So, it turns out the automagic timing announcer at the VT50 was a little erroneous. While JayPro did place first in the My Waterbury Business Was Flooded And That’s All I Did This Month category, he was actually 22nd in his racing category and 77th overall. Still absolutely nothing to sneeze at there. Germon’s strong finish got him 12th overall and 4th in his group. I’m suitably impressed and sorry for any confusion with the numbers, they’ve just posted their first whack at the results here

It’s actually pretty cool scrolling though the list and recognizing a lot of customer’s names. I’m hoping that you all had a great race.

Lots of things on it right now. Cool things. Exciting things.

First up, is a build/experiment that I will have put together for this weekend. You’ll just have to wait until Monday to see what it is, but I’ll give you a hint. It will be using one of these:

Cane Creek Angle Set

Also coming up, is the “Soon to be Fall Classic: Leaf Blower”. It’s a fund raiser/social ride put on by our Stowe Mountain Bike Club. Basically, we’ll be riding the whole enchilada in Stowe, it will be a big burly ride for sure, but food will be catered by Frida’s (yum), and there might be one or two adult beverages consumed. There will also be a night ride going off in the Town Loops after dark, if you don’t have lights, don’t worry, I’ll be bringing extra. A donation of $5 is required to borrow the lights.



You will need to sign up to participate, which can be done here. The price is $25, which covers the delicious food and a t-shirt.

Let’s not forget about Halloween. We didn’t do a costume ride last year, but I think we ought to this year.

Trick or Treat

Then there is that magical month of Novemeber. Hunting season, stick season, the harbinger of old man winter. If we are lucky, we’ll be getting some quality rides in without getting shot at. B29 is planning some sort of shenanigan infused ride, on or around November 16th. You will not want to miss it. Details will be forthcoming.

And snow. Snow is definitely on the horizon. It is inevitable. I’m still trying to decide if I plan on standing sideways on the snow or not this winter. I’m leaning towards yes, but where exactly I don’t know. A pass can be a pretty big expense. My equipment is pretty outdated, so some upgrades would be in order, which again, can be pretty expensive.

I’ve toyed with the idea of a split board over the last couple of winters, but that requires some pretty specific equipment, and a similarly kited out buddy who would be willing to accompany you on an adventure or two. Dogs don’t count as buddies in the back country.

I do think I’ll get some XC skis this year though, those aren’t super expensive, and I can maybe get rid of some of the fatness that normally comes with short days and long nights.

Oh, and then there is next year. So many cool things to think about doing on the bike next year…

 

Yup, it’s that time of year. Darkness comes quickly, and not everybody has the time or capacity for a daytime ride. This is where owning a set of lights can be a real benefit.

darkness approacheth

In 2007, I purchased a Niterider Fire Storm, which had a decent burn time and a ton of light. In fact, the light still works well but it is heavy, and the HID bulb burns with a blue light that washes the trail clean of any shadows, making everything look flat. Not too bad, unless you happen to be hurteling down a hurgy gurgly rooty descent, where misjudging the terrain can mean trouble.

Light technology has changed a lot in the last few years. Lights have gotten lighter, batteries have gotten smaller and most importantly, less expensive. LEDs have all but replaced incandescent bulbs, and the brightness that these little bulbs can produce is getting better. Best of all, these lights are getting cheaper.

LEDs are bright

I just picked up a new light system, the PowerLED EVO from SIGMA, rated at 900 lumens. I have no idea what a lumen actually means, but it is a unit of measure pertaining to the brightness of a light. 900 seemed like a good number, it was more than some of the other lights available to me at tha price, but not too far away from the much more expensive 12-1900 lumen lights. This light system retails for $250, weighs less than a pound, and can be mounted on a helmet without being too cumbersome.

headlight on the G-Train

On Sunday night I got a chance to see how the LEDs stacked up against my old turbo bright HID, and was pleasantly surprised to see that they did a fine job of illuminating the trail. The light quality is whiter, and it didn’t seem to eliminate every shadow, meaning I still had some depth perception. This was on the low setting too. The SIGMA has 4 settings, low/med/high and flashing, and I found that even on low, there was ample light for my needs. Burn times are rated at 5.5/2.5/1.5, which I find to be pretty satisfactory for a light that works so well on the low setting. I have yet to go on a social ride that lasted any longer than 2 hours, and let’s face it, night time is also time for beer drinking and football watching.

