Saturday, September 03, 2005

New 29"er News!

EuroBike is going on in Germany right now, and a bit of news for 29"er fanatics has come from there. It seems that Salsa, a small bicycle and component company based in Bloomington, Minnesota, are going to release a new rim for 29"er use.

In the past, Salsa has produced the now classic Delgado, which turned out to be a workhorse rim for many 29"er advocates. Now, Salsa has seen fit to produce a rim specifically made for 29"er usage! The new rim, (Name unknown at this point) is to be a disc specific rim. Most importantly, it is slated to be 29 millimeters wide! Right now, rims in that width neighborhood are few and far between for the 29"er. This news would be enough for most of us, but to add icing to the cake, Salsa expects these rims to come in at a sub- 500 gram weight! I find this to be a tall order, but if Salsa can pull this off, then they are to be commended. I only hope that the strength is as astounding as well. Release date is scheduled for the Spring of '06. I will definitely be building a set of wheels around these rims utilizing my purple anodized Surly singlespeed disc hubs that are chillin' out here at Guitar Ted Labratories.

The other bit of news comes from the high country of Colorado. White Brothers Suspension has been secretly field testing it's new "platform" suspension technology for a year now. Having passed Mike Curiak's thrashing, White is now ready to unleash this technology on all the rest of us! The new technology should be just what the 29"ers out there need to bring their front fork technology up to par with what the 26"ers have.

Well, the news keeps tricklin' in! Interbike should be very interesting! New 29" stuff, Monkeytron nuttiness, and there is a high probability that Mr. 24 himself will be in a vendor booth! A chance to shake the hand of the man whose words are golden in Lost Wages! Awesome!

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