Understanding Cycling Through Practice: Everything is Connected
Tekné is an ancient Greek concept describing knowledge gained through making, doing, and experience.
Tekne Cycling is where I document and share what I learn through riding, experimentation, field testing, product evaluation, and writing. Whether exploring remote routes, testing equipment, developing products through Matter Lab, or analyzing complex cycling systems, the goal is the same: to better understand the relationships between riders, equipment, behaviour, and environment, and share learnings with the cycling community and industry.
Collective Excellence
Journal
Long-form writing, analysis, field notes, and technical investigations.
Ride Guides
Routes, travel reports, and lessons learned from the road and trail.
MATTER LAB
Product testing, development, prototyping, and small-scale manufacturing.
Work with Tekne
Product testing, technical storytelling, and development feedback.
Featured Posts
ALL POSTS
Implementation: Custom T-Lab X3 #dropbarbraap
The final piece in a series of deep-dives into my titanium dream bike, T-Lab’s X3. Fully custom designed and built to thrive across a broad range of riding conditions, my build biases toward reliability under heavy and frequent use in harsh environments.
Grinduro Canada: The Mind-Body-Bike Trifecta
Here’s the thing. GRINDURO is not ‘gravel.’ ‘Gravel’ is not a thing. It’s also not nothing.
EXECUTION: Ideas Made Material
The second in a trilogy on the process of designing a dream gravel bike, this piece walks through the way I refined my thinking and design for my custom T-Lab X3 modern gravel bike build, translating principles into specific decisions.
GENESIS of a Modern Gravel Dreambike
The first in a three-part series on the process of designing a dream gravel bike, this piece walks through the way I conceived my custom T-Lab X3 modern gravel bike build. This is a principles-based approach, which is meant to support decision making that lands riders on bikes they love.
Core Pieces for Spring: Castelli in Focus
For those with ample supplies of motivation and zeal, but insufficient kit for spring riding, this is a short guide to a selection of key pieces from Castelli. Quality cycling kit is expensive, so I hope this helps inform decisions that lead to many hours of happy riding, not regrets.
Winter Solstice Quest: 200km before dark
Two-hundred kilometer rides every month through winter; doable? All I actually needed was an objective, something to look forward to through the dreary days of November, as daylight hours diminished rapidly, and the stark reality settled in: winter was coming. And not just any winter; COVID-winter.
Three-season all-road: how to choose tires
I try to paint a picture here that’s more about building a holistic understanding of the environment you’re riding, and a degree of ‘mastery’ around decision-making than about telling you which tires you should buy. That’s the last thing I want to do. I want to help you develop a deep understanding of the requirements you’re working with, which you can then assess against your priorities. This will ground good decision-making.
Duration, path, and outcome.
The early phase of the pandemic threw me for a loop; not right away, it took time to settle in. Work on the computer, Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting; I struggled. I read a lot of fiction in an unconscious effort to escape a reality I had little control over. When do we ever have ‘control’? Never. But we think we do. I had to ride my bike in a way I’d never needed to before.
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3 days, 3 riders, and a loop around Parc Mont Tremblant connecting Rouge Matawin Wildlife Reserve and ZEC des Nymphes. Here’s what we learned about surface conditions, campsite availability, water filtration, and wheel setups.