The last ride of 2008 (for me at least) was a lot less than stellar. Having brought the bikes for the trip to PA for an abbreviated version of the holidays, we thought we’d try and give the trails at Jim Thorpe a try. Alas, the conditions weren’t so hot. In fact, despite the record breaking warm weather, they were still quite snowy.

We got a good climb in, up Flagstaff Mountain, and about 1/4 mile down one of the snow and ice infested trails along the top of the ridge, before calling no joy. I mean, I can only let so much air out of my tires to get any kind of traction. Turns out I had to let it all out to even get the slightest hint of traction. It was frustrating for sure. It isn’t the sort of riding made any easier by having only one gear, the slightest shift in weight would result in the bike sliding off course, and getting it back on track was next to impossible for me.

Days like that are a good reminder that December has the potential to be a pretty silly month to attempt a mountain bike ride in the northeast. An even sillier time can be January, unless you are riding in the southwest. Which is exactly where we are headed. Tucson, AZ to be exact, where the weather ought to be much nicer for riding bikes.

SSAZ09 is an event put on by Niner rider Dejay Birtch. From what I can find out (he is being tight lipped about the details), it is about a 50 mile “fun” ride with about 5000 ft of elevation gain. I’m told that the ride is bailout friendly, and that there will be “refreshments” provided along the way. While there is no requirement that you ride a singlespeed, it is recommended to alleviate some of the heckling that is likely to occur on a ride such as this. If you are going to be in the Tucson area on Jan 24th, maybe we can ride bikes together. Sign up can be found here.

I can’t imagine anywhere else I’d rather be in January.

New to the world of 29er-ness is Fulcrum. Fulcrum is a relatively new company, founded in 2004, based in Italy. but they have built a solid reputation for themselves as making some very nice, flashy and of course quite expensive road wheels. Would you expect anything less from the same country that brought forth Sidi, Ferrari and Lambourgini?

Well, their first foray in to the 29er world is a solid one. They are currently offering two wheelsets, one is price conscious, the other, a no holds barred UST lightweight race wheel. Yes, I said UST. The one thing that sets these wheels apart from the rest, is a very well though out 1-piece 20mm axle in both the front and rear wheel. Not only does this make for ridiculously easy bearing preload adjustments, it stiffens things up nicely.

We’ll start with the Red Metal 29 SL. This wheelset has a traditional J-bend spoke interface, and is laced up to some seriously beefy deep section rims using 28 butted and bladed spokes. One of the technologies used by Fulcrum is something they call 2:1. Basically, they double up the spokes on the side of the hub that bears the most force. In the front wheel, this would be the disc side, in the rear, the drive side. This wheelset weighs 2030g without the included skewers. These wheels retail for $450. Killer huh?

The second set of wheels is the Red Metal 29 XLR. This wheel incorporates straight pull spokes laced to a UST rim, meaning it is compatible with all UST 29er tires out there. What, there aren’t any UST 29er tires out there? Sure there are! Geax has the Saguaro, and is also introducing the Barrow in UST flavor early in 09. I’m not sure how these would work with a homebrew set up, and unfortunately, all this annoying snow has prevented me from finding out. This wheelset weighs in at 1850g and retails for $1099.

My first impression is that these are top notch wheels. Not necessarily the lightest out there, but I feel that they will certainly be stiff enough for anyone that wants to put them through their paces. Is UST a dead horse? We’ll see. One positive indication about these new UST systems, is that more tire manufacturers are taking this 29er tubeless thing seriously, so this can only be a good thing. 

The SL wheelset seems like a no brainer. Despite that it is a tube specific rim, I think the axle system and price make this a great choice for the performance oriented rider on a budget. The XLR wheelset is pretty spendy. I’m sure that this comes from the more expensive straight pull hub design  and UST specific rim, expenses carrying over from 26″ UST wheelsets…

After bashing 29ers for years, it seems like European companies are starting to wake up and smell the crema…

We have been visited by the snow fairy. About a foot fell on Friday, and another is supposed to fall today through tomorrow. Of course, this makes for some terrible bike riding, but we are equipped to be outside in all but the most inclement weather. Today, was a snowboard day. 

I left early to hit the big mountain with friends, and Mandy and the boy followed up later to hit the kiddie hill. 

Conditions were quite nice down low, but brutally cold and windy up high. A close encounter with a poorly placed snow gun on the way to the big lift made seeing anything impossible, forcing Shaun and I to de-ice in the ski patrol hut. Getting back outside seemed like a bad idea and the snow laden arctic gale instantly froze a shell around my beard. Thank goodness I have that thing!

Anyway, I’m hoping tomorrow is better.

Down south I realize that a huge freezing rain event threw everything into total chaos, so the school systems in those towns and counties are excused from this rant.

So, we got about 6″ of snow overnight locally, and now school and daycare is closed for the day. I am not happy with this situation. Do I get to close today? No. Does anybody else get to have the day off? No.

I am OPEN.

It’s just snow people, not lava. And we all knew it was coming. There was plenty of time to prepare. I even went to the hardware store and bought a bag of ice melt and a shovel for the store, so that when I get to work, I can be open and no one will break their neck walking up the front steps.

We live in Vermont. It snows here. Everyone else is expected to get to work on time, so why are schools and daycare centers closed? I’m frustrated on many levels, both as a working parent, and as someone who got screwed out of going snowboarding before work this morning because someone thought a random 3 day weekend would be neat. Not cool.

And as a side rant, the 90 minute delay is inexcusable too. That little disruption is caused when the buses “won’t start”. PLUG THEM IN! There is an entire channel on TV that is dedicated to the weather. Extreme cold, snow storms and heavy rain don’t just randomly happen. 

