Matthew Botos

The pedals on my full-suspension bike broke in an all too familiar way last weekend, so I sprung for an upgrade instead of fixing them again. To try something different, I got four-sided Eggbeater pedals - the minimalist C version for my singlespeed and the platform-wrapped Candy C for my full suspension. And since cleats quickly become welded to muddy shoes, I got new shoes to go with them.

I’m not a big gram counter, but the weight savings is impressive over my old pedals:

• Old mid-range Shimano SPDs 397-425 grams
• Eggbeater C 294g
• Eggbeater Candy C 308g

100 grams isn’t so impressive as the fact that it’s a 25% reduction! The titanium Eggbeater 4Ti are even more impressive at only 167g.

The real test, of course, is in how they ride. It was an easy transition from loose SPDs to the Eggbeaters, which were a little easier to get into with four sides instead of two. I didn’t always get an audible click, but they engaged and disengaged consistently. The psychological boost of new parts helps, too - I turned in a faster ride than usual!

Despite a long time mountain biking, I’ve never actually been to a race, so the Twilight Criterium in West Chester was a new experience. Standing next to the course really gives you sense of the speed and power of the racers, and with the short lap critereum format, you get to see them about once every 90 seconds. Despite being a pro race, it was quite accessible and easy to walk around to different points and still get a good view. Getting a good look at the racers - let alone a good photo - is tough; they really are fast!

View the Twilight Criterium photos

My brother Dave and I were born two years and one day apart, so this year we spent our birthdays together at his home near Blacksburg, Virginia. Along the way, I stopped to see a new addition to the Air and Space Musuem. For my birthday, we went for a bike ride along Poverty Creek near Pandapas Pond. On Dave’s birthday, his wife Paula put together a great party with Mexican food and plenty of friends from the area. The cake was a bullseye for both Dave’s gun hobby and my taste for chocolate, though we had to work to keep their three cats from taking a bite!

View the Birthdays in Blacksburg photos

As a mechanically-inclined rider, I sometimes feel guilty taking my bike to the shop for things I could probably do myself. But when it comes to more complicated systems like hydraulic disc brakes, the guys at Bikesport really shine. Though it took three weeks and endless parts orders and brake bleeds, they finally got it working again. In the meantime, they fitted my bike with a spare brake so I could ride. And was all was said and done, I only paid for a fraction of the work since it took so long.

In an era when many big businesses could seem to care less if you stay a customer, it’s nice to do business with a place that really wants to keep you coming back.

Last Saturday, I spent National Trails Day with a crew of three dozen people rebuilding a section of trail in Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Park. Today I got to go back and ride it. The trail, below Bluebell Meadow, used to swing out to the uphill rider’s left after the stream crossing into a muddy, eroded slope. The new trail throws in an S-curve to slow things down, and the whole section is built on top of a foot-thick layer of rocks to provide drainage. A lot of work, but a big improvement! The rest of the photos are a nice reminder of why we build trails in the first place.

View the Wissahickon Trails Day photos

We’ve been enjoying a perfect week for biking here in the Philadephia area with sunny days hitting about 70 degrees. Thursday I joined a group from work for a ride at Valley Forge, and got some “hardcore” cred for showing up on my singlespeed. Saturday morning found me enjoying a beautiful ride at Wissahickon, my first there this season and only my second time on my full-suspension bike.

It’s always amazing how nice Wissahickon is for being a city park, particularly with the leaves filling in and the creek still healthy from the spring rains. Being by myself, I was free to ride at a mellow pace and stop to enjoy some of the scenic points we sometimes huff past on group rides. It was also refreshing to see the city putting some money into the park by shoring up parts of the trail along Lincoln drive that were about to fall into the creek.

Afterwards, I lounged a bit at the Valley Green Inn and enjoyed the people watching. They were setting up for an outdoor wedding which I’m sure was absolutely perfect; it’s a great spot I’ll have to keep in mind when I retire from dating.

