The concept occurred to us as we were doing a torture test of Schwalbe’s Hans Dampf all-mountain tire on the back side of Mount Tamalpais in the birthplace of mountain biking, Marin County.

Instead of writing up a review and attaching a video — as we’ve done for many BikeIntelligencer evaluations — we decided to just talk out loud about what we were feeling as we rode the bike…while all the time pointing out what the tire was going through on our test.

The result we dubbed OTBR — On The Bike Review.

Tires are tailor-made for On The Bike reviewing, but other components can be critiqued just as easily and effectively. Among them are suspension (droppable) seat posts, front and rear suspension systems, brakes, drive trains — in fact, just about anything worth reviewing can be adapted to the On The Bike review. The best fit of all may be evaluating a new bike itself — recording reactions as they occur to the reviewer in real time.

We wish we’d had this setup when we first rode the Crank Brothers Joplin suspension seat post back when. We could have dramatically illustrated the frustrations with trying to raise and lower the post using the Joplin’s under-the-saddle lever. Remote controls have since made the Joplin approach obsolete, and Crank Brothers itself has a new post called kronolog.

How does OTBR differ from conventional reviews?

The first thing to understand is that OTBR would not be possible without GoPro’s sound technology. You need a mike that can pick up voice in just about all conditions. The Hero gets the job done, offering amazingly adaptable audio pickup as the ride progresses. Combined with the camera’s visual feedback, the OTBR gives the listener/viewer a truly real sense of how the bike is performing. For the viewer, OTBR is quite literally the next best thing to being there — on the ride itself.

Contrast that with text reviews where the writer discusses reactions in the past tense, often leaving out key information and having no way to show exactly how a component behaved. There’s just nothing like being there.

We at BikeIntelligencer used helmet cams for nearly a decade before the GoPro. They were heavy, bulky, difficult to use and suffered from low video resolution (barely TV quality back when TVs were big heavy tube things with fuzzy pictures — you remember!) as well as short battery life.

When we did reviews with them, the best we could do was voice-overs during editing.

When we began using the Hero it immediately occurred to us that its versatility lent itself to bike reviewing. But we tended to use it the same old way we did pre-GoPro: With mostly dubbed-over commentary. The visuals — riding along a favorite singletrack — may have offered some sense of what the ride was like. But without real-time, simultaneous commentary, the “review” element was not as effective.

The model here might be those outdoors videos where adventurers whisper so as not to disturb the wildlife. The commentary imparts a greater sense of immediacy and participation. It puts you right there on the scene. It’s just plain more real.

Beyond being more real, OTBR is more spontaneous and honest. If a fork seal pops, it’s right there on pixels and you see the travel die. If a suspension post wobbles, you can show how and why right there in the saddle. If your brakes fade, it’ll show right there as you pin the lever to the handlebar on the next corner.

With the Dampfs we wanted to test traction, durability and stability. We picked the nastiest downhill around, Blithedale and Eldridge grades on the back side of Mount Tam, to just pound the stuffing out of the Dampfs and their Snakeskin sidewalls. If we so much as rolled a bead, chipped a knob, tore a sidewall or dented a rim, we’d have it all right there on video.

OTBR’ing is so effective we hope that Web reviewers and YouTube denizens will adopt it with time. It may even merit its own queue on our favorite review site, MTBR.com (it’s no coincidence that OTBR shares so many initials with MTBR).

To do the job right, OTBR does require a bit of thinking on the feet (or pedals), good audiovisual instincts and an articulate narrator. The reviewer has to be able to make observations beyond the American Bandstand approach — “it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.” But that’s true of reviewing in general.

We think OTBR would be a great tool for our favorite reviewers — folks like MTBR’s Francis Cebedo, PinkBike’s Richard Cunningham and BIKE mag’s Vernon Felton. With the resources of their supporting publications (far better than BikeIntelligencer‘s modest lot), they should be able to take OTBR to a much more sophisticated level.

In the meantime, here’s our humble OTBR offering, featuring the Hans Dampf on one of the nation’s most popular mountain bike rides.

Armed with a GoPro Hero HD helmet cam, we decided to document our travels aboard our long-travel trail bike, the Pivot Firebird. We hit Ashland OR (to our minds one of the most underrated mtb destinations), San Luis Obispo CA, the San Francisco Bay Peninsula, Santa Cruz and Aptos and finally Fairfax — the birthplace of mountain biking — in the heart of Marin County.

