If you are the type of person who rides your bike to get into trouble, but prefer to make it out the other side unscathed, please allow us to introduce you to Knolly.

Knolly Bikes are tough, robust and beautiful.
The people of Knolly bikes, however:

The bikes themselves are overbuilt. But, that is kind of the point.
We will be adding the Delirium-T and Endorphin to our demo fleet, so you can test ride these as soon as we get them.

Baggy shorts are great. They let you wear a chamois without feeling goofy. They also protect you (a little) in the event of a crash. We wear them for short rides, long rides and everything in between.

In the world of baggy shorts, there are many players. And let me tell you what, we have worn a large number of them. The winner, by a landslide is Fox.

FOX Shorts

We love them for making sure we don’t rip our tighter shorts. We love them because they are extra hip protection. And during the summer, they are super ventilated to allow you to ride in the hottest parts of the day (with lots of water and food).

They come in plain old tough to super techy (crazy ventilated) all day shorts. As soon as you try these, you will be hooked.

A great mountain glove will survive several seasons and allow your hand to thrive the whole time. Gloves should fit “like a glove,” but with one difference: you need to grab a handlebar after slipping the glove on. If you do not feel binding up at your palm, you have found your glove. Different gloves offer more or less ventilation than others. They also offer a variety of protection levels. If you are more prone to wrecking and carnage, picking the more protective glove makes more sense.

1. We love Fox gloves – These offer a great variety of protection from the crazy amount of the ones pictures below, to a very simple lightweight version. All of them fit amazingly well and seem to hold up to anything. Scott (the owner) and Brian (the mechanic) used Fox gloves in secret, even while carrying other brands.

2. And Louis Garneau gloves go and go. For some people, the LG Mountain gloves fit better than anything else out there. And we have to say, nothing this ventilated holds up nearly as well as LGs. We wouldn’t carry them if we were not flat out impressed.

We love riding on trails along the Front Range. The temperature in the morning often times is half what it is by the afternoon. So helmets need to be pretty perfect to ride as long as you want to ride. All helmets pass the same safety tests, so it comes down to a few factors.

The most important factor is fit. If the helmet fits well, it will protect better than one that does not. Try on several helmets until you find one that fits similar to a baseball cap. Snug but not too snug helmets will allow for your head to heat up a little and also cool off, depending on what you are needing.

Ventilation is next. Having adequate air flow means that you won’t overheat when it is warm out. It typically means a lighter helmet as well.

And lastly, weight (as we just mentioned) is important. A very heavy helmet will be tiring. The last thing you want to do is get lazy whilst riding on trails. Many of the trails in Denver will eat you alive if you aren’t fully ready at all times.

Our top choices for Mountain Helmets are:

1. Fox Helmets - These pass our 3 tests with flying colors. There are 2 main styles that work well for the Front Range. The Flux and the Transition are fantastic for pretty much all year round riding. If you are riding a great deal in the winter, the Transition will be a little warmer and the opposite is true of the Flux. They are great looking helmets that are feather light.

2. Louis Garneau – LG helmets are super light and fit just about everyone. Our favorite of the lineup for mountain is a bit more of cross country style helmet. It is called the Titan. It is extremely breathable for all your hot weather riding.

The Robota is little bit more protection, but it is a bit heavier than the Titan. Try out both and see what appeals to you more. They do fit a bit differently.

We like hearing that. It is one of the things that gets us more excited about tires. There is a difference between different treads and rubbers. We’ve been playing with different tires under different common conditions in Denver. Here is some of what we found:

1. Maxxis

- Maxxis makes a great number of wonderful tires. Along the front range, we have found you cannot go wrong with the Maxxis Ignitor. It comes in both a 26″ and 29″ version, both accelerate in their field. The rubber is sticky enough for pretty much all conditions Denver has. It is at the same time able to strike the balance to be a relatively long lasting tire as well.

2. WTB

- WTB makes lightweight tires that grip all day long. There are a few that we have found to work better in dirty conditions than others. The Weirwolf (named after Mark Weir) is extraordinarily grippy and light. People often want to dab a foot on tight fast turns, but the Weirwolf hangs on with ease. For an even faster rolling experience, the Weirwolf LT offers a lighter, low profile tread version of the same tread pattern. Incredible ride when the conditions are already quite perfect.

3. Continental

- The Continental Mountain King is an all-rounder tire as well. You will love the Hot Chili Rubber for its stickiness. And the tread pattern lends itself to speed and stability on most every trail in the Rocky Mountains.

