Bikes on Campus: Diamondback

This beauty of a bike was spotted close to Eikestad Mall and ironically right next to the board directing you to our LBS, Mason's Bike Inn.

With this colour scheme, brilliant frame design, super long stem, rubber covered stancions and V-brakes, how could a bike like not catch your eye? ;)

New trails at sunset

Today we decided to try some new trails close to my home as a training ride.

Arné's office and most of her classes overlook the mountain and she has been eyeing this new trail for a while now, itching to go ride it. From far away it looked like a few flat slightly off camber sections with some switchbacks thrown in that curls up to the top of the mountain. Inevitably, this would entail some hike-a-biking for us, but descending would make it worth it.

Even though our ride started very late in the afternoon, we planned to do the complete trail. Unfortunately, with the sun setting much earlier now in winter time we only managed to do about half of it.

Arné flowing down the new section with the sun setting over table mountain.

From close by, the trail wasn't as off-camber as we imagined it would be and so far the trail looks nice, very straight forward with nothing to tricky, just a few rocky sections that might catch one off guard. It reminded us of the trails at the Delvera Trail Centre close to Stellenbosch.

We will definitely go back soon to do the complete trail from the top!

Team life.cycle shirt design

Arné and I have decided to design shirts for us so we kinda look like a team at the races.

After working through a bunch of different designs and negotiating the size, colour and font of the logo, we eventually agreed on the following:

We decided to support our good friends at Dial'd Bikes since they always have the parts we need and if not, they order in special things for us like my 5Ten Maltese Falcon shoes. Obviously we also chose a local manufacturer for the shirts, coz local is lekker!

Thanks to our pro-designer buddy, Wes, who hooked us up with the rad logo design.

10 Working days and our shirts are here!

WP Downhill Round 2 Paarl: Photos by ESP

This post is just in time as we are already busy preparing for Round 3 in WP Downhill series that is taking place this weekend at Jonkershoek.

I finally managed to order our photos from Ewald from the race we had at Paarl a few weeks ago. As always, the photos look awesome and I am super happy with them:

Hanco over the rock

On our first practice run with Hanco behind me, making sure that I get down safely.

I remember that this almost turned into an OTB, but luckily I managed to keep the bike controlled.

Just lightly touching his brakes. This is my favorite photo!

Race face on, near the end of the track.

You can read our race report here.

Bikes on campus: Orange cruiser

Today's bike on campus is this beautiful orange cruiser that caught my eye while walking to Hanco's house last week. It was spotted just outside the Eikestad mall.

I can see that this bike is loved dearly by its owner. I especially love the basket in the front as well as the bell on the handlebar.

It doesn't matter how uncomfortable these big bikes are to ride, they still remain beautiful to me.

From the archives: My first Downhill rig

I started mountainbiking and riding trails on an old cross country bike, soon thrashing it down the trails as fast and hard as I could manage. After a while, this wasn't good enough anymore and I knew I had to get a proper DH bike. I started stalking the classifieds and managed to find this gem on Gumtree:

This Morewood Prime 8, became my first DH rig...  

Looking at this bike now, I seriously don't know what I was thinking, but back then it managed to keep me happy!

From the archives: My very first MTB race

I got on a bike for the first time in 2011.

All smiles!

Well of course I owned a bike when I was a kid, but that doesn't really count... So two years ago I closed my eyes and bought a proper mountainbike: a Giant Reign.

Singletrack!

Three months later, I did my first mountainbike race in Stellenbosch. As a newbie, I chose to do the 30km route. At that time Hanco only had one bike, the Scott Voltage, that he used for downhill, and I realise now, that he must have been really in love with me then, as he trained for and finished that race on his heavy dh bike...

Concentrating very hard to stay on that jeep track...

Oh my, how times have changed! Both those bikes have been sold and, thank goodness, we got new helmets!

Being the gentleman he is, Hanco let me cross the finish line before him.

As this was my first proper race, we ended up doing it again last year, but opted for the tougher 45km route. Keeping with tradition, we will probably take part again this year, and who knows, maybe Hanco decides to do it on his Makulu!

Bainskloof: Us and our bikes

We were recently asked to pose as models with our bikes for an agency that specializes in stock photography.

Armed with a flask full of hot tea and coolbag with boiled eggs, bananas and naartjies, we took the trip to the Bainskloof Pass area. This area was chosen for the shoot because of the absolutely majestic mountains and stunning views of nature.

