The acknowledgement that it’s winter still hasn’t settled within me yet, unlike the snow, which has firmly settled outside. All auspices point to a long and cold winter, which will hopefully only make the spring and summer all the sweeter.
There is, of course, one respite in the frozen months: the holidays! Since Yuletide is upon us, we thought we’d put together a little list of items that would make for some great stocking fillers for the bike-maniac in your life.
No time like the presents
Here are twelve of our staff's picks for holiday gifts (no need to read into that number) brought to you by Jaydee:
1: The Flip Fuel Whether it’s for a bikepacking trip or a coffee outside, this little device will allow you to combine all those nearly empty fuel cans into one, freeing up a bunch of space in your pack. No wonder it’s Lauryn’s fave.
2: C&L Titanium Mug At home, at the office, during a coffee ride, or on a trip, this ultralight and snazzy titanium cup will support your caffeine addiction wherever you go.
These coffee accessories will have you caffeinated all the way into 2027.
4: C&L Softgoods We have totes, caps, T-shirts, and hoodies in all sizes—maybe even a few workwear jackets left!
5: Fauna Cargo Cages Solid, light, made in Canada, and 14% off when you buy a pair! What’s not to love?
6: Cable Cuffs & Ghooost Flowers Looking for an elegant way to manage your cables? Both of these options are handmade and cute AF! The Ghooost flowers are made by @GHOOOST in Japan, and the cable cuffs are made by me (@devolution514) by silver-brazing recycled bicycle chain parts right here in Montreal.
7: Quad Lock Products At the price of mobile phones these days, you shouldn’t gamble on dubious phone mounts. We’ve tried a plethora over the years, and this one reigns supreme—standing above all the others. Really, stop playin’!
8: Voilé and Austere Straps These things are to cycling what Tupperware is to a kitchen: you always need a bunch, in all shapes and sizes.
9: Crane Bicycle Bell These beautiful bells, made in Osaka, Japan, have some of the most pleasantly noticeable sounds you’ll ever hear. Some of the brass ones can ring for up to 15 seconds! They’re guaranteed to make heads turn. After all, isn’t that what bells are for?
10. Aeropress Don’t be fooled by its simplicity and compact size—this coffee press may become your most valuable tool on the road or even in your everyday kitchen at home.
11: Brooks Seat Cover Alright, confession time. I may have learnt the hard way that just because someone might need something, that doesn’t mean it should be made into a present. (Ask me about the toolbox incident of Christmas 2004)
But hey—if someone rides a Brooks and it’s looking a little… vulnerable… This could be a clutch stocking stuffer. But, proceed at your own risk.
12: Water Bottles We have so many fun ones! Tabasco tribute, Vermont maple syrup, C&L—hell, we even have a Kewpie Mayo one!!!
Servicing the Christmas Spirit
If none of JD's suggestions tickle your fancy, why not, in fact, get your name on the starting grid for one of Vincent's mechanics classes?
Vincent:
Our first series of classes is in full swing, with one or two classes per week and a good number of happy students. I always find it interesting how the same class can go in very different ways depending on the number of participants, their prior experience and their respective bicycles. I think a major advantage of having a maximum of 4 participants is that I get to spend time with each one of them and help them learn the particularities of their bicycle. It’s one thing to learn the theory behind how to adjust a derailleur, but every bike is different and the “correct” way of doing things rarely works flawlessly in the real world.
As I’m writing this, the mechanic class level 2 in French next Sunday is full, but there are a couple of spots available for the English class Sunday December 14th! That being said, if you know someone who missed on that first batch of classes, here’s a good way to cheer them up: offer them a place on our Mechanics Course! Whether it’s for our flat repair class, mechanics level 1 and 2, or our wheelbuilding class, it’s the perfect gift for anyone you know who expressed interest in bike mechanics. The preorder is open for any date, and additional dates will be announced early after the holidays.