Not everyone can find what they are looking for when building their mountain bike. Wheels are especially difficult for some people. A custom wheel means that each part is picked out for its quality, weight, price and specifications. We assemble it to be exactly what you want. To get there, you will need to pick the right parts. Here goes:

Bigger Pictures!

RIMS

- Rims are the most important factor in strength and weight on a custom wheel build. There is no such thing as a great wheel with a crappy rim.
Rims we love:
1. Mavic – These are just plain old fun to build with because our customer loves them and forgets they are there. They can be built with extremely high tension which leads to a REJOICING CUSTOMER. The XC717 is absolutely amazing.
2. Salsa – Surprisingly, Salsa makes some of the best bang for the buck rims on the planet. If you don’t care about weight and want bomber wheels, go for the Salsa Gordo. If you do care about weight, almost all the other rims rival the most expensive rims out there.
3. Sun - The rims coming out of Sun are pretty damn nice. Arguably, the Sun Rhyno Lite Rim in 26″ and 29″ are the best rims you can get for the money. We built a set of 29ers for a guy that has well over 4000 miles and counting. Not bad for one of the least expensive rims you can buy!
4. Others worth noting – We have built very nice wheels with DT Swiss and Velocity Rims. They are easy to build with and are tough final works of art. The price is hard to deal with, however. Stan’s NoTubes also makes some very very light, coincidentally very very expensive rims. Pretty much these are for racing only, but fun to look at, nonetheless.

SPOKES

We build with double butted spokes. The best we know of. The brand is Sapim. The model is the Race. We can easily get more expensive spokes if you need them. However, these are the strongest spokes we know of for the money. (Period!) Available in Black and Silver.

HUBS

A quality front hub spins well and lasts a long time. It is ready for disc brakes when you are. And it definitely shouldn’t break under regular usage. It is very rare to break hubs, barring some sort of craziness.
And a rear hub that lasts needs to have a great ratcheting system and be compatible with the brakes that you are using. Otherwise, if it spins well, you should have it for quite some time.

We like:
1. Chris King – Sorry to be obvious, but they are very light. They do what they should and so what if you get harassed at the trailhead by lookers-on. They are expensive, but such an amazing value. What’s more, King’s manufacturing practices are some of the most sustainable and environmentally responsible in the industry. The hub are precisely made and very top notch. They’re rebuildable with a special set of tools (that we have), but they do not need much upkeep.
2. Shimano – Again, very obvious, but they make rock solid parts for not a great deal of money. The lineup that everyone is excited about this year is the SLX. It is a cross between crazy strong and not expensive. A very rare breed, indeed. Across the board, Shimano hubs are amongst the best deals going. We build them up with regularity for happy mountain bikers.
3. Surly - For single speeders, the Surly hubs are hard to beat. They come ready for a beating and stick around after abuse. They are ready for disc brakes if you need them. You could even run fixed if you are nutty.

THE BUILD

This is the biggest factor to whether a wheel comes out strong, stays strong and performs as you want it to.

We build our wheels in a very exact way. It is 5 parts an art form and 10 parts science. The lacing and preparation are the art. The tensioning and preconditioning are the science. We have built a tool that systematically lets us know which spokes need attention and which ones are ready to go. After we have made sure that your wheel will not want to go anywhere, we take out an insurance policy: we have a special adhesive that holds the spokes in place, but allows for movement under truing stand conditions. So, we can replace a spoke if we need to, but not because it jiggled loose.

Wheels make the biggest difference in overall speed and stamina on a bike. When you take away rotational weight, your bike is more likely to do what you want it to do when you want (and hopefully how you want, too). The advantage of a complete wheelset is that you know what you are getting. The difficulty of a complete wheelset is that it isn’t always EXACTLY what you want.

Complete wheels we are comfortable with you choosing:
1. Mavic – You just cannot go wrong. Price vs. weight vs. strength, Mavic always is in the top 3 brands. On top of that, if you are someone who destroys wheels, they have the MP3 program which is not insurance, but it kind of is. They’ll fix your wheel if you are using it hard and it breaks; they won’t fix it if you get hit by a bus or jump off of an overpass.
Mavic Mountain Wheel that makes us all hot and bothered – Mavic Crossmax SX

Mavic Cross Rides – Tough and not expensive!

2. Easton – Easton makes tough stuff. Most people are familiar with their bars, stems and handlebars. Well, their wheels are tough and light. And their build system rivals anything we have ever heard of. They do not have as many options as Mavic or Shimano, but the options that they offer are very clearly great choices.
Easton wheel that will make the Front Range yours to conquer: XC ONE DISC – Light and reliable.