Unfortunately the shoot consisted out of more posing than riding and the photographer had us climb up on very big rocks and pick up our (not so light) bikes for a few minutes at a time.
Although it was a fun filled day, I realised that modelling is not for me. It is very hard work!

Hanco looks a bit tired from all the posing

Taking a tea break

 We will be receiving the photos at the end of the month, but here is a sneak peak that was sent to us today.

Although this experience was not completely unenjoyable, I would much rather prefer riding my bike instead of posing next to it!

Bikes on Campus: Hot pink folding bike

After the University of Stellenbosch introduced the Matie bikes in 2012, the cycling culture in Stellenbosch has really grown and the amount of bikes on campus have more than doubled since I first set foot here.

Every now and then I come across a strange, interesting, funny, old or beautiful bike and cannot help but stop to photograph it. It then gets posted on Instagram with the hashtag #bikesoncampus.

I will also be posting them here on our blog in the future.

The first one up is one of my favorite bikes on campus at the moment and I always smile when I walk past it.

Folding bikes are still quite rare in Stellenbosch so this one stands out even more. Judging by the location it was spotted at, it's probably the property of a future teacher. I wouldn't mind my future kids having a teacher as cool as her!

Race Report: WP Downhill Series Round 2 - Paarl

This past Sunday was spent organising and racing at the second race in the WP Downhill 2013 series.  With it being Easter long weekend, we weren't expecting a big turnout and we were surprised that we managed to draw close to sixty riders. And that even included some brand new faces!

Madeleine and Reto pushing up to the start gate. Instagram photo by Wes

The day ran smoothly and it seems as if all riders were having fun. There was quite a strong cross wind and a few riders had unlucky crashes. Luckily no one got seriously injured.The race format for this year changed a bit and we are now enjoying one day races. This means that we have a whole six hours of practising and shuttling time after which all riders do one race run. After the race runs we have a short prizegiving and then the cleaning up starts.

The Paarl track is more beginner friendly compared to some of the other tracks used in the series. This however does not make it "easier" for riders. The faster one goes, the trickier it can become.

Arné going down the first rock garden. Instagram photo by Wes

The track starts out on a short pedally flat section and quickly dips down through a few rocks and starts descending. Here after a series of sandy turns follow which leads the rider to the rock garden followed by another gnarly but short rocky chute. For me the worst is over after that part and then I can relax a bit until another flat rock garden is reached which is followed by the road gap. There after it's smooth sailing all the way home with riders just ducking down a rock and over a few more small jumps and round some nice flowy corners to the finish line.

Hanco and I stayed teamed up during our practice runs and I am very grateful that he sacrificed his last practice run to help me fix the flat tyre I got going down the previously mentioned rocky chute. At first we thought it was just a normal puncture that the Stan's sealant would easily fix, but when we tried fixing it with a bomb, we soon saw there was a nice big slash on the sidewall of my rear tyre. I was quite impressed with Hanco's trick of using a R10 note as a tyre liner to cover the slash and prevent the tube from sticking through there when inflating.

Sideways goggles man aka Hanco showing us how it's done. Instagram photo by Wes

Although this happened just before racing and we managed to fix it in time, it still made me a bit nervous about getting another puncture on my race run. This made me take my race run a bit slower than I normally would have taken it. I am still happy to have ended in third position in the Elite Women category. I just wish there existed a Fun Women's category as I would feel much more comfortable competing there!

The podium: Rika Olivier in first position, Gina Nixon in second and Arné in third. Photo by Reto

Hanco felt that he didn't get as many practise runs in as he would have liked and thus felt a bit unprepared for his race run. However it didn't stop him from ending in 4th position in his category. 

When we got home (and after stuffing our faces with delicious Panarotti's pasta) we quickly added up the points for the WPDH team's pointslog. At the moment we are standing in fifth place. This might however change after the next race as some teams had to sit this race out.

Overall it was a succesful day and we managed to wrap it up without any serious incidents. It was really fun spending the day riding with awesome friends such as Madeleine and Reto and interacting with other riders and spectators.

The next race is in a month's time at the Jonkershoek track.

Read the full race report on Pinkbike with photos by ESP here.

Welcome

Photo by Ewald Sadie

Welcome to our blog!

We will be using this blog to keep you updated on what we get up to on and of our bikes.
We'll be sharing with you about our rides, our gear and our races as well as photos and videos that inspire us.

Happy riding!