Yawp! Cyclery's 2019 Gift Guide

Giving gifts can be difficult, and the charm of the holidays is sometimes lost under an atmosphere of corporate greed. Every year we make a gift guide hoping that we can help suggest durable, functional gifts for the people in your life who ride bicycles that you can feel good about giving and that they’ll actually use up or wear out. If none of these things quite hit the spot, you can always make a donation in the name of your loved one to World Bicycle Relief or People for Bikes.

We’ve just received an order of tote bags, which we’ve used to make a number of different gift bags. What’s better than getting a gift? Getting a bunch of gifts! In a bag!

on the road

The basics for the aspiring commuter in your life. 1 Yawp! water bottle, 1 bottle of Rock n’ Roll Extreme chain lube, Crank Brothers multi-tool, and the Incredibell Omnibell (designed to fit on almost any handlebar!). ($45)

if on a winter’s night a traveler…

Winter is one of our favorite times of year to ride bikes, but that’s only made possible by the right gear. Keep your head, feet, and insides warm with a 45NRTH Greazy wool cap (with ear flaps!), wool socks, and a Surly flask for a special warmth that wool just can’t match. ($83)

Flatland: a romance of many dimensions

Whether you’ve been riding a bike for eons or just getting into the swing of things, flat fixing tools are perfect for cyclists of all varieties. This gift pack includes 1 tube, tire levers, patch kit, and Topeak portable pump. ($39)

Walden

No matter where the trail takes you or your mountain bike loving loved ones, this bag of delights will help you get there. This gift bag includes 1 pair of 100% Ridecamp gloves, 1 Singletrack Map (with a variety of locations to choose from), 1 Timber mountain bike bell, and 1 Lezyne tubeless repair kit. Safety, comfort, and adventure all packed into one. ($84)

The Sycophant

Maybe you love Yawp or know someone who does. First, let them know that we love them, too. Once you’ve done that, reward them for being so awesome with this collection of Yawp things including a silipint, t-shirt in a size of your choosing, stickers, patches, socks, and Yawp tote bag to carry all your new awesome stuff in. ($46)

the things they carried

Whether you're preparing for a bikepacking trip, or like to carry lots of things on your daily commute, this gift pack has got you covered. With a Salsa Anything Cage, Oveja Negra Chuck Bucket, and Yawp! Silipint, you’ll be able to carry all your favorite beverages and related accessories. ($106)

Other Awesome Gift Ideas for Your Cycling Inclined Loved Ones

Spurcycle Bells

Durable, rebuildable, made in America, and one of the classiest looking and sounding bells on the block. Currently available in black, silver, and limited edition Chris King matte bourbon and violet! ($49-69)

Spurcycle Ti Key Clip

This new titanium key clip will keep your keys portable and handy on your belt loop, while also making sure you have a bottle opener at the ready. Which is important if you’re planning on spending any significant time with your family this holiday season. ($39)

King Cage Topcap Mount

More carrying capacity right at your finger tips! This topcap mount adds another mounting point for more stuff. At just $8, it’s a great option for a stocking stuffer, white elephant gift exchange, or that cousin you have to get something for but don’t really like that much.

Yawp! Gear

Merino t-shirts by Surly with our logo on the sleeve ($75). Caps by Rothera ($30). Tote bags ($12). Silipints ($16).

surly wool

Surly’s line of merino wool gear is great for all sorts of cold weather. Neck gaiters, jerseys, pocket tees, socks, scarves, and caps made out of the best merino wool to keep you warm and dry all winter long. ($15-165)

Yawp! Owl headbadge by jen Green

Jen Green has one of our favorite Instagram accounts. She makes amazing headbadges, and we are lucky that she made some for us! These little owls are white bronze, and we have them in two sizes (to fit all of your Surlys).

For more ideas, here are links to gift guides from years past.

2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015

No Time for Sluicers - The Yawp! Company in Leadville

I’ve been through Leadville a number of times, but never to Leadville. I did not know it as a place that one visited. To my surprise, Leadville’s tiny downtown was clustered with families wearing Colorado hoodies. Sleuths of black leather motor bikers sat on split-rail fences and clogged restaurant entryways. A shrewdness of dirty campfire Yawp! Company non-motor bikers mobbed the beer and pizza joint. Like rebels, we took up both parking spaces and ate all the cheese. But then we went immediately to bed because we are also old.

