Friday News And Views

Stans carbon wheels or just the carbon rims- Available now.

Stan's Carbon Wheel Sets And Rims:

 Stan's announced new carbon Crest based and Arch based wheel sets and rims available for purchase earlier this week. The wheels feature all the usual wheel "blah-blah" and the Stan's BST bead socket technology, yada-yada.....

 The thing I realized when checking out this was that carbon rim prices are coming down.......finally. 

When I got some Enve rims over ten years ago now, (they were Epic  Edge rims then), the rims were $800.00 per rim. Since that time carbon rims from China came along at about half that price and the competition heated up. There were those Derby rims, then another smaller company I cannot recall, then other companies like Whiskey and Stan's started coming along with their stuff. All of this has driven down the cost where you can now get some great product at about half of what those Enve rims would have cost in today's money in some cases.

I think it is also a reflection of the competitive nature of this segment that more rim only offerings are coming. This Stan's rim is now available as a rim only, albeit somewhat reluctantly offered, judging from the response a Stan's rep gave on their Facebook page.

I still think these rims are astronomically priced when you consider aluminum rims are going for about a C note or a little more. I'd be willing to pay more for carbon, but not four to six times more money. Your mileage may vary........

Gravel Worlds Registration Opens Tomorrow!

Set your alarm clocks for 6:00am tomorrow, January 27th, and register for this awesome event. Gravel Worlds will happen August 18th and it has two options- the "full course" option is the 150 miler and the "Privateer" option is the 75 mile course. 

Registration will be held on Athlinks.com which can be accessed via a link on the Gravel Worlds site. For your $80.00 shekels you get a commemorative t-shirt, and some other schwag. It's a very well run event with great people and a nice course. I plan on registering again. This event along with the Renegade Gent's race are two of my favorite events ever.

Solstice 100: If August doesn't work for you to ride Gravel Worlds, well maybe this event that happens in the same area would. Starting out of Malcom, Nebraska, (the General Store there is a must see), this event will be on June 23rd. Registration for this event is also tomorrow at 7:00am. Click here to get to the registration page.

I suspect this will be a very cool event since I heard really good reports about its inaugural running last year. Check it out. $45.00 ducats for a century of Nebraska gravelly goodness with a bunch of rad friends. (Because gravel grinders are your friends, you just may not know them yet!)


 

Silca Tattico pump- High tech heavy metal

High Tech Pump:

When Silca announced this I was...... Well, let's say I was a bit dismissive. I mean, a Bluetooth mini-pump? Really? Then I moved on. But then I was contacted by the rep for this brand and the rep had some sensible points about the pump.

So, let's say that you have had a bit of a puncture, maybe you lost a bit of sealant before the tire quit leaking, and now your tire is under presure, or softer than you'd prefer. Yeah, okay.....time to pump it back up, right? But to what? Most of us are not packing a gauge, and if we are, it isn't really all that accurate. Think about it- before the ride you were careful to set your tires up precisely. Are you going to tell me that no longer matters if you have to pump up your tire mid-ride?

Okay........I get it.

So here's the deal- The Silca Tattico pump has a battery, (CR2032 coin type) and it sends a Bluetooth signal to a free to download app on your smart phone. This will tell you with an accuracy of 2% or less what your psi is. That's better than many floor pump's accuracy, by the way. Okay, so that may be a valuable asset to many of us riding tubeless or that have to have tires set within a certain psi range which is narrow in scope, like say for fat bikes, or plus sized tires, which are notoriously sensitive to air pressure changes.


I showed the image of this pump on my scale because it is made from aluminum. All aluminum. No plastic parts here, dude! It has a heft to it and the parts seem pretty precisely made, much more so than most mini pumps.

There is a lot more to this, and I'll have a lot more to say about it after I review it for RidingGravel.com soon. So stay tuned. This isn't as silly a thing as I first thought, I'll say that much now.

That's all for this week. Have a great weekend and get in some riding if you can!