I know it seems fairly obvious to most, but I had someone the other day ask me what the little numbers on certain bike components mean. Here is an example:

This is a torque spec. This is something that most bike shops will look the other way on, either out of ignorance or laziness. For the most part, it isn’t the end of the world, as most (and I mean most) people will stop tightening a bolt at an appropriate time. I know a few people that like to tighten bolts until the threads strip out or the bolt breaks, which ever comes first.

Why is torque so important? Well, in today’s high end bike world, things have been engineered to work a certain way. The designers of high zoot bike components have the task of trying to make something as sexy and light and strong as possible, and in order for them to work, certain rules need to be followed. This holds especially true for fancy crabon components.

My fancy crabon handlebars cost $170 retail. They are expensive because someone designed them to be light and strong. And look, they even went so far as to put convenient markings on the bars should I want to make them narrower. I like Ergon grips. They work for me, and my grip of choice on the single speed is the GX1, and I just got some fancy new white ones to install.

I also got a fancy new torque wrench. I’m somewhat of a tool whore, but in this day and age, you gotta have good tools if you want to work on nice bikes. Imagine screwing up someone’s $5000 pride and joy because you used the wrong kind of hammer (I’m exaggerating – a lot, but you get the point). I’ve been told that this is the same torque wrench that the Shimano and Sram tech guys use, and if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me. Plus it’s shiny, and comes in a cool box. And if you want one, I can get it for you.

Set the little widget at 5Nm, tighten, wait until the wrench goes “pop!” and voila! The grips are properly installed.

I’ve made a few more changes to my Air 9 Carbon that I’ll going into later on, as you can see by the addition of some familiar looking wheels.

I am testing a new saddle from Bontrager. This is the Evoke RXL, which has hollow Ti rails and utilizes their Inform technology. Basically, it means it won’t destroy your taint. The saddle comes in 3 widths, which is nice because everyone is different down there. It seems nice, and I feel that I should at least try something new. This is the medium width (138mm) and so far, it seems pretty good. I’ve never really had an issue with Bontrager’s saddles, but I have yet to put a really long ride on one.

This is a time lapse of what happens when I drink Red Bull. I highly recommend avoiding this stuff unless it is an emergency. I will only ever drink one if I need MENERGY! I was feeling a bit sleepy and tired while driving to Boston to go see Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies. A little pick me up was in order.

Coffee doesn’t really have staying power for me, but what ever sugar and unholy crap in Red Bull will keep me going at Mach 2 for at least 4 hours. I typically only drink one when I have to sit in a car for a long time, and I’ll only ever drink one. It has a sort of Jekyll & Hyde effect on me.

The flavor is not one I really enjoy. It reminds me of a mix of urinal cake and candy.

The effect is almost instantaneous. There is so much power being absorbed by my body, you can actually see all the lights behind me got brighter as I became an energy absorbing black hole. I even drew power from the moon.

We still had a long ways to go, so I downed the rest of it.

It tends to make me UNCOMFORTABLY ENERGETIC!!!!!

Then it was off to Boston!

This Superfly flies! Literally, unless you want it to go up. This of course has everything to do with the engine and not the bike. The engine is a lot heavier than fighting weight these days. I know full well that I will regret not taking my opportunities to ride when they come, but that is the bane of Offtober.

I walked a lot.

But only slightly more than my first trip up Perry Hill on Mr Furley this calendar year. I did have somewhat of an excuse though. I’m pretty sure my old Boone Ti 20t cog was not up to the task of handling the full squish set up. After all the adjusting and aligning I did to get it to not drop the chain, only made it jump ahead on the rear cog with the slightest bit of “power” applied. I was OK with it though, I lacked power, and found myself walking most inclines on my short shakedown ride. I was able to get a very good sense of the bike’s personality despite my quasi mechanical handicap.

My first concern was that the handling was going to be a bit, well, off. The frame was designed around a 100mm G2 fork (52mm offset)***. All I had available to me was a 46mm (standard) Reba. I didn’t feel that the bike handled weirdly at all. This will be a completely separate rant/blog post later, but I can tell you that as far as I’m concerned, the whole offset thing is a bunch of hooey.

