A closer look at the Lone Wolf Cycling X Honey All Roads. The Trail Wizard as we are calling it was inspired by a ride we took to scout out a renegade CX ride that happened this past weekend. The bike and the name both came from the same space. The All Roads was designed to take you into the secret trails hidden behind stone walls and overgrowth. Some ride to get from point A to point B the fastest they can. We seek to get lost to find trails no one has ridden before and turn them into a loop that can transport a rider to another time and space. Lone Wolf Cycling shares our spirit of adventure and they have created a color scheme inspired by the woods we love to ride in. We are raffling off tickets for a chance to win this special bike. We will also be offering this as a very limited edition bike celebrating our partnership with Lone Wolf Cycling.
LWC Field Operations X Honey All Roads Trail Wizard Raffle
In commemoration of the LWC Field Operations - MA ride, Honey Bikes will be producing a one-off special edition Allroads frameset. Conifer inspired art by LWC and dubbed the Trail Wizard, this handmade beauty will be raffled off to one lucky winner. Buy tickets for $20 at www.bikereg.com/25921. Proceeds from the sales will be donated to Philly and Massachusetts trail projects. Drawing held Oct. 6 in a sacred woods ritual filmed and uploaded to the LWC Vimeo page.#trailwizard #lwcfldopsMA
Ronde de Rosey 2014
The Ronde de Rosey 2014 was a huge success. For the last three years I have ridden a Honey bike on the RdR. This year I had the pleasure of riding the All Roads. I can't say enough about how well it shined. The Ronde is a long ride: 50+ miles of mostly dirt with a lot of singletrack and rocks. To be able to ride 90% of this terrain you need a bike up to the task. The All Roads was confidence inspiring to say the least. It shredded the technical stuff but was fast and comfortable on the road connections. The perfect bike for this type of ride. The Ronde is an underground mixed terrain CX race/ride/adventure that winds through secret trails and paths all over the Metro Boston area. It was created by its namesake Scott (Rosey) Rosenthal as a benefit for Bikes not Bombs and as an excuse to get us all together to have some fun getting dirty on CX bikes in the Spring. I have had some very special rides at the Ronde. This year was one of the best. Great team. Great time meeting and riding with friends I haven't seen since cross season. Its the type of ride that forms bonds with friends and teammates alike. It brings out so many of Boston's CX and mtn bike riders. Its always so great to see everyone at the Washington Square Tavern. This year we raised over $1,000 and donated lots of spare parts for their recycling program.
Adam's Farm Short Track Series
Boston has been hoping for a short track mountain bike series for a while. Short track is a perfect way to get a mid-week training ride in and have some fun. Short track typically is a shorter course and shorter duration than a typical mountain bike course. The Blue Hills Cycling Club found a gem of a venue at Adam's Farm in Walpole for a mountain bike race last year. The race was called the Barn Burner and was a blast. It had so much going for it. A mere 30 minutes from Boston, it had a fun mix of terrain, plenty of parking, a Barn, beer garden and food trucks. Last year's race had a great turn out and the racing was fantastic.
The Barn Burner will be held on July 13th this year. The short track series will be held at Adam's Farm on four Wednesdays over the summer. May 21, June 18th, July 23 and August 20. There will be two heats each Wednesday evening throughout the series.
The A Race will be held at 6 pm and will be 30 minutes. The A race is Cat 1 and Cat 2
The B Race will be held at 6:35 and will be 25 minutes. The B race is Cat 3 and first timers
Honey will be sponsoring the Barn Burner and the Adam's Farm Short Track Series so look for some sweet Honey primes each Wednesday! We are really excited to be a part of this local grassroots mtn bike race. The Blue Hills Cycling Club took a park that wasn't being used by mountain bikers at all and cleared trail, repaired sections that had damage and created a loop that all of us can enjoy year round.
