It's still too early for a year in review post, but I already have my favorite photo. While I love the scenic stuff and don't particularly like racing, somehow this photo by Kenny Wehn of Geoff Kabush in the Iceman Cometh race cracks me up. So here it is in glorious full portrait display, so there's some scrolling to do and then I'll continue:



Not sure why I like it so much, probably a combination of the fact that a pro rider owns an OPEN U.P., that it is a Yeti Limited Edition (one of my all-time favorite specials), that it's a mountain bike race, that he won the race, that it looks old-school and that it looks fantastically strange to see that bike in front of a whole lineup of mountain bikes. It  gets my imagination running about what is going on in everybody's mind. I imagine some "what the heck is he ..", "is that really a ...", "surely he can't ..." which then slowly gives way to "if we don't get rid of this guy, we're toast in the finale".

Of course nobody may be thinking anything other than "my legs hurt", I don't know.

So Geoff Kabush winning a mountain bike race on an UP is amazing, but he didn't stop there. The weekend after, he took the same bike to the Canadian National Cyclocross Championships and came second. Different wheels of course because of the tire restrictions, so 700c vs the 650b x 2.1" from the week before. Here's a small gallery of Geoff in that race, courtesy of Simon Kocemba:

I can't think of a better way to showcase the versatility of the UP, and of Geoff. Below I have some close-ups of other set-ups Geoff uses. From top to bottom it's his road set-up, his Dirty Kanza set-up and his Iceman Cometh set-up:







If you want to follow Geoff or just wish a fellow-OPEN rider Happy Holidays, you can do so on Twitter or Instagram: It's fun to follow him on Instagram as he'll go into detail on his specs and you'll also see posts like this with comments from his competitors like: "That was impressive. I was on your wheel in the first long section of single track, I was a little nervous you would be slow on that bike, you rode the shit out of that thing!"

And if I don't blog again before Christmas, let me wish you a great Holiday Season and all the best for 2019!