Urbanus Magnus

My buddy O'Malley and I got up early Saturday morning, strapped our bikes onto the back of my family's van and drove up to East Duffins Headwaters for a few solid hours of biking. This fairily well-kept secret of the GTA is a hiking and mountain biking park located in Glen Major forest. The park is owned by the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority (TRCA) and, although not fitted out with large berms, beams or MTB-specific structures, it is spectacular for its single track and quite a few good hills. Not to mention the *huge* length of its trails - there are enough winds, forks, and parallel paths that you wouldn't have seen them all in one full day of riding. Its on Sideline 4, a few kilometers north of Concession Road 9. Here a map of the place: Lots of multi-use, and MTB-oriented, trails. I fooled about with my phone and set it up so that GPS was on, and tracked the expedition: View MTBing the Glen in a larger map --> There are some more routes on...

Quite a few years ago, Surly introduced the then-revolutionary Karate Monkey frameset (they claim it was one of the first commercially-produced 29er frames). Now, Surly has taken the concept behind their utility bike, the Troll, and bumped it up from 26in wheels to 29in: The new Surly Ogre.   Credit: Surly Bikes Surly says that their new frame has geometry similar to the Karate Monkey (which, by following their numbers, it does), but with all the function of the Troll. What does this mean? Well, it has: - Front and rear Canti/Linear brake mounts - Disk brake tabs - Double dropout eyelets, both front and back (so you can mount fenders and racks all round!) - Specifically design for fender clearance (yay!) - Fits up to 29 x 2.5" tires, more that one should ever reasonably need - Full-housing cable mounts  - Surly-compatible trailer mount The bike seems well-equipped to be an all-rounder, off-road (or road) tourer, or nice singletrack companion.  The only quibble I...