Labor Day Weekend

Well, it is Labor Day Weekend and I will be stuck at home, not riding, as my wife is on call at the hospital all weekend. I will be out with my amazing kids doing some fun, non-bicycle related adventures though. In the meantime, here are some photos with comments. I hope you enjoy them and that you have an awesome Labor Day weekend, where ever you are.

I went to an amusement park last weekend. These places must be a mechanical engineers dreamworld.

The wooden roller coaster was a paragon of flex! The whole structure moved a foot or more to the outside of the downhill curve when the cars passed by. Amazing! I bet a lot of folks wouldn't ride the contraption if they saw how much it moved and shook while folks went around the circuit.

Some crazy European 29"er goodness. More proof that the Euros will bring more options to big wheelers everywhere. (Once it catches on there- which it is well on the way to doing.)

Most promising rubber for 29"ers coming in 2010 for the Mid-West..........

Kenda's Slant 6

Maxxis Ikon.............

Michelin Wild Racer................
















And I am sure there will be others!

Have a great weekend and roll those bicycle tires for the last blast of summer 2010! (Even though it feels very Fall-like here already!)

Eurobike 29"er Thoughts And Comments

<==Curious Euros were test riding 29"ers like crazy while the 26"ers stayed clean. (Image by "c_g")


I have to say that I have been very blessed to find two awesome contributors to Twenty Nine Inches, and one of them resides in Europe. Not only that, but he gets to go to the trade shows and festivals, feeding Twenty Nine Inches with all manner of timely European based 29"er news.

I  also have believed for some time that the next big push for 29"ers would come from Europe. You could see it starting to happen last year at Eurobike. A few companies made debuts of bicycles and components at Eurobike instead of at Interbike. To my mind, it signaled a shift in thinking on the part of the manufacturers and brands. Now, it would only be a matter of time before more  Europeans were influenced by 29"er sightings. What I didn't realize though, was how World Cup racing would influence 29'er thought in Europe.

Last year 29"ers made some impressive gains into the World Cup ranks and this year the trend continued with European racers getting on board 29"er hard tails at some events. This did not go un-noticed by the European mountain bikers, but the biggest surprise is how hard the manufacturers pushed 29"er intros at Eurobike this year.

It all added up to what may be a perfect storm of sorts for fans of big wheelers. Not only were the people interested and curious about 29"ers, there was plenty of product to satisfy that curiosity there at the show. This will now be an interesting thing to watch: That being how the European cycling community reacts to what they have now seen and tried at the show. If the dealers sell through the hard tails they are testing the waters with for 2011, I think it will bode very well for 29'er aficionados all over the world. More components, more bicycles, and more designs will be produced. Already we are seeing several new tire designs being promised at Eurobike 2010. 

All that and Interbike 2010 yet to come. This is going be an interesting year in big wheeling!

Have a great weekend and enjoy your Labor Day holiday if you are in the U.S. Ride yer bikes and have a good time!



 

That's Gonna.......No- It DID Leave A Mark!

<===Ultra-endurance rigid single speed?

I wanted to go out for a longer gravel road ride Wednesday since we got a soaking Tuesday night which made off road choices not so good. I decided to give the Fargo the nod. I looked at it and figured I should just give it the once over before I went out the door.

Good thing I did, because I saw a double butted spoke just flopping around! The nipple must have corroded in half, because the spoke was intact. I'll have to get that torn apart and repaired later, but for now, I was scampering around for another wheel set. Fortunately, I have a few around! Within a few minutes, I was ready to roll.

I kitted up and hit the streets to the north headed for some gravel. Then I turned left to a bike path coming off the sidewalk I was on rolling off a bridge approach. I was carrying too much speed into the corner, dropped the front wheel off the edge of the bike path, and the tire grabbed that edge and pulled the bike downwards. I hit my knee, wrist, and left side of my rib cage really hard on the cement.

The cement had that "just brushed" finish on it to, so it was like hitting 80 grit sand paper at 12 miles per hour. To say that hurt would be an understatement. I definitely have a new found respect for road racers that hit the deck, get up, and continue on. 

Well, I was bleeding, so I got back on my bike, and went home.

The Bike I Want

<===The New Salsa Chile Con Crosso: Close, but not quite....

There are a lot of bikes out there in this world and you'd think that there would be one for every purpose, every whim and desire possible. Well, you might think that, but you'd be wrong.

I'm guilty of the following as anybody. The desire to have everything tweaked to your utmost desire, and then not like it afterwords. I had a custom frame or two built, and I think it just made the "tweaker" in me even worse. I am not satisfied with either of those two frames, and in fact, I am not even sure I like them at all much of the time.

Weird, huh?

So, with that in mind, take the following with a grain-o-salt, because even if this bike exists, (which I am pretty sure it doesn't), I may end up not liking it at all, or at least most of the time, like my two custom bikes I have. 

