Here are a couple of bikes that I built up for the floor. I had some parts laying around that didn’t seem to be doing anything except collect dust, and lets face it, shifters aren’t that sexy to look at unless they are attached to a bike.

Here is a large Root Beer Niner EMD, built up with a X7/X9 9 speed kit, Truvative Stylo cranks, Race Face seatpost, bars and stem, Rock Shox Reba Race fork with Push-loc, Stan’s ZTR Arch wheelset and Maxxis Aspen tires.

I had a little bit of free time, and it pays to keep your assembly skills sharp. Especially when learning to set up new products. I like to know what works with what. I had a brand new set of Bontrager Race wheels laying about from Mandy’s SF100, so I put them to use on this medium Kermit Air 9.

I put a full X9 2×10 group on the bike, a 2011 Reba RLT fork, and rounded the build out with some Bontrager Rhythm components and some nice green Ergon grips.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday.

I had every intention of blogging from the road, as I knew I would have plenty of free time. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate that much, and we only got in one ride while we were in PA. And even that ride was cut short due to mechanical issues.

I’m sure you would all love to hear about how the boy was whipping my butt at lightsaber dueling on the Wii playing Force Unleashed as he regularly does, but I actually learned a few new moves, and struck a little fear into a gloating 7 year old’s heart. That was about the most exciting thing we did on Thanksgiving Day.

We had fully planned on attending the 200th Annual  Tice-Medellin Thanksgiving Day Ride at South Mountain, a ride we latched on to last year. Except this year, it was snowing big wet snow flakes, and we weren’t feeling up to it. So we bailed, and went right on to eating crap, turkey dinner, drinking, and playing Wii lightsabers.

Holidays in PA are binary in nature, and Friday was round 2. We repeated the dinner, but not the Wii dueling. Instead we took the dog and boy for a good long walk, and made a quick trip to the store for some good beer, sorry, Yuengling has it’s place and all, but… Then we sat about on our arses and watched the last day of the 48hrs Bond-a-thon on SyFy.

Finally we rode on Saturday. We started out at a balmy 36° at one of our favorite local trail stashes, Salisbury.

Somehow we managed to bring the right clothing for such a chilly ride. We had a shortish window, but the sun was shining, and dammit, we were going to have us some fun. We dropped in to some ultra fun leaf strewn PA rocks. I love riding there.

Shreddie was a fun bike to have at my disposal that morning. The climbing was a bit tough on my ever growing behind and total lack of cardio fitness, but I cleaned every section I attempted. There are some pretty tricky rock gardens here.

We got about 50 minutes in, just about as far as we could get from the car when Mandy informed me that she had a problem.

Oops.

Oh well. The technical nature of the trail pretty much made us ride at walking pace anyway. Mandy was able to use her skills to pedal out on just her spindle. Snaps for Mandy, they don’t just give the SSUSA belt out to anyone you know.

Here is the ride profile. Worth every second, and you should most definitely give these guys all your love and support for creating and maintaining these trails.

Now we’re safely back in VT, despite watching what could have been a much more serious car/deer collision happen about 100 yards head of us. No people were hurt, but the deer was not so lucky, and neither was the car that tagged it.

This is my Monday, a whole pile of bikes to build, most of them 29ers. Don’t worry, you’ll get to see them.

Headed to PA for the holidays, and bringing bikes.

I will hopefully be posting up things of interest over the weekend, provided anything interesting happens. I have heard that the Bond-a-thon will be on the SciFi network, and I think it is time for the yougling to start getting accquainted with the classics. I saw Spy Who Loved Me in the movie theater back in 1977. While it wasn’t as awesome as Star Wars, I still loved it

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving everyone!

Things can get really out of control very quickly if you let them. Take, for example, my t-shirt collection. I wear t-shirts every day, and I have a lot of them. So many that I often have to “rotate the stock” every so often, because I get sick of wearing the same ones over and over and over. Over the last few years, I’ve become somewhat of a t-shirt snob, and typically only wear shirts made by American Apparel. I like the fit, and they make my guns look big, and more importantly, make me look skinny (unless you look at me from the side).

Because I’ve been fortunate enough to have a business that often utilizes sweet promotional t’s, I’ve gotten a fairly extensive pile of B29 branded shirts. Add that to my fairly extensive Twin 6 collection, and before you know it, things are out of control.

Now apply those same rules to my cycling clothing, and all of a sudden you have a real problem.

Both of these piles have spent the last few months vying for supremacy of the closet. Go for one item of clothing and seven others ambush you from behind. I am also the king of procrastination when it comes to dealing with stuff like this, so this time, it was pretty bad. When it does come time though, I deal with it  in its entirety. Nothing was passed over. Especially the socks.