My second concern had more to do with the fact that I was making something that was designed to be a certain way, be something completely different. I spent a lot of time getting the drivetrain lined up and cooperating. Well, this oddball set up actually works pretty well.

Besides my fatness err… I mean fitness, the bike did nothing short of impress my socks off. I only noticed a couple of things. I did clip the pedals a bit more than I expected to, but I guess that would come with the territory. I also felt that the bike could be pushed a lot further than I was prepared to let it go on it’s maiden voyage.

Considering my 3 week absence from 2 wheels, I tried to ride conservatively. I did find myself “in the moment” a few times though, and it made me wish that it was late March instead of late October.

Full suspension singlespeeds are somewhat of a odd duck. Not something you could ride all the time, but something you could definitely use to your advantage in certain scenarios. A quiver bike if you will. I will unlock the secrets though. This is something…

I’ve pulled off the old Boone cog and installed a brand spanky Endless 20t Kick Ass Cog, and have yet to replicate the skipping issue. I hope to have another good ride in the very near future to see if this whole contraption actually works.

*** we are going to talk about this whole offset thing when I am good and ready

OK, enough slacking on blogging. I actually have some blogworthy stuff to blog about.

First, I must recant my awesome trip to Boston. Keller got married this year, but because he is special, we had to do some of the traditional wedding stuff in a different order than usual. He got married at the end of May, to a really awesome gal, who then let him go to Boston for his batchelor party 5 months later with the likes of me, and another friend Friar (who also happens to own the Rez, next to B29).

So why so late with the Stag Night? Well, one of Keller’s favorite bands (and mine too) was going to be playing in Boston on the 21st at The Paradise. That band is punk supergroup Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies. The band is a revolving cast of characters from Lagwagon, NoFX, No Use For a Name and the Foo Fighters to name but a few. The show is totally kick ass, and I highly recommend going if you have the means. We knew about the show months and months ago, so we decided to make that our chaotic night of no social brakes.

We made the drive down in some of the most interesting driving conditions I’ve ever been in. It was raining in VT, but it let up once we crossed into NH. The roads were wet, and the racing slicks I have on the Saab were hunting and pecking for traction in a way that made my driving experience a white knuckled affair. The odd thing, is that there were no clouds in the sky, and the bright almost full moon lit up the road a deep glossy black. It was pretty amazing, and we all agreed that it could only be a good omen.

Once we got out of deepest darkest NH, we began to pull in some Boston radio stations, and settled on a classic rock station that seemed to be playing the original versions of many of Me First’s songs. This was our second sign that things were going to be awesome that night.

We got to the hotel after a brief miscue on Storrow Drive, checked in and headed to the club in time to see the first opening act finish up. The second act was actually pretty good. Once they left the stage, Keller and I made a beeline for the stage while Friar sourced us some drinks. A big surly bouncer dude was arranging the barriers in front of the stage, and was at first a little leery of our presence.

We weren’t being terribly obnoxious, but we were probably pushing the limits a wee bit. In the interest of keeping things light, we explained that we had driven all the way down from VT to see Keller’s favorite band for his bachelor party. He must have bought it, because he moved the barrier right in front of us out of the way so we could get closer to the stage. I mean, how much of a ruckus could a bunch of country bumpkins in their late 30s (except Mark) cause? He even took some pictures of us being a little more obnoxious than we were before we had won his favor.

How close to the stage were we?

Mmmmm, about this close.

We didn’t get terribly crazy, but we sang along to every song with such vim and vigor that stand in guitarist Scott Shiflett (brother of regular guitarist Chris Shiflett of the Foo Fighters) handed Keller one of his beers. I even got to high five Fat Mike, which made my night.

The show was amazing, high energy, loud, and over way too quickly. They didn’t play all of our favorites, but they did tolerate our heckling with a professionalism that is uncommon to punk groups. The songs they did play were pretty awesome though, including Keller’s favorite Late Night/Double Feature originally from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

After the show, we did a Boston pub crawl, which was a bad idea. We ended up getting back to the hotel around 3, which is as late as I’ve stayed up in the last 5 years. I made it though, despite being a little worse for wear the following day. I attribute my survival to the affect that Red Bull has on me, which I will be blogging on later this week.

