I became a TREK dealer.

As you may recall, earlier this summer TREK absorbed the Fisher brand name, leaving us, along with many other dealers out in the cold. I am one of the fortunate few that was able to secure the big name.

What does this mean? Lots of good things actually. It will not affect Bike 29 negatively at all. In fact, I will have access to some really cool bikes once they start to become available. We did really well with the Fisher line this summer, and I think we will continue to do so with the new Fisher Collection. Some very cool new bikes coming down the pike.

Here is the story of all the fun events that happened right before I left my keys on the truing stand.

We had planned a girthy ride the night before. Some (actually most) of the group that rode is going the 50, so base miles with climbing was on tap. We did an abbreviated Gravel Grinder route, where we rode the first 4 hills (Perry, Loomis, Barnes and Gregg) and then we took off to Cottonbrook to ride to Little River State Park.

Along the way, we stopped at Jay’s house for a mid ride beverage. It was on the way. Seriously.

notice how everyone is smiling

I had yet to ride this trail. In all the years I’ve lived here, I never once explored this route. There are a few local trails that I don’t ride, which is just plain silly, and now I am determined to know and ride all of them more often than I actually do. Fortunately, Davey used to ride this trail a lot back in the day, and knew where we needed to go.

Check out my little butterfly friend.

While we didn’t really gain any extra mileage, there was a boatload more climbing, to the tune of about 1700ft of gain, most of it coming in one single 3 mile climb. It was not as bad as you might think. Not so much relentless as much as it was constant. It sort of rolled up, which was nice, there were some recovery breaks which I was very happy about. I had the headphones on, and the music provided by shuffle was actually working for me. I settled into a good rhythm, and put 3 minutes on DA, who was the first to catch me at the top. E-Dog rolled in 10 minutes later.

I felt pretty good for my effort. I climbed with my ultra fashionable T-6 Dicky’s Death March jersey all the way unzipped, which is how the pros do it. Only they aren’t as fat as I am, so they have no idea just how wonderful it feels to climb as unfettered as I was. I’m all about the full zip jersey now.
We wrapped up the ride and I forgot my keys on the counter.

Big thanks to Shaun for all the pictures! I forgot my camera as well.

Due to an unexpected SNAFU, the doors were closed in the Waterbury showroom, all day Monday. I know of a few people that were pretty pissed off, and I am very sorry to those that did not make their feelings heard.
I am sorry. I had no control of the situation, but steps have been taken so that this will never happen again.

We’ll be back with your regularly scheduled mischief in just a bit…

I love the English Beat, even though, growing up, they we’re just called The Beat.

Much has transpired over the weekend. I will not start from the beginning, instead I will go backwards.

Sunday was a “recovery day”. Pancake breakfast and Town Loops were on the menu, the weather just about as perfect as you could want. Mandy and I headed out from Stowe, after a scrumptious brunch at the Grey Fox Inn. Her folks were up visiting, and we took advantage of the delicious Dutch pancakes and pool offered by their digs.

Well, not 20 minutes in, I decided to destroy my rear tire, a Maxxis Aspen. A sharp rock punched a 1/4″ tear into the side knobs of the tire, and the Stan’s sealant could not keep up. I had to stop and put a tube in. It was at this time that I found that my inflator had actually punctured my CO2 cartridge at some point, meaning I had no way of actually inflating the tube. Fortunately, Mandy had a spare cartridge, and we were on our way again shortly.

I was feeling pretty good, despite being pissed at the demise of a tire that I was really beginning to enjoy. We rode out on some of the lesser know loops before making a beeline for the Pipeline. I was not very excited about the inner tube, but I can count myself lucky, that in the 5 years I’ve been running Stan’s, I’ve only ever had to use a tube 3 times, twice because of a catastrophic tire fail.

It was actually quite hot out. MId 80s and no clouds in the sky made climbing a steamy affair, but I used a trick I had figured out the previous day to help beat the heat. I’m all about the full zip jersey now. I went totally unzipped, and I felt as if I was able to climb a few degrees cooler. I mean, if they do it on le Tour… right? It made a difference to me.

At the top, we rewarded ourselves with some delicious site brewed beer, before heading back down to reward ourselves in the nice refreshing swimming pool. A nice end to the weekend’s activities!
It should be noted, that the actual ride time was only 1h30m. It took me about 10 minutes to fix my tire, but only about an hour to drink 2 beers.

With my fancy new crabon singlespeeder, I have gotten a chance to try out a couple of tires this summer that have had my interest for a while. The first one is the Geax Saguaro.