As some of you may have seen, our very own Julian has been on a european adventure over the last couple of weeks, cycling from Girona to Marseille with a couple of pals. In Girona, he swung by the kind folks at Path Less Pedalled, to talk all things Bassi, Belmont and bikepacking. If you haven't seen either of the videos with Julian, I highly recommend checking them out!
The Parts Swap, ex post facto,
from Vincent's pen:
Holy moly! What a blast that was!
Sunday November 16th was our second annual Parts Swap Meet, and I think anyone would agree the event was a success. The flow of attendees was pretty much relentless throughout the day and the turn up was actually impressive, considering the mix of snow and rain going on outside and nearby events like Expozine and others. The little church’s basement was packed most of the day with an alluring amount of niche and weird bike parts of all eras and categories. Even though I’ve been told most participants didn’t sell that many parts, the feedback I get the most is that everyone was very happy they got to chat and just hang with fellow bike nerds. I personally see the Parts Swap more like a social/community event rather than commercial or with the intent of selling as many parts as possible.
People also seemed to appreciate the other, non-bike related attractions. The noodles served by Sun Ramen were so delicious and perfect for such a cold and wet day, and the beers from Projet Pilote made for a nice little relief in the late afternoon. I even got to discover a very cool tattoo artist, Onsight Tattoos, who had a number of awesome bike-themed flashes and got to ink a couple of people.
As the de facto event planner at C&L, with little experience in that regard, I always find it daunting to organize something of that scale. How do I know if people are gonna like it? How do I make sure people are gonna come? What is it they want to see? So many questions are spinning in my head during the weeks leading to the event, and the result seems to be that whatever it is we’re doing, it’s working. I’m very grateful for everyone who got involved in the organization and during the event, and for every single participant and attendee who made this event possible. Myself I had little time to walk around and chat, but I still got to see so many familiar faces, meet new people, and see satisfied people leaving with a handful of parts.
It’s hard to tell what’s in the bank for next year. Every time we’re doing it we’re learning new things and finding ways to improve it. Do we want to make it grow? Can this be done while staying accessible and free to attend? Could it be merged with something else? We’ll see, but on our end it’s clear it’s an event we want to see happening every year and make it a tradition
Open the pictures in a new tab to see 'em good and big.
I was really excited when Eric wrote in asking if we could make a Belmont his way, because it showed he really understood the point of the frame, and that it's probably the only one around that fits his needs.
He'd been looking for a Canadian replacement for a road frame "with more class and soul than a modern carbon special" with which he could do road rides and randonneuring out in BC. Speed and comfort was the name of the game.
Eric wanted silver parts everywhere (and was disappointed but understood that we don't offer the Belmont with a quill stem) and, a surefire way to have a corner of my heart to himself, downtube friction shifters. I'm also in agreement with him that a 700C wheel with 32mm tires is plenty for anything on a road and keeps rotational weight and pneumatic trail down compared to a wide all-road tire.
In lieu of the quill-stem cockpit, we found a beautiful setup with a Dia-Compe CB-2 headset, Nitto Ultimate Road UI-26 forged stem, and Velo Orange Nouveau Rando handlebar. To complement that, the seatpost and saddle are, to my eyes, an iconic combination: Brooks Swift with Nitto Crystal Fellow. The results speak for themselves and everything will be tough and remain just as gorgeous for the lifetime of the bike.
The Brooks microfibre bar tape goes with their saddle, no surprise there, and the TRP brake levers can be set up on modern compact handlebars or on traditional round drops, depending on if you install the included spacer block, which is such a relief when trying to narrow down bar choices. They naturally pair perfectly with the TRP Spyre brakes that come standard on a Belmont build.
The three-arm French throwback YMC crankset is sourced from Blue Lug, and it really ties the bike together. It was Eric's first choice of cranks and he was entirely correct, the æsthetics couldn't be better, even if he and I would have been just as happy with a Bassi Classic compact.
