Nicholas Carman wrote this for us a few years ago and it’s fun to look back out how fat bikes have evolved into today’s machines.

In this video, Adventure Cyclist contributor Patrick O'Grady shows off his custom Nobilette road bike.

It's hard not to be attracted to shiny things, which is one of many reasons I've been spending a lot of time this week checking out the Velo Orange Grand Cru Drillium 110 Fluted Double Crankset. That's a pretty impressive name for a component. Before getting into the details, I thought it would be fun to break down the name of the crankset first.

A peculiar looking fork, Salsa's Enabler first caught my eye a few years ago when introduced as their rigid 29er "adventure fork." It has since become the stock fork on their Mukluk line of fat bikes and it is becoming a go-to option for a fatbike frame build. While putting together a fatbike build earlier this winter, I took an opportunity to purchase one and put it to use with my setup. Although I haven't tested it to it's fullest potential for overnight adventures and gear hauling, it has steered wonderfully so far and I have thoroughly enjoyed some of the features of this unique fork.

Belt drive transmissions are probably best known in the motorsports world, where you can find them on a fair number of cruiser-style motorcycles. Over the past few years, they have been slowly working their way into the cycling scene, and are currently most commonly found on urban single-speed bikes. The benefits of belt drive over a bicycle chain, which you may already know, are that they are cleaner (since they don't require any kind of lubricant), quieter, and they last longer.

The vast majority of touring bikes are built with cantilever brake bosses, which as the name suggests, are designed to take cantilever style brakes. The reason for this style is that they allow you to run wider tires, and provide a lot of space for fenders.

While the winter season often means that you spend less time on your bike, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should spend less time with it. Your bike has seen many miles throughout the course of the year, and this is an excellent time to give it a tuneup before you zero out your cycle computer and start logging the miles for 2010.