I like anagrams almost as much as Mongo love candy. I also love experiments
First up is FS/SS\SF

It stands for Full Suspension Single Speed Super Fly, in case you couldn’t figure it out for yourself. It is somewhat of a bastard child, born from a drunken conversation I had with a certain hairy faced crazyman from Arizona.

I’ve had this project up my sleeve for quite some time now, but I have sort of kept it on the way back burner as there were many other things, much more important things that have been in the way of its completion. Some of it was the availability of a suitable canvas for such a project, but mostly it was the chain tensioner issue.

What issue is that? Well, being a full suspension bike, the rear wheel changes position relative to the chainring through the entire range of motion of the suspension. Have the chain too tight, and the suspension won’t move, have it too loose and it falls off the cogs. It’s a predicament of sorts. Or at least it was. Or maybe it still is, I have yet to battle test this rig. Something has to be in place to keep enough tension on the chain to keep it on the gears, yet also allow the suspension to move freely.

I’d heard of the Yess tensioners from some of my industry peeps, but had yet to see one in real life. The clincher was seeing “Rad” Ross Schnell’s custom SSWC bike. Same suspension linkage, and if it works for him, it ought to work for me right? Let’s hope so.

So I finally got it put all together, but had some hiccups with the chain staying on while tooling about in the parking lot of the shop. After about an hour of painstakingly getting the chainline as straight as possible, and adding tension to the spring in the arm of the tensioner, the chain stayed on no matter how hard I horsed the bike around. Success? We shall see…

So here are the details:

19″ Fisher Superfly 100 with Furley’s Reba Race with pushloc with a tapered crown. It’s a 46mm offset, so we’ll see how it messes up the handling of the G2 geometry. It’s better that you don’t ask how I got the tapered steerer crown assembly, let’s just say, I know some people. The wheelset is a crazy spoked I9 laced to white Flow rims, the cranks, seatpost, seat, brakes, handlebars and stem etc are also from the wreckage of Mr Furley. The gear is 32×20. It weighs 24.15 lbs with pedals and a bottle cage.

The rear brakes don’t really work, and the front ones feel punky and squeal like a piggy. The Pushloc is also pretty jacked up, but I will fix all of that later if this bike proves to be worthy. I’ll post up some more pictures and my findings soon.

Next up is Operation Hairyface

Now, those that have followed the blog for a while know of the shenanigans that go on this time of year. No Shave November is a classic example. Well, I’m pretty handicapped when it coems to this sort of thing.

Here I am on October 1

And here I am on October 20th

Pathetic huh? I’ve had friends come into the shop and say “Hey, I though you were growing a beard”. Bastards….

Anyway, No Shave November has come a month early this year. If you want to play along, you may can be clean shaven no later than November 1. Trimming/grooming is OK, but no clear cutting unless you are defining a style that you are going to commit to until the end of Manuary.

I am not going to commit to a style until Manuary, as I have no idea what my crappy beard will look like.

Hopefully it will be thick like this one.

So at some point during our family hike this weekend, the subject of Halloween came up. No, no, not the crappy metal band, but the actual holiday. You know, the one where you get dressed up as some sort of creature/monster/celebrity and binge on candy?

Right

Well, K-dog is getting a Jango Fett costume from Target for his birthday from one of his grandmothers. If you aren’t going to click the link, I’ll just tell you that Jango is the blueprint for all the Clones that were created to battle the Sepratist Uprising. The sole condition of this blueprinting (besides the pay – which was considerable), is that he had an unaltered clone to raise as his own son. That kid’s name was Boba.

OK, ringing any bells now? Boba Fett? Only the most baddass bounty hunter this side of the Rishi Maze.

I’ve always been a bit partial to the dark side.

Anyways, I decided that I wanted a Darth Vader costume. So when we got home, I hit the internets to try and find my halloween costume. While fully expecting to find some cheap-assed-crappy-plastic-held-to-your-face-with-an-elastic-string kind of affair, I found this:

OH SNAP! And it come with all of this!

Internets, I love you!

