potluck

Been eating and drinking a lot. Tried to get "double pounded" Saturday at Glynner's... (2 lbs of beef, 1/2 lb bacon, plenty of cheese and fries) fail! Did succeed in eating quite a bit of it, still rode my bike on the potluck ride, still found room for a few drinks. Potluck ride was incredible- looking forward to next year already.

Otherwise I sent $ in for all 3 days of jinglecrossrock. A daily cat 3 race and Saturday/Sunday SS races in the AM. Been rocking the Viner on a few practice rides. Made about 5 laps of Eastwood on it last week. After I was starting to feel real good about my handling skills and the bike I decided to try to really lay one down and time it. Turns out the CX bike isn't quite as fast as the 29er! as it was only just under 37 minutes. Tons of fun though. Fell a few times and rode over some obstacles and skinnies without breaking the Zipps. Probably shouldn't really be riding trails on them with skinny tires a whole ton.

On a related note I beat the HELL out of the Kona this past weekend... rode it up some stairs, off a few drops etc. etc. and it's no worse for the wear. There is something uber fun about skinny tires and aggressive riding, or is it just that it's the end of a long year?

I'm pulling the plug on the Marin as a 69er SS rigid. Going to set it up as more of a "trail" bike and abuse the hell out of it. Will be 1x9 with xt/xtr bits and a Marzocchi 130mm 26" front fork. It worked really well the way I had it, but it was serving a purpose I didn't have. Plus, I was really starting to miss my old Jamis freeride/trail/beater bike. 130mm will be a lot of travel for a frame originally designed for much less, but the angles won't be far from where they are now with the 29" wheel out front.

Next update will probably be my thoughts on Jinglecross.

mist

Found a new way to get out of my neighborhood yesterday. Sort of a deer path that drops down the back way to the highway. It was a bit muddy on the way to work, but totally rideable even fixed (this was, of course, going downhill).

Left work last night at 1:30. Mist. Visibility under 50 yards. Entire commute felt like there should be a headless horseman chasing me. I don't often get spooked anymore riding in the dark but it was creepy enough out that I observed the fact that I 'could' have been spooked. Was very careful crossing the freeway, then hard right through the hole in the fence and around the back of the Appliance Smart. Hit the, now frosted/frozen solid, deerpath and almost immediately hit the red line. Half way up and I was surrounded by the mist and trees and breathing so loud that I didn't hear the wind or any cracking of the wood that must have occured because a pretty good sized limb fell out of a tree right behind me...

Next time I'm on the Stairway to Heaven I'll try to remember how I felt right then.



This am I got out on the road bike with the REAL Design wheels on it. Sort of sucked because the roads were very wet from the mist that has continued to stick around, but they did what they should have done. Didn't notice any major flaws or really any major strengths. They should work for my needs.

I mounted my IRD tires up on the Zipps and put them on the Viner. If it dries out a bit I'll take it out for a gravel ride or two this weekend. Not sure if I'm going to Indiana Thanksgiving weekend to race in the Turkey Gobbler (or whatever it's called), but if I am, and i want to, this is the setup.





also, these showed up. Hoping to do some work with them to make them really fit right. I will need to take up extra volume (my feet are so low volume that this is true with ANY shoe) and also plan to do the heat molding thing with the footbeds and the uppers. Luckily I can do this using the Bauer hockey skate oven at my family's store.

fall=gear season

Been selling and buying- figure this is a good time of year to do it. Prices should be good for used stuff this time of year, right?

No longer have-

mavic ksyrium es wheels
tubular cx/gravel wheels (the ambrosios on dt240s)
velocity p35 wheelset
racing ralph 2.4s
the 1978 raleigh competition gs with lots of 70s campy
salsa woodchipper bars (sold one set, still have the other if you want it...)
lots of other smaller items-

new stuff-

dt240 disc hub/zipp 404 wheelset. Not sure what to say about these, pretty sure I really do plan to throw some 1.8s/1.9s on them, maybe wider? and ride offroad at times. They will certainly by fun on the road. I liked the price and think they are cool...







did get out for a couple brief rides on them already. One on the road and one on the mountain bike (with cx tires). Early reviews are good.


REAL designs supersonic 40 wheelset. These were so cheap on ebay that I had to do it. They will be my day to day wheels on the road bike until I mess them up. They are 'cheap' (claimed retail was 1k), light (1600g range), and use odd spokes... it will suck if they turn out to be unreliable, but they are currently in great shape and the tires on them cost as much as I paid. I still have my ultegra/mavic open pro wheelset to fall back on if these do fail me. I'm tempted to take the yellow stickers off. First ride will be tomorrow, expecting good things-









control tech carbon road bars and bontrager xxx lite carbon stem (separate purchases, but obviously go together). Have been on the Viner CX bike since right before the Night Nonsense- couldn't be happier. 12 degree stem allows me to slam the bars for cx racing and get it up where it will be comfortable for 8+ hr days with no other changes. Bars/stem feel very solid handling wise and the ergonomics is working well for me... hands don't go numb, back doesn't hurt, I'm happy! Never really said too much about that Viner frame either, which is also obviously new! It's good enough that I'm putting it in the category of "it works, I like it and I own it" alongside the Mamasita and the 585. Don't expect a lot of changes so far as frames from me in the next year or two unless something breaks.








In addition to those changes I've also picked up a bunch of tires...

specialized 1.9 borough cx
2 kenda klimax's
2 maxxis aspen 2.1s
bontrager xr 1.8 front
700x35 ird crossfires (1 white and 1 blue for the viner)

I'll be testing the tires on various wheel combinations as the weather allows. I plan to make the Zipp's work tubeless- although possibly only for cx season. Just need to cut up some tubes to make valves.

Since the weather has been crap the last few days and may well continue to be crap I'll probably end up riding the Kona winter fixie abomination as detailed in my last post... works for me (although I'd like at least a chance to ride the REAL design wheels and the Zipps on dry gravel at some point before winter)

sorry for the long post

BALLS Preparation

http://ballsride.blogspot.com/

Is awesome. So awesome that I've decided to dedicate the next 4 months to training in order to maximize my experience at BALLS. Countless days and thousands of miles worth of gravels lie ahead.

However, before I can begin I knew I would have to build the perfect bike-



Now that THAT is out of the way... I plan to ride a lot.

If you are reading this and aren't planning on doing BALLS, you should change your mind. It's a party, it's a camping trip, it's a group ride, it's in Wisconsin (land of amazing bars, food, beer and singletrack), and YOU will have fun. The locals over there are great and they simply "get" it. This is the perfect combination of difficulty and fun- a dirty century that everyone can enjoy. It's guaranteed that you will have fun at this ride. You might say that you are against paying to ride your bike- you won't be... you're paying for the beautiful cabin and the shower at the end of day one. You might say you can't ride 100 miles- well, you can... there are NO hills. You might say that it sounds too easy... then ride faster (or drink more E&J- I'll have plenty). You might say that you are doing Trans-Iowa instead... good luck and have fun! I will follow your progress via the internet from my cabin, or from around the campfire.

Oh ya MN guys- Friday is Blue Mounds ride day... so assuming Blue Mounds is open, take Friday off as well and expect to ride 30+ miles of singletrack Friday to push the 3 day total over 200.