Kyle Thomas

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May 29 2012

Building up to biking the trails

Yellowknife has been having some ridiculously nice weather lately and fingers crossed it doesn’t end.

I have been biking into work steadily for about three weeks now with much joy. When I started my time to get from my house to my office, which is about 3.80kms, took me 13 minutes. As of lately my time has gotten down to between 10-11 minutes with my fastest time being 9 minutes 11 seconds.

My legs have been getting stronger and I am noticing that I’m not panting as much when I finish the ride. It is becoming more enjoyable than anything else. That being said I got my first taste of the rocks again today and it wasn’t even that far.

As I was riding home I took a quick detour up the start of the hiking trail around Frame Lake. Simple rocky surface up a small hill. It nearly killed me climbing. The bike did well bouncing off one rock to the next but my legs were not prepared to deal with gravity. I ended up stalling and falling off a couple times. It was pathetic but I’m not giving up. This is just the start.

The bike I am riding is a Specialized Chamber Pro 29er and has been supplied by the awesome people of in Grande Prairie. They have been very kind to me and their service is amazing. Go Like their and you’ll see what I mean.

Written by kylewith · Categorized: Journal · Tagged: Bike, biking, Ernies Sports Centre, yellowknife

May 14 2012

My Summer Bike Series

Well summer was coming and now it seems like we got stuck in a rut of this cool chilly weather. Anyways once that warm weather does come I got a busy summer ahead of me. In between my work at Kellett, help at PropertyGuys.com and a potential YkOnline.ca Fishing Show I have a bike series I am going to be producing on YkOnline.ca.

Thanks to Ernie’s Sports Centre in Grande Prairie for hooking me up with a wicked Specialized Camber Pro 29er for the series.

I explain all about the series on YkOnline.ca here but the bottom line is I want to spend all my time on a bike traveling around.

This was one of two videos, check out the other one here.

Written by kylewith · Categorized: Journal · Tagged: biking, Blogging

May 06 2012

I have bike butt!

If Bike Butt isn’t a thing already, I’m making it something. As you’ll see from the videos I put up on YkOnline.ca in the next day, I got to try out my new bike over the weekend. It was my first quick ride of the year and just like every other year my backside has to get use to the seat.

I don’t know what it is about me or the bike seats but (haha pun!) we never get along and afterwards I’m always walking a little funny. Yes, we can make jokes about this but seriously where is my doughnut cushion!

Hopefully this condition is only temperately.  

Written by kylewith · Categorized: Journal · Tagged: biking

Oct 15 2011

I was big into the Biking Business

I may not be very entrepreneurial these days and I’m certainly not that much into biking as I use to be, but there was a time.

Back when I was 14 years old I was the bike guy. I started my 1st business called the YK Bike Corner. From 13 to 16 I was into biking, cross-country and downhill, I loved it, but I wasn’t very good at it. I still enjoyed it though, what I did start to get into was the mechanics. The 1st mountain bike I ever bought was a Kona Scrap. That is actually the only mountain bike I’ve actually bought, everything since then was built from the ground up. I then moved to a duel suspension bike, with a KHS frame. I rode that for about a year until settling in to a Giant AC 1 frame. I actually had two of those frames, one for back up parts. So in the time I spent building these bikes I acquired a set of skills, skills that I could use to help others.

My First Client

While looking through a local online classifieds site I found someone who needed help gearing their bike. I was 13 at the time I thought what the heck, I don’t know how much a person charges, but I can help. So I did just that, I rode my bike over to this persons place and I fixed the bike. I think I made $20 for about 15 min. of work, I was living large.

Business Began

After that first client I started to market myself. I built myself my 1st little website, albeit it was a free one, on a service that I don’t even think exist anymore. Anyone remember freewebs? I would put flyers up around town, I would put up classified ads, and I even went to the extent of advertising on the local classified site. Things actually started to pick up. At the same time as I was doing the bike stuff I was also flying into Treeline Lodge where I would work for a couple of weeks and then come back again.  Over the course of 2 summers I got myself established, people actually  started to know who I was. I made enough money to buy myself an outdoor tent garage, and convert it into a bike shop. I had a bike stand, and I had all the common tools, plus a lot of the specialized ones, for things like the crank and cassette. At 1st my whole shtick was that I could come to the client, and I wasn’t talking about big repairs here, but the little things that the average person can’t do. So I had my backpack full of tools and I would bike around town and fix people’s bikes.

Then I turned 16

When I 1st turned 16 and got my license it was a whole new world. Instead of going to people, I could go to them and get their bikes, bring them back to my shop and fix them there and return them the next day. It was awesome. There’s nothing like working in your own shop, in your own environment, with your own stuff. It was pretty cool, at one point I even had people coming to me and dropping off their bikes. In the summer of 2007 though, I spent most of July up at a place called Bathurst Inlet Lodge and when I came back I took off to British Columbia for most of August. I think this was the last summer that the bike business was still going. I had done a lot of work in May June, but when I started to go away things dwindled. I lost interest in the biking and really had no time to do the fixing anymore. Do I miss it? Absolutely! A year or so after I stopped fixing bikes I contemplated trying to get a job at the local sports shop, but it wasn’t for me. What I liked about my little business, was that I got to talk to the people, and I got to meet them. You will be hidden away and just fixing something and then sending it out again. I like the interaction.

In the past

The reason my memory got jogged about all of this, was because the bike forum, Pink Bikes sent me an e-mail the other day. I hadn’t signed into my account in probably 4 years, but it still worked. ykbiker!  Not only was able to sign in, but I was also able to find some old pictures. Here’s some pictures from my past… Which was actually not that long ago.

Pinkbike3

This is my complete bike to this day, with minor changes. I have a stronger rear rim now and a different rear shock, which has a blown seal.

Pinkbike1

Pinkbike

This was the parts frame. With all the moving parts on this frame I wanted to have extra bearings and bolts.

Pinkbike2

This is a Haro frame. I had bought this as a complete bike for my brother, but then he didn’t like it, so I stripped it and sold it.

Pinkbike4

Finally we have a .243 Frame I bought second-hand. This stuck around for a while although I don’t remember what I did with it.

Kylebike

I did just manage to find a picture of the KHS frame before I swapped everything onto the Giant frame. I of course am in the picture… back in 2005, while visiting Jasper.

Written by kylewith · Categorized: Memories · Tagged: biking, business, history, past

Jul 07 2011

Biking Inspiration

This isn’t the biking you normally see a person doing, but I find it so fascinating. It is a lot harder than normal biking and something I have wanted to be able to do for a long time. Basically it is parkour for bikes. The idea is while on your bike you use the objects around you to find different and challenging routes to other places. So using walls, ledges, cliffs, benches, etc.

There is a reason I can’t do this, well actually there is about a 100 reasons I probably can’t do this. 100lbs, I think if I lost 100lbs I would be able to do this type of riding. If you watch the video you’ll see it takes a lot of muscle to pick up the bike and maneuver it through the air, bouncing it off different things.

I use to pretend I could do this, I think I even had a bike that was somewhat built for it, but I’m to much of a big lad. I like this video and I like the style. It isn’t a race, it is slow and thought out. I admire this as I like the technical component of it.

Doesn’t it look like fun?

Written by kylewith · Categorized: Journal · Tagged: biking, parkour

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