The biggest problem (besides my total geekiness -of course) is the expense. The thing costs as much as an AIR9 frame! But it’s a Darth frickin’ Vader costume! I’m almost justifying it in my head right now. I have suspension forks that cost that much. I literally could not have a suspension fork on one of my bikes, AND have a Darth Vader costume. And to be truthful, I’d probably get a lot more use out of a Darth Vader costume than I would a fork mounted on one of my bikes that I rarely ride.

Besides being a Dark Lord of the Sith, Vader is completely awesome. He’s so powerful, he doesn’t even need a lightsaber to get his point across.

That Lord Vader… only he could be so bold…

But in the end, we all find out what a big softy he actually is. Everyone loves the redemption story. Except Mandy. Which is why I would have a tough time explaining a Vader suit.

Which is why I am accepting donations!

Help me blog audience, you’re my only hope…. crrgghr

Help me blog audience, you’re my only hope…..crrgghr

Help me blog audience, you’re my…

Sometimes, it’s good to do something a little different. Instead of doing the bike ride I had extreme delusions of grandeur of doing, the whole family went on the short hike up to Taylor Lodge in Nebraska Notch. It’s pretty close to the house, and is only 1.6 miles to the lodge, but it’s a pretty rugged 1.6 miles.

We had close to a foot of snow fall above 2000 ft on Friday night, and it was all melting. There was a lot of running water on the trail, it was something to behold. The boy actually did very well for a freshly minted 7 year old. The whining was minimal, and he actually got pretty excited to see the lodge, and exhibited some hustle I’ve never seen from him before.

We passed a lot of people, including one family that looked woefully under-prepared, the “mother” was wearing white tennis shoes, the “son” had a big oversized coat on, huge overstuffed pack, and the “dad” just looked pissed. they took forever to trundle past us as we waited on a spot of the trail that was really only suitable for single file traffic. After they finally passed us, we got to a raging stream that was a little too deep to just hop over. It certainly wasn’t suitable for tennis shoes at any rate.

We ended up finally getting over this little obstacle with some family team work, and finished our hike to the Lodge. We chatted with some other hikers who were cold and wet, and wondered how we were dry. They were hiking from Butler Lodge (far away), where they had spent the night, which is why we were dry, because we had just come up from the valley.

Once we started down, the boy decided that he was all done having fun. It’s a tough hike, lots of rocks, which were wet, and whatever parts weren’t exposed, were covered by wet leaves. Either way you sliced it, you had to pay attention to where you put your foot down, or you were going down. We decided that it was time for a Grump Off, as there really is no better way to pull a cranky little boy out of a funk than to push him into it as far as he can go.

The rules: who can be the grumpiest. The prize: being grumpy. After a while, he seemed to figure out that it wasn’t that bad, and we were able to finish the hike with little drama.

We got back to the car in what I would consider a reasonable amount of time, about 3 hours for a 3.2 mile hike over some rocky and wet terrain.

OK, this is going to be hard for me, but I have to give up a couple of bikes that I really like. I have come to terms with the fact that the funnest of our local riding is pretty much over until the snow melts next year, But I have some other devious plans in the works, but they all take money, so off to market they go.

I’ve already posted one up before, had a buyer for it, who ultimately welched on me after about 3 weeks, during which time I could have sold it 3 times over. So here we go again.

This is a large 2009 Milk Dud ano Niner WFO, and it comes with the following:

Stock FSA headset, Thomson X4 stem, Easton Monkey Lite bars, Ergon GE1 grips, Marzocchi 44 tapered fork, XT direct mount front derailleur, Truvative Noir cranks (36-22), GXP BB, XO rear deraillieur, PG990 11-34 cassette, PC991CS chain, X9 trigger shifters, Avid Elixir CR brakes (185/160 rotors). Newly rebuilt Crank Bros Joplin post w/ remote, WTB Devo saddle, WTB Dissent tires (practically brand new) I9 classic hubs (also practically brand new) laced to Stan’s Flow rims with DT Comp spokes.

The frame is 135mm rear spacing, but has the DHX Air rear shock and Maxle rear drop out. super fun to ride, but has been collecting dust lately.

Price is $2500

Next

This one draws a tear to my eye, but:

Large 2009 Niner RIP9, full ano black.