Now, if you were going to a 24hr race, you would probably want to get a more expensive system, but for an average Joe, this light gets the job done for post work weeknight rides without breaking the bank. I’m going to be trying out a few more lights this season, with the cap at $250. I feel that that is the absolute most anyone should pay for a system that might only get 5 or 6 rides a year. I’ll report back with my findings, or, see for yourself at the ongoing Thursday Night shop rides.

Meet at 6!

 

The Vermont 50 is arguably the biggest, most important mountain bike event in VT. It’s grown huge in size and when registration opens in May it sells out in under an hour. Whether the conditions are fast and fabulous like in 2010 or wet and miserable as in 2009, it’s the race that caps off the season for many Vermonters.

The Bike29 team was out in force this year with Matt Germon, JayPro, and Nat Fish lining up as well as the friends of Bike29 including birthday boy Ian, Jonesy and quite a few the Mountain Moxies. I was on the start list, but sadly sidelined due to a massive hematoma.

Germon's bike, a little muddy, fueled by Coke

Race organizers had to perform a bit of course reroute due to lingering road closures and bridge outages post-Irene. Though the weather was warm and clear on race day, it had rained steadily on the day prior bringing some nice soft, muddy trails for the riders.

Our boys in red(ish – everyone seemed to be sporting the retro jersey this weekend) did fantastic. Germon finished quite early, maybe top 15 overall? Jaypro came through shortly after and I’m fairly certain the automagic race announcer pronounced him first in his category. Considering that over the past month Jay’s training plan consisted of gutting the insides of his Irene-flooded property and operating his business out of the Bike29 retail space, that’s pretty damn impressive.

Great job to the entire team for their efforts at the 50 and for all the results over the season. It’s been great to see so many Bike29 podium shots this year.

Fall is a really great time to ride bikes here in New England. Sure the days are getting shorter, and the temperatures cooler, but there is still plenty of time to get out there and ride before the snow flies. It seems that I can remember riding trails into December a few times in years past, but really it’s late September and October that have given me some of the most memorable “fall rides”.

I’ll never forget the ride I went on the day before my son as born. It was a brilliant day, the colors of the changing leaves were over saturated against the bright blue sky with temps in the mid 70s. A group of us rode Perry Hill. All of it. I rode every difficult line, many of which I have yet to repeat to this day.

My first year doing the VT 50 was a similar experience. I have never once thought about that ride being a race for me, so I just used it as a really long day on the bike. When the weather is great, that ride is spectacular.

It’s also during this time that the repairs in the shop start to wind down, freeing up my time during the day to sneak out for a couple of hours. Having had a pretty difficult year in many respects, I have decided that there is no better time than this fall to recharge my batteries. It’s important to remember to do this sometimes, it can be an overwhelming task to manage a business, be a parent and lead a balanced life. The 3-4 hour rides are over for me this year, it’s time to enjoy the shorter 1-2 hour rides, with no real agenda. No hill repeats. No intervals. No mileage requirements.

Last year I had a pretty full year of riding, so much so that I was pretty burnt out by the time I reached October, where I pretty much squandered an entire month’s worth of good weather off the bike. It was a big regret for me, one that I think I have learned my lesson from. So if you happen to be passing by the shop on a weekday and it’s closed between 2 and 3:30, you can guess I’ll be out on the trails. If you know your going to be out my way, come between 2 and 3:30 and bring your bike!

One of the things that frustrates me the most about living in a place where there are seasons, is that summer eventually leads to fall, which leads to winter. Which leads to spending less time out riding bikes, and more time figuring out how to stay warm. If we’re lucky (or unlucky if you like snow sports) we might have a mild winter like we did in 09/10, we were riding dry singletrack in March. If we are unlucky, we get never ending snow and rain until June, like we did this year.

One of the things that frustrates me the most about the cycling industry, is that all the new cool stuff gets released at the end of summer, and doesn’t really become available until winter.

