Customer Interviews: Commuter Peter Krasnoff

Peter Krasnoff is a long time Rohloff user who has SPEEDHUBs installed on two of his bikes. Peter was notoriously tough on bike frames and drivetrains, and he had broken two frames in the past due to shifting problems. We installed his first SPEEDHUB on a Cannondale Bad Boy, and he was impressed with its low maintenance design and ability to withstand his four day a week year round commute in hilly San Rafael, CA. After a year and a half of trouble-free commuting performance with the Rohloff drivetrain, he decided to get a new mountain bike built around a Rohloff hub, Gates belt drive system, and a Spot Rocker frame.  Around the same time, he put a deposit in with famed local builder Steve Potts for his version of the ultimate commuter frame to replace his Bad Boy. When the frame was finished the following year, we moved the Rohloff wheel over to the new frame and built the bike up with a variety of titanium parts for a super commuter that he rides nearly every day.

Learn more about Peter, his unique, handcrafted Potts, and why the SPEEDHUB works for his riding style below.

Watch renowned framebuilder Steve Potts explain the frame be made for Peter Krasnoff:

Customer Interviews: Mountain Biker Scott Sumner

Scott Sumner is one of the most devoted Rohloff converts we know. We've set up four of his mountain bikes with SPEEDHUBs, and he says he'll never go back to a derailleur system. He has even convinced a number of his riding buddies to try out the Rohloff internal gear drivetrain, and afterwards they had us build up bikes for them.

Read on to learn why Scott is such a fan of his Rohloff SPEEDHUBs.

Customer Interviews: Commuter & Trail Rider Dylan Menges

Dylan Menges was the proud recipient one of the first Surly ECR builds we put together after the bike model was released last year. Dylan lives in Columbus, Ohio, and uses his ECR to commute around town and explore the bike paths and trails along the Scioto River. He is a true adventure rider and wanted a bike durable enough to serve him reliably for rides of all kinds for many years to come.

Read on to learn more about how Dylan uses his Rohloff SPEEDHUB-equipped bike and what other features stand out on his ECR.

Neil and Xan MTB Road Trip: Part 4 - Nevada and Home to California

After reloading the bikes in Saint George, Utah, and with grins still on our faces from riding Zen trail (see Part 3), we drove on for a few hours into Nevada. We slept in the large Las Vegas suburb of Henderson so we could hit Bootleg Canyon the next day. I had never ridden there, but it had been on my list for quite a while. Neil had ridden there several times during the US bike industry's annual fall trade show, which includes two days of bike demos at Bootleg. This would be his first time riding here without the craziness of the trade show though.

Neil and Xan MTB Road Trip: Part 3 – Colorado and Utah

After some epic rides in the Springs, it was time to pack up the car and start the real adventure. I crammed all of my stuff into the van and we headed north to do one of Neil's favorite rides in Golden back from when he was in college. Even though I've spent plenty of time in Colorado at this point, I still sometimes go on a ride that totally blows my mind. Golden Gate Canyon was absolutely one of these rides.

Customer Interviews: Adventure Racer Shane Hagerman

From time to time our customers tell us about impressive rides they’ve done, but few live up to Shane Hagerman’s tales. Shane is a member of Team Odyssey Adventure racing, a race team that competes in multi-day endurance races throughout the world. The four members of Team Odyssey work together to cover hundreds of miles over the course of a few days, sleeping just a few hours a time to give them an advantage over other teams. 

The backcountry routes that the courses follow are often rough and obstacle strewn, meaning their bikes must be as durable yet as light as possible. A few Team Odyssey members ride Rohloff SPEEDHUBs for this reason, including a teammate of Shane’s that we recently built this lightweight titanium Vassago Optimus Ti for. 

Read on to learn more about Shane, adventure racing, and why the SPEEDHUB is his drivetrain of choice.

Mount Diablo Bikepacking Trip

Mount Diablo is known among Bay Area cyclists for being a long, punishing, and oftentimes intensely hot climb. While the team here at Cycle Monkey knew the reputation the mountain had, we experienced the pain it can dish out firsthand on our recent weekend bikepacking trip on the fireroads and singletrack that wind up the mountain. While we got our fair share of the flowing singletrack, sweeping views, and triumphant peaks that we had come for, our ride was also marked by steep climbs, brutal heat, and bushwhacking through overgrown trails. Regardless, the mountain delivered a fun and adventurous weekend that lit a fire under us to go on an extended offroad tour.

