Friday News And Views

Meet The Maker

Most fat biking freaks know all about Surly fat bike rims, or do you? They are not manufactured by Surly at all, but by a company called Alex Rims. They make stuff under their own name as well. In fact, I used to use their workmanlike TD-17 Disc as a 29"er hoop back when. Anyway......

I found a link to a Polish site that had information saying that Alex Rims are going to release a version of the Rolling Darryl and another, slightly less wide fat bike rim. See the post here and use Google Translate to read it if you want.

You'll also see there that Alex Rims is releasing a 29+ hoop. This is all relevant to those of you looking for bargain hoops that are of decent quality, as I have found Alex rims to be quite serviceable if not very spectacular. They just work. Typically they are pretty reasonably priced as well.

Curiously, there is also news on the bottom of that post revealing the fact that Alex Rims is also doing a 36"er rim that will be tubeless ready. Hmmm......... Could someone actually be considering releasing a mass produced 36"er mtb? Alex Rims do a lot of OE work, so that could be, but I'd be willing to bet that a unicycle wheel would be a safer bet here. But.......you never know.

Registration: 

Hey, remember when I wrote this big, long post about registering for T.I.V11?  It had the following line in it:

"30 spots for Finishers will also be up for grabs by post card entry starting October 27th. Again- DON"T SEND ENTRIES SOONER!! They will not be accepted"

Notice that I stated very clearly that post cards sent early would not be accepted? Yeah? Well, someone didn't listen.  Someone actually tried to send my boss a letter containing a post card and with it a note that instructed my boss to wait until the 27th of October and then hand me the card. There was also some money with instructions to buy the shop some beer.

Bzzzzzt! You've been red flagged! 

First off, this is an unfair tactic to those who will actually play by the rules. On that basis alone I have to disallow this entry. This person just left me no choice in the matter. Secondly, my boss is quite possibly the worst person ever to have asked to buy the shop beers. Well.......unless you like Miller Lite. Because that is what he would buy. I told him to not bother. But the offending potential entrant wouldn't have known that. That's just collateral damage there!

 So, besides that oddity, Trans Iowa registration kicks off next week, and I am sure more crazy stuff will happen. I can just feel it. I also can about guarantee some more folks will do some things that will be outside the parameters of the instructions I gave or their cards will be unreadable. Some folks will miss T.I.V11 on technicalities. It happens every year.........

2015 Beargrease XX1

Beargreased Lightning:

At the shop the other day I had the honor of building up this 2015 Salsa Cycles Beargrease XX1. They should just rename this the "Beargreased Lightning" and shorten it to "BL-XX1". Why?

Because it weighs 24.38lbs in a size Large. 24.38 freakin pounds!!! That's just nuts right there.

This is with tubes, mind you, and if you went tubeless on this beast, it would easily drop a couple of "el-bees". Okay? So we're looking at a potential weight with pedals of a bit over 22 pounds. Blame this on a liberal sprinkling of carbon fiber. There isn't a whole lot of metal bits on this rig. Even the rims are carbon fiber here.

Sure.....it costs a lot of money. Over 5G to buy this one, but you have to pay to play when it comes to light weight bicycles. In the case of the "BL-XX1" model, it is well worth it if you race one of these fat bikes in Winter events. It is worth it if you want a premium, all year around mountain bike. It is worth it if you like to have fun and go fast and have the cash to spend. I don't know many folks who would turn down one of these rigs if money wasn't a barrier. It's that nice.

The deal here though is that it kind of casts a pall over anything heavier. That's too bad, because you can have a blast on a fat bike that weighs 5, 8, or even 10 pounds heavier. You don't have to spend an enormous amount of cash to get into this sort of bike and have a blast on any sort of terrain. Take the Mukluk 3, as an example, which goes for a very reasonable $1899.00 and weighs about 34 pounds. Point is, I hope my posting about this crazy bike doesn't put you off from getting jazzed about fat bikes, because they are a ton of fun. Try one and see.......