One of the things that is the topic of many conversations amongst my cycle nerd friends is the new Ibis Ripley. Ibis is one of those classic bike companies that seems to do everything right. They’ve made some of the most lustworthy bikes over the years, and have just released details on their first 29er.

It has all the things I really want in a trail bike. It’s carbon, dead sexy, and has all the features one would expect, tapered head tube, ability to run a 120/140mm fork, 120mm rear travel, cable mounts for a telescopic seatpost, 142mm Maxle rear end. t also has a really cool pivot design. It’s a pretty fancy schmancy DW link suspension that has eccentric pivots, which is an industry first. The way the bike is executed is amazing.

I really want to ride one of these, but it most likely will not be available until there is 3 feet of snow on the ground in New England. Until then, I’ll have to daydream about all the nice places in the southwest where I could potentially be riding such a cool bike once it’s finally available.

I want it now!

I love tires. I like testing new tires out, finding out my likes and dislikes, comparing them to others, you get the picture. Over the years, my tastes have changed in regard to what I’m looking for in a tire. I’m prepared to make certain sacrifices to get what I want. I’m always looking for that delicate balance between light weight, volume, tread type and durability. For example, big tires are seldom light, and while those few tires that are may be light, they aren’t necessarily durable or grippy.

Geax is a company that is relatively new to the Bike29 tire catalog, but I can say that I have been thoroughly impressed with their tire offerings thus far. In fact, I still have the AKA on my white A9C (Rambo in case you forgot). Last year I spent a lot of time on the Saguaro, which I also found to my liking. Between the two, I’d have to say I prefer the AKA because of how fast it rolls, but this test is not about those tires, we’re talking about the new big kid on the block, the Gato.

The Gato has an aggressive, open tread pattern, with a fairly thick casing, and sized at 2.3″, it isn’t exactly a race tire. It’s all there, all 800g of it. I knew it was going to be heavy, my interest in this tire was to see how well it stacks up against other “big boy” tires, like the Nevegal, or locally popular Rampage. Weightwise, the Gato is right in between the two. It’s touted on the company website as a tire for wet and loose conditions.

What I hope to find out about this tire, is how well it handles our soon to be deteriorating trail conditions. I’ve all but hung my racing hat up for the season. It’s time to start riding for fun, which means that heavy grippy tires, and lazy line choices are back in fashion for me. I’ve had great experience with the Nevegal, Rampage and Nobby Nic. How well will this tire ultimately stack up? My expectations are high, but so far, there is nothing in my first few rides on these tires that gives me any indication that I will be disappointed.

I know, you are asking yourself, how many favorite things could I possibly have? The answer is a few.

This little bit of equipment piqued my interest back at the Topeak/Ergon Base camp way back when. I asked Topeak supermodel Eddie O’Dea what his favorite floor pump device was, and he turned me onto the Joe Blow Mountian.

I had another brand floor pump that was sort of doing the trick, but it was wearing out. I tend to go through floor pumps quite a bit in the shop, they get a lot of use, and it seems I wear one out once a year. Sure, rebuild kits are available for some, but the pump just doesn’t work the same as new once you reach a certain point. Also, new stuff comes out, and we all know how much I like new stuff.

New stuff like this Joe Blow Mountain. Looks like a regular old floor pump from the picture doesn’t it? If you were to put it next to a regular old floor pump though, you would notice that the barrel of the pump is frickin huge! As the name suggests, the pump is made for inflating large volume mountainbike tires. Cool! I tested it out, and could get a tire/tube up to 35 psi in about 10 strokes. Very nice. Now here was an opportunity to see if what Eddie told me was true. Could I air up a Stan’s tire with it?

Turns out I can. In fact, every tire I have mounted since the beginning of last week has been with this pump. It takes about 12-15 strokes to get the beads of the tire to snap into the rim, which is really pretty light work. This is fantastic, as this will make last minute/emergency tire swaps so much more available when outside of the shop. I’ll keep one of these in the car for rides and races from now on. I even proved it works out in the field by Stanzing up a set of wheels outside of the Burke house last weekend. Winning!

