Remember when it was fun to rail corners and flow down the trail? It's still out there waiting for you. But grinding up that long hill or spinning your legs around a 20k loop can get the better of you. If you haven't gone around the reservoir in years but today's the day, this is one way to begin again. 

CRUISING

You don't have to be crushing Moose Mountain laps to want an assist on the paths. Electra Townie GO provides a solid power assist for longer rides around city pathways and trail systems. Calgary has one of the most comprehensive path systems in the country, threading through the provincial land of Fish Creek, around Glenmore Park, through Edworthy and up into Nosehill - then it goes around again. 

If you haven't been riding much or far and you're looking to take in Calgary's full scope, it's worth checking out the casual fun of the Electra bikes — relaxed fit, upright posture, simple controls. 

The power-assist Electra can take you anywhere the pavement rolls.

ELECTRA POWER ASSIST BIKES

MOUNTAIN

You want back into the trails. Who could say no to such fun? But if a few years have gone by since the legs crushed it up Pneuma then you might need some juice at your back. Mountain E-Bikes jump you back into the game, smoothing out the early season pain to the body and giving you the power to go farther or faster on your favourite rides throughout the whole year. 

MOUNTAIN E-BIKES

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UPDATE: Since the province has shut down parks and recreation areas, we have made the choice to CLOSE 22X until the trailhead recreation areas are open to the public once more. Our Canyon Meadows and Bow Trail locations are still operating. 

Our Service Shops are open and you're welcome to come in OR take advantage of our pickup and dropoff service -- call our Bow Trail or Canyon Meadows location to arrange a service appointment. 

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#bikesarenotcancelled means taking some drastic steps in our stores to keep them free from potential infection points and maintain confidence for our staff and customers. Check out the video attached to this post for our gameplan or keep reading below. 

To combat this emergency, we've changed up our hours, stepped up our cleaning procedures, and opened up new delivery channels for customers who purchase from our online store. 

CHANGES TO STORE HOURS

We've limited the hours we will be open in order to keep delivering service to customers, but give us time to clean and keep rushes to a minimum. 

Bow Trail and Canyon Meadows:
MONDAY – FRIDAY 11am – 7pm
SATURDAY/SUNDAY 10am – 5pm

Bragg Creek:
WEDNESDAY – FRIDAY - 10am – 6pm
SATURDAY /SUNDAY – 10am-5pm
MONDAY/TUESDAY - CLOSED

CLEANING PROCEDURE CHANGES

All our locations now have procedurs in place for spot cleaning of all contact points (eg. Credit/Debit terminals, door handles, etc.,) and multiple hand sanitizing stations at all counters. Our goal is to maintain a vigilant level of disinfection at all times during the day. 

Along with these cleaning procedures, our staff have been briefed on what they should do if they feel ill or show symptoms while at work or off-shift. We have plans in place to support the Calgary Cycle family during these tough times. By that same token, we ask ALL CUSTOMERS to refrain from coming to the store if they feel ill or have symptoms. 

ONLINE SALES 

Our online store is running full steam ahead. To support customers who would prefer to shop online we have made accommodations for pickup at our locations or for delivery. Any order from the Online Store can arranged for pickup at a specific time at the store to limit exposure to other customers. Also, we are now offering FREE DELIVERY for any bike purchased on the store, within the Calgary area. 

Parts & Accessories can also be shipped to your home, through UPS or Fedex. 

Bike Service

Getting your bike tuned up for the season is one of the most important goals for most riders at this time of year and we're making it possible for you to get that done even if you're not able to make it to the store. 
We've arranged for easy dropoff at locations, but we also have a number of available slots per week for pickup of your service bike. We'll tune it up, clean it up, disinfect and deliver back to your curbside. 
There are limited slots available for this service, so make sure to call in for a service appointment ASAP. 

As always, if you have questions or concerns, please contact us and we can talk with you. Email, phone, Instagram and Facebook are all available for you to contact us and work out getting two wheels under you. The season is still coming and it will be more important than ever before to get out, make healthy choices and enjoy the brief window mother nature gives us to pedal around. 

