Horseshoe Bay > Earls Cove > Saltery Bay > Powell River > Comox > Nanaimo > Horseshoe Bay. 24 hours, 4 ferries, 245km and 11 hours 48 minutes of cycling, 2 burritos, 2 coffees, 2 Mars bars, 1 bag of gummies, 1 Coca-Cola, 8 litres of water and one body of water (Strait Of Georgia)…
It wasn’t just when Sven Martin needed a helivac after bending (and snapping) his forearm around a tree. It wasn’t just carrying Jon Cancellier the last hundred meters to the finish line of the last stage after he had broke his foot. (Which was also the same day as the above happened. #carnage) It wasn’t…
Eskapee.com might be one of the best things to happen to the universe of digital bicycling content in a while (‘a while’ referring to at about a year or so because things happen so fast on the internet). It’s an incredible outlet who’s purpose “is to tell the real mountain bike story. Stories we hope…
Just a collection of images from a recent trip to the UK.
This place isn’t an artisanal cidery with faux rustic charm, this is a working farm and there is absolutely zero airs and graces gone into it. It’s rugged, raw and bloody delicious. the photos I shot aren’t of the most bucolic parts of the barn, in fact, it’s impossible to really show how perfectly unrefined this place is.
A couple years back Grant Robinson, Jon Matlock and I put together a small magazine. We all needed an outlet for ideas, an aesthetic, and philosophy that wouldn’t fit anywhere else in mountain bike magazines. We didn’t really care to make a mountain bike magazine or even a mountain bike magazine. We produced one issue…
*This piece originally appeared in Cranked Magazine issue 1. Illustration by Wacek “Waki” Kipszak. Meet The Trolls: A partially enthographic and wholly conjectural investigation into a mountain biking’s newest terrain and the real riders that virtually ride there. Mountain biking is a multifarious activity and there appears to be no singular definition of what…
Winding seal, unfeasible hill; Dirt and rock, for my luck I knock. Roofs corrugated, walls brightly decorated; Unfinished stories, hopes of wealth and glory. Honest buildings gaily painted, it’s patrons long time acquainted; Minor doorway barely there, within shelves stocked with wares. Mans face oil creased, leans on wall firewater greased; Hub of the…
A short story about good intentions, bad worms and unforeseen consequences Wayne Reid felt so pleased with himself that he vowed to leave his apartment for the first time in days. He would put on a clean T-shirt (or at least salvage a used one from the laundry bin), attempt to run a comb through…
Q: How do you become a better rider? A: Dick about more. There’s no mystical medicine that can make you a better bike rider. No shaman can miraculously bestow skills upon you. It takes a bit of hard graft to become a better rider. But hard work doesn’t have to be entirely joyless. I…
I’m a nerd for the history and tales behind trails probably as much, if not more, than I am for riding them. So when Alison Taylor (the editor of Crank’d Magazine) asked me to write a story about the history of trail building in Whistler I jumped at the chance.
So, is racing, mountain biking and is mountain biking, racing? I’d agree with the former but the latter? That would require a few more qualifiers.
It happened. I spoke too soon and one of the big dogs went down. Or should I say, got put down. Dirt was a leading light since the day it launched 18 years ago.