I just got an email from the International Mountain Biking Association that mountain biking in Valley Forge park is being threatened:

Pennsylvania’s Valley Forge National Historic Park is proposing to close all mountain biking trails in its new management plan. Mountain bicyclists have ridden some park trails for nearly 20 years and have one final chance to provide comments on the draft management plan and keep trails open. The deadline for comments is April 6.

They also provided a direct link to the Park Service for comments. Here’s what I wrote:

As a neighbor, supporter, and volunteer of Valley Forge Park, I urge you to preserve access to the trails for ALL users, including hikers, walkers, equestrians, and mountain bikers. As a mountain biker, I have enjoyed having trails close at hand in an increasingly overdeveloped area and see a direct benefit to the health and happiness of everyone who can take advantage of them.

There are many challenges to maintaining multi-use trails, and mountain bikers are willing to work with park officials and other trail users to find a good solution for everyone. I have personally donated countless hours of my own time maintaining trails at Valley Forge and other parks, and will continue to do so wherever I ride.

Local mountain bike groups like the Jersey Action Riders have also successfully forged partnerships with groups such as the Fairmount Parks Commission and The Friends of the Wissahickon. Together, we have successfully run two fundraisers and donated thousands of dollars to trail restoration and improvement efforts at Wissahickon.

IMBA Trail Solutions has also become a key consultant in helping assess and redesign the trail system for the future. Finally, the Delaware Valley Mountain Bike Patrol has many volunteers who ride in an official capacity at Wissahickon, supplementing the park’s paid officials in a time of decreasing budgets.

Partnerships like these are a model of how the local mountain biking community can help you, be it with fundraising, planning, or physical trail work. Please keep the trails open to all those who enjoy them; we realize what a treasure we have and want to work with you to ensure they can be enjoyed well into the future.

If you ride in the park or just think that Valley Forge, of all places, should remain freely open to all trail users, please let them know by April 6.

One thing leads to another in interesting ways sometimes:

As part of our agile software development process at work, we estimate how big the tasks are for the next couple of weeks so that we don’t bite off more than we can chew. This week, we threw down poker cards with our estimated feature points, which happened to be in a Fibonacci sequence.

That prompted me to share this set of Fibonacci single speed spacers, since a few other guys ride. A few of the non-riders even took an interest, giving me the opportunity to explain the simple and lightweight appeal of a bike with only one gear.

Today, this thought caught back up with me and I finally weighed my bikes:

• Geared full-suspension: 29.5 lbs
• Single speed hardtail: 24.5 lbs

That’s for a Trek Fuel 90 cross-county full-suspension and a Trek 7000 hardtail, so it’s a fair comparison. Both have aluminum frames and mid-quality components; the single speed gets a slight extra advantage from having v-brakes instead of full hydraulic discs.

After a bit of trouble finishing my single speed bike, I got to take it out for a ride today at Valley Forge. The trails there are a bit more mellow and without much climbing, making for a good testing ground. The bike rode great; it seems I got out all the kinks in the build process!

Single speed riding is a different feel, and the simplicity actually helped my riding skill a bit. Without any gears to mess with, I was free to focus on just pedaling hard to get up climbs and over obstacles. The hardtail was also more precise than my full-suspension bike, and perhaps a hair faster overall on this smoother terrain. It also brought back the forgotten sense of power that comes with pedaling out of the saddle and not losing any of it into the suspension.

I walked a few bits, but my only other complaint was feeling the bumps in my back a bit more. Mike’s recommendation of 32/18 gearing was a good call; it woke up my legs without killing them. Overall, it was a fun experience, and I’ll definitely be trying out some more trails on it.

Building up my “new” singles speed bike wasn’t quite as easy as stripping it down. A few snags earned it a difficulty rating of 1, as measured by unplanned trips to Home Depot.

Running just a 32-tooth chain ring and bash guard on the front meant cutting down some bolts with a Dremel, and getting the chain tensioner screwed in required a bigger bolt to re-cut the stripped threads. The tensioner itself was a bit confusing; after taking it apart to swap bolts, I couldn’t get all the pieces together again, but found it worked fine without one. The final product isn’t as light as a purpose-built single speed, but it’s still quite respectable and a bit more meaningful to have my old frame under me again.