I effectively got rid of about half of the stuff that I had in the closet. I moved the out-of-season stuff into storage bins, which were then banished to the evil vortex that is the basement. Any sock that had a hole in it was discarded with extreme prejudice. It took up my entire Sunday, but it needed to be done.

I’m beginning to get a clean streak in me. Lots of new 29ers are coming into the shop on Wednesday, not to mention all the accessories and little things that I sell lots of during the holiday season. There is a lot of cleaning to be done.

I’ve started cleaning the bathroom at the shop. Laugh, go ahead, but it is no small feat. it’s a small poorly lit room, that houses not only my massive tire collection, but about 10 years worth of old and weird bike stuff stashed in big boxes. And the recycling. And old issues of BIKE.

Not to mention that the bathroom in any bike shop is pretty dirty. No ring around the toilet though. I do try to keep up on that, as it is a pretty unsightly thing.

Do you know what you use to take ring around the moon out?

Oh, I made a funny about cleaning. As I was taking Seam-a-lam-a-ding-dong out before bed time, I looked up and saw the full moon, and a very distinct ring around it. It was one of those ethereal sort of experiences. Spooky, but not ominous, and about one of the most amazing occurrences of nature I have seen this year. I put it up there with the Northern Lights, and it totally kicks double rainbow’s ass. I went back inside and grabbed my crappy camera and tried to capture the ring.

ya gotta look real hard

I had to do a little doctoring to the picture, but I assure you it was there. That’s what you get when you use a little point and shoot. Not the most appropriate device for capturing beautiful events in nature.

But totally suitable for capturing a couple of things that I found rattling about the shop.

Pink King hubs, 20mm front, 135mm steel driveshell rear, laced to Stan’s Arch rims with DT Comp spokes and purple DT nips. There are a couple of cosmetic dings on the rims, but the are straight and true. I’ll let them go for $450

And a White Brothers Fluid 130. I’ll let that go for $200.

You know where to find me if you need to know more about these delectable deals.

…and maybe a little not so cool stuff. Let’s just get the unpleasant complaining about my stupid helmet cam out of the way. For whatever reason, I simply can not get mine to work as it should. It makes all the beeps and boops it’s supposed to, it just doesnt take the movies. I think I’ve tried just about everything, except calling the company, which I will be doing today.

The lamest part about it, is that I thought that I was capturing some really good footage from Saturday’s ride out in Town Loops. JayPro (aka Shatner), Shaun (aka Shackleton), M2, E-Dog and myself hit the Town Loops for a chilly spin on the trails. It was cold and windy, and the trails were a little slick, but we had a great time chasing each other through the woods. Shaun had an amazing wipeout right in front of me that would have been so fabulous to share, it was low speed, and took forever. It wasn’t so much catastrophic as it was bumbling. Oh well, it just motivated me that much more to get this whole camera thing sorted.

And on to the good stuff.

I love the west. I like it here just fine, but there are so many things I miss about being out there. Big mountains, big sky, and more importantly, the beer and the food. Sometimes the planets align and the west comes to me – thank you Shaun!

Ska Brewing Company. My first hangover at SSWC09 was served to me in Durango at the brewery. It’s an impressive building, with an impressive array of beers, which are also available in cans outside of town. My favorite, the Modus Hoperandi.

New Belgium Brewing. Sure, you can get this in just about every other state except VT, but it is still awesome. My favorite, the Ranger IPA. Mandy hates it, which is great because it means it’s all mine!

And food. I love the food of the southwest. Iron Mike brought back a string of dried red chilies from Santa Fe when he was out there this fall, and I managed  to get my hands on a few.

It’s really fueling my stoke to get out to Tucson. The riding will be awesome, as will the company, and best of all, it will be WARM!

It’s been unseasonally warm up here over the last week, with temps in the mid 40s, sometimes getting up to 50. Decent enough for riding bikes in the woods. Nope, wait a minute, it’s still rifle season. Even though there is no snow on the ground to aid the hunters in tracking their quarry, I can assure you they are still out there. Again, gunshots rang out pretty close to the house this morning.

Stowe Town Loops is the only local trail system within town limits, which theoretically means there is no hunting, but I’ve seen my fair share of dudes with blaze orange flannel and guns out there. I’ve also heard that the Millstone trails are open to mountainbiking and closed to hunting because of the same town status. I think it’s safe to say that it probably pays to be very careful, and be visible. A lot of private land abuts both of these places, and bullets don’t care about property lines.