#bikesarenotcancelled

It all began many moons ago in the far-away time of 2018. We looked ahead at the spring that would come and asked ourselves how to get it going with a bang. The weather was going to be pretty nice (according to the Cloud-Wizards and their ancient doppler maps), and the winter had been bitter cold. Riders wanted to put away their Fat Bikes and get back on their steeds: Santa Cruz Hightowers and Bronsons; Norco Sights and Optics; Devinci Spartans; and old crusty bikes left in the backyard. They wanted to Ride. 

So we took all the best bikes that were lonely and sad because they had no riders and they were from the previous year. These poor souls needed a home, so we cooked up a wonderous two-day extravaganza. 

With TENTS! And balloons tied to fingers that gripped new handlebars. Clearouts across the board: bikes, clothing, tools, and everything a rider could crave. 

It was such a wonderful time, and we decided to do it again. We decided to do it every year. Now it's back. The season is on. 

March 14 & 15 we'll be playing our favourite game: putting riders on bikes. We'll have stuff on sale that'll make your eyes water — maybe from emotion, and we won't judge you. 

This is our commitment to increasing access to quality trails. We’re pledging to give $1 million over the next three years to trail development projects, local and national advocacy organizations, events, and programs geared toward creating and strengthening access to trails.

Santa Cruz wants to support activities that benefit riders and their local communities. And, we want to inspire others to do the same.

PayDirt is about supporting grassroots organizations to do the silent work of advocacy to build or maintain the trails we all enjoy. Any group who has an idea or running project that increases access or improves the experience of mountain biking can apply to the PayDirt fund. Starting today.

Apply today!... www.santacruzbicycles.com/paydirt

Starting November 19th we’re opening up the application process for local organizations and projects to apply for funding.

More information about PayDirt and information on how to apply can be found here.

We will consider any project that increases access for mountain bikes will be considered; whether that’s building trails, supporting local trail and MTB organizations with their advocacy efforts, trail builders or providing opportunities to get more riders on bikes more often.

Long-time supporters of good causes

SCB has long supported people and groups that provide greater trail access. We've partnered with groups like Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship since their inception on the quest to create sustainable recreation-based communities in California’s Lost Sierras region through trail stewardship, job creation and world-class events. We started by supplying Greg Williams with bikes for his rental/shuttle business back in 1994 and we’ve supported the Downieville Classic since the beginning. We’ve been supplying SBTS with bikes for their annual $5 Per Foot campaign, which to this day has raised over $400,000 thanks to riders everywhere. We continue to offer our financial support to SBTS each year and want to continue that relationship long into the future because they’ve got a lot of big plans for that area…

Locally, in Santa Cruz, we are big supporters of Mountain Bikers Of Santa Cruz (MBoSC). Despite the origin stories from Marin County, mountain bike trail access in California does not come easy. Despite being the home to a lot of mountain bike companies and a lot of mountain bikers the number of legal and non-threatened trails isn’t that great. Of the 220 miles of official trail in the county, less than 40 are open to mountain bikes. MBoSC works to support, preserve, and expand trail access and responsible mountain biking in Santa Cruz County. Every employee of Santa Cruz Bicycles is a member of MBoSC, we attempt to encourage as many of our staff to go out and dig alongside MBoSC, we’ve partnered on several fundraising programs in the past and we’re increasing our commitment to them for the future through event partnership of the Surf City Cyclocross series (the USA’s longest running CX race series) and the Old Cabin Classic in Wilder Ranch State Park. Both events are held a stone’s throw away from our bike factory in Santa Cruz.

The San Vicente Redwoods trails project is something that’s been brewing for a while. When a large area of wild space on the coast just north of town became potentially accessible by the public Santa Cruz Bicycles led a local industry syndicate to fundraise for the property’s recreational trail plan. This collaboration meant we were able to raise the funds necessary to get through the project planning stage (which was executed by MBoSC and SBTS), and we want to see it happen so we threw in an additional $500,000 in the campaign to raise the $7m the project will cost (it’s not just trails, but also infrastructure, maintenance and wildlife conservancy). Any day now, after a long bureaucratic process, the first shovels will start turning over dirt to create 38-miles of new multi-use trails - something quite rare in Northern California.