Sea Otter Trail Ride Video

Neil and Phil headed down to Sea Otter Classic earlier this month to have a look at some of the most exciting new product releases in the bike industry. Sea Otter, held in Monterey, California, is one of the largest bike festivals in the world, offering races, product demos, and amazing trails. We showed off Neil's Oxide Battleaxe and Surly Krampus to customers at the festival, and afterwards went for a trail ride at the neighboring Fort Ord National Monument. Neil rode his suspension-equipped Surly Krampus and Phil rode his rigid Krampus.

Neil and Phil Head to Monterey for Sea Otter Classic and a Trail Ride

Last Friday, Neil and Phil were joined by Cycle Monkey friend Charlie for a day in Monterey at Sea Otter Classic, one of the bicycle industry's largest festivals. Sea Otter is the event at which most companies debut their most anticipated new products, so our trip to Laguna Seca raceway, where the festival is held, gave us a chance to do some important product research. After a long day at the festival seeing old friends and checking out new products, we got a chance to get an evening ride in at the neighboring Fort Ord National Monument.

Northwest Trails Trip Video

On their drive north to the Seattle Bicycle Expo, Neil and Phil stopped along the way to ride a few of the Pacific Northwest's most renowned trails. Although the weather wasn't always cooperative, they rode their newly built Rohloff-equipped Surly Krampuses in Olympia, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and Redding, California. Watch our video above from some of the best singletrack in the country.

Neil and Phil Ride Redding in a Rainstorm

On the way to up to the Pacific Northwest for the Seattle Bicycle Expo, Neil and I stopped in Redding, California to get a ride in and help break up the twelve hour drive. We didn’t know much about the trails in the area before we got on the road, but we had heard that Redding had some good riding so we decided to make the stop. While driving north on Highway 5 through the Central Valley, we looked up a few specific trail options on our smartphones and decided to just pick the trail that sounded the most fun and take our chances. Little did we know that this spur-of-the-moment stop would be one of the most fun and adventurous rides either of us had been on in a while.

Neil and Phil at the Seattle Bicycle Expo

Neil and I drove from Berkeley to Seattle for the Seattle Bicycle Expo on the weekend of March 1-2, where we had a great time meeting the locals and sharing our products and services with Seattle cyclists. The turnout for the expo was fantastic even with the wet, grey weather that came through that weekend. Most of the consumers exploring the booths at the show were wet and wearing cycling gear, having ridden through the rain to get to the expo center. The sheer number of the commuters at the expo that weekend was a testament to the bicycle community in Seattle: nasty weather doesn’t stop Seattle commuters, and their ranks only seem to be growing.

Neil and Phil's Autumn Annadel ride

Neil in front of the Annadel State Park trail map, ready for the climb.

A few months ago, Neil and Phil drove up north to ride Annadel State Park, one of the most technical and fun mountain bike trails in the Bay Area. Annadel is popular among local riders for providing the kinds of long rock gardens, jumps, and other challenging trail features that aren’t as easy to find closer to home in the East Bay. Any time we make it up to Santa Rosa to ride Annadel, it’s a treat.

Neil and Phil met local Cycle Monkey friend Jake at the trailhead. Neil chose to ride his Lens Sport Lunch Box, a 29er trail bike set up with a Rohloff hub. Neil built up the 150mm travel bike specifically for aggressive riding, with sturdy rims and a laid-back seating position. It’s the bike he takes when he’s able to make it up to Tahoe and big mountain trails in Colorado, Utah or other parts of the Southwest.

Neil's Lens Sport 29er trailbike with 6 inches of travel.

Guest Post: Fruita and Grand Junction Trip, By Xan Marshland

This October I joined a few other members of the Colorado College Cycling Club on a trip to Fruita and Grand Junction, on the western side of the Rocky Mountains. Our plan was to ride some of the area’s renowned cross country and all-mountain trails for four days, camping by one of the trailheads and spending all day riding until we were exhausted. This area had been on my list of places to ride for years, so I was incredibly excited to finally get out there.

I started riding cross-country in my freshman year of high school, but my riding style has progressed greatly since then to favor more adrenaline-inducing trails. Due in no small part to the influence of my team coach and Chief Monkey Neil's aggressive (or insane, depending on your perspective) riding style, I quickly began to prioritize descending steep, technical terrain over fitness-based riding. By my senior year I had fully embraced the “all-mountain” attitude of earning as many vertical feet of descending as I could under my own power.

