Steve Stickel is a name that many of you probably don’t know…but should. His custom frames are hand made out of Asheville, NC and have incredible craftsmanship. For those of you local to the Atlanta area, you can see Lonestar’s white 26″ singlespeed made by Steve at the local trial head. LS will be the first to tell you how great the frame really is. Custom touches, like brake rotors used as gusseting, really set his frames apart from others I have seen.

SRAM’s X.0 rear derailleur went through a redesign for 2008. The most visual of these changes is the new 20th anniversary gold accenting on the mounting bolt and graphics. What you will also see is a new 6061 aluminum backing to the carbon Blackbox cage.

Brian Lopes’s recent announcement of a sponsorship deal with Ibis caught many of us by surprise. Much speculation quickly followed suit regarding which Ibis models he’d be riding. Bike magazine HQ happens to be right around the corner from Casa de Lopes so last week he swung by our office to give us a complete tour of his new quiver.

Mountain Bike Action just did a great write-up on the El Ciclon. For those of you that don’t know…the El Ciclon is the 5″ travel bike in the Ventana line-up.

The perfect ride is different for everyone, and that is one of the things that is so great about mountain biking. You can make the perfect ride whatever you want it to be, and sometimes you don’t even know what it is until you have experienced it for yourself. For some people it is during a race and for others it might be a trip out with the family

Lonestar stepped up the trail submission standards with this. His Bull Mountain review and summary is the best submission to date…beats every single one of mine!

Say hello to the new component group from Shimano…SLX. Set to replace the Hone and LX line for mountain biking, the SLX is marketed as a heavier duty all mountain group for the Shimano line. So far from the pictures, it appears that Shimano mixed the previous LX and Hone together and added a new look along with the some features that were added to the XTR line. The rear derailleur shows some XTR-like characteristics. This line will still fall below the XT line in price and is designed around the growing popularity of 5″ and 6″ trail bikes.

I started thinking this morning about how much during the day I actually think about mountain biking….Turns out it is A LOT! [Thumbsup] So at what point does passion turn into obsession?? When I’m not riding…I am at work posting to forums, posting to my blog, contemplating the next parts purchase, etc. At least the other half thinks it’s ok because at least my obsession/addiction keeps me in shape and healthy!

The winter riding season has ended for the 07/08 season, so I thought I would share my favorite picture from the year. This one was taken at Rich Mountain during the last of the cold rides. We started off the ride in the low 30’s with several inches of snow that was left over from several days before. It really made for a beautiful landscape to start the climb up Stanley Gap. This ride included over 25 riders that included a lot of veteran racers.