Because our favorite Northwest high country rides are still impossibly snowed in — closing in on mid-July no less! — we wish we were still south, riding our hearts and minds out. Instead we’re sitting at our desk, blogging away as Phil and Bob and the 2011 Tour de France drone on in the background.

So here’s to memories of rides recently past. Enjoy!

Ashland SuperD (partial). We rode part of the race course and had a blast.

Alpine Road, Palo Alto. Trail-blazed as an off-road cycling romp by the legendary Jobst Brandt before mountain bikes even existed, Alpine remains a fun jaunt downward.

Mount Madonna, San Luis Obispo. Praise the Lord! even though the “Madonna” has nothing to do with the Bible.

Mount Madonna Lemon Grove Loop, San Luis Obispo. A quick ride from town that you can extend into a two-hour workout.

Wilder Ranch State Park, Santa Cruz. Classic singletrack with the best sight lines you’ll find on two wheels.

Forest of Nisene Marks State Park, Aptos. Where some of the best slopestyle riders in the world hang out, and you can see why.

Camp Tamarancho, Fairfax, Marin County. Mountain biking got its start nearby, and Tamarancho is the must-ride not only for locals but mtbers the world over.

You gotta love it.

Our 2011 West Coast mountain biking tour concluded with a romp through the familiar groves and switchbacks of Tamarancho, always a joy, always a place where you run into lots of other mountain bikers from all over the San Francisco Bay Area, and the world.

There’s a campaign to formalize Fairfax’s reputation as mtb’s birthplace with a mosaic in the center of town. According to the Marin Independent Journal: “The chamber is teaming with Quntilia Nylin, ceramic artist and creator of the history obelisk in San Anselmo, to create a ceramic tile installation in downtown Fairfax.” We will miss the fundraiser but wish the locals well.

Excerpt:

My high school civics teacher drew a pie chart to illustrate what share of our time and energy would be devoted to care and maintenance of a car (about a third of the pie). In the spirit of smart-ass teendom, I snarked, “What if we ride a bicycle?”

Bike commuting was unheard of in Los Angeles, but I knew I could save wages and work fewer hours than my classmates. The same teacher informed us that the U.S. automobile death and maiming toll is around 5 million people per year, dwarfing the devastation of the Vietnam War. Thirty-five years later, the statistic has hardly changed. This situation is considered “normal.” That’s why you don’t know it.

Sources from Santa Cruz to Marin have reported boggy sections of favorite trails, and even in exposed double-track, drainage continues to provide a high spatter factor. Wilder Ranch, which we rode on Wednesday (only on fire roads), re-opened yesterday afternoon after being closed due to conditions.

Beware the poison oak!

We tried out Arastradero regional park in Palo Alto yesterday and it wasn’t pretty. Exposed and multi-use, Arastradero is our bellwether site. Although chunks of trail are dry, numerous switchbacks and runoff sinks have been churned into goo.

On one popular spur, damage was so severe that walk-arounders have made a section hourglass-shaped. The only problem: It puts users right alongside a fresh patch of poison oak.

With little rain forecast in the foreseeable future, trails should bounce back quickly. We’ll keep you posted.

My Seattle friend (and former world-class racer) John Loomis, who worked for Gary Fisher back at the industry’s dawn and who never misses the ride, was the catalyst. John suggested we meet at the orthogonally indescribable Jacquie Phelan’s eclectic estate and head out from there.

Jacquie is a Marin legend and her blog is one of my favorites. Although I’d heard of her since the late 1970s and exchanged email and was a big fan, we’d never met. But she greeted me like an old friend, gave me the nickel tour of her place, which could have served without modification as a set for my favorite movie, “Harold & Maude,” and then introduced me to another legend, her partner Charlie Cunningham.

Charlie looks just like his pictures from the “Klunkerz” days, with that curly boyish hair and incipient smile of his, and in his t-shirt and jeans he looked like he just got off a Schwinn cruiser after smoking down Repack. He couldn’t ride with us but Jacquie got out one of Charlie’s vintage aluminum bikes, so he was with us in spirit the whole way.

John rambled up, Jacquie donned her nose and glasses, feather-ornamented helmet and sequined wool gloves, joining a wool Peloton jersey, lush velvet skirt and racing shoes, and we were off. I’m sure there is historic significance to each article of clothing, including the funny nose and glasses, but I didn’t get a chance to ask.

Within moments on the climb up Bolinas Road, Jacquie and John were deep in conversation and off like bullets. Both were racers, and I had no chance of keeping up. Which was OK, because at my vintage I pretty much smile and go my own pace, thankful just to be able to keep turning over the cranks another day.

