Here is our own Skip Brown, just after a top-ten finish at a World Cup race at the Georgia International Horse Park in 1997, the year after this same course served the Atlanta Olympics. Skip and Matt O drove down from Boston in the Seven van, raced and drove home. For a while there was an annual 24 hour race on the course (24 Hours of Conyers). It also featured in the documentary 24 Solo. Skip rode a double-butted Ti Sola that day, a very early iteration of the bike we are still making today. A few years later, we would get to watch Mary McConneloug ride another bike in this line at both the Beijing and Athens Olympics. Some of THAT history is captured in the documentary Off Road to Athens, well worth a watch.
Tag: Mountain Bikes
On the Road: Dan Sharp in Alaska
It is forever humbling, the places people go on our bikes, and the stories and photos they come back with are like treasure. Daniel Sharp is an adventurer, writer and photographer with a vivid imagination and very human storytelling style. He’s not superhuman. He doesn’t pose as the master of the wilderness he explores. His are stories we can relate to, and pictures we can dream about.
Here are some of the images from a recent trip to Alaska, with excerpts from his trip journal.
Alaska is way too big to squeeze into a single two week trip so for this, our first Alaskan adventure, we focused on the Kenai Peninsula. We flew into Anchorage, spent a couple days making sure our bikes were put together properly…
The next day we set off to ride Lost Lake Trail. The plan was to ride from the Lost Lake trailhead to Primrose campground. This is not a huge ride in terms of mileage, but this was to be our first loaded ride in Alaska, so it was a bit of a test to see how it went on legit singletrack.
The descent into Primrose was challenging with a loaded bike. At times it was steep, rocky and littered with roots. We rode most of it and walked the crazy parts. We stopped and picked blueberries.
Lost Lake was a good warm up, but now we’re ready for the real test: Resurrection Pass.
Here we go! Resurrection Pass! jingle jangle of bear bells. The first thing that struck me about the trail is that it was nothing like Lost Lake. There was sustained climbing, but it was so much gentler. This was more of a proper bikepacking trail.
We met our first bunch of marmots–they’re bascially ground hogs–they signal each other to let their crew know we’re approaching. Aside from birds, they’re the only wildlife we’ll see, which I find strange. I was hoping to see some mountain goats at least. I love the trail above treeline. It’s alpine tundra–raw and sculpted.
Tori wisely brought newspaper plastic bags to put over our socks and under our shoes. I’m amazed how well they work to keep my feet warmer and keep the wet out. Best DIY vapor barriers ever.
The last miles of the day go quickly, finding good lines over wet roots, crossing streams, splashing through puddles. Before you know it we start to signs that we’re getting close to the trailhead, signage that we saw on day one, a cabin, a group of day-hikers cheering us up the last grunty climb. I start to get that hesitation where I feel sad that I hurried back to the car, that I gobbled up the descent instead of savoring it in slow motion. We know this was special and we want to make it last.
We were able to leave our anxieties, one by one at each stream crossing and get to a point where we felt not only safe, but really comfortable living by bike on trail. The ability to take everything you need to live with you and arrive safely under your own power is such a great feeling.
See the bike Dan rides here. Come back for more of Dan’s adventures including a recent microadventure in Oregon.
Cold and Dark
The sun wasn’t up when we met in the grocery store parking lot, each of us blowing great gusts of breath into cold hands. This had seemed like a good idea last night, but this was our first cold, dark shop ride of the season, and we stood there, shifting from foot to foot, trying to gather the will to roll out.
The sun filtered through the trees on the way up the first leaf-strewn climb, heat rising in our chests, until we were at the top with dumb grins on our faces. Someone said, “I must have mountain bike amnesia, because I always seem to forget how much fun this is, even though it’s ALWAYS this much fun.”
We passed a dog walker and ran into an old Seveneer, on his own pre-dawn ride. We shook hands and made small talk, and then we went on and dropped down the other side of the hill, crossing the road and the meadow and fording the brook at the wooden bridge. We’ve done this together so many times, that we know where each rock is, each overhanging branch.
Mike found a new way up to the water tower, and he promised us it wasn’t as hard as the usual way, which is a straight grind up a steep pitch. It’s a good trail to understand how fit you are. Or not fit. As the case may be.
The new way is a twisting, undulating serpent of a trail that switches back a few times, but not so dramatically that you can’t keep your front wheel on the ground. We arrived at the top huffing and puffing, but happy to have added a new section to a patch of woods we’ve all been riding for a decade or two.
From the water tower, we dropped back down, our rear wheels grabbing and sliding in the loose leaves, and snaked back through the meadow, across the road and up, and up, until we were on the verge of the last plunge back down toward the grocery store, its parking lot now morning full.
It’s hard to describe how much fun a pre-work ride like this is, except that, as a cyclist, you already know. It was cold, and it was dark, and it can be hard to get out of bed to ride a bike when it’s like that, but wow, this is Tuesday on mountain bikes in the fall. Just some guys from the shop, out for a ride. Complete perfection.
#TBT
Here is the bike Seven friend and sponsored-rider Mary McConneloug rode at the Beijing Olympics. It’s the same frame she rode at the Athens games four years earlier, making it the only mountain bike ever to feature in two Olympics. We are so proud of this bike, and Mary of course, because it proves that well-made things can last, even at the absolute top of the sport.
Seven and Get-a-Grip at the Wassau 24
Our good friends from Get-a-Grip in Chicago recently raced the Wassau24. See the picture below of Adam Kaplan with Seven Sola SL.
Adam said, “The Wausau24 was a great event. Very well organized. The course was 11 miles of twisty, rooty, and rocky singletrack mixed with some nice gradual fire road climbs and fast descents. I started off first for our team and had laps at approximately 10am, 4pm, 8pm, 2am and 6am. The first two laps were great, no real fatigue. The third lap I flatted 2 minutes in and had to be careful. The fourth lap was amazing in the dead of night. The last lap was in the rising sun and misty conditions. Our team, Get a Grip Cycles, was able to clinch a podium spot for third place. Not bad for a bunch of 40+ year old men.”