As Colorado fills up and the planet heats up, I suppose it makes sense that this windblown little town in the midst of some towering Rocky Mountains would become a Getaway Destination. When I say windblown, I mean that some of the buildings have blown all the way down and no one seems to mind. The Yawp! Company went there, and it was pretty darn swell.

With our first two trips of the year troubled by snow and injury, it was something of a relief for this trip to go on much as previous trips have gone: bikes, beer, campfire, repeat.

On Saturday, we rode the Pipeline to Twin Lakes loop, 2/3 of which I would heartily recommend. Should you go to Leadville, you might enjoy section 11 of the Colorado Trail, with its fairly mild (for the CT) climbs and dense aspen groves. There are lots of folks hiking Mounts Elbert and Massive. Many of them start hiking around 4am. I don’t really know that’s a fact, but based on how many vehicles passed our campsite between 3:45 and 4:30am, it’s a good guess. So as long as you don’t start your ride at 4am, you’ll hardly see anyone. Unless a storm blackens the sky around the mountain tops and unleashes a bout of lightning that sounds like that other Janet Weiss band, in which case 7,000 hikers may be flushed onto the CT from their respective summit trails by nature’s own Ice Bucket Challenge.

While in Leadville, you might also enjoy the Twin Lakes trail south of the lakes as an out-and-back. It’s quick and punchy with some fun tech. For a trail that is entirely flat, it’s almost never flat.

Okay, it looks pretty flat in those photos, but it’s not flat.

Those two sections are the 2/3 that I recommend. If you enjoy ending rides with a climb as well as long, un-scenic doubletrack slogs and exposure to afternoon storms, then I also recommend the easternmost third-third of this loop.

I didn’t take a picture of the campfire. I know these pictures, as a genre, are unexciting, but I like them. I like how faces are overexposed on one side and bleed into the surrounding darkness on the other. Campfires are one of the few social situations in which this introvert can fully relax, so I have a soft, blurry overexposed spot in my heart for such photographs. I’m lucky to share campfires with people who are so interesting, creative, and funny that we can always find new and worthwhile things to say about poop. Just kidding. We don’t talk about poop. Except for when we do.

On Sunday, we followed good advice from Brian and rode nine miles up an increasingly steep, loose, and rocky fire road to the Champion Mine. The creek crossing was so cold it made my ankles feel like they were going to burst.

We rode past the site of a fairly recent avalanche, where hundreds of trees lay on their sides, and what little air there was at 11,000 feet smelled so strongly of pine sap and tree flesh that it would’ve made the CEO of a scented candle company collapse out of spite. Being the hardened and emotionless Company that we are, we casually noted the tree genocide and continued on.

The mine is huge and old and made by hand, and in a remote Rocky Mountain gulch with little other evidence of humankind. For some reason, that makes it incredibly cool.

It doesn’t happen often, but on this trip we had a couple of different groups riding different rides simultaneously. That means I don’t have photos of everybody, and that I didn’t get to spend much time with some of the folks who came on this trip. I do really like, however, that people are comfortable camping with us and then riding their own rides.

I feel like this is the appropriate place to leave you with a poop joke, but we don’t talk about poop so I guess I’ll just log off.

Even More Words About the Surly Big Fat Dummy

I’ve had a Big Fat Dummy for almost two years now. Before that, I had the original Big Dummy for about seven years. I have already gushed about these bikes in a blog post, which you can find here. I have a little more to add to that post now that I’ve recently replaced my big fat wheels with 29-plus wheels (from 26 x 3.8 to 29 x 3). I imagine the 29+ configuration isn’t right for everyone, but it sure suits my needs. The character of the bike changed quite a bit, and since the Big Fat Dummy is currently available in both wheel sizes, I thought it worth the time to relate my experience with both.

Let’s say you’re trudging through an unfamiliar wood, encumbered by an unreasonably large satchel of magic beans that you’ve procured from market for your grandmother. You should’ve been home hours ago, and if you don’t soon find your way you’ll be sleeping in this forest, which you know to be overrun with marauders, wolves, violent fungi, and flesh-eating gnomes. You set down your unreasonably large satchel to wipe your brow, and happen to see a little round window set into the side of a large tree trunk. The window is lit from within. If you place your unreasonably large satchel underneath the window and stand upon it, you can see through the window a small, abandoned residence. Releasing the latch, you call into the warm room beyond, and your call elicits no reply.

