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A few years back in 2018, I shot Bailey’s Salsa Woodsmoke, just before he took off on the Tour Divide. The bike was dialed at the time, with all the kinks worked out and he pedaled it from Canada to Mexico. Now here we are, two years later, Bailey has a shop in Santa Fe called Sincere Cycles and one of the brands he carries is Monē Bikes, based out of Silver City. As soon as he opened his shop, he ordered a custom Monē to once again take on the Tour Divide.
I’ve been a fan of Cjell Moné‘s bikes for some time, from seeing his custom TDR bike on the wall at Adventure Cycling HQ to him writing about brazing alongside masters for his production run of frames. Until recently, I had only thrown my legs over Kirsten’s personal frame at infamous Brush Mountain Lodge waiting out snow on the TDR. Cjell and I have quite a disparity in size thus making his personal bikes out of the question. A few weeks ago, Cjell let me know that Nate from Blue Dog Bikes in Tucson was purchasing his “demo” bike that was my size and that I should take it for a spin. I jumped at the chance, I was always too self-conscious to ask an operation as small as his to put together a bike solely for me to rip and review. But since someone else already had the bike and was nice enough to let me rip it for a few days, shred I will.
I first saw one of Cjell’s (pronounced like “shell”) bikes on a tour of Adventure Cycling’s headquarters in Missoula, Montana. His lugged 29+ drop bar Great Divide rig hangs on the walls, in all of its patina’d glory. Over the past few years, we have had a lot of near hangout misses, from a trip to Ecuador to being in Salida, Colorado the same day this past summer. But alas the stars finally aligned and after spending Thanksgiving in White Sands National Monument, my partner and I decided to make a stopover in Silver City for a spin in the hills and a dip in some hot springs.
“I’m not tired, I’m just tired of the situation.”
Words by Cjell Monē and photos by Corbin Brady
Corbin’s family calls it ‘Going Nuclear’…It’s precisely the time when ol’ Hard Corbin stops enjoying the infinite riches of bikepacking and tells the world to ‘go, fuck itself.’ Two days of bike carrying and rationing food are a good recipe for a nuclear reaction.
Cass Gilbert over at bikepacking.com teamed up with a couple of nut-jobs living on an organic farm outside of Quito, the Dammer Brothers, to ride their bikes across Ecuador. I can’t tell you a lot about these guys other than between them they have 7 million bikepacking miles and their hobbies include lifting steel fatbikes over their heads.