To me, it’s a sign proving just how soft we are getting. Gone are the days of walking to school uphill both ways in a raging blizzard. I can count on one hand how many snow days we had when I was in high school. And guess what? I walked to school every day. 

And so it seems, I’ve become that grizzled old man preaching to anyone that would listen, about just how tough we had it when we were young, and how we had to eat wood and rocks.

Well, now I will have a little helper today, so I apologize in advance to anyone that calls in and gets interrupted with an update on Thomas the Tank Engine and what important job he might be doing at any given time.

It can be done!

Ponte and I made another trip out to Camp J. I can safely say, that this was more of a game of chicken than anything else. Both of us were waiting for the other to call and bail, as the weather was less than pleasant. Ambient air temperature was about 30°, and high humidity and a nice stiff north wind made it feel like it was -30.

It did actually get a little better once we got going, but that wind never really went away. The mission this time was to grab some footage to make a little movie trailer for a new upcoming Bike 29 project.

Since Mandy started riding the “Project Jabberwocky”, well, she sort of got hooked on the whole rigid singlespeed thing. She decided to dust off an idea that a good friend of ours had once had about making a mockumentary about the Mono-ski. She’ll be changing the name from “Un Homme, un Ski” to “Un Homme, un Velo, un Vitese” or something like that, but the basic concept is the same.

So, after a few beers after Friday’s Open House (which ruled BTW) I thought I might make a trailer. I’m putting the finishing touches on it right now, but I’ll post it up as soon as it’s done.

Now, preparations are being made for the first “big” snowstorm of the season. I can safely say that riding in the woods up here is rapidly coming to a close. We’re expecting over a foot of the fluffy stuff to fall out of the sky tonight. Time to mount up my other “riding” devices!

I made the trek out to Colchester yesterday morning, M2 was going to ride the infamous “Camp J” before work, and I found myself free at the time. I haven’t been there in probably 9 years. Camp J, or Camp Johnson is actually a plot of Colchester Town land, that abuts the Camp. The Camp is the big VT Army National Guard base. It is also known as Sunny Hollow, and is currently under the care of the Fellowship. Pre-911, you could pretty much ride anywhere, then obviously, things got a bit weird once the government thought everyone was out to get it. Fences were erected, and weekend warriors with guns were posted at the borders keeping an eye on things.

Way back when, we used to ride out there all the time, 3-4 times a week! Before we moved to Cali, we lived in Winooski, which was spittin’ distance to these trails. Ten years ago, this was one of the few places OK to ride mountain bikes (that we knew of). We used to bring Dagget out here. He was the best mountain biking dog. He’d run along side of the lead person, and if he thought he had a better line, he’d run you out of the way. Then, he’d bolt into the ferns, find something stinky to roll in, and come back horrendously filthy.

I missed him so much on yesterday’s ride.

I just had to get up and walk away and be really sad for a minute…

So anyway,

The trails aren’t much more than a series of short loops strung together. The area is far less than epic, but what the trails lack in technical features, they more than make up for it with fun. They basically run along the tops of ravines, occasionally dropping in to cross to another. Camp J was also famous for it’s log piles. You could always expect a downed tree to have a log ramp built on either side of it. Some of these got rather large.

Since the Fellowship took over maintenance, there has been huge improvements to the old system. Lots of bench cutting, switchbacks and quite a few bridges have been employed, the most notable one being about 50 ft long, over what I remember being a rather soggy crossing.

Like I said, it’s been a long time, but I can easily see myself getting back there soon. It is a great place to rock the rigid single speed, a far cry from the 26″ full suspension bikes we all thought we were so tough on back in the day. The climbs are much flatter and shorter than I remember them being, the log piles only inches to the feet they seemed at the time. 

I feel a nostalgia ride coming on!

It’s hard to believe that we’re in December already. Where does the time go?

This last weekend was filled with activity, and there is still plenty more ahead for me. The Thanksgiving break had me away from the shop for 3 whole days, which is never fun to come back to after a prolonged absence. Lots of catch up to be done. I suppose that if I didn’t go ride the Turkey Burner on Firday, I would only be a little more caught up than I am now. There is still a lot to do to get ready for our open house this Friday.

Still, a nice low key Thanksgiving dinner with friends was just what the doctor ordered. I even snuck a ride in on the Karate Monkey before lunch. Follow the big meal up with some Star Wars and apple pie, and you got yourself a great day. A new tradition that we started last year, is that I take the turkey shrapnel home and make some sort of soup with it. I boil the carcass down on Black Friday, and make stock. Saturday I clarify the stock, and make the soup on Sunday. Last year it was curried turkey, this year, turkey barley. And it was good.

The Turkey Burner ride was pretty awesome. I rode Kermit with the new rigid fork, but I did not get any pictures. See, it was raining. And when it wasn’t raining, it was snowing big wet flakes. We had fun anyway, and I found that 24 miles of super technical singletrack was doable on a rigid fork. Who knows, I may even try to get back down there again before winter is here for the season.

The Alchemist had their 5 year anniversary party on Saturday. We went there after I closed the shop down and met up with some friends. Hard to believe that we’ve been haunting that place for that long. Great beer, great food and a killer place to hang out.

One of my many projects, he big one that I’ve been threatening to do for about a month now, is to change the layout of the shop. Well, I’ve started. And I need to have it finished by Friday. Nothing like a deadline…

It’s actually going pretty well, I got the Christmas lights up in the window, new light fixtures for the store, and some really good ideas on the layout and merchandising. I’ll post up some pictures when it is a little less chaotic.