Very cool, if true

Posted by mhoye

https://exple.tive.org/blarg/2025/10/31/the-new-whip/

https://exple.tive.org/blarg/?p=6744

“There’s no trail here, turn back, you need to portage your canoe,” look at all this quitter talk.

This bike started its young life as Canyon Stitched 360, a single speed jump bike that was a ton of fun on burms and pavement, but shipping with a 30×12 drivetrain that made it difficult to wrangle hills and the off-piste nonsense I seem to favour. Most of where I end up is… well. Sometimes it’s a path? I sometimes – not always, but sometimes – think that if you know where you’re going and how you’re getting there you’ve already missed a part of the point.

In any case; today this bike’s a bit different.

Front to back, the stubby jump-bike stem has been replaced with a 130mm Profile Aris stem that gives it a trials-bike front end feeling, more a bit more leverage and legroom. Cut-narrow handlebars with a bit of extra lift have me standing almost straight up if I’m out of the seat, looking like a meercat in overgrowth and joyously swoopy down Toronto’s few hills. The post holding up that seat is TranzX dropper that gets mostly out of the way if I’m knee deep in the gnarls, but gives me enough height that getting where I’m going on the flats isn’t a hunched-up unpleasantry.

Down in the drivetrain, 30-12 is perfectly fine for a jump bike but pushing that 2.5 ratio up a 25 degree singletrack incline made of mud and roots, it’s a bit much. The rear wheel now sports an Alfine 8-speed internal hub, in theory is meant for e-bikes.

It’s so quiet.

I pay a bit of a weight penalty for that, but… look, there’s no way I’m the strongest anyone in the anything, I know that, but I’ve stripped the teeth off a Gates belt before, and I’m told you’re not supposed to be able to do that; I’m hoping that this thing doesn’t get turned into a fistful of scrap shavings next time I get a bit excitable. Replacing the front cog with a 38-tooth gear that juuuuust barely fits has given me enough range that I can haul myself up the 20% grade Redway Service Road, no … well, not “no problem”, really. 20% is a slog, full stop. But now it’s achievable. And at the top end, that 3.8 ratio (on 26ers) isn’t quite what I get from my beloved track bike, but with a bit of a tailwind or down a bit of a hill, I can soar.

It’s unstoppable. I love it.

The only thing I need now are some knobbies, but that’s a springtime project. For now… it’s just about perfect, an instrument precision-tuned to the idiosyncracies, predelictions and frame of one random weirdo that happens to be me.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that occasionally, when somebody asks “what kind of bike is that?” I get a fair bit of satisfaction out of saying, there are no other bikes like this.

https://exple.tive.org/blarg/2025/10/31/the-new-whip/

https://exple.tive.org/blarg/?p=6744