Fox RL120 Fit fork, Cane Creek 110 headset, Thomson X4 stem, Ergon GE1 grips, Race Face Next SL carbon bars, Avid Elixir Mag CR brakes (185/185 rotors), Race Face Next SL cranks set as a double(36-22), King BB, PG990 11-34t cassette, PC991CS chain, Easton EC90 seatpost, WTB Devo saddle, XO triggers and rear derailleur, XTR front deraillieur. Wheels are I9s with I9 spokes laced to Stan’s Flow rims, with Panaracer Rampage tires. This bike also has the Maxle rear axle on it.

All this can be yours for $3000.

And finally

My beloved Salsa Primero

It’s a 49 cm frame (or 56 actual), full SRAM Force group with a Black Box ceramic BB, compact gearing, 50-34 front, 11-28 rear. Easton EC70 seatpost, WTB Devo saddle, EA 70 handlebars, Thomson X2 road stem, Fizik bar tape. The fork is an Alpha Q full carbon jobbie, King headset, and the wheels are Kings laced to Mavic CXP33 rims.

The bike is smooth and responsive, and weighs just a bit over 17 lbs. Not bad for steel eh? It probably has less than 600 miles on it, which is a shame. Someone else needs to love this bike appropriately.

$1700 takes it.

It pains me to let these guys go, but go they must. Feel free to contact me if you have a serious interest, and need additional info or pictures. I will ship the bikes anywhere in the continental US for the prices listed.

I have tons of other random little stuff too, but I’ll be putting that up on the ‘Bay. That is a good weekend project I can do while we hide from the weather, which is supposed to be absolute shite. Our first Nor’Easter is knockin on the door!

OK, first things first. TEAM 29.

I’ve gotten a couple, OK, more than a couple of people interested in flying the colors in 2011. Just because you haven’t heard from me, doesn’t mean you are out of the running. But, conversely, just because you haven’t heard from me, doesn’t mean send me an email every day. I did say that I would let it go to the end of the month, at which time, the selection process will begin.

I think the first wave of interested folks might have been feeling a bit capricious, giving me a “hell yeah” sort of response. To be expected, who wouldn’t want to be a part of this amazing juggernaut? Then the ones that followed were a bit quieter, more mysterious, which I actually found a bit more intriguing.

Needless to say, all inquiries/entries/bribes are going into a special folder where they will be individually reviewed at the appropriate time. This is a serious process, much like picking out your next pet. So many things to think of, like, are you going to still love it after it poops all over your comforter?

Oh, and Lance Armstrong came to Waterbury VT. He totally declined an invitation to go ride Perry Hill on 29ers with me. Actually, he didn’t, but his peeps probably did. Meh. I suppose that’s what you get when you use Facebook as a way to communicate with someone you don’t regularly talk with. I suppose I may have gotten the same response if I had asked Edward Van Halen to play guitar for me at open mic night at the local coffee shop.

Lastly, it’s very important to be alert out there while you are riding your bike. I was almost crushed between two cars when a motorist decided to turn right without noticing that I was right there. Fortunately, having spent a lot of time riding in traffic in my youth, I was able to avoid the collision. So be careful, it’s a jungle out there.

Double flying V. Full on, all across the sky.

What does this mean?

I’ll tell you what it means. There will be less of this,

and more of this.

But for now, there is still some good bike riding to be done in the woods. We are still putting cool bikes together for people too, like this one.

It’s a size small A9C, new Reba XX fork and brakes. All the other parts came off a well loved One 9. It in at 20.5 with pedals, and it’s the right color to be seen in the woods this time of year.

Soon enough, I hope to clear my schedule out so I can take advantage of the remaining good weather this season has to offer us. SSAZ will be coming up before I even know it. I already had to pull the plug on SSWCNZ2010, something that was a bit of a pipe dream anyway. I couldn’t possibly imagine cramming that into this already busting-at-the-seams last half of Offtober. New Zealand would have been awesome to visit, and I will resign myself to wait for another time to go there. I can tell you this though, there is no way in hell I will miss out on our pilgrimage to AZ. Priorities.

I have some more details to put together regarding Team 29. I’m trying to get some ducks lined up, but I’ll post more about  that later this week.

Ride ‘em if you can