During one of my recent phone conversations with the folks at King, I had to inform them that I was very disappointed that I had to put a different headset on my bike. The don’t make purple, and I’m on a purple kick. They were very understanding and quite apologetic.

I had been speaking to one of their customer service folks that I’ve known for a while, he’s been to Waterbury (and more importantly, The Alchemist), and we have a great working relationship, based on sweet bike parts and beer. Well, not 2 hours pass, and he called back with some news for me.

Turns out that there were a couple of purple odds and ends were laying around in the warehouse. King has not made purple since 2004, but it seems there were just enough bits to make 3 headsets. SICK!

So here they are, 3 brand new, anodized purple Chris King headsets.

Unfortunately, they still have no plans to start making purple parts again, but rest assured, I’ll be one of the first to know when they do.

It’s on.

This year’s ride will take place on Sunday April 19th. We still havent completely ironed out the finer details of the event, but the 25 mile ride will be the same. We are throwing in an optional  ”hero” loop for those that need just a little more post winter punishment. I havent mapped it out yet, but it will likely add at least another 7 miles, and about 400 ft more of climbing.

There will be more details on the course to follow shortly. We just received about 2 feet of snow, which makes things difficult when attempting to map a course by bike. Boooo! I’m so ready for the snow to go away, despite yesterday’s epic powder.

We are capping the event to 100 participants this year, so if you think this is the sort of silliness you can truck with, get registered now. We already have 15 signed up, and we haven’t even begun to market the event yet. There will be no same day registrations this time around, it simply creates too many logistical headaches.

As it stands right now, the ride will start at 9 from PIlgrim Park (same as last year), although we are trying to gain use of Rusty Parker Park, just across the train tracks. There will be a sag wagon, snacks, heckling and tech support  during the ride, and a post ride BBQ. All we can hope for is the same beautiful weather we had last year.

Talk about a roller coaster ride. 

After finding that my crafty wheel experiment was not going the way I planned, bummed, I decided that I’d just suck it up and go on with the show. Tuesday afternoon was about as gorgeous of a winter day one could possibly ask for. 32°, bluebird skies, minimal wind, and best of all, clear roads. Time for a ride.

I spent the morning putting the new wheels on Kermit. I had to re-space the rear brake, and then found that the axle ends of the front hub were too big to fit the Niner carbon fork. I have a phone call in to I9 to see if there are other ends that will work, the ones on my Jet are smaller and clear the dropout. It would be a shame not to have this compatibility. 

In order to ride both of the wheels, I had to remove the carbon fork, and use the “old” painted to match steel fork. Such hardships I endure…

So after getting everything in good working order, I finally got on the road around 3. My route, Loomis Hill. Locals and regulars to this blog know that this is one doozie of a climb. It goes up for a while, then kinda fakes you out in the middle, before resuming its merciless upwardness. I was able to climb fairly aggressively today, a far cry from Sunday’s feeble attempt up the lesser Barnes Hill.

I managed to stand and crank almost 70% of the time, I was looking for any lateral movement in the rear wheel, and was surprised to find there was none. The other 30% was spent in a seated low RPM pain room. I will say, it went faster that I thought possible. Upon cresting the big hill, there was a slight roll up, where I found myself at the max cadence 35-21 will allow without bouncing around on the seat. I was hauling ass! 

Upon that crest was a long descent, through a couple of dips that sometimes require effort to get to the other side of. It totally depends on how the road condition is, the surface is paved in one spot, but dirt everywhere else, and can be quite treacherous if you don’t ride the conditions. Basically, that means you can fly off the road if you are going too fast (especially when using Nanoraptors for tires). 

Well, these wheels spun right up! I don’t know if it was the aero spokes, but the wheels felt noticeably faster. As yesterday’s build results proved, they certainly aren’t lighter, but the difference in velocity was palpable.

Could it have been the difference in rolling resistance between the Nano and WW LT? Both tires are pretty darn fast if you ask me… I guess I’ll have to play around a little more, but I was definitely gobsmacked.