After another rider pointed out my low rear tire (it was 10 psi), and I helped another guy who had broken his chain, I finally pulled to the top. Jacquie had been worried enough to ride back down trying to find me, but hadn’t as she put it memorized the gear enough to pick me out from the hordes. You have to understand, Turkey Day is the biggest mass recreational mountain bike ride you will ever do. Getting an accurate headcount is impossible, because there’s no registration or support station. But I heard the thousand-rider estimate tossed around more this year than ever before, and that was undoubtedly conservative. I’ve been on organized rides all my life with headcounts in the thousands, and this felt like well over 1k. As Jacquie noted (see link below), the youth element was out in bigger force than ever in the past; Marin’s vibrant school teams are having an impact along with the GenX equivalent for sons and daughters of mtb fanatics. Plus people had been primed by a week-long bout of spectacular weather, even though it was a bit overcast and chilly out on the course.

John may have come all the way from Seattle but probably wouldn’t win any “furthest” award. I saw Colorado and Utah license plates in the lot, and overheard one group who obviously were from somewhere in the Deep South.

They really should be called Turkey Day rideS, because you can pretty much pick any route from a dozen or more configurations. There are so many places to ride from Fairfax. The standard route is to head up Bolinas Road to the Pine Mountain Loop. You can get back to Fairfax any number of ways from there.

Anyway, I rejoined Jacquie and John at the trailhead and we started up the vicious rubble-laden fire road toward the Pine Mountain loop. Unless you’re in supreme shape, every so often you have to stop and push a bit up the climb. Which was fine, because it gave Jacquie a chance to introduce me to more legends. First up was Joe Breeze, riding with his son Tommy. At the next stop Jacquie was holding forth when some guy crept up behind her and started planting little air kisses on her neck. Jacquie never did catch on, despite the big circle of grinning riders gathered around.

The guy turned out to be Gary Fisher himself, tall and wickedly fit-looking, riding Fisher colors and bike of course. So I got to meet the most famous name in mountain biking.

At this point I should say something about how real, grounded, open and humble all these folks were. Somehow the press clippings, fame and adulation haven’t worked a number on them — a real credit to their sense of what is truly important in life, which is just being yourself. As a result, they instantly make you feel like just one of the crowd, even if you’re just another guy on a bike who can’t keep up. It’s one of the things I love about the mountain bike culture: The bike is the bond. It’s like a secret handshake or tattoo or password would be in another context. If you have mountain biking in common, you know you have a world of other things in common too.

At the turnoff to the loop we met my final legend of the day, Scot Nicol, founder of Ibis Cycles and developer of my XC bike, the Mojo. I don’t have my Mojo in Cali so was riding my Firebird, but I mentioned how my Mojo-riding friend and I formed Team Carbon Copy in Seattle (after I pretty much duplicated his build on my bike; we’re both sub-25 lbs.), and have done various epic exploits around the Northwest under that moniker. “Really?” Scot said, “send me the links. I’d love to take a look.” I sure will. And I’m sure he will.

Due to time commitments I didn’t do the loop but instead headed up toward Repack with the intention of hitting Tamarancho for the ride back to Fairfax. But there was a huge group at the junction with Repack, which I hadn’t ridden in years. I decided to go for nostalgia and headed up the grade. Then I remembered I hadn’t seen the plaque commemorating Repack as the birthplace of mountain biking. I went back and looked around where I remembered it being, but either I was wrong or the plaque is gone. Or maybe it’s all just a figment of my imagination, or maybe I dreamed it; there certainly ought to be something marking the place.

Repack was a whole lot more fun, and shorter, than I remembered. It may be because I was on the Firebird, which is a real adrenaline stoker on the downhill. The road was in primo shape, great for launching at the water bars and risers, and some guys were screaming down the steep parts. It made me wish I’d been there back in the day, when John and Jacquie and Charlie and Joe and Gary were creating the foundation of a different way of thinking about cycling, a new way of riding bikes, and a magical way of bringing people together to ride.

Jacquie Phelan’s inimitable version of this year’s ride

Charlie Cunningham

Last year’s ride

The historical sweep, including the worst Appetite Seminar ever

Now all I need is an iPhone holder for my commuter bike handlebars.