The "Perfect" Gravel Bike: Okay, so here is the thing. I want to get a lightweight, comfortable, versatile gravel road bike. Less mountain bike than I have now, and more road bike-ish. This bike would be "old school" in today's road bike terms with slacker geometry, and weirder with clearance for up to 42mm tires. It would have cantilever brakes, not calipers, for mud clearance on B Maintenance roads. It would have at least three bottle mounts, and if it had a steel fork, I would have two more water bottle bosses there too. Stand over clearance would be minimal and shouldering the bike would be a capability that would be a must.

Cyclo-cross rigs have too tall a bottom bracket, and not quite enough clearance for 42's, typically. Touring bikes are too long, too heavy, and again, typically do not clear tires that big. Oh yeah- Did I mention it has to be single speed-able? Also, preferably made from steel, since it rides so nicely when designed right, or a money-is-no-object spec of titanium, which would be primo. 

So, there is the basic layout. I'll leave it at that. I think it would make a killer gravel road bike, but you know: I may end up finding out somethings that would make me want to refine the idea, and then, well........you know! 

The circle starts all over again!

Bike Shop Tales: Brazing

Coming from a jewelry back round, I had previous experience that came in handy once.....

Several things about working at Advantage Cyclery were a lot of fun. I had quite a diverse group of fellow workers and lots of things would be going on most of the time, so that it usually was never boring there. (With the special exception of November) We had a frame builder that worked there for awhile, we had a few great athletes that came through there while I worked there, and we had more than our fair share of characters.

One of the things I got to do once actually called upon some special experience that I had learned as a jeweler. Brazing and torch work were second nature to me then. Of course, I was using tiny torches and working on some pretty expensive materials. Bicycle torch work called for bigger torches and the materials were not so precious, but the basic techniques were similar.

This all came into play when we had a customer with an older Fisher steel mountain bike that was fitted with an under-the-chain-stay "U" brake. The customer disliked the placement of the brake since they used the bike as a touring rig, and getting underneath there to release the brake in times when a flat tire occurred was a pain. Especially with bags on a rack that were filled with......well, whatever these folks carted around!

Anyway, Tom asked if I could braze some cantilever studs on the seat stays of this bike, and I agreed I could try that. The parts were ordered while I went about removing the old brake, studs, and any trace of them from the chain stays. We re-routed the brake cable along the underside of the top tube. (I can't remember if I brazed on cable stops here, but I think I did!) Then we got a cable stop to work off the back of the seat binder, and finally, I prepared the seat stays and the bosses for brazing. The job went off without a hitch, really, and the frame was off for a repaint of the Team Fade, which has always been a favorite paint scheme of mine for a Fisher mountain bike. 

I guess I could have veered off into a frame building career right there, but it didn't take root. I kind of regret that. I think it would have been a rewarding experience. Well, until I read some of the flak surrounding custom frame building! I guess every job has its pitfalls.

Bike Shop Tales should return next week! Stay tuned!

Well, That Didn't Work!

I went to work tweaking on the Origin 8 set up recently. I took off the 120mm fork and installed a proper 100mm fork. The wide rim/wide tire combo which wasn't working so well were traded in for a narrower rim/tire combo that went into the frame just fine.

I then tried to figure out the brake set up in the rear, which was a bit tedious, then I contemplated the handle bar. Was it too high? Well, I thought, a lot of folks seem to be running bars higher, why not give it a try? 

Out on the south side of The Camp, (because the Horse People have invaded Cedar Bend, leaving their "steaming piles" all about), I went out and found the ground to be really, really dry and hard. Like concrete hard. The rains that had come before, which were very hard, worked up a bunch of fine sand to the surface, which was spread out over the rock hard dirt in many places. Classic loose over hard pack. Well, it got me.

It was an off camber left hand turn, slightly down hill too. Front tire went away and BOOM! I hit the deck hard on my left shoulder and hip. The shoulder was already messed up from something earlier this summer, and this didn't do me any favors, I am sure of that. Oh well.....

Then I noticed a problem in the rear wheel/brake area. The wheel locked up and I could tell from the sound it was a classic rotor/caliper interference issue. Hmmm...........was the brake caliper moving in the slotted mounting holes? I didn't have time to mess around, I just put the rear brake on and jammed the bike rearwards to undo the effects, and it worked. No more rear brake use on the rest of the ride though. Turns out the adjusters had rattled loose allowing the rear axle to slip forward. Hmm......guess I need some jamb nuts now. Oh yeah...........and a lower front handle bar! Gotta weight that front wheel a bit better!

I'll be back......

Bike Shop Horrors! "Holey" Bike

I had a three tube carbon Trek come in for a flat repair and clean up the other day. I noticed some nasty gouges on the non-driveside chain stay. Upon closer inspection, I found it was actually worn through!

This was beyond where the crank arm could have contacted it. Maybe a case of bad heel rub? Who knows, but this frame looks like it came in contact with a grinder to me!

Here is a shot of most of the chain stay to the drop out. It looks like a metallic dog chewed on it some.

Sorry for the out of focus shot, but you can see other things in this image.

Can anybody find "Otto" and its owner?