I like Saguaro cacti. I also like this tire. I haven’t had a good opportunity to really give it a fair shake until I rode them at the Darkhorse 40 this year. Conditions were just about perfect for this tire. It is billed as a 2.2, which I would say is pretty true to size. It is not the tire you think it is though. As the name might imply, it favors dry conditions, the rubber compound is harder, and the tread depth is pretty low. The casing is pretty stiff as well, and it does well against pointy and jagged rocks. I found that I preferred to run them at lower pressures that I normally would because of this, and 25 was just about as high as I like to ride them. My tires weighed in the low 700g range.

So low tread means fast right? No, not exactly. the knobs are square edged, and just far enough apart to make riding smooth pavement almost chore like. They send a rumbling vibration through the bike to the seat  in the same way a Nevegal might at high speed, and they are just as loud. But hey, these are mountain bike tires, and pavement is only a necessary evil some of the time.

I found that these tires really excel in dry loose conditions (DH40). They are fast enough on the trail, and they really hang on. The round profile gives them a pretty consistent feel on banked or high lean turns, and when they break, they tend to do so gently.

Not so good in the wet though. Nope. But Saguaros don’t grow in the rain forest. I will definitely be bringing these tires back out to SSAZ as a WWLT replacement, unless something else really awesome comes out between now and then.

The second tire I have tried out is the Maxxis Aspen. This has been a tire that I have had trouble keeping in stock ever since it came out earlier this year, but it seems like production has caught up with demand for the time being. The weight is a much racier low 500g range, but the volume, well, lets just say that I found it a little disappointing.

This is the only gripe I have with this tire.

Even though it is billed as a 2.1, it seems like a 1.9 at best, and it looks a little awkward against Rambo’s big sexy crabon frame. They are 110% there on grip though. Holy cow! I was very impressed with them, both in how well the tire rolled, but also what it stuck to. The rocks at Bradbury were all wet, as were the roots, but these tires never once spun out on me. Part of it has to be attributed to Maxxis’ Exception rubber compound, which is a little softer and grippier, but the tread design itself seems to have a bit of a science to it as well: low sipped middle tread, and decent side knobs oriented against rotation.

I’ve had some great rides on this tire, I point it at off angle stuff, and it sticks. Roots, rock, whatever. It is a fast rolling tire, much faster than the Saguaro. It is also well over 100g lighter per tire. The only thing that gets me, is the size. Even at 30 psi, I bottom the tire out on my rims when rolling through the rough stuff. If this tire existed in a 2.4, I would be a really happy camper. I would imagine that this fictitious tire might run in the low 6s, which would still be in the acceptable range.

I will admit, I am very picky when it comes to these things, but all in all, I will give both tires 2 thumbs up each.

RAMBO.

That is the name of the new bike. I totally appreciated every suggestion, but none of them seemed to really capture the spirit of the bike. Mike Maggs pretty much secured the the name after he brought me back a  bunch of cool stickers from his last trip to China, so he will get the super awesome limited edition B29 shirt. I’m still hashing out the artwork for it, but I hope to be able to show it in the next week or so.

My buddy Keller took me out to the ball game last night. Our local team, the Lake Monsters were playing the Connecticut Tigers, not that that mattered. It’s only single A ball, but sitting in the bleachers and stuffing our faces with .25c hot dogs and beer in plastic cups and heckling the players is what living in America is all about. I haven’t been to a Lake Monsters game in years, but it was super fun.

See Keller throw the horns as he is drinking. Just awesome.

…it’s yer berfday, an we goan party like it’s yer berfday.

Yeah, that’s right. I am celebrating my 39th lap around the sun. But does that mean a day off from blogging? No, and why would I? Such awesome stuff is happening right now.

As some of you may know, that HRD (His Royal Dickness) just got a full supsension crabon 29er Sanra Cruz Tallboy. Obviuosly it’s his feeble attempt to one up me again.

What? One up me? Again you say? Well, let’s see, he did say that he was going to no longer train, and drink beer and have a good time on rides. That, and the abandonment of totalitarian singlesepeeding. Sounds like he is on the G-Train to me.

I still have the one thing (actually a couple of things) that he doesn’t yet have. The super elusive SRAM X9 10 speed running gear. Oh yes. I have some. In fact, I have his super elusive X9 10 speed running gear. And I’ve been having my way with it. Vere humpink

I hope he logs on the webiverse while he is out at the Breck Epic and sees these pictures. I wish I was in Breckenridge. I know a couple of people doing this silly and oxygen deprived race. I want to be there. It almost sounds fun. Maybe I’ll put it on my “list of things to do” before I turn 40.

Well, because I’m not there, I’m having fun with Dicky’s new drivetrain. I’m gonna defrok his fork too, but more on that later.