At $45, the pump is not that expensive. Besides the huge amount of air it can put into a tire, it features an easy to read gauge that only goes up to 75psi. The gauge is pretty accurate ( I tested it agains the Topeak digital pressure gauge), and has more than enough headroom for big tires, MTN and CX alike. Also, it features the Twin Head which they have had on pumps for years. It’s my favorite way to put the pump on the valve, super easy and hassle free.

So there you have it. This is definitely one of my new favorite things.

It’s hard to believe that this weekend marked the 12th annual Burke trip. What once started at the state campground on the mountain, has morphed into a 2 house festival that can sometimes go from Thursday night to Sunday afternoon. It’s hard work partying that hard for that long, and showers and beds make it a lot more manageable. Especially now that we are almost overrun with kids.

Of these 12 years, I think I have only missed 3. The first 2 I missed due to living out in California, and the third I missed for some reason that I don’t remember. I do remember that my absence was the year that it was decreed that attendance to Burke is mandatory, upon pain of ridicule and mockery. Lesson learned.

Due to having to work, the boy in school, etc, I didn’t get up there until Friday night. I got the last beer out of the first keg, a delicious Hill Farmstead Amarillo IPA. If you’d ever had a Hill Farmstead beer, you know how delicious they are, it’s like drinking gold. The PBR was then tapped, and the gloves came off.

The good thing about having 2 houses across the street form each other,is that staging for rides is pretty easy. The bad thing, is that staging can take 1-3 hours to get everyone ready. No one is ever in a hurry, which I have never been able to understand. There must be some sort of law of physics involved: the greater the number of people getting ready for a ride, takes exponentially longer to get ready than a smaller one. When we finally rolled out, there were 15 of us. Almost immediately, the number started to diminish.

This was Nat’s attempt at taking his own route though a muddy crossing. You would never know how deep the mud was…

Not 20 minutes later, his ride was cut short when a stick got picked up in his back wheel and sheared the derailleur hanger in two. We got him detangled, and were close enough to the road so we could call in an extraction team. We went on, and then lost Blue. He’d been off the bike for most of the season due to surgery, and was not feeling the “pace”. When riding, we rode fast, but we stopped a lot. And waited around a lot. Big group ride syndrome in full effect.

We had some locals with us on Saturday, who were gracious enough to lead the ride, which was a nice change of pace, because we actually rode some trails that we often overlook. After about an hour, our group split into two, the other group headed to town to fetch Nat, who we learned had since fixed his bike, and was going to meet us over on Darling Hill. We waited for a while, but at least it was good napping weather…

Our guides had to go, but at this point we knew what we wanted to ride, and knew how to get there, so once we all regrouped, it was game on.  Recent heavy rains made it so that many of the trails we usually use as connectors were closed, so we had to do a bit of orienteering to get ourselves where we wanted to go. It seemed as there was extra climbing, and at least 4 or 5 wrong turns. Eventually we got back to town, where some shuttles to teh house had been called for. A small group of us remained to “do the slow crawl up the hill”, another tradition, in which we stuff our pockets with cans of PBR and ride back to the houses. It’s a 2 beer climb.

We tag out with the folks that were watching the kiddos, get cleaned up, then it’s party mode. Saturday night is the big party, we probably had 30-35 people including kids. It gets loud, raucous and boozy. Tons of food and drinks are consumed, stories of the days various rides swapped, and fun is always had by all. I managed to stay awake until 11 before having to retire.

Traditionally, there is a Sunday ride too, but I was a solo parent. Foisting a grumpy partied-out 8 year old on one of my friends would have been extremely lame of me, so we cleaned up, packed up and said our goodbyes. Almost everyone else hit the road too. I knew that even if I had the opportunity to ride, my body would have gone into revolt. I have not ridden my bike since our trip to Ascutney 2 weeks previously. That little hurricane called Irene really messed things up for a lot of us. Sometimes its good to appreciate the times you do have, and be thankful that you have good people to share them with.

Another great trip, but now it’s back to reality. It’s Interbike this week, so we will most likely get to see some cool new 29er bike products. I’ll be surfing the webs for snickets in between build the awesome bikes I’ll be building this week.