I also hit every pot hole and rut I could safely ride through at speed. It was actually quite fun being this naughty, but really, my wheels have to work, so I tried my hardest to be rough with them. 

I finished my ride in a little under an hour. Quite a bit faster than the last time which I remember being close to 1:15. Is it the wheels? Dunno.

But

I will say that the Aerolites are worthy of another experiment. I’ll be trying a set of King SS hubs next…

I’ll also say that the engagement of the I9 hub left nothing to be desired. Stand and pedal, you go. And they are purple.

And Mandy was coming home as I was headed out, and she said “Your bike looks HOT!”

And it does. The wheels stay.

They took a month to get to me, but I am pretty happy they finally arrived. These are Industry 9′s high flanged hubs. I just had to have something that matched that purple headset. As I said before, vanity has gotten the best of me this time around. 

The first thing I noticed was the heft of the rear hub. It’s all there. At 385g, it is on the portly side of things. King claims the weight of their single speed hub to be 322g, the I9 is noticeably heavier in the hand. King isn’t making purple hubs at the moment, so I guess I’ll have a wheel that is a little heavier. I mean, I am saving 100g in spokes so what do I really have to complain about? This just doesn’t necessarily fall under the Ridiculite category as I had hoped. 

The big test here is the spokes. These are light, and if they hold up under me, then I can ultimately offer that Ridiculite build. All together, the wheelset weighs 1880g with valves and yellow tape installed. Not too terribly heavy…

I laced the wheels 3x, the four spokes around the valve are silver, as well as the opposing four. The rest are black, and I used silver, blue and purple alloy nipples picked at random. They look cool if nothing else (at least I think so).

I’m going to put them on Kermit for the time being, and I hope to be able to get out on them this week.

I swear I have some sort of a problem. I wouldn’t classify myself as a weight weenie, I weigh too much to really get crazy with this, but I am beginning to find ways around this.

So, there is an upcoming wheel build for my race bike. I’ve been slowly gathering components for it over the winter. This wheelset will essentially be a prototype “Ridiculite” build, something I’ve played with in the past with varied success. I figure if I can make it work for me, then it will work for just about anybody. Then, and only then, will I offer it as a Bike 29 Wheelset.

So, let’s say that 8 DT Competition double butted spokes weigh 52g.

This is what I typically use to build my wheels with. A wheelsets’ worth of these will weigh 416g.

Now 8 DT Aerolite spokes weigh 39g.

That’s 312g for a wheelset. A 100g difference. And once again folks, this is rotational weight. 100g in the wheels is pretty significant. By my flawed logic of 1=4, the bike will “pedal” almost a pound lighter. Let’s just hope that they are as durable as the Comps….

I also managed to get my mitts on one of these.

Not because it’s 4g lighter than a King (but I did check) but because it’s purple. King has opted to not make any purple components at this time, and sadly, vanity has gotten the better of me.

It is time for purple anodized parts to be cool again!

I never would have thought that a delicate flower such as myself would head out on a bike ride in the rain. In February. Well it happened.

It used to be that if there was even a single cloud in the sky, I’d call a ride. I had a lot to get done at the shop, and a puppy to tire out, but I stayed focused and got everything done that I needed to. I walked the pup early in the morning up in the Waterworks Trails, and was amazed to find that it was almost 10° warmer up in the hills than the valley floor. The sky had big sloppy brush strokes of blue that appeared to be getting larger.

OK, focus.

Tire the dog out for an hour

Ship some orders

Take some phone calls

E-mail some quotes

WOW! it’s 56°! And it’s still sunny!

At 2:30 I left the shop to bring Seamus home, I still don’t think he’s ready to be left unsupervised out of his crate. I got my riding things and went back to the shop. I noticed it was getting dark. I took my sunglasses off, and saw that it was in fact getting really dark. And cold. hmmmm…

Well, I was ready, and I was going to go for a ride. Just for a little bit.

