News And Views

The best Fall colors tree I've seen is on my way to work in the mornings.

Fall presses onward and now whatever trees are turning will be at their peak in the next few days. We are expecting our first freeze this weekend, so that will likely drop a lot of leaves when that happens. Then it will be the downward spiral towards "brown" when Fall comes to its ends and everything is dormant until next Spring.

My plan is to get up early Saturday, brave the chill, and get in some riding, although I am not sure where it is yet that I will be going. I'll likely be out on the Grava Bikes Revenuer to get some miles piled on that rig for the review I am doing. This time I will be certain to fill the water bottles! Maybe I will see which way the wind is blowing first and then decide!

Otherwise I would dearly love to get out on my Singular Cycles Buzzard and hit some trails. I don't see that happening on Saturday though. Maybe on Sunday, then I might get out. The good news is that we are to remain high and dry, so wet weather cancellation seems highly unlikely at this point. I gotta say it again- what a spectacular Fall we are having for cycling! Could it be the oncoming of the "El Nino" weather pattern, or just a turn we have in drier conditions. I don't know, but I am trying to squeeze what I can get out of it before it all goes pear shaped in a cloud of freezing Northwest wind driven snow.

Hoopty! WTB KOM i25 rims for the Twin Six Standard Rando have arrived.

Wheel Dreams: 

Long time readers probably have figured out by now that I dream of wheels. Big, small, and medium wheels, it doesn't matter. I like to build wheels as well, and in the realm of doing that, I have something to look forward to. Actually, more than one set!

First I have to talk about what showed up yesterday. I received some i25 KOM rims from WTB. These rims are really meant for XC 29"er use, but as with road and mountain biking, all the trends point to wider rims. I think the same is true for the gravel bike rigs I like to ride. In fact, I did use some WTB Frequency i23 rims with WTB Nano40 TCS tires, and that was a spiffy set up. The tires take on a nice, wide stance, giving them nore volume, more support from the sidewalls, and a bit flatter profile which I find is good in looser gravel.

However; those rims aren't all that light weight. So, when I found out that WTB was doing the KOM in a inner width of 25mm, I jumped at the chance to get a set to ace up to some nice hubs for my Twin Six Standard Rando. Now I need to decide which hubs I want to get! The competition has been narrowed down to White Industries XMR hubs or Chris King R45 hubs. Which one! I have to try to decide that, then which color to get! 

Whatever it is I decide to do, I already know that I am putting on some Nano 40TCS tires and going tubeless, of course. Those tires just do a workmanlike job on most any gravel road and with the tubeless set up, I have a cushy ride with no chance of pinch flatting.  The other thing is that the Standard Rando has a bit tighter clearances than either of my other gravel rigs, so a 40mm is best and that still gives me ample room for mud and rocks to get through the stays without getting stuck.

 I did mention I have more than one set of wheels to build up, but I am waiting to talk about that next set for just a bit now. It shouldn't be long, and I will be able to reveal what that is all about. The good news there is that I already have a set of hubs waiting in the wings to lace up to these new hoops that are coming.

Okay, that's a warp for this week. Stay tuned for Trans Iowa v12 news tomorrow.