Jordan Carr is the marketing manager for Club Ride Apparel in Sun Valley, Idaho, a former tech editor at Mountain Flyer Magazine and a ripping rider who enjoys blasting singletrack around the West on his SS REEB with Gates Carbon Drive. Carr sent us these images of a recent trip to the White Rim outside Moab, Utah.
“Riding with friends in beautiful places is why so many of us appreciate the simple yet elegant contraption we all passionately refer to as the bicycle,” Jordan writes on the Club Ride blog.
Amen brother.
And just to make you all jealous of Jordan’s life in Sun Valley:
Back home in Ketchum, Idaho, on the Cow Creek trail.
Press officer Sean Weide is an integral part of the BMC Racing Team’s operations. In addition to speaking with the media, one of his duties is to lead the team riders through the crowds between the team bus and the start line.
During Saturday’s stage from Livermore to Mount Diablo, Weide was on his official BMC team lifestyle bike, the BMC urbanchallenge with Gates Carbon Drive. The start of a pro race is a mad house. Weide weaved through the crowd, parting the spectators to give his racers a path to the start. Then he raced back to the team car and threw his bike on the roof for the drive to Mount Diablo to await the torturous uphill finish, where he would again jump on the bike to gather his riders for post-race interviews.
Weide loves his bike because it is virtually maintenance free, allowing him to get his important work done without worry or delay. Gates is a proud sponsor of the BMC Racing Team, and we are pleased to provide Weide and other integral staff and management with the fastest belt drive commuter bikes.
Congratulations to BMC and rider Tejay van Garderen for their victories in the Team and Overall categories in the Amgen Tour of California.
Meet Bubbles, one of the latest builds from Rob English of English Cycles.
English is an award-winning custom bike builder. When a customer requested a super-light and low-maintenance road bike with an Alfine 11 internally geared hub instead of a derailleur, English devised some ingenious weight-saving features–including a chainstay socket (pictured below) to minimize weight and tension the belt. Bubbles weighs in at a thrifty 16.7 pounds.
Read more about the bike and see some more pictures on the English Cycles blog.
The Amgen Tour of California is in full swing and Gates Carbon Drive is in the house and behind the scenes as the official Lifestyle Bike provider for BMC Racing Team. In the video below, BMC Racing press officer Sean Weide poses for race photographers with his BMC urbanchallenge before leading out the team before a training ride.
Weide, below, says he needs the Carbon Drive to keep up with his team! We’re not sure about that but the bike is certainly one of the fastest commuter bikes around.
Check out more images in the team’s photo gallery from the Tour of California.
Tim Lucking and Taylor Nye of Team Gates Carbon Drive traveled to western Colorado to compete in the 18 Hours of Fruita last weekend. Racing on their belt drive singlespeeds against geared competitors, the speedy duo won the two-man category. Lucking recounts the winning race strategy below.
Taylor Nye and I hoped for a podium spot, but that seemed optimistic given that we were racing our single-speeds against geared teams. We drove out Friday so we would have time to set up camp and get in a couple of laps and determine our gearing, settling on a 46 x 26 sprocket setup. It’s a relatively flat course with two punchy climbs. The rest is winding single- and double-track through sage and juniper bushes while skirting the twisty edge of Highline Lake. There were no long flat sections. Perfect for a single speed.
As the sun set on tent-town we got 2-3 hours of sleep before waking for the midnight start. Taylor was going for the hole-shot and had a great starting position, but the race director pulled the old switcheroo and started the race backwards, so Taylor started at the back of the pack. The race began and Taylor hammered like crazy and came through in 2nd position in the 2-man category after the first lap.
The night laps were tough because there was no wind and the course was dusty with lots of ambient dust in the air, making it difficult to pick our lines. We chased the leaders and caught them 7 laps in. We continued on through the night, morning, and afternoon knocking out fast laps with no mechanicals. The Spot Rockers gobbled up the twisty trails that became more wash-boarded by the lap, the TRP Dash Carbon brakes allowed us to wait until the last possible second to scrub speed before diving into a corner, the Lazer Nirvana helmets kept our noggins cool and protected, the Primal kits kept us comfortable all day, the Crank Brothers cockpit parts ensured that we were dialed for ergonomic efficiency, and of course the Gates Carbon drive required no maintenance all day even in the billowing dust.
With fast transitions we were able to lap the field by the mid-afternoon and finish in first place with 32 laps completed in 18 hours. That worked out to 117 miles per person. Not too shabby for a couple of single-speeders! We were wrecked afterward and enjoyed our sleeping bags greatly.
It was a wonderful event with fun competitors and hosts. It’s great to be part of a sport where you can go out on the course and be competitive and polite at the same time, then come back and hang out to swap stories when it’s all said and done.”
