As a member of the media, going to the Sea Otter Classic used to be a delightful mix of getting my ass kicked in the road and circuit races, followed by wandering around a couple dozen 10×10 tents checking out what West Coast bike-related brands were showing off. Gradually that transitioned into me doing the road gran fondo (easier to walk afterward), followed by doing the off-road one (fewer hours away from the expo) to the way it has been for me since 2017 or so, in which I rarely bring a bike with me anymore because the expo is now so large that I couldn’t get through the whole thing even if I cloned myself.
What we present here are a combination of what we’d like in our garage (or dresser) and stuff that deserves to be the topic of post-ride coffee talk.
Prototyping full-suspension mountain bikes isn’t easy. By the time you cut tooling to be able to lay up carbon, you’ve committed to geometry. Is that head tube too steep? Are those chainstays short enough? Pivot has taken a new approach; they are machining aluminum lugs and bonding in carbon fiber tubes to make prototypes that more closely conform to the design’s intended ride qualities than almost any other approach will allow.
Yes, it’s expensive, like mid-five figures. But leave it to Chris Cocalis to come up with a fresh approach.
You’ve probably seen the Sea Sucker racks, which attach a rack to your vehicle with suction cups. I’ve previously reviewed them during the RKP days, and they work, no question. I once drove from LA to San Francisco (farther, actually), with one of those carrying two bikes on the roof of my car.
Yes, everyone who uses one of these on an occasional basis gets nervous about a suction cup un-suctioning. Allen has come up with a new rack that includes an anxiety-elimination module. Actually, it’s just an app. Sensors in the suction cups communicate with a smartphone app via Bluetooth and should one of the four suction cups begin to lose its seal, an alert is sent to the smartphone.
9Point8 is a Canadian brand that makes a variety of specialty products, including dropper posts. The dropper posts caught my eye initially for two reasons: First, they are rebuildable in a way that most aren’t and second, users can swap out the seat clamp to allow for a more forward or rearward saddle position.
They also make kits to allow riders to adjust their head tube angle. There was a time in which I would have thought this a VERY BAD IDEA, but in mountain biking, changing a bike’s head tube angle can make a bike easier to manage on particular kinds of terrain.
Do you have any scars on your shins from flat pedals? Do you ride a fatbike in snow and/or ice? Well 9Point8 is based outside of Toronto and they realized that if you put studs in the shoes and make the pedals soft, you wind up with pedals that can’t hurt you and the ability to walk on ice and snow.
We’re hoping we can get Patria to review these for us.
If you haven’t heard of Morelle, here are the basics: Gary Fisher (yes, that Gary Effing Fisher) is working on a new ebike. The principals of the company come from the battery space and the heart of the ebike they produce will be a battery that will charge in as little as 10 minutes, reducing the need for batteries with ginormous capacity, which will also reduce ebike weight. The battery will meet UL 2271 requirements.
The German component maker SQ Lab has produced a number of saddles that I’ve found to be remarkably comfortable, which is to say they support my netherest of regions in a way that reduces the opportunity for numbness. This new saddle, the 60X Ergowave, which comes in several variants, features a shortened nose and greater width than we see in most saddles, in keeping with a number of new saddles on the market, such as the PRO Stealth. Can’t wait to try this.
Bulls is a brand I’ve had my eye on because they aren’t one of the big legacy brands known for doing great mountain, gravel and road ebikes, but they are doing substantially higher-quality ebikes than we typically see from the D2C companies. The Copperhead EVO AM 1 750 (I know, it’s a mouthful) is on sale for $2599 and comes in four sizes and is equipped with a Deore 11-speed drivetrain and Tektro hydraulic disc brakes.
Most hitch racks are not fender friendly. Saris has just introduced a new hitch rack, the Superclamp that uses a special wheel block and clamp that allows the front wheel to be clamped in place without interfering (damaging) the front fender. The Superclamp can handle up to a 50-in. wheelbase, making it long enough to handle compact cargo ebikes, fits tires up to 3-in. wide, and can carry two bikes each weighing up to 60 lbs.
Every once in a great while I’ll run across an apparel company that surprises me with the quality of their clothing. Such is Safetti, a Colombian brand that showed at Sea Otter. From the embroidered logo to the quality of the stitching, ticking and other trim, I was impressed with the quality, and just as impressed with their designs.
TPU inner tubes hit the market with great promise and then dashed their reputation faster than they could build it, usually due to problems with the bond between the tube and the valve stem. While my luck has been pretty good so far, I’ve met enough people who have had trouble with them not to argue. Aeron aims to change that, thanks to their hybrid valve stem design, which incorporates TPU into the valve stem, making it unlikely to break free.
They make two road versions, the SuperLite Race and UltraLite Protect (a bit heavier and a bit more protection), as well as a city/touring tube called the UltraProtect, which is meant to offer the kind of puncture-proof protection you want for your commuter. Shown above is the SuperLite Race.
I have, on occasion, gone shopping by bike and planned to carry home my booty in a pannier. And on occasion I’ve worried about whether or not my panniers would be there after my shopping. Ortlieb has introduced a new lock for their bags, which will provide enough protection keep honest people honest. It comes in both single and double lock versions, depending on whether you have one pannier or two.