Some gentlemen on Bikerumor (sic) have been discussing the fact that I don’t know what I’m talking about. This is nothing new.

I mentioned in my piece on the on-one site that I’d found that the singlepivot system let me make a shorter chainstay bike than a Horst link one, ie: amount of travel achieved until the rear wheel bashes into the seat tube.

This morning, whilst procrastinating various things (and having just signed off my “best frame ever”) I thought I’d fire up Linkage and look again. And it shows just as I thought. With HL pivots in a conventional position (ie: behind the BB and with a dropped chainstay pivot) the rear wheel moves significantly forward through the rear wheels travel. Perhaps this is an anomaly  of the rocker link position and geometry I have chosen, but seeing as the bike is designed to run a SINGLE RING there didn’t (to me) see much point in running a dual link design. 

Well, that and the fact Oxley says the proto is “massively rad”. 

A local Colden man has come third in a tough arctic endurance snow bike race, in Rovaniemi, Lapland. Ed Oxley, owner of “Great Rock” a Colden based mountainbike guiding and coaching company was racing in the 150km event on a bike designed by another local man, and race entrant, Brant Richards of Hebden Bridge. 

The pair entered the race only three months ago and have been training by riding in the Hebden Bridge area. 

Both were riding On-One Fatty bikes, made by Richards’ company in Sheffield, which feature 5in wide tyres to help them travel on the snow. Ironically the weather conditions during the race were too warm! Temperatures were around -2 to -5c rather than the -15c expected meaning that the intrepid duo had to push their bikes for a lot of the race. 

Richards abandoned at the half way mark to due “a sore bum and cramps” and managed to get back to the finish line to see his friend arrive in third place. 

They’re already planning the next adventure “possibly somewhere a bit warmer”.