OK, so these aren’t necessarily a 29er specific product, but they are made by a 29er specific company. I’ve been using the Niner Carbon Flat Top bars since February, and I have to say that I like them a lot. I’ve been using low-rise carbon bars for a long long time, and I’ve used just about all of them out there. Easton for years, Answer Pro Taper Carbon, Race Face Next LP, to EDGE/ENVE. This was my first flat carbon bar, so initially I was a little resistant to the change.

Let’s have a closer look at them shall we?

These bars are a whopping 710mm wide, but have nice graphics on the end for easy width tuning. The clamping area is textured for better purchase on the stem, and the graphics are arranged in such a way that they look good no matter which way you run them. And you can run them up or down. Confused? Well, the 31.8mm clamping area is offset 5mm, so when the bars are run “up”, they are completely flat, but flip the bars over, and you get another 5mm of drop. Pretty neat, especially for those that like the front end to be as low as low can be. Also, they come in 4 colors, tang, kermit, red and moondust.



Niner was one of the first companies to offer a wide aluminum bar with an ergonomic back sweep back when they were making just one frame model, the One9. I had a set of these to try out, and they were my first non carbon handlebars in maybe 8 or 9 years. While I liked the backsweep, I was reminded why I did not like aluminum bars. I felt that they were a little on the harsh side of things, and they beat up my hands quite a bit. This was also before I started using Ergon grips too, so I will admit that my grip of choice at the time might have had something to do with it. I promptly switched back to Easton Monkey Lite bars and felt better almost immediately.

Move forward a couple of years, and wide flat bars are all the rage, now with a few carbon ones thrown in the mix. One of the things that I have found over the last 2 seasons, is that I am preferring the front end of my bikes to be lower. For comparison’s sake, the front end of my Jet RDO has effectively dropped 1.5″ over last year’s aluminum version, just from changing my stem to a 0° rise, and now using a flat bar instead of a low riser.

Oh, and another thing, I went from running an already wide-esque 680mm low rise to a 710 mm flat. It is a pretty significant difference. My stance on the bars is now even wider, but I feel as if I have better control of the bike. It makes for better climbing, as I don’t have to lean over the front of the bike to keep the wheel down. And because I’m not doubled over, and with my arms more open I feel I can breathe a little easier. The extra leverage is nice too when you have to pull on the bars, or get out of the saddle. Descending I feel I can get into a very comfortable position, and steering is as easy as dropping your inside shoulder and applying pressure to the grip. It is important to remember how wide you ride though, there is one spot on Perry Hill where the trees are 712mm apart…

So back to the ride. I don’t use carbon bars because they are light, blingy and expensive. Ok, those are all very valid reasons, but they are not the real reason. The carbon does a very good job of absorbing a lot of movement that your body would have to compensate for. I’m not talking about inches of movement, that’s what suspension is for. I’m talking millimeters or less. Carbon bars move, much in the same way an airplane’s wings will flex during flight. Think about how uncomfortable it would be if the wings didn’t flex, ugh, I’m getting sick…. As I mentioned earlier, my hands and forearms got pretty beat up riding rigid aluminum bars, which is why I prefer the feel of carbon. I don’t get beaten up anymore.

Not all carbon bars are created equal though. I’ve had some bars that were too flexy, in fact, I remember a set I had a few years back that I could actually see orbiting the stem as I was out of the saddle on a steep climb. I stopped using those almost immediately, and went to a brand that I knew worked for me. Last summer I got my first set of ENVE (previously EDGE) bars, a low rise 700mm bar. It felt solid, it displayed good comfort without feeling flexy, and steering was dead on. The Niner bar has a similar feel, although I do detect a bit more movement out of these bars. This could be attributed to the 10mm extra width and flat profile. They still feel solid, and are very comfortable on long rides.

Overall, I am very happy with the choice I made to run these bars. While carbon is never cheap, I feel the performance is worth the extra coin. To top it all off, Niner backs their handlebars with a 5 year warranty against manufacturer’s defects. Now that is saying something! My word of advice though, is to use a torque wrench when installing them. Even though carbon is durable, it isn’t fool proof…