At the Sea Otter Classic this spring in Monterey, I ran into a bunch of Marin high school kids who were absolute bike maniacs. Many brought along Mom ‘n Dad. There’s a revolution going on at the font of the sport that will pay huge dividends in years to come. The latest…

Iron Horse got purchased and the new owners will get the company’s patents. What they won’t get (automatically, at least), is Iron Horse’s most valuable asset before it went bankrupt: A DW-Link license. I just got my second DW-Link bike (a Pivot Firebird) and Dave Weagle’s brilliant innovation is the real deal. Believe it!

Biking Bis: Interesting piece on history of multi-gear cycling.

Cyclelicio.us on running red lights. I don’t run red lights either as a matter of principle. But I do use bike-specific maneuvers to get around them (e.g. taking a right turn and then U-turning back to make a left turn, as opposed to having to try to stop traffic on a bike in the middle of an intersection) when it’s safe and warranted. My philosophy on riding in traffic boils down to one simple ideology: Stay alive. Sometimes to do that you have to bend traffic laws aimed at two-ton behemoths.

PinkBike: FluidRide Cup No. 4 results from a rainy day at the Mt. Hood Ski Bowl. Bryn Atkinson pulled down the win with local (Issaquah) favorite Luke Strobel in second. Congrats to the Evil Bikes/Fluidride shop team which placed two finishers in the Top 10! The Evil Revolt made its debut in late spring, quickly sold out, and is showing some eye-popping results on the circuit. The bike to watch!

A sign of things to come?

I spent yesterday exploring Marin trails with a couple of locals. The Marin that gets depicted on the maps and in the guide books is a mere appetizer to the feast of Marin mountain biking that actually exists.

The “public” mountain-biking Marin naturally shunts riders onto the well-trammeled routes, mostly on Mount Tamalpais, in the Headlands and in China Camp State Park in San Rafael. That’s all well and good. With Marin continuing to draw tourist and enthusiast riders from all over the world under the banner, “The Birthplace of Mountain Biking,” managers want to provide handy reference points in the form of easily accessible trails and fire roads.

There’s no shortage of mapped and signed routes in Marin for the casual visitor. For the locals, though, there’s a cornucopia of riding that doesn’t make the Tourist Bureau radar. One of the great things about cycling culture is its instant bond effect. Having been fortunate enough to run into a NorCal rider while camping in Oregon, I soon found myself with an invitation to ride the “other Marin.”

We met in Fairfax and took Tamarancho — the Boy Scout camp with signs stipulating “Bicycles must stay on singletrack!” — up to the Pine Mountain loop (of Thanksgiving day “Turkey Ride” fame), circled around the backside (“Furnace”) and then dropped down to the highway for a road burn back to town. In between we explored some routes that, despite having lived in the Bay Area for 3 years and having “done” Marin County mountain biking during visits for nearly 20, I had never seen or even known about.

These were not your typical urban connectors. These trails went on for miles down rocky embankments, across golden fields, through low-lying chaparral and along epic ridges. They transported us into a world apart, quiet and restful and contemplative, far from the madding congestion and din of freeways and shopping malls that California is better known for. These trails, in short, were what what mountain biking is all about. Repack may be the birthplace of mountain biking. These trails are mountain biking’s holy grail.

The hope is that some day such “gray trails” will be made official. Local biking organizations, in tandem with the dedicated efforts of IMBA, are doing yeoman trail maintenance and community outreach toward that goal. My sense as a scarred and somewhat cynical observer is that an Obama Effect is transforming the outdoor recreation arena, where trails are seen not as single-purpose niche “facilities” but multi-use venues open to all, and where “bipartisanship” wins over selfish interests.

Listening to my fellow riders talk about people, associations and park rangers on a first-name basis as “the opposition,” I couldn’t help but think of mountain biking in British Columbia, where I’ve also ridden for nearly two decades. Up there, trail wars are so foreign a concept as to be laughable. Trails pop up overnight and automatically enter the local lexicon. Some get signed, some not. All remain open to everyone.

Not only that, but mountain biking is celebrated in B.C. as a tourist attraction, revenue generator and source of regional pride. Canada issues fat, glossy brochures detailing biking routes everywhere from Vancouver and Whistler to interior backwaters like Revelstoke, Rossland and Golden. To bog down the populace with petty fractious rivalries would not only counter Canadians’ easy-going and friendly natures but would rob municipalities of valuable income.

One can only pray that similar enlightenment is on its way to America, and that a new era of trail accessibility awaits Marin biking denizens. The “other Marin” is just too magnificent and awe-inspiring a place to deprive future generations of its enjoyment.