By *The Rough Stuff Fellowship I wrote this post specifically for a journal edition of The Rough Stuff Fellowship, which is THE original off-road cycle touring and mountain biking club, and founded in 1955. It’s a global club and well recognised. It even has special lifetime members and ambassadors of off-road
Technique is everything
Our garden in Switzerland is mostly grass and trees, and is on about a 45 degree slope. We manage it quite naturally, and just like most of the Swiss farmers manage their mountain meadows. This means that we just let the grass and wild flowers grow until about mid-June and
Ducati
In addition to usual cycling brands, a lot of car companies have dipped their toes into the bicycle world. I assume this is to connect the car brand with a lifestyle of health, leisure, fitness and sport. Some also get their engineers to apply car developed technology to cycles. It
S’Bike Prototype – More research required……
Last November, I nailed a post to this site under the title ‘Rapid Prototype’. I had obtained an unknown frame from a friend who featured in ‘Interesting Interview No.1 – Terrance Malone’, and this special frame had no markings, serial number, or provenance. It gave some clues to it’s heritage
More great MTB product testing👍
Sometimes, there are contradictions and tensions in the message when talking about ‘new innovation’ and ‘heritage’ in the same sentence, unless you are a marketeer and you use heritage as ‘the hook’ for selling a new innovation. I’m using the two separately in this post, but both will be complimentary
Kash for Klunkers
I was listening to a track by the rock band, The Yidz, called Kash for Klunkers. The title of the track (marked E for Explicit by the way) appealed to me, because the term ‘Klunker’ is used to describe an iconic part of mountain biking history. More of this later
Elastomers for my ATZ Cilo
Without getting too scientific, which would push the boundaries of my own physics and chemistry knowledge quite quickly, an elastomer is a type of polymeric material that can be repeatedly stretched beyond its original length with little or no permanent deformation. It can also be compressed repeatedly and still return
Cilo Mountain bikes and bears🐻
I’m riding up a tiny, Swiss road that has 27% gradient and it keeps going up at this rate for 3 kilometres. For a couple of months of the year, it’s impassable due to snow. It’s only a very narrow road with rough tarmac and it’s not used enough for
Rapid Prototype
I think that the most exciting sounding jobs are those that are in the field of design and prototyping, which then (hopefully) realise an exciting and iconic product. In reality, most of these jobs are about failure, although with a fast learning curve. This is what I call ‘failing forward’,
The Beach. On Any Sunday.
There’s a certain sense of freedom on a beach. It’s locked like a border between the land and the powerful sea. The beach can provide tranquility, interest in washed-up sea shells, dead fish, international litter and wood that has travelled the oceans, only to be finally deposited with a smooth,
