Saturday, September 04, 2010

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!)

4 comments:

BB said...

No biggie, but the picture you are showing of the Maxxis IKON is actually a picture of an Ardent. The IKON has much closer spaced and smaller knobs.

Guitar Ted said...

@Bruce Brown: While it may not be an Ikon, it sure ain't lookin' like the Ardent 2.4" I have in my hand as I type this. ;>)

The Ardent has two different sets of paired center knobs running down the middle. You'll note that the tire I have pictured has identical pairs of center knobs.

This was what my European correspondent saw at Interbike.

BB said...

My bad. That picture makes the Ikon knobs look really huge/tall - at least compared to the prototypes I have. And yes, I see the additional paired set of knobs that run down the center between the other pairs is missing in your photo - just like my Ikons.

Either I had too much coffee, not enough, or the close up of the photography fooled me.

I went out to the garage and really studied both the small Ardent and the Ikon and just realized the tread pattern is dang similar outside of the knob height and the extra pair of center knobs. Been riding them since June and just noticed that thanks to your picture.

Observant I'm not at the moment....

Guitar Ted said...

@Bruce Brown: Well, no harm, no foul! I was thinking I had gone mad though. You see, I knew you had been testing that tire, and I figured I may have been looking at it all wrong. I had the tire, (Ardent), in hand and checked carefully three times before posting my comment, figuring you had to be right, since you had an actual Ikon in hand.

Oh well! We are not perfect are we? No, we certainly are not!

Can't wait to try that Ikon though. It looks great for our terrain.