The venue is great for all levels. It has a true mix of terrain. Lots of nice twisty singletrack as well as a few rock gardens and stream crossings. Pauly's Pass is a funky little DIY wood bridge that makes riders choose between glory and potential skin loss.
For more information go to Blue Hills Cycling Club's website.
Allroads
The Allroads bike is exactly what it is named after. We designed this bike to ride on all road conditions=paved, broken, carriage trails, and even singletrack. We have spent the last year testing the bike in the most extreme conditions imaginable. What started out as a "do everything" bike is quickly replacing all our other bikes for the types of riding we love to do the most. You can easily transform the bike to adapt to the type of ride you will be doing with a simple tire change. It is very hard to clearly define what "type" of bike the Allroads is. It really is what ever you want it to be. With 28 slicks it is a great road bike, with 33 file treads it is a fantastic CX/Gravel bike, and with 40 mm tires it becomes a very capable woods and singletrack shredding machine.
What makes it so capable at so many different types of riding?
• Disc brakes enable us to open up the rear triangle to accommodate tires ranging from 23-41mm. This means you don't have to be limited in tire selection and can easily fit studded winter tires for all year riding.
• Hand-picked, custom-drawn and size-specific tube selection creates a bike with a stiff drivetrain as well as plenty of vertical compliance keeping the wheels on the ground.
• A low bottom bracket provides rail like handling in corners on the road and confidence inspiring stability through tight turns and off cambers off road.
• A long front center provides more toe clearance for big tires and more stability on descents similar to a classics road frame.
• There is generous room in the rear end for fenders. We know that the Allroads will be ridden in all conditions so the bike comes standard with fender mounts.
• The bike is probably one of the most versatile bikes available. It not only can accommodate a wide range of tires but can be used with either 700c or 650b wheel sizes.
The bike pictured is a limited edition Allroads called the Hammer and Cycle and was inspired by the Rasputitsa gravel road race held this past April in Northern Vermont. Rasputitsa means "mud season or quagmire" in Russian. The bikes was designed specifically for the mud, snow and ice that we knew would be awaiting us.
After riding and racing the bike for 6 weeks it lives up to its namesake. Riding it back to back weekends in rain, mud and snow at both the Rasputitsa and Diverged ride it passed its test with flying colors. Both rides shared a similar brutality but could not have been more different. The fact that the All Roads shined at both events is a testament to its versatility. I knew the All Roads would be great in Vermont. I was most impressed by its ability to descend 35 mph sketchy dirt roads with absolute confidence.
Two moments stand out for me from the Rasputitsa. One was the descent after cresting Cyberia. Cyberia was a 2 mile stretch of rocky "road" disguised as a stream bed that was still frozen in snow and ice. The downhill sector of Cyberia was snow, mud and ruts. I saw so many people hit a rut and go flying into a ditch. Even riders on mtn bikes were riding it tentatively. We were able to get back off the saddle and fly down this mud roller coaster ride with smiles on our faces.
The second moment that will be forever in my memory was following a rider into a covered wood bridge a little too hot. Actually I was going in way too fast as it was dark under the bridge and I couldn't see that the surface of the bridge was a bunch of uneven raised wooden planks. This could have ended horribly. Instead I trusted the bike and hopped one plank and got in between the next plank and rode out through the groove. You need a very nimble yet stable bike to pull that off without crashing.
The Diverged ride on the other hand was truly a mixed terrain ride. Wet wood bridges, slick roots, mud bogs, real singletrack, boulders everything you could imagine. Parts of this ride would push a cyclocross bike way beyond its comfort zone. The Allroads shined. I never felt out of control or in any way in danger. A lot of this goes to the disc brakes and ability to run big tires but the geometry played a big part in this as well.
As the Spring mud season begins to end I am looking forward to putting 28 slicks on the Allroads and taking it on dry dusty dirt roads for more adventure. Western Mass, NH and Vermont are all calling my name. We have a long list of dirt rides on our calendar I am looking forward to all of them!