I choose to stay out of the woods if I am alone, but would ride with a group in either of the above mentioned places. We’ve had such a good season, I mean, we were riding singletrack in March! I can give the woods up for a couple of weeks so folks can hunt in peace. It’s difficult though. Trail conditions are still pretty good, but Old man winter is coming, and I think he is pissed.

Poor Seamus is so bored. He has the unfortunate problem of being deer colored, and he tends to stick his black, white and tan tail up in the air and wag it as he bounces along. Even tough he has a little orange coat, I still don’t feel right about taking him anywhere in the wild. Poor little fella.

Gonna try and do some riding this weekend probably on some gravel.

In my lameness, I have not really attempted to ride my bike in any way shape or form for the betterment of my fitness. 45 minute pokes in the woods are fun, but don’t really do much except pass the time. Now that must change. I have that big ride in Arizona coming up in February that I ought to be ready for, and 48 miles in the desert just doesn’t ride itself you know…

So I suppose I actually have to get out there and ride some, whether I like it or not.

Some of my friends have already logged some trainer time, and while I think about jumping on the hampster wheel, I can’t quite bring myself to do it. What I really need to do, is get my lazy ass out there on the orange bike and grab some gravel road miles and suffer in the cold boredom that is winter riding here in VT.

That first ride is always the hardest, because it only means that there will be months and months of the same cruel slogging through mushy dirt roads. But it must be done. After those first few painful miles, it gets a little easier, and soon the transition can be made from the shortish flat rides to the longer ones with the serious climbing added to the distance. It’s practically like starting from zero again.

But while I’m not doing that, I am tweaking and refining my weapon of choice for the big ride. I’m gonna hopefully get some off road miles on it over Thanksgiving in PA, just to make sure it is truly battle ready. SSAZ is not the only thing this bike has to be ready to throw down for… Besides Singlespeed-a-palooza in May, there is also SSUSA to consider, which is to be held in CO at a date TBD. And SSWC is to be held in Ireland also TBD.

Seems like I got a lot on my plate already, and it isn’t even 2011 yet!

I’m also furiously growing my pathetic beard so that I can try to have some good ironic facial hair for these big rides. It is no secret that Dejay can grow awesome ironic facial hair almost overnight. I cannot.

I haven’t done any kind of facial grooming since September 30th, yet this is all I can come up with. It’s at the point where it does do a good job of keeping the cold off my face, but I’m secretly hoping for some sort of tipping point to occur – when a certain amount of time might pass and BWOON! all of a sudden it’s out of control. I couldn’t be so lucky.

Instead I’ll probably end up having to manscape some sort of a goofy moustache or beard.

I had fully intended on making some fun bike video bloggage of Shredward as he appears in nature, but it seems that during the “great computer crash of 2010” I lost all of my video capabilities on my craptop. Watching anything on the Youtubes is painful at best, unless you really love hurky jerky stop motion footage. I found this out when I was suddenly inspired by an afternoon of listening to VanHalen and taking crappy video with my decrepit Canon Powershot. I had fully intended on delivering a video tour of Shreddie, but I was thwarted.

Meh.

And you know what? I’m probably not going to get another laptop any time soon. It’s just another expensive device that takes my free time away. And you can count on the fact that as soon as I get a laptop or what ever sort of device that comes next, it’s successor is bound to come out within two weeks, and it will be twice as awesomer and twice as cheap. Unless someone wanted to give me the gift of a new Macbook Pro. That would most likely break my cycle of electronic woes, and generate a deep run of good karma for the donator. Not begging, just saying…

But if any of you are Facefriends on mine, you can check out a video on my profile from this Saturday taken during our bike club social ride. The rider ahead of me had a camera mounted under his saddle facing rearward, which actually gives a pretty cool aspect of the trail we were riding. I didn’t know I was being filmed, or I might have tired to ride a little faster/smoother/better, and not swear so much.

This video did inspire me to actually figure out how to use my now totally obsolete Contour, non-HD camera (which came out almost immediately after I bought it) for what little remains of the season. I mean, if I had been filming more this summer, I would have had proof that I actually did ride my bike.

And I might have had some spectacular crash footage that I could use as a perpetual excuse for an injury that could have potentially prevented me from doing so many things. Like not doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, feeding the dog or taking out the trash. Or blogging for that matter. Or blogging about nothing else.

But enough about that. Tomorrow there will be a facial hair update! Oh, it isn’t going well…

A little while back I asked if anyone wanted to be on the B29 Team for 2011. I received a lot of responses, and while I wish I could have had everyone be on board, I had to be pretty judicious as to who made the cut. It is a very short list.

