A recent press release by the Bicycle Retailer and Industry News website mentioned that Bicycling Mag has decided to move its offices from Burbank to Valencia, California. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Southern California, Burbank is a city just north of downtown Los Angeles while Valencia is a little farther northwest of Burbank, another 25 miles.

Riding next to the beach… +1 for So. Cal riding

Bicycling Mag’s Steve Madden (I thought he made women’s shoes) stated that their reasons for keeping an office in Southern California is because its “important to have a place with access to sunshine.”

Jumping the gap on a So. California trail

That got me thinking: yeah, Southern California is a great mountain biking locale but could it be one of the Best Mountain Biking locales in the world? Could it be THE best Mountain Biking Locale?

Off chamber singletrack with some nice exposure to boot! yum

Here are my thoughts:

1. Diverse trails: You can’t start off any list of best mountain biking spots in the world without a list of what that location has to offer. I live in north Orange County and within one hour of me I have access to literally hundreds of trails. The Santa Monica mountains northwest of me are world renown for their challenging yet beautiful trails. The San Bernardino mountains to the northeast is home to what is widely considered the best singletrack in So. Cal.: San Ana River Trail (SART). To the east are two major race courses in Fontana’s Southridge which runs Cross Country, Downhill and Super D races as well as Temecula known for its Endurance racing. To the south, within an hour and a half drive, there are a ton of trails. I would not be exaggerating if I said that I could ride every Saturday for a year without riding the same trail twice.

Riding SART in the middle of December

The sheer variety of all that is available can make choosing a weekend ride particularly difficult. Want to ride in the mountains? Want to ride in the hills along the beach? Want to do a 100 mile epic? You can find them all in Southern California.

Lance ready to race in early November… notice the beautiful skies

2. Spectacular weather year round: You can not qualify your locale as the best mountain biking spot in the world if you can not ride on dirt at least 3 seasons of the year. Year round riding gives you another point. Sure there are a ton of great spots in Colorado and Utah to ride but if they’re closed down 6 months of the year for the white stuff then you can’t really stake a claim to being the best. Maybe we’ll give you the title of best mountain biking locale 6 months of the year.

Think of it this way: I’ve been mountain biking through the last few winters and the coldest its ever been is the high 30s. What did I wear? For my legs: leg warmers & shorts. For my upper body: wicking base layer, long sleeve t-shirt & windbreaker pull over. No parkas, no snow boots, no ear muffs. On the other side of the coin I’ve ridden into the dead of summer with just shorts and tank-top type wicking shirt, no problem. Some guys even ride shirtless… although I’m not sure if that’s a plus or not.

Just an aside but why would you send products to test in places that are packed down by snow 6 months of the year? Unless you’ve got a mountain biking product made for extremely cold weather most products sent in the fall/winter can’t or shouldn’t be tested until spring/summer in those areas. Do you want your mountain bike getting ridden in conditions most mountain bikers wouldn’t venture out in? OK, now I’m just being selfish.

Early MARCH race at Bonelli with temps in the low 70s

3. Tons of Local Bike Shops: If having choices are good then having a ton of choices is even better right? A few weeks ago, I visited 4 different bikes shops to check out there 29er collections. These four shops were within 5 miles of each other, not “as the crow flies” but actual driving miles. In Southern California you are not limited to the one LBS in town. Don’t like one place’s service or bikes? Stroll down the street and see if the next LBS doesn’t do better.

Not only are there a ton of LBS’s but some great big name e-tailers such as pricepoint.com & jensonusa.com are located in Southern California. Why is that good? Because if you buy something from them and select ground shipping, many times you can get your purchase the next day! No need to pay for expensive overnight shipping if you live here.

Pricepoint is almost down the street in Gardena, CA.

Jensonusa not only has quick shipping to So. California residents it also has two brick & mortar stores. Can’t wait until tomorrow to pick up your order? Roll on over to their store and pick up orders that you make from their online store.

4. Huge mountain biking community. I’m not a fan of riding solo, but that’s usually not a problem with such a large mountain biking community. The strengths of this is not just meeting friends and riding together, it also has fringe benefits. Having a large mountain biking community means demos are always swinging by. Just last week Specialized, Pivot and Rocky Mtn had demos going. This weekend Giant will be doing demos in So. Cal.

Demoing the KHS Flagstaff

Another fringe benefit to having a huge mountain biking community is that there are a lot of bike companies who have offices in Southern California. How is this a plus? Well, you can’t spend 24/7 mountain biking, right? You’re going to have to work sometime to pay the bills and what better place to work, for the mountain biker, than for a bike company? Niner, Intense, KHS, Felt, Shimano, Giant, Turner, etc. all have offices or are headquartered in So. Cal.

OK, enough bragging. Now I want to hear your arguments. Why do you think your location should be considered the best mountain biking locale in the world?

Popularity: 10% [?]

I used to think (and I’m sure many people still think) that every bike company has their own little plant in China or Taiwan churning out hundreds of bikes a year. But this plain untrue.

The vast majority of bikes you see out there (especially those from small bike companies) come from just a handful of manufacturing plants. In fact most bikes do come from plants in Taiwan, China or the Netherlands… go figure… but these plants aren’t small. They are giant plants owned by the giant in bike manufacturing… Giant.

Giant started off innocently enough making bikes for other heavy weight bike companies like Schwinn. But in the mid-80’s Giant decided to come out with its own line of bikes and now they’re considered one of the top bike companies.

Giant is also looking to double their production of bikes by the end of 2008 by opening a new factory in China. You can read more about it here via Dirt Rag Magazine.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Maybe I’m late to the party, but I’ve been noticing a lot more “S� and almost “S� shaped downtubes recently. Giant has begun to use them on their Trance & Reign models after their 2007 models just had the conventional straight downtube.

2007 Giant Trance with a conventional “straight� downtube

2008 Giant Reign with a new almost “S� Shaped downtube

Specialized, too, has been doing this for a while now to their full lineup although some are a little more pronounced (think Enduro) than others.

Yes, it’s a dual crown fork so clearance isn’t an issue, but if a conventional downtube had been used, the shock and unconventional top tube would have meant no water bottle cage

This particular design has been around the past few years but now it seems that more people are using it and with good reason: it helps with fork crown clearance and allows you to keep a water bottle cage in FS bikes. In the 29er world the “S� shaped downtube should be used more judiciously than the 26″ world because of the taller wheels.

With the 29er wheels being slightly taller than 26″ wheels, standover height starts to become an issue. To get a lower standover height, you need to lower the top tube but, lowering the top tube means having to lower the downtube too. This in turns can cause an issue with the fork crown clearance.

The “S� shaped downtube solves this problem though. The “S� starts at the headtube. By taking advantage of the flatter angle for the top of the downtube, you can still lower the toptube and have the fork crown clear the downtube in case you’re in an accident and the front wheel turns underneath the bike. Rather have that happen than having the fork crown damage the bike frame or vice versa, right?

Another dilemma ensues if you have a FS with a shock in the front triangle. When you lower the toptube and use a traditional downtube you run the risk of not being able to fit in a water bottle cage on the downtube. But with an “S� shaped downtube, the middle portion of the “S� downtube drops at a steeper angle than a conventional downtube allowing you to still put in a water bottle cage even if a shock takes up a good portion of the space available in the front triangle. This works because the “S� then flattens out at the bottom before reaching the bottom bracket allowing the shock to still have its space.

Brand new Stumpjumper 29er with a very pronounced “S� downtube

Lenz Sport uses an almost “S� shaped downtube for many of their bikes including this 29er, the Leviathan

Popularity: 3% [?]