Some Sol Sessions Notes

<===Who needs Leadville when you can bring home hardware like this!

Well, the Salsa Cycles "Sol Sessions" are still going on up in the Cable area of Wisconsin, but I'm back home now. What a trip! And at the perfect time too. We needed to get away and clear our minds after all that has gone down around here this spring. We had great friends surrounding us and we had a great time with them. Thank you one and all, and I know some of you read this blog, so this means you!




<===Check out the details in this buckle. It is absolutely HUGE too!

The best part of the trip? Well, that's too hard to say. I know one highlight that I can share here is that riding the new Big Mama was sooo much fun. I said to Jason that the really cool thing about it was that it was a new bike to me, but I felt totally safe and confident in letting it rip on the downhills. It had tires I had never ridden before too, so that says a lot, I think. It climbed really well too. I think it would make a perfect endurance rig, really. Jason says it's an "all day kind of bike", but I would say it's an "all day-all night" kind of bike!




<===Sheesh! 25 years already?

The bikes will come spec'ed with a pretty Shimano XT heavy spec. I got to ride the XT stuff this past weekend too and it is pretty dang nice. Hard to fault the shifting of the Rapid Fire triggers and the Shadow rear derailleur. Man! That stuff shifted whenever and where ever I wanted. Load, no load, no problems.

Jason has raved about the XT brakes to me for quite some time now. I thought they were nice, but still not quite dialed in to how well I can make my Avid BB-7's feel. Power? It had gobs of it, and it was sorta controllable. I could have gotten used to it, but I thought the "modulation window" from pad contact to full lock up was still too small for my tastes. I still was getting that "whoops!" too much brake thing from time to time where you feel the wheels start to lock up and your weight shifting forward quickly. Not fun! Again, I could have learned how to get along with them and they are fantastic brakes when your mind starts to mesh with the way they work, it's just that I prefer a little more modulation in my brakes if I can have it.

The Big Mama. Yeah........it is on my radar! I'm pretty sold on it. They will be available as a frame set in September. Complete bike in January. Gonna have to get myself one of these for sure!