By now it was raining, but just a barely. I headed out on River Road with my ultimate goal reaching Jonesville 8 miles away. The ride is not so much as flat as it is rolling, and one is guaranteed an annoying headwind on one half of the ride. I rode my Van Dessel Gin & Trombones. As I turned onto River Road, it was a steady drizzle, I figured I’d ride to the dam and see how I felt about things then.

Once I reached the turn off, I decided I could go a little further. I’d reassess things at the Camel’s Hump Road turn off. It was at this point, I found I was already wet. Luckily I had dressed appropriately, so I kept on going. Wool is awesome! By the time I reached Jonesville, it was pouring, and I was halfway through my ride. And DAMN! there’s that headwind!

Still feeling pretty good, I turned around and picked up a good cadence and just turned the pedals over and over. Sometimes, I feel like I actually ride a little better in adverse conditions. The ride was about 50% dirt road, which was downright scary at times. The parts that weren’t glorpy mud, were a hard surface that looked like asphalt, but was actually solid ice. There was a little slip and slide happening, just to make sure those core muscles got worked too.

Fortunately, no one was hurt, but there was this one time where I got two complete crank revolutions where I had zero traction on the rear wheel going up a hill.

Other than that, it was good. The equipment functioned perfectly. The wheelset on my G&T is a Royale Cross wheelset that we’ll be offering on BikeCX. I feel it’s proven itself worthy for prime time. I was running the Schwalbe Racing Ralph 700x35c tire tubeless on a Stan’s 355 rim, the air pressure was dead on for today’s ride at 25psi.

So apparently, all it takes is a ride in the rain to beat the winter doldrums. Being cold, wet and muddy somehow makes being inside seem slightly more acceptable.

And I have to say I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

First outside ride in VT that is.

The harsh reality that we don’t live someplace warm or dry has finally settled in, and getting out and riding is something you must do when you have the opportunity. We have a saying here “make hay while the sun is shining”, well, if you want to ride bikes in VT in winter, you gotta do it while it isn’t snowing or below zero.

Saturday was such a day, the temps were climbing. In fact, they kept rising through midday Sunday topping out in the 40s. I got out right around 2:30 with a couple of other folks who were jonesing for some two wheeled time, and embraced the raw, 35°, overcast and pretty windy afternoon. Today’s ride? Well, since it wasn’t my first ride of the year, I thought that Perry should be doable with a minimal amount of pain.

I got Kermit back together last week, now with the prototype Niner rigid fork back in place. Also, I figured that I’d try out the Ergon GX1 grips for funsies. They are an obnoxious color green, which I am growing to like. 

I gotta say, that while I appreciated the extra cush of the Reba fork during my trip to AZ, I was very happy to have the rigid carbon fork back. The bike feels faster, more nimble, and much more responsive. The grips felt a little weird at first, but halfway through the ride, I had forgotten all about them. 

So how was the first VT ride of the year?

Not bad at all! Can’t wait for the next one.

Last year on February 9th we had a big sale, that  we really didn’t tell too many people about, yet we sold a lot of stuff!

Well, guess what? We’ll be having the same sale again, only we won’t be putting everything on the chopping block. 

There will be some very good deals however, and the only way you can see what they are, is to check the sale page.

Here is the deal.

The prices on sale items will be good for the weekend preceding the 9th only. Sale prices will not be offered before the 7th or after the 9th, so don’t even ask! Discounts will not be applicable to previously ordered products, although that shouldn’t be too much of an issue. There will be no rain checks either. Our sale offering is pretty focused, but hopefully folks will find the deals compelling.

There is no doubt that idle hands are the tools of the devil.

I have decided at this point that I am going to change pedals. Not just one set, but most of them. I’ve been a stalwart supporter of TIME pedals for the last 11 years, in fact, my very first set still lives on my Karate Monkey, still functioning perfectly. Having invested quite a few of my own personal drachma into a pedal inventory over the years has made it very hard for me to just up and switch pedals like so many dirty underpants, yet here I am. I’m not 100% into this switch, as I have yet to even use these upstart Crank Brothers pedals.

Jury still out, but…

…pedals rotate too…