The Belmont is a frame that's happy to be built as a fast modern randonneuse, but is in no way limited to that. I really look forward to building peoples' ideas of a cool bike and seeing what we can come up with together, it's one of the fun parts of this job!
This is a frame which was brought to us by Marc-André, who wanted a very specific build.
Black Mountain Cycles are a shop in Point Reyes Station, California. It's a small town not too far North of San Francisco on Highway One, with lovely galleries, ice cream, and this manufacturer within view of the Black Mountain. They design really particular frames which I can only describe as "What if a road bike could mountain-bike". It's a really fun idea but makes it a little more difficult to build the complete bike. There's not a lot of leeway on which components work with the frame, and together. Honestly, I appreciate their philosophy both as a company and in the way they choose to make bikes.
This build wound up being really appropriate to the kind of trail riding Marc-André does, and has zero compromises. We've got Shimano GRX on the drivetrain, with a small mountain-bike crank and a wide-range cassette, superb wheels from DT Swiss (handbuilt by us), and lots of winning Ritchey WCS bits to fill it out. There's no other way to say it: this bike absolutely rips. It's meant to be very stable climbing at low speeds and descending quickly on rough gravel trails.
Local rider Terry came to us with this gorgeous, brand new Panasonic road-bike frame, welded just for him through Panasonic's famous made-to-order framebuilding system. Check out the factory visit in the video below, it's super cool!
For those who don't know, yes this is the same Panasonic that's made batteries, turntables, etc you've encountered before. They also happen to be a huge domestic bicycle manufacturer in Japan, mostly under the brand name "National". Since the 80's they've had an impressive ordering system for specifying your frame model, sizing, and colours.
This bike came to us as a frame and Campy groupset, and we supplied the rest of the components, along with our usually thorough assembly. The nice, fast Campagnolo wheels go perfectly with the drivetrain, while the classic-looking components we're known for really tie the bike together.
Note especially the Cinelli Giro d'Italia handlebar with Nitto stem, a typical Italy-Japan mix like we've always loved. Terry borrowed one of our loaner saddles to try it out, which you can see in these pictures.
See below for pictures of the details, and don't forget to open the images in a new tab to really zoom in!
We're thrilled we got a chance to help you build your dream bike, Terry! Happy riding.
Dumitru came to us with a mandate for his dream drop-bar build, and the result came out just right! He wanted a few things: an upright and comfortable position, brifters and a 1x transmission for ease of shifting, light weight stuff where it counts, and classic silver and brown styling.
He sized between the 52 and 55cm frames, so we opted for the latter to achieve this "French Fit", with the handlebar significantly higher than the saddle. Nitto's super-short, super-tall Technomic quill stem helped out here to get the bars nice and close.
For brifters, we opted for SRAM's Apex1 group, which we've tested time and again on our Hog's Back builds over the years. The double-tap shifting is intuitive and fast, and the ergonomics of the levers is excellent. Instead of using their crank, we opted for our Narrow-Wide Low crankset, which has a smaller 38t chainring than the Apex1 offers as a minimum, and can even be lowered to 34t for future-proofing or outfitting this bike for hillier rides. Plus, it's silver!
To shave some weight, we opted for where it counts: the wheels. Velocity Quills are our favourite lightweight road rims for wide(r) tires, and they built up perfectly to a Velo Orange rear hub and Shutter Precision front, with double butted Sapim Race spokes that are both lighter, and stronger. Clad in Rene Herse Babyshoe Pass tires, these are smoooooth spinning wheels!
Speaking of silver, we needed to make this ride classic. The Montreal is a great platform for this, and we kept things shiny all around. Honjo's beautiful aluminium fenders might appear old-timey at first glance, but they're actually light, solid, and wonderfully functional. The Brooks B17 saddle, which needs no introduction at this point, checks all the boxes when it comes to comfort and good looks.
Catch Dumitru riding long distances on this guy! It's since been outfitted with racks, bags, and lights, and continues to evolve over time and age like a fine wine.
Photos by Troy