1. Fox Racing Shox – We love them. Very few problems. Very thorough mechanics and easy (but, not simple) repair. The company is nice to work with.

Big Fork Pictures!

2. Rock Shox – Since being purchased by SRAM a few years back, they are catching up quickly to Fox. The company is easier to work with than Fox, but we do see (slightly) more problems with their forks. The Reba is an especially nice fork for the money, and has received some pretty cool upgrades for ‘09.
3. Maverick – Just like their frames and rear shocks, Maverick forks are forehead-slapping simple, light as all get out (3.9 lbs. for a 6″ travel fork – !) and durable. Fewer external adjustments means less weight and less to go wrong, but a bit more labor intensive tuning.

4. Marzocchi – These guys were the leaders for a while, but have started to slip as of late. Many of their OEM forks (manufactured by SR Suntour) are junk. The company is easy to work with and they have an amazing upgrade program, if you are interested. They still make some nice stuff.
5. Magura – The jury is still out. So far, so good, but almost no bikes come stock with these forks yet.
6. White Brothers – Seen a surprising number of these forks overworked. They still stand up to a beating and keep on going. The company is a pleasure to work with. Still a niche crowd of followers.
7. Manitou – Once a big player, these guys have all but dropped out of our circle. We still have to repair them, which is rather unpleasant, but they seem to hold up relatively well.
8. Others – We’ve worked on Hanebrink, Bombshell, etc. and most of the time they are nicely machined. They are simple and functional and made more for the motorcycle enthusiast turned cyclist. Fun to tune with different weight oils and springs.

The best products are the ones that we forget we have. That bottom bracket that keeps on working or the bars that never break, they don’t get enough high fives (and high fives are free). And man oh man, do we see people’s headsets go south constantly.

A nice assortment of nice headsets

The Chris King Headset is THE ULTIMATE HEADSET for people who ride. It doesn’t break. If it does (almost never because of normal use), they can repair it. You don’t need to replace a King headset.

The other nice thing is that King headsets are, in fact, super light. So, what else do you want? You want it to be less expensive? I know. It is much more expensive than others out there, but let’s look at how much you save if you had to replace it with a new one each 2 years (which isn’t all that far fetched).

King – $130 (give or take a few bucks)
Install – $35
Total for life – $175 (added in a tip for the mechanic!)

Cane Creek S-2 – $40
Install – $35
Total – $75
Two year total – $150
Four year total – $225
You get the point… sometimes you get what you pay for quickly and sometimes you have to enjoy how great a product is for years before it “pays for itself”.

– We could go on and on, but the most important thing about a frame on the Front Range is whether you like the geometry and the way the suspension (if you have any) works FOR YOU. This is done by trying out bikes, not by reading magazines or listening to your buddies. We offer demo bikes for this exact reason. Once you find your bike, you will know it. You will be beside yourself. And mountain biking will fill your being with the “crazy love.” We obviously fell in love with Maverick, Titus, Jamis and Giant for mountain bikes. Let’s see what we can do for you.

Maverick

– Uses the Monolink Suspension design. The specific idea is simple. The path the wheel takes is similar to the suspension fork. That makes sense for keeping momentum, and, as a great bonus, for keeping pedaling forces from having any negative effect on the suspension.

The design is super stiff, easy to work on and has a very distinct feel to it. It climbs phenomenally well and stay super active while you are pedaling both up and down. You need to try it out to see if it is the right system for you.

Titus

– Titus uses the Horst Link, which was purchased by Specialized forever ago. Other companies use the Horst link, but not how Titus does it. By making every part as stiff and light as possible while being extraordinarily precise, Titus took the Horst where Specialized will never go.

Jamis

– Jamis uses a multi-link suspension system. It works well and predictably. And Jamis makes it stiff by using huge hardware to keep everything together. You’ll find climbing to be faster than you would expect from a longer travel bike, and descending is just an all out sit-on-your-couch-through-everything festival.

Giant

– Giant uses Maesto suspension, a type of virtual pivot point design, for their dual suspension mountain bikes. The premise is super complicated. Basically, the suspension is free to travel on several pivots so that there is no defined point in space that is the exact fulcrum. What the hell does that mean? It means no matter what you are slamming through or climbing, the power you put to the pedal reaches the rear wheel… a.k.a. you go fast through it all.