Creative ways of raising funds and awareness

We’ve helped raise a lot of cash and awareness for projects close to our heart. For example, 2017 was one of the worst wildfire seasons on record for California. Homes were lost, lives changed and singletrack went up in flames. “We talked to our shops, reps and customers in the areas affected by the fires and above all they expressed a real desire for a return to normalcy,” said Santa Cruz CEO Joe Graney. “We all know how a good bike ride makes you feel, and we want to help people get back to that.” In order to help with trail reconstruction efforts in Santa Rosa and Santa Barbara, we partnered with other California-based bike brands to make two custom bikes for raffling off. The total raised was $128,249.

Long-time friend of Santa Cruz, mountain bike guide and MS sufferer, Andy McKenna, has been doing the good work to raise awareness of how people with MS can still lead happy, healthy lives. He does this through his organization, STOKED ON MS. To help keep the fundraising momentum going we produced a one-of-a-kind, unique, custom-painted, fully-specced Santa Cruz Bicycles Bronson bike. Each raffle ticket cost just £5, and ultimately raised￡28,319.

There was also the time when Oregon introduced a new tax on bicycles (specifically mountain bikes), which we thought was kinda wack. “The whole thing seemed like a bad deal for Oregon cyclists in general and mountain bikers in particular,” said Joe Graney. “It doesn’t look like any of the money collected from the sale of mountain bikes will actually benefit mountain bikers, so we thought we’d try and do something to ease the pain of our northern neighbors.” Which is why we launched the “The Oregon Trail Tax” where we matched the $15 per bike excise tax customers pay on every new Santa Cruz or Juliana bike sold in Oregon with an equal donation to three Oregonian trail building organizations – the Northwest Trail Alliance (NWTA), the Central Oregon Trail Alliance (COTA), and Team Dirt.

Advocacy in Oregon is nothing new for Santa Cruz; as part of the company’s sponsorship of the Trans-Cascadia enduro race (which goes towards the Ten For Trails program, event funding and bike raffle fundraising), our employee-based Factory Racing Team has logged more than 500 hours of trail work in the state over the last two years on trails near the towns of Oakridge and Ashland.

Generally all the events we support have a significant trail stewardship and fundraising element to them: this includes Downieville Classic, NZ Enduro, Trans-Cascadia, Ard Rock Enduro, Old Cabin Classic and Trans-Provence.

Mobilizing human-power

But our work doesn’t stop at writing checks. Whenever we can we’re side-by-side with these organizations at meetings, and mobilizing our employees to write letters of support en masse and turning up at trail days. In 2018 1,411 employee hours were provided to voluntary advocacy efforts - sometimes that was us paying for our employees hours to skip work and turn up to dig days, other times it’s our employees going above and beyond to make tool noises in their own time (which we don’t count in our total). But we know that sometimes it’s cold hard cash that really helps these grassroots organizations to do the silent work of advocacy so that others can make tool noises that build new or maintain existing trail networks.

In 2018 we donated approximately $175,000 of cold hard cash, and we helped raise around $225,000 to support new trails and maintenance. But starting in November 2019, we're going bigger. We're committing $1 million dollars in cash over the next three years. That's our solid commitment. How that money is best used is what we need help from the community to determine.

An even bigger commitment

We want to share our support further than the core groups and places we already support. We want to make sure they're rad projects put together by trail advocacy pros that will lead to better access to mountain biking. It doesn't even have to be for building or maintaining trails, it could be about getting some people on bikes or giving them a trail experience. Who knows, we're open to ideas.

We recognize that every mountain bike rider (many Santa Cruz Bicycles employees identify as riders above all) has a duty to put into the pot because at the moment it's a lot of volunteers and committed professionals doing all the hard work so riders can just enjoy their riding. We don't believe in No Dig, No Ride, not exactly, but we do think if we don't contribute in some ways then what's our worth to the world? This is why we’re supporting the silent work and tool noises that provide us all with great mountain bike experiences.

Jump inside the mind of Bryn Atkinson as he blasts through the trails of interior British Columbia on his 2020 Norco Optic.