11/22/2008

Words and photos by Stuart Kernaghan

Cam came back to Vancouver after Interbike, but I decided to head east. After a week of small-bike riding in Arizona - characterized by five flats in a day and a half (thanks to goat head thorns), temperatures in excess of 35°, and rides that started at elevations of 7,200' - I made it back to the Wet Coast, just in time for the Thanksgiving downpour. Ah, Vancouver. The city I love.

During my absence from the nsmb content dungeon, Mr. McRae wrote, edited, and posted his final words on the gawdy monster that is Interbike 2005. So I shall pick up where he left off. Sit back and enjoy.

Kona
Ah, Kona. North Shore and Deep Cove stalwart. The bike under guys like Dave Watson, Robbie Bourdon, and Paul Bas, among others. The big bikes from Kona haven't changed significantly in a while, but there are some big changes for '06. Most notable is the new rocker arm and mounting points for the rocker on the bigger-travel bikes.

The Stinky has been around for years, with the Stinky Primo is the top-of-the line Out of Bounds bike, and the official bike of the Kona Clump freeride team. It sports the redesigned frameset and linkage, 888 RC2X forks with 170mm of travel, Fox DHX5.0 rear shock, and Mavic Deemax wheels. Go big, baby.

The orange frame looks really cool with the yellow Deemax wheels

The CoilAir is a 6-and-6" air-sprung bike (as opposed to the Coiler, which has coil springs) uses a Fox 36 Talas RC2 fork and a DHX Air rear shock. The same travel at a lower weight...

The lime green CoilAir, ready for slightly speedier ascents and super fast descents

Another rider on the Kona team is DJer extraordinaire John Cowan. The Cowan dirt jumper model is back in '06, and comes with the goods to keep you taking off and landing as smoothly - assuming you've got the skills.

The bike comes with a Marzocchi Dirt Jumper 3 fork, Truvativ Hussefelt cranks with the new Howitzer BB, the Cowan Jack Shit chainguide, and Hayes HFX-9 discs.

Sky blue seems like an appropriate colour for a bike that will spend a lot of time in the air

RockShox / Avid We've done pieces on the new RockShox / Avid gear before. But there were a few new things on display at Interbike that we hadn't seen yet. The first was a long-travel single crown fork. Tyler Morland, SRAM's man in Whistler, played coy when I asked for details. PR guy Michael Zellmann didn't seem to know much. He may have been playing dumb, but a rather strange tangent about cheese and HB's insistence on showing us Crankmeister made me think otherwise. Behind the Plexiglas panels, which made photography damn difficult, was a fork that had RockShox's Maxle front quick release, what looked like 40mm stanchions, and somewhere around 7" of travel. It's being pegged as an '07 fork, but there are already a few of these forks out there and you'll see more in Whistler next year as the team guys put them through their paces.

The new RockShox fork, with CBC in the back

Remote reservoir - whatever for?

On the same bike as the mystery fork was a new freeride rear shock with a remote reservoir. Anyone care to speculate what it does, or why it's special?

Avid hydraulic disc brakes have been earning a real following in this part of the world, and they're just going to get more popular once the new four-piston freeride brake is rolled out. Details other than that are still sketchy, but Paul Kantor from Avid hinted that there may be some demo sets floating around in the near future. One particularly cool thing about the new brakes is that they integrate the SRAM shifters - similar to the way the new X.O shifters attach to the bar. Another thing about Avid brakes - both Zellmann and HB were talking about significantly better heat dissipation in the new stainless steel hardware for the Juicys. Numbers that were floating around between random dairy product comments was 40% cooler than with the old nuts and bolts.

Four pistons are better than two? Apparently so for freeride...

Troy Lee Designs Troy Lee Designs makes sweet helmets. Not cheap, but sweet. Colour options for '06 are awesome, and will suit just about any style on the hill.

Pink and grey, orange and blue

Matte red, and red/black/white carbon

My personal favourite? The matte red lid on the left. One drawback - these helmets aren't as vented as others out there, so keep that mind if your melon gets hot.

Troy Lee also makes armour, including these sweet red shin / knee guards. nsmb team rider Colin Miller uses 'em, and likes these babies a lot.

Red legs pads, also available in black

Dekerf If you're old school, you probably know the Dekerf name. Chris Dekerf started out his life in the bike industry working as a frame builder at Rocky Mountain, and then moved on to open his own bike building business. Beautifully welded and designed steel XC hardtails were always the staple at Dekerf. He did make the Impact, one of the earlier steel freeride hardtails, the Phenomenon, a short-travel XC FS bike, and a steel DH bike waaaaay back in the day, but the Shore was never his focus. After taking some time off from Interbike, Chris is back with his new line of road and touring bikes, as well as the staples. He did, however, have one particularly cool thing in his booth - a disc-compatible, suspension-adjustable rigid front fork. Best of all, the fork mirrors Dekerf's classic wishbone seat stays. So, so cool. Price is around $500, and there a bunch of different models to choose from. Give Chris a shout if you're looking for a top-quality rigid disc fork.

The Dekerf wishbone disc fork

Dark Cycles Local Shore bike companies are awesome. Canadian ... good. Awesome testing grounds ... good. Quality products ... good. What's not to like? Dark Cycles is relatively new on the scene, but you'd never know from the quality of workmanship in the machined aluminum parts and cro-moly frames. The first item is the Anubis pedal. These 6061-T6 billet aluminum pedals are anodized and post-machined, and come with a 4130 chromoly solid rod spindle. Each pedal also sports three sealed bearings.

Dark Cycles Anubis pedals - big, chunky, and ano

Now that is one awesome looking bash guard

And then there were the Blackguard bash rings. These are a must-have if you're into flames. All of them are 6061-T6 billet aluminum anodized and post-machined, and are available in 94mm, 104mm, and 110mm sizes.

Dark is also turning out steel frames. The Supernova is a steel cro-moly hardtail with 16.5" chainstays that are designed to take big rear wheels.

It uses straight gauge tubing, and comes with replaceable aluminum drop-outs - with flames on the drive side.

The bike can be set up as a single speed or geared, and there are through-axle options. Not surprisingly, it's disc only.

The Supernova hardtail - steel still has a home on the Shore

The Scarab is Dark's full squish bike. The full 4130 cro-moly frameset uses anodized CNC-machined 6061 aluminum linkage arms and replaceable drop-outs on both sides. There are sealed cartridge bearings at all pivots.

This isn't your standard full squish bike, though. The Scarab requires, and comes with, a proprietary chain tensioner system that includes a high idler cog and a lower bottom bracket-mounted roller arm.

Rear wheel travel is 8.5"and frame weight including shock is 11.7lbs.

Ryan Walters from Dark Cycles, holding the Scarab

Bike Parks of B.C.
A lot of lucky people know about the bike park riding opportunities in B.C., but there are still some people out there who don't know. Several of the lift-accessed resorts around the province got together under the leadership of Jordan Petrovics of Sun Peaks Resort in the Loops to share the love with Interbike attendees. Also in attendance at the booth were reps from Mount Washington, Whistler, Cypress Mountain, and Panorama. Well done, everyone.

Jordan Petrovics of Sun Peaks (l) and Joffrey Koeman of Cypress Mountain (r), manning the booth

So that's it for now. There will be two more instalments from Interbike '05, and then I'm done. Hopefully that will be before Interbike '06.

Until next time...

Stuart Kernaghan