And also, I have to say a heartfelt thank you to Guitar Ted. You sir, are a saint.. Possibly the best thing a guy could have show up at work on his birthday. It is spectacular in it’s radness, and it has already completed it’s first beer run.

I will admit, that I am a little torn, should I leave it alone, or add my own flair to it? Decisions…

Or something…

The ride at Bradbury Mountain went off on time at 12 -esque. Everything before it was sort of an adventure. I worked at the shop solo all day Saturday, which meant that the soonest I could possibly leave VT was 3:30. Well, that was just a pipe dream. While it wasn’t that busy at the shop, most the business came in the last 30 minutes, which mostly comprised of Huffy fixing and tube replacements. So much for leaving the shop on time.

Then once I got home and loaded up the car and got the dog’s personal effects together, the stupid chickens wouldn’t come home. Yes we have chickens. We have 3 Rhode Island Reds, which apparently like to hang out in the woods all day. No matter what exotic food treats I enticed them with, they would not come out from their hiding places. The best I could do, was get the big one (big because it thinks with it’s belly) to come and see what I was offering for food. The short story, chickens are stupid, and I left them to fend for themselves for the weekend. Stupid birds.

After dropping the dog off at a friend’s, I finally hit the road at 6.

I arrived at my destination in ME about 5 hours later, not bad considering the bumper to bumper traffic I hit at 10pm on the 295 north of Portland.

The weather was the wild card on Sunday. It certainly didn’t look like the sort of conditions one would set out for a day of riding in. Gloomy low clouds, intermittent drizzle and wet roads really didn’t instill confidence. Despite the imminent threat of precipitation, we got off lucky, and it never rained on us. Yay us!

We met a good mix of people out there, KB who I had shared a ride with on my turf, a gal named Sandy and her 14 yo daughter, both of whom rode like 10 men, Mandy, and a buddy of mine that I have not seen in a million years. My good buddy Doug from way back when is now a Portland resident, and also a 29er rider. And a single speeder. Back in the day, Doug and I would get up to some serious hijinx. We were long time Burlington VT friends, then longtime Boston MA friends, and then life sort of drifted us apart. I haven’t seen him in at least 10 years, but we were such good friends that picking up where we left off took no time at all.

The ride was awesome. The rain (?) had left the ground tacky, the roots and rocks were only a little bit damp. During the slow part of my Saturday, I had swapped out my tires to the Maxxis Aspen. I’d been hearing good reviews, and I wanted a change from the Geax Saguaros that I had been running up until now. – Spoiler alert, future twin tire review/blog post.

The company was great. It was super fun riding with Doug. We used to shred the gnar back in the day, and now we were flying through the trees once again, this time on bikes. I could have ridden all day, but eventually it was time for everyone to go their separate ways, and the ride was called. We had a couple of beers in the parking lot, I had found a ratty 12pk of Schlitz in cans on my beer stop, which is now my preferred ironic beer. PBR is sooo mainstream now.

We headed back to the cabin, and then the weather started delivering what it had been talking big about all day. Drizzle my nizzle. After watching some Red Sox on the tv, a big dinner of awesome salmon, we went for a walk to the beach in the dark damp dusk.

Monday we drove home. The entire way back though, I was thinking about the trails we had ridden, and how much fun they were. Also the company. Sadly, it’s been about 3 years since I last rode Bradbury, which is way too long. Now the Bradbury 12 is on the radar. Could it be my next “race”…?

In case you cared (I don’t) the stupid chickens are all fine. Keller came back and pinned them in their coop after I called in a favor. There they would stay all weekend! Stupid birds.

We’ll plan on meeting between at Bradbury Sate Park between 12-12:30 on Sunday.
I’ll have the crabon bike, and a cooler full of beer for after. Hopefully Mandy and I won’t have to drink all the beers on our own…
See you there.

I was just checking out some stuff, seeing how my friends did at the Millstone Grind, when I noticed the times of the 2 lap – Cat 2 Single Speed race. Pretty darn close to what I was pulling. Or not pulling, because I was goofing off the entire time.

Hmmmmmmmmmm.

See the results.

See the Garmin data. I forgot to turn it off until right before I put the bike on the roof of the car, after I had gotten changed and started my first post “race” beer.

Hmmmmmmmmmm.

I’ve discussed this with another Unprofessional Cyclist, and we came to the conclusion that there is no way in hell it could be proven that I wouldn’t have won that race had I;

a) signed up for the correct one

b) rode a little harder

c) walked a little less

d) actually finished 2 laps

At the very least, I could have possibly stood on the podium, instead of watching our Token Roadie get 2nd in the Cat 3 Single Speed (3 lap) race. The guy has ridden a singlespeed approximately 4 hours total in his life and he is already winning.

Bastard. At least he was wearing my t-shirt up there…