this week's Friday Fix, granted it's not a mountain bike but I have it configured more like a cycle cross bike, so that's close enough.

I picked this bike up on the side of the road after someone try to sell it at tag sale for $10 and there were no takers. It is a Bianchi Classica and I think it made in the early 1990's. It doesn't have the engraved CLASSICA at the start of the seat stays as the first production year model did, in fact I thought I read somewhere that this bike was the first of the Bianchis to be mass produced in Japan.

The addition of this bike to the stable prompted the sale of the Cannondale. That was a sweet bike but just too small for me. This bike, with the longer stem feels just right for me, although the seat tube measurement was smaller than the Cannondale's. It was fun stripping down the bike, though. I was able to pass on the cables to a buddy who was refurbishing an old mountain bike and needed specific suntour cables that you can't buy any more. The drop bars went to the Cannondale and the pedals were pretty cool.

Back in March, I purchased a 700c Alex Rim flip flop wheel that I was going to put on the Cannondale but you might recall, the rear drops on that bike were true vertical drops and I just couldn't get the enough chain tension with this wheel. For the longest time I kept scouring Ebay and Craigslist for a 700c front wheel but never found anything. Just when I was about to breakdown and buy a new wheel from NYC bikes when I found someone on Crankfire.com that was willing to trade a 700c steel fir wheel set for a pair of Crank Brothers' Candies.

I got a pair of Bullhorns from Profile Designs and the levers are Cane Creek 200TT, both of which, along with the cork tape I bought at Pricepoint. This was the first time putting tape on bars. In fact, I do have a post about bar taping in which I use the Bianchi as an example, called How to Tape Your Bars. I started out by first using electrical tape to keep the brake housings underneath the bars and then wound the tape onto the bars. I was able to tuck the ends in on themselves for a very professional look.

I played switcheroo with the pedals. I decided to put my CB Acids on the Fixation, thus moving the Candies over to the Bianchi. I am going to try riding clipless but it seems most fixie riders use toe clips or no clips at all. I think that may be so that if they have to loose contact with the pedals in an emergency it's a no brainer. Clipless might be another story so I will try it for awhile and see how it works. I can always go back.

The last couple of things I need are better brake pads, fenders although running the 700x42 tires might not fit with conventional fenders, so I might have to get creative, and the last thing is good mirror. So far, little jaunts around the neighborhood, the bike feels really nice. The 42:16 gear ratio feels really nice on asphalt and I can't wait to tackle the Route 25 climb into Brookfield with that gearing.

Can't wait to start riding this to work!