industry nine in the frost

Now there’s only so much you can tell from one ride in deep, sloppy mud but since I finally dodged illness, work and self-destructing forks to actually get out on a ride with my Industry Nine wheels, I thought I should write a quick first ride review as lots of people have been asking about them.

In short, they feel amazing. Mine are the orange Enduro ones with Flow rims and while I’ve been using the Flows for some time built onto Hope Pro IIs, the Enduros are lighter still at 1775g the pair, and feel much stiffer. Not so much on the climbs, I don’t think I could notice much difference there but on the downhills there was an extra degree of precise handling and getting on exactly the right lines that wasn’t there with the old wheels.

The fast 3 degree take-up from freewheeling is nice too, maybe not as revolutionary as I had hoped for but it felt fast and ready for action. The main benefit for me was the lack of noise from the freewheel, it makes a gentle, relaxing even, buzzing noise rather than the eardrum-bursting CLACK-CLACK-CLACK of the Hope.

You also can’t get away from the fact that the i9 look amazing too, but a picture’s worth a thousand words (at least) so I won’t go on about that. Maybe there’s a bit of first-ride invincibility about my impressions so far but I think I’m going to like riding these wheels.

the JRA hamster expired

Regular visitors to the site might have spotted more than just a few glitches over the last week, in fact the whole lot disappeared for a couple of days. Something drastic broke on our server and as luck would have it, it co-incided with our website hosting company going bust.

We’d had inklings that all might not be well the the hosting company (Burton Hosting) as service levels gradually deteriorated from instantaneous response  to not answering phone calls, emails or support tickets over the course of a year, and luckily we had sorted out a new host and taken backups. It still caused a load of trouble but I think we’re back to normal now. If anyone reading this knows what actually happened to Burton Hosting I’d be interested to hear about it.

In other unrelated website destruction news, Singletrackworld.com were hacked by some unscrupulous 6th form students who then posted their entire user database on a hacking website. This is a bit of an unpleasant thing to happen at the best of times but they could have probably done without working hard all through Christmas so we wish them all the best getting it back up and running again.

EDIT: It seems Singletrack were on Burton Hosting too so it’s not entirely unrelated that both our sites went down for longer than they should have done.

And here’s a link about them: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=742458

Alpkit Snapwire Spork

I brought the Spork on the off chance that at a moments notice I’d be needed to set off with just the meagrest of essentials on a journey some where else.

In reality its just a pretty thing that sits on my desk and I fiddle with and I might take out incase I order a chinese takeaway that doesn’t come with a wooden fork. Maybe I should do something that might justify my spork.

you to can buy a spork for £6.50

snapwire spork - closed

Seb has sent through the 2009 DH season listed out and we thought we’d share it with you incase anyone’s interested in travelling and racing every weekend for 2009!

Date Race
07/12/2008 MiniDH (Forest of Dean)
14/12/2008 Hamsterley / UKBP
21/12/2008
28/12/2008
04/01/2009

> read more…

No not the bikes, we like them, but Orange mobile phones WHAT A WASTE OF TIME, I bought a new phone off them at the end of October and you have to buy a top-up at the same time (£10). It took ages and hours (OK, maybe 1 hour) of calls to get the phone to work and I still don’t have my talk time on the phone, I’ve called their “customer service” number which is actually an Orange mobile number so charged at maxi high rates and someone tapped my details into a computer. At least I could hear tapping, maybe it was just him drumming his fingers on the desk because nothing whatever happened, I may as well have just spoken into my phone without dialling any number first. Then if you phone customer services from your mobile phone it is literally impossible to get past the Most Annoying Woman In The World on their automated system no matter what buttons you press. If you phone a freephone number they refuse to speak to you unless you want to spend more money with them (which, sorry, aint gonna happen).

I’d just like to go back to the automated system for a minute. The woman they have recorded sounds like she’s speaking to 3-year olds and spends ages telling you how amazing Orange are, no they’re not, they are rubbish, they take your money, fail to provide a service then charge you loads of money on premium rate lines to not even sort it out. I’ve wasted at least 2 hours now and the next stage is to go and smash up the local Orange shop.

If you are considering getting an Orange phone, don’t even think about it, not unless you want to be driven to despair by their total lack of customer care or willingness to do anything for the money you will be pouring their way. They are just another of many big companies who will take as much money from you as they can while doing nothing in return.

Oh apparently this email will get you attention: executive.office@orange.co.uk

SKS Air Checker

We’ve been fans of pressure gauges for a long time and even more so now we’ve been running tubeless and trying out different tyre types and sizes, making it really hard to guess the pressure.

Looking for one to sell in the shop we ordered up a few to try out. The Topeak smart head is one we’ve used for years and it’s worked well but the fact it needs to be turned on and off by cryptic beeping buttons and then the presta/schrader changer breaking didn’t give us the confidence to choose it.

The Weldtite, whilst being really cheap, erm.. feels really cheap and is awkward to use, turning itself off really quickly.

We settled on the SKS air checker with a double head – meaning it can’t break so easily – and a deflator button to adjust pressure (although you do have to remove it from and refit to the tyre to get an updated reading). Even the screen is back lit and it comes in a handy little bag.

Available now for £19.57 here >

tyre pressure gauge group shot, SKS -left, Topeak - top & Weldtite -bottom.

Singletrack magazine

Tubeless stuff is obviously very close to our hearts and so it was good to see a load of tubeless products featured in the latest issue of Singletrack. While they made a lot of good points and said some nice things about products we sell, and they actually tested the products for a good length of time unlike some other “reviews” we’ve seen recently, there are a couple of points where they went off the tracks a bit. So we don’t have to spend the next week answering questions on the phone “but in Singletrack they said this…”  here are some comments.

1. Stan’s kits aren’t available in just ‘narrow’ and ‘wide’ versions. In fact there are 9 different rimstrips available if you count the road version, all varying in either material thickness or strip length to get just the right fit on virtually any rim.

2. “There is no grippy mid-weight tyre on the market so I’m sticking with thick-walled tyres and inner tubes for now”, well OK but why not use that thick-walled tyre tubeless? The conversion kits open up virtually the whole world of 26″ rubber for use as tubeless tyres so if there’s nothing there to suit then you’re being too fussy. Here are some examples of what we use at JRA, all tubeless: Maxxis High Roller LUST 2.35, Maxxis Ardent 2.4 dual ply, Maxxis ADvantage 2.25 and 2.4 single plys, Maxxis Minion, Maxxis Swamp thing (2.35 SPC to 2.5 DPC).

3. We’d like a definition of “All Mountain” please…

We could go on; but won’t. If you want to purchase your own copy of Singletrack don’t forget we sell it in the shop!

It’s cold and dark outside and I’ve got the flu and haven’t ridden my bike in 2 weeks so I thought it was time to bring back some happy autumnal riding memories. This is from our 1 week away from it all in the Sierra Nevada (Spain) with switch-backs.com, some of the best trails I’ve ridden in a while in warm, sunny mountains.

Dan riding in the Sierra Nevada Spain