It’s Bike Park season, nearly. That means it’s time to roll out the reminders of how to keep it classy and rubber side down. In 2012, fourth year medical student, Zachery Ashwell published his study of the injuries suffered in the Whistler Bike Park. He analyzed 898 Whistler Health Care Centre case reports from between…
I’ve asked a lot of people a lot of questions in the course of my ‘career’ as a writer. I’ve always been fascinated by what makes people tick, what motivates them, what is the process of their critical thinking and what defining moments forged them into the people they are and the path that they…
The most essential thing to learn to do in mountain biking is…anyone? Well, I believe the answer is how to corner. Every trail has corners, it’s the only thing that every trail will have. Corners might be the only feature that singletrack in a Welsh trail center and an ancient packhorse track in the Upper…
[This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 issue of Mountain Life magazine.] “I feel that you can experience something in your head and get the same physical reaction, the adrenalin rush, as you do when you do it for real,” Dan Raymond chews this thought over some, takes a swig from his beer (craft…
“When I was a kid I would make my own skateboards in my dads’ shop. I had a very deliberate intent to make them a certain way,” Ian Ritz matter-of-factly reveals as he wanders about the Function Junction headquarters of Chromag in Whistler, the bike brand he founded out of necessity and inclination. Ian’s father…
So it’s that time of the year when Pinkbike holds it’s POTY (Photo Of The Year) competition. 32 of the top photos (I’m assuming that means most viewed) from 2014 go into the octagon and battle it out in a round robin style death match that will see just one image crowned the very, absolute,…
I recently returned from the Andes Pacifico race in Chile. I don’t know where to start to describe such an incredible experience, all I know for certain is that my ribs are sore from laughing so much, my pride is bruised from crashing more in one week than I have in the last 20 years…
*EDIT: Thanks to Neil Barstow for finding the link to this piece ‘How to live like a king for very little‘ by Thor Harris. Link in article below now. I didn’t write this. I came across this a while ago and it made me laugh, cringe and think. —
There are tits everywhere. Absolutely every direction I look there are boobs staring at me. I glance left or right and what catches my gaze every time is the twinkle of lusty eyes and a pair of perky nipples. Yellowed page three beauties pinned to walls encase me in a wanker’s wet dream. Like trying…
Recently I came across an interesting think piece on climbing website Evening Sends which raised the question of whether one particular female climber was in fact a climber or a model. The climber-model in question is Sierra Blair-Coyle, who has 30,500 followers on Instagram, 202,000+ people who like her Facebook page and which the article…
This was the last thing I wrote for BIKE Magazine during my short spell working there. It happens to be my favorite thing I wrote while at BIKE. I wonder why that was? Maybe I knew what was coming and I was relaxed enough to write as I wanted. Or perhaps it’s because the Bike…
This article originally appeared in Spoke Magazine. It was penned around the same time as the previous article I posted ‘The Globalization Of Contentment’, and you’ll see why. One hundred years ago the idea of traveling around the world was something only attainable by the uber elite – or sailors or soldiers sent overseas to…
This story originally appeared in Spoke Magazine. Another, fuller version also ran in Privateer Magazine. Before you read this, let me give you some background to the story: I’d just spent the previous ten months traveling almost non-stop (in fact, I’d been traveling for a lot longer than this but 2011 had been a particularly…
Each summer Chromag Bikes hold a Show ‘n’ Shine event where owners attempt to win the coveted Best In Show award. Well, not every owner goes for the win. While some people spend months putting together a fresh, beautiful bike or coming up with an equally impressive way of displaying their bike (think peepshow, full…
I was asked to scribble a prayer for the start of the Chromag Bikes 10th anniversary (actually, the 11th) ride, Exile On Steel Street. The loose topic I was given was ‘why’. Here it is. WHY? It’s stiff and it’s harsh, It’s brutal and jarring. Every bump is a thump, and each root is a brut. It’s antiquated and…
Twenty years of biking has taught me this: Keep your house in order. Learn how to maintain the trails you have. Sure, build new trail if you really need it but don’t forget to keep what you have tidy. Learn to corner, it will make your life better. Always reserve the right to maintain a…
I’m currently writing a feature story for the local newsmagazine, The Pique, and was reminded of this I wrote for the 2012 Crankworx Joyride finals. Thunderstruck kid gets in the van The heat choked the air from lungs and drained sweat from pores, evaporating all energy and vitality from the town. Fleshy young girls and…
Momentarily Forgotten By Seb Kemp I attempt to hurtle down an old familiar stretch of singletrack. I know the tempo of the trail, what’s over the blind crests and around each turn, but still how my tires play with the details of the route is something I have to be alert to. The web of…