Guest Post: Colorado Downhill and Cross Country Trip, by Mark Tingwald

Wallride on the Valhalla Trail in Snowmass, Colorado

Last summer my brother and I took a trip to Snowmass, Colorado to ride at the ski resort and in the mountains around Aspen. The plan was to drive down to Los Angeles to pick up some friends, then road trip straight to the resort and get a hotel room for a week of riding and fun. I was excited to take on some more challenging, rocky terrain that we don't have here in the Bay Area and test out the new Rohloff hub the Cycle Monkey crew installed on my Felt Virtue Ltd. My plan was to ride the Felt at both the downhill-oriented bike park and on a longer cross country loop, and I was looking forward to seeing how it would perform on both.

Our trip started in Berkeley, where my brother and I loaded five bikes into my van. After getting the bikes packed we made the trek down to L.A. to pick up two more friends and four more bikes, and then went straight through to Snowmass.

Riding a drop on the Valhalla trail.

Neil and Phil's Muddy Santa Cruz Trail Riding Trip

Neil at the Demo Forest trail map. 

This Thursday, Neil and I headed down south early in the morning to ride the famed trails of Santa Cruz. We were itching to get out on a proper ride and had been watching the weather all week, waiting out a rain storm for a chance to hit the dirt. There was no rain in the forecast Thursday, but with the storm the day before it looked like we’d be hitting the mud instead. That was fine by us. Some of the most grin-inducing rides we’ve ever had have been in the sloppiest conditions imaginable.

We decided to ride Soquel Demonstration Forest State Park (A.K.A. Demo Forest), which we prefer to the trails above the UC Santa Cruz campus because of the abundance of jumps, steep berms, and other trail features it offers. We drove through the San Jose morning traffic, pulled onto Highway 17 through the Santa Cruz mountains, then drove down a little country road, eventually parking on the side of the road in a secluded section of the woods. Stepping out of the car, we realized everything in the forest was dripping wet, we were surrounded by puddles, and it was breezy and overcast. We thought this should make for some interesting trail conditions.

One of the few flat sections of trail.

Phil and Tyler's November North Bay Camping Trip

Tyler's Surly Krampus and Phil's Budnitz No. 3, just before heading over the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin.

Tyler and I, two of the newest members of the Cycle Monkey team, are big fans of bike camping. We often spend downtime at the office dreaming up fatbiking trips and road tours to tackle someday. But for a more immediate thrill, we headed out into the North Bay on a recent weekend for a bit of Rohloff-equipped bike camping. We were excited to get out for a full weekend before the weather got wet, and had been looking forward to the mini-tour since we had planned it just a few weeks before.

The plan was to take the BART train from the East Bay to downtown San Francisco before pedaling over the Golden Gate Bridge and north to Samuel P. Taylor State Park. The park has a popular campsite in a big redwood grove, and the ride there has some of the most beautiful and varied scenery that the Bay Area has to offer – rolling hills, dense forests, waterfront bike paths, and ritzy neighborhoods were all on the route.

Joining us was Cycle Monkey friend Bishnu, who is the roaster at our local coffee shop and quite an experienced bike tourer himself. Tobe, one of the mechanics in our Monkey Lab, was to join us later that night at the campsite. Our motley crew had quite a range of bike styles, packing lists, gear-carrying setups, and pedaling paces, but we all had the same goal: getting outside the city, packing on the miles, and simply enjoying the weekend.

The whole squad: (from left) Tyler, Bishnu, Tobe, and Phil.

Big Mountain Riding: Neil & Xan's Tahoe Trip

Neil (right) and Xan before heading down the trail.

Neil and Xan loaded up the van early one morning this fall to do some riding around South Lake Tahoe. Henry, a friend of Xan's, joined us for the trip. The goal was to ride the famed "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" trail, officially called the Saxon Creek trail. This would be Xan's first ride on his new white Rohloff-equipped Ventana Zeus, a 160mm travel trail bike with 650b wheels. It was also an opportunity for Neil to get away from the office and have some fun after a busy summer. Neil brought his Lenz Sport Lunch Box, a 150mm travel 29'er, which has proven to be a very capable bike over the past few years.

The bikes all loaded up and ready to go.