Next up is Chris Muddiman. Here is his story:

Chris also likes beer and Star Wars, so that makes him pretty much OK in my book.

His blog is well worth a read too.

Yeah, I really like this. A lot.

I got about an hour on it out on the Town Loops. I was grinning ear to ear the whole time. This whole full suspension single speed is the same sort of awesome as hot tub time machine, or bacon double cheeseburger. It even has the same number of syllables. That’s how you know it’s awesome.

The SF100 was meant to be a no holds barred, ultra lightweight XC racing machine. While it is stiff and light (the frame at a mere 4.7 lbs with rear shock), it isn’t stiff enough for out of the saddle pedal mashing. The full carbon swingarm and suspension linkages do flex a little when you are applying the power, or are jibbing and bonking off of obstacles on the trail. I’ve buzzed the tire on the rear end of the bike several times during the initial test runs.

Also, the BB height was too low for my tastes. I smacked the pedals a fair amount on things I thought were not so big, so that was a big sticking point for me.

The suspension felt really good though, I never felt like I was getting robbed of any power on out of the saddle climbs. I also liked the slacked out feeling that the non-G2 fork gave to the front end. It wasn’t exactly choppered out or anything, but you could feel a difference. It gave the bike a very playful feeling, which was both good and bad. Good in that it encouraged rough housing the bike down the trail, bad because the rear end flex and low BB height brought reality back in an annoying fashion.

Add the constant loosening of the bolts, and I was all done with this toy.

Enter my Jet 9, formerly known as Pale Horsie. That poor bike was built for one thing and one thing only, and that was to race the VT50. Well wouldn’t you know, 3 VT 50s have passed and I have yet to throw my leg over a Jet of any kind to “compete” on. I’m not sure where to assign the FAIL, but it is a fail nonetheless. Pale Horsie did pull through for Joe however. Joe surprised all of us by not only actually showing up, but actually finishing the race on Pale Horsie.

My lightweight wheels, XX drivetrain and 19 gears were stripped from the Jet, the crazy wheels and salvaged Furly parts were stripped from the Superfly, and about 2 hours later, Shredward was born. It took that long because I had a heck of a time getting the Yess tensioner to work on the Jet frame.

You can see that it is a pretty tight fit in there, but it does actually clear the chainstay. Barely. The chain wraps around the Endless rear cog and tensioner so tightly, that if I were to get a flat or tear the rear tire, the entire chain and tensioner would have to be removed to get the rear wheel out of the bike. Certainly not ideal. Plus, the annoying sound of the chain dragging over the top roller pully is still there. While it doesn’t seem to be causing any drag, I still hear it, and if I can hear it, I feel like I’m getting robbed.

But on the trail? WOW! What a difference. Stand on it, and the bike goes. The back end of this bike is much stiffer than the SF100, with most of the stiffness being appreciated in situations where off-camber rooty sections seemed to just disappear. There was some small launches, root ball bonks and some corner railing, and it all added up to seriously big fun.

I left the Pro Pedal off for 99% of the ride. I only turned it on once when I attempted to make a climb up a very steep double track. I ended up walking, but it had everything to do with the motor, not the bike. In fact, I was very impressed at what the bike would actually do with my lack of strength. Some of the very punchy and technical ups we encountered simply vanished. There’s one climb in in particular that is difficult at best, the approach is a low speed, hard left turn over some off camber whales, around a tree, up some rocks, another left over another pile of root covered rocks, followed by a chunky upthrust of shale fins. I climbed it as easily as I would a flight of stairs.

This just proves what I’ve been saying to folks all along, the Jet is by far one of the most pedaling efficient bikes out there. Those that already own a Jet know this. Slapping one gear on it and climbing technical singletrack out of the saddle proves this. It just doesn’t get much better.

The best part of the ride was at the end. Bear’s Run is a little gem of a trail that takes you out the back side of the Loops. A relatively new trail, it’s a fast and flowy bench cut that has a couple of 180° switchbacks that can be met with speed, and very few damp spots. The trail gets flowier that faster you go, and on a full suspension bike it’s as smooth as a stick of butter.

Well here it is. I was on a full suspension bike. And because I had 1 gear, there was no SMACK/SLAP/CAPINK!! of the chain bouncing off my chainstays. That’s right. Silence. It was dreamlike. I’d sort of become accustomed to that sound acting as a gauge for how fast I should be going, lots of slapping -too fast, not enough slapping -go faster. This time, nothing. Silence. I went really fast.

And silence, was golden.