In Other News.....

Singular Gryphon in SS gravel mode

Of course, most folks hitting the blog here today will probably be Trans Iowa hopefuls or curious on lookers. It would seem that my entire life has been Trans Iowa centered by the looks of this blog of late. However; that couldn't be further from the truth.

I've been busy, for sure, but I've been doing some other stuff that is bicycle related besides Trans Iowa. One of the things I've been up to of late is getting things arranged for Winter and lining up the Winter time projects. One of those thing has been taking care of some rigs that have been long neglected and that I hope will see some Winter time duties.

The first out of project phase and back in order is the Singular Cycles Gryphon. Tires re-juiced, and basically patched up for Winter time gravel duty. Now sporting the rare and lovely Ragley Luxy Bar, I am reminded how much I really like this bike. This is a "steel" bike ride feel bicycle if there ever was one. Smooth does not quite describe the feel here. I may swap to a silver stem again and go back to green bar tape. The red/black combo doesn't do anything for me, but that aside, this is a good bike to bring out again. It's been too long since I've used it regularly.

Another bicycle I haven't ridden since.......well it probably has been well over ten years! It is the only road bike I own. Well.......if you don't count gravel bikes I have as road bikes. This one is going to be the trainer mule for the time being.

Early 80's Colnago Super

The old Colnago Super was my last serious road racing style bicycle. It has a lot of Campagnolo Record stuff on it, but as you might be able to tell by the silvery looks of the drive train, it is older 9 speed stuff. The wheels I built on some impossibly thin, spindly, flexy Sun Mistral rims and honestly, I don't quite know how it was that I was able to make them last as long as I did. The handle bars and stem......I hate. I know, strong words, but they really stink on this bike and they should get replaced with some silvery bits later in the Winter. At some point, I'll likely have to re-lace those Record hubs to some real rims. Likely some silver Velocity A-23's.

But none of those things prevents me from using the bike as a trainer mule, and that is just what the old Colnago will be doing. I have a trainer and will be commencing "rides to nowhere" soon. Maybe after the Winter I will find the time to re-lace the hubs and get some new bars, stem, and re-wrap the bars. New tires will definitely be needed by then as well.

He huffed, and he puffed......

Then there has been some riding going on as well. I have been on a couple rides with my son on the fat bikes. He's growing more, (had to raise the saddle yet again), and he has gotten to the point where a new handle bar is probably going on there as well to make this more comfortable for him.

Speaking of handle bars, I am going to a wider bar and a different stem, (maybe), on the titanium fat bike. Sharp eyes will note that the crank looks different. It is a new Surly OD crank. I have been eyeballing these cranks since a year ago, and now I have finally gotten them on there. Honestly, I cannot tell that big of a change, or even that there is a change, in terms of stiffness, but I can tell that this crank has a 36T big ring versus the 32T I had grown accustomed to. The main thing though is that now I can clear every gear combination without chain to tire contact but one. That would be in the lowest gear combination, but it barely "tics" the sidewall of the tire, so really, not a big deal. Before the swap, I was contacting the tire with the chain in four out of the nine cogs in the cassette in the granny gear. So, a big improvement there, and I can honestly say that with these big, grippy tires and with this crankset combination, I have gotten the most capable Winter time set up I've had so far. I cannot wait to get into the snow with this! Well.........maybe I could wait a little while longer. However; it may be that in a day or two we'll have the white stuff on the ground again. Ah well........

So, I know Trans Iowa is taking up a lot of bandwidth here of late, but today the registration will close, (more than likely before noon), and then it will be back to the regularly scheduled programming here. Thanks for putting up with all this!