Getting The Horse Ready

 
My trip to El Paso, Texas is fast approaching, and I need to tweak out this rig to take with me. Of course, I'm talking about the Big Mama.

This is a bike I've wanted to take down there for quite awhile now. It is very rough, rocky, and the down hill parts can be quite technical. The bikes I have taken down there before were just barely passable as trail bikes there.

A couple of great additions recently to the rig are these Geax Gato 2.3"ers that are TNT which means they are tubeless compatible, but more importantly than that, they have a sidewall reinforcement that protects the casing, and it will allow for some (hopefully) waaaay low pressures so I can rock crawl my way through the Franklin Mountains.

The other nice addition is the Specialized Blacklite Command Post, which is a "dropper post" that will make going down a couple of the switch backs a much easier thing to do now. One thing that won't be easy- The heat! It already is getting upwards of 100 degrees during the day down there. Of course, that's a different kind of heat, but all the same, I'll be pushed pretty hard just by that.

I've got to get a bash guard in place of that big ring though. No sense in having a big ring down there. It won't be about going fast! That's for sure. I've got a 36T ring on that rear cassette though, and I'm hoping to finally slay that beast of a climb exiting the trails from the west in the Tom May's Unit.

Last time I was there, I did the Upper and Lower Sunset loop on a Specialized Stumpjumper Carbon Expert hard tail. It was fairly brutal riding a hard tail for that loop for me. I know this bike, albeit heavier, will be easier on me, and hopefully, a faster loop time will result. We'll see.

I've got some tweaking to do, and hopefully that will get done this weekend. I hope you all have a great Memorial Day Weekend!