Big Thanks, Big Things

It’s been far too long between posts. For a while now life has been busy but with all the boring stuff. Work, tax, moving house and all that. The last few weeks however, things have changed. This post marks a big push from me to not only get this blog back on board, but my biggest passion – riding bikes!

So what’s been happening? A bit actually.

After months and months of working out the most cost effective way to get some new bikes to Australia, my buddy Carl from Transition Bikes has gone above and beyond and sorted us out with Transition Bandits. I can’t thank Carl enough – he and Transition Bikes may not think they are doing much when they help people like us out, but it really does make a huge difference.

Spank Bikes has also hooked us up with some sweet gear for our new Transition Bandits. We’ll be running their new Spike Race28 wheelsets, Oozy LTD bars, Spike Flat pedals for when we’re not riding with SPDs, and their Subrosa Lock-on grips. Jess will run one of Spanks new Spike Race 50mm stems while I will hold out for a redesigned Oozy LTD stem that should become available towards the end of this year. In addition to these parts I have been supplied some clothing, plenty of stickers and some promo gear too. Big thanks to Mike, Crystal, Angel and anyone else behind the scenes at Spank Bikes that made this happen and for taking care of me.

It’s amazing to have support from the bike industry like this – I really can’t wait to show both brands and the people within them how their products turned out. With any luck the bikes will be built sometime next week.

I have also been coaching and guiding locally here in Adelaide, South Australia with Escapegoat – offering tours, MTB guiding and coaching. Skills coaching here in Adelaide has certainly been different to what I was doing with Whistler Bike Park, but obviously this is just a result of our terrain and more specifically the fact that we don’t have a chairlift accessible MTB park. I’ll post more on coaching and guiding with Escapegoat later.

Finally, we are off to Queenstown, New Zealand on Easter Sunday. Jess is on work holidays for two weeks so we took the opportunity to head over and check the place out. We’ve been told that the South Island of New Zealand is the British Columbia of the Southern Hemisphere, and that Queenstown is the Whistler of the Southern Hemisphere, so I suspect we will both love the place. We’re flying into Christchurch and then driving down to Queenstown. From there we’ll be riding our bikes in the Skyline Bike Park as much as we can, and try to get to know the town as best we can in a short visit. I suspect that one day we might head over there for either a short or long living stint. Time will tell I guess.

Bike building, holidays and MTB coaching again. Life is busy, but it’s busy with all of the good stuff right now!