The Evidence

<===Just in case you were wondering....


I figured I had better proffer evidence of my Badger for those who have been curious. Here is where I'm at so far with it.

You can see that the frame has been designed from the get go for drop bars, but what you might not be seeing is that the fork has been designed for drop bars also.

The fork? Yep! It has a longer axle to crown length than a lot of rigid forks out there. Rob Pennell's idea here was to make it so the head tube didn't have to be freaky long and the fork blades, being longer, would make for a more compliant ride. The fork also could be swapped out for a 100mm travel suspension fork without changing the geometry too much. It's a nice option to have.

This all lets me use a "standard" stem with a "normal" rise and still have my hand position be only a couple inches below my seat height while in the drops. (which is the proper way to ride off road drop bars) The bars are the Origin 8 Gary bars, which I can not really find fault with and are much less expensive than Midge Bars are. I would pick the Midge over the Gary any day if it were not for the extreme difference in price which I do not feel justifies the minute differences between the two bars. I am also going to try the Tektro linear pull compatible drop bar levers on this build too. So far I have to say that the lever shape and feel look to be very promising.

The wheels are the special Bike 29 Royale set that use King ISO disc hubs and I have the Stan's Flow rims on these. I mounted up some wire bead ExiWolf tires and they aired right up with a floor pump. Cool! The rotors are a spare set of Avid BB-7 rotors with a 185mm up front. I will be getting some Avid BB-7 calipers here sometime soon.

The head set is a silver King headset that I recently got and it matches the silver Thomson post and stem.

So that is where I am at so far, just so you all know.............stay tuned!



<===The "TDVSL" set up.

One thing I forgot to mention from yesterday was my stem/handle bar set up on the XXIX+G. I used a combination of a Salsa CroMoto stem and Moto Ace 17 degree bar to achieve what I call the "TDVSL" ideal. What is "TDVSL" you ask? Well, that would be an acronym for "Team Dicky Virtual Stem Length", that's what. You see, Rich Dillen is the consummate tinkerer. I like that about him. He does all the lab rat experiments, I read about the results on his blog, and apply knowledge where necessary. That is how I came up with "TDVSL". Dicky arrived at the ultra short stem ideal and it seems to be working for him, so I thought that I'd give it a try. Only thing is, I did it a little more stealth like with the 17 degree bar, which allows me to use a more "normal" stem length. Either way, I ended up with "virtually" the same posistion as Dicky did, thus the "V" in "TDVSL". So far it's been brilliant, so I thought I'd publicly recognize my source of new found knowledge here. Thanks dude!