[This piece appeared in Dirt Magazine #146 and was republished on the Dirt/Mpora website. While it was produced many months ago it provides a counterpoint to Mike Levy’s opinion piece that appeared on PB just last week.] HEY YOU HATE THIS SMARTEN UP, DON’T DUMB DOWN Words by Seb Kemp Illustration by Jon Gregory I’m…
This story was originally intended to be a feature story in the December, 2013 issue of Bike – an accord between words and pictures, as has been the powerful legacy Bike has nurtured for twenty years of print publishing. At this moment in time twenty years can appear to pass in one year; modern means…
Behind my house is a small stand of cedar trees. They aren’t the tallest or the biggest, but they certainly stand out from the crowd of pipsqueak pecker-woods. I like to take a stroll and hang out with the cedars from time to time. It often strikes me that even though I might be able…
Story by Seb Kemp/Photos by Dan Barham/Video by Callum Jelley For the full feature, check out the December 2013 issue of Bike Traveling to a foreign land gives you a glimpse of its character. That’s a given. There’s a world of distinction, however, between being a tourist and being a traveler. The tourist experience…
*The following is a little different than usual. A short piece of fiction about a world sometime in the future. Don’t take it too seriously. The Rooster Of Marcelo A short story about good intentions, bad worms and unforeseen consequences. By Seb Kemp Wayne Reid felt so pleased with himself that he vowed to…
I board my plane to Vegas in just a few hours. To warm my mind for such a change in season I decided to read through a short piece I wrote for Dirt Magazine several years back. I doubt much has changed and I am excited to be bamboozled all over again. — The Desert…
A Couples’ Ride from Darcy Turenne on Vimeo. This video is brilliant. Anyone who is in a polygamist relationship with their partner and mountain bikes will nod emphatically at all the simple insights. In issue 135 of Dirt Magazine I dabbled with a similar topic. It is in no way as funny as the above…
The ranch at sunset. While living and working in the mexican desert I got to see the sunrise and the sunset most days. It was good for the soul to experience the big sky of open plains because the previous four years I’d lived mostly in mountain towns which meant big sunsets were a rare…
Here is a little rhythm from our time living in Hagley Gap, Jamaica. Photo from above by Ian Hylands. Winding seal, unfeasible hill; Dirt and rock, for my luck I knock. Roofs corrugated, walls brightly decorated; Unfinished stories, hopes of wealth and glory. Honest buildings gaily painted, it’s patrons long time acquainted; Darkened doorway barely…
Time for another quality Quinn Lanzon post. This time he muses on the link between movement and words. READING AT THE WHEEL There are a slew of fancy mantras about the experience of traveling from point A to point B. Can’t recite any offhand, but they tend to follow a trope where sometimes the commute…
News Of The Tweet, despite a little vacation during February, is back to regular programming on BIKEMAG.com. This week the Twitter highlights are all based around some pretty heated battles between the sexes. Check it out after the jump.
2Flat is very proud to post the first entry from Quinn Lanzon. He usually blogs under the banner of Quinzon but I believe we might be seeing more from him in the future, beyond this website too. Recently, during college reading week, he trekked down to Brevard, North Carolina to sample the riding delights and came…
Dirt Magazine #128 has been out for a little while but it was only today that I saw a copy with my own eyes. In this issue I have a story very close to my heart: Whistler beyond the bike park. I’m going to post the whole story below with some of Reuben Krabbe’s excellent…
I came across this promo video for Ryan Holiday’s book Trust Me, I’m Lying. Crafty, sly, dirty, manipulation or clever, slick, truthful use of the modern system of media communication?
The following (huge) story appeared in Privateer magazine #10 (August/September ’12). I feel extremely fortunate to be able to work with Privateer because they truly aim to tell the story of mountain biking behind the “news” and “releases”. More so, when I handed them my ridiculously large story regarding the history of the North Shore…
The delivery man just keeps giving today. He has been three times today and the latest package had Revolution Magazine issue 28 in it. This one has flown all the way from Australia but it contains a heap of content I pigeon posted their way. There is a short interview with Ian Ritz of Chromag,…
Yesterday I spent the evening with Sombrio being a part of their focus group meeting. Sombrio are expanding and moving in some pretty interesting directions, part of these changes is to converse with consumers and those affiliated with the brand. I was honored to be asked to join and the evening was a great chance…
Reading Terry Anderson’s think piece in Foreign Policy magazine (don’t be mistaken, I’m no well-read deep thinker, I actually found it on-line thanks to a tweet from Shane Smith of Vice) helps put things into perspective. Currently, I’m supposed to be scribbling down short reviews of bicycles that cost thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, there are…
The above image of @amarcoux reading the one existing copy of the June issue of Bike Magazine was tweeted by @morga_deth. On the cover you might be able to read the words ‘NEW ZEALAND’ and if you had Adrian’s view you might be able to read that the chap on the cover is me. The…
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