There are three bowls of porridge on the table. One is too hot, one is too cold, and the third is just right. You eat all of them because you’ve been trudging through an unfamiliar wood all damn day, and your two-headed chicken didn’t fetch enough at the fair to earn you both an unreasonably large satchel of magic beans and a meal. After finishing the porridge, you find three enormous combs full of thick, gnarled hair. You do not use any of the combs. A small door at the back of the room lets you deeper into the tree trunk, and down there you find a garage. It’s mostly full of Conundrum unicycles, propeller beanies, and juggling pins, but toward the back you find three Surly cargo bikes. You are saved. The unreasonably large satchel will fit aboard any one of them, and you’ll have no trouble making it through the forest before dark.

The first bike says Big Dummy on the toptube, and it’s just a little too small. The unfamiliar wood is thick with roots, loamy soil, and creepy, sinister warnings spelled out in broken twigs. The bike would undoubtedly do the trick, but it has been outfitted with slick tires for some kind of road surface that will not be invented for centuries. You would likely struggle to clear some of the obstacles ahead, and perhaps sink into the soft earth.

The second bike seems much more appropriate. This Big Fat Dummy has 26x3.8 tires, and could haul your emaciated cow to market straight up the side of the settlement’s outer wall. This bike would most certainly do, although dark would be fast approaching when you reached the forest’s far side.

Fortuitously, there is a third option. It’s another Big Fat Dummy, but this one has 29x3.0 tires. It suits your needs to a big fat T. Magic beans aren’t all that heavy, and you need a cargo bike that’s fast enough to cover much uneven ground while escaping the clutches of various witches’ ovens, and yet have the traction and tire volume to ride over fallen, wilting beanstalks.

It’s all a bit academic, because while you’re busy test riding the cargo bikes around a small clearing behind the tree trunk, three bears return from their walk and eat you. And you deserve it, too, you bicycle thief.

Had I realized that this blog would end in your death, I’d have chosen another analogy. I apologize. Please take some comfort in knowing that everyone who lived lived happily every after. The bears made the best porridge of their lives from your magic beans and your delicious quads, and I have a most excellent cargo bike.

Yawp Cyclery's 2019 Goal Program

In 2017 we started a program that we un-ambitiously called our Goal Program. Even if you aren't the kind of person to whom goals appeal, we hope our program might appeal to you.

Part of the reason we here at Yawp! remain resistant to cycling goals is that most everyday riders don't have them. Riders who enjoy racing seriously have them, and because we are not fast (and never will be) we are outside of the cycling subculture most congruent with goal setting. Know what, though? We've set goals anyway, and they've led to unbelievably positive outcomes. That's why we suggest that you think about setting one yourself.

Yawp! offers an annual goal completion program. All you have to do to sign up. We accept submissions between January 1st and 31st every year. You may find goal-setting to be exhausting and obnoxious. If you're thinking this Program is not for you, remember these two things:

1. Why make a bunch of spur-of-the-moment bad decisions when you could make your bad decisions in advance?

2. There will be prizes for anyone who meets their goal.

The folks who set goals for 2017 really blew me away. They aimed high, and if they did not hit their targets it wasn't for lack of effort. Thanks to all who participated, and congratulations to those of you who met your goals. 

If you aren't sure what kind of goal you want to set, here are a few examples:

-Commute to work by bike one day per week, every week.

-Ride 7,000 miles in a year.

-Ride 1,000 miles on dirt.

-Bikepack for one weekend.

-Bikepack the Colorado Trail.

-Finish a 50-mile event.

-Ride a hundo every month.

-Clean everything at Dakota Ridge.

-Race the Iditarod. 

Guidelines
You must submit your goal between January 1st and 31st. You must complete your goal by December 31st of this year.

Challenge yourself. If commuting to work will not be a challenge, set a different goal.

Buying a new bike, getting your touring rig all situated, or finally getting your brakes dialed are all good goals, but they don't count toward this program. Your goal must have to do with riding.

Set as many goals as you like; only one prize per participant.

To sign up, just fill out the form below. This year, we'll be sharing everyone's goals publicly in the beginning of February so that we as a community can support one another in the pursuit of these goals.

Enrollment is open! Please fill out the form below to submit your goal. 

YAWP! Cyclery's Essential Videos

A few weeks ago we posted a bunch of our favorite photographs (here). We also found a few videos we like, and we hope you enjoy them too.