Minus Ten Review- 24

The classic Raleigh 29"er. The XXIX

Ten years ago this week on this hear ol' blog I was yakking about the Raleigh XXIX, which was their first 29"er effort. Looking back I feel this was a really interesting debut in that it had a non-suspension corrected look and it handled great with this configuration, but it also could be a 80mm travel suspended bike using the then few forks available. That kicked the head angle back to an almost current day 69°. Had we the ability to put on a 46mm offset or 51mm offset fork on there, it would have been perfect. That whole offset thing was still locked in at 38mm back then. Hard to believe it now, right?

I had one of these, but I got it in a Medium and I never could get it to feel right. I should have popped for a size Large and I think had I done that, I would still be riding the thing. Oh, and by the way, my old XXIX is still kickin' it locally here. I sometimes get an update on her from its current owner when I see him.

I also was surprised one day at work to find out that Jeff Kerkove, my former co-worker, had cooked up another blog for me to herd. It was the Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitational blogsite, which is still in operation to this day. Originally, Jeff had made this awesome header and the "links" in the right hand margin were all fake, humorous titles that Jeff came up with. It was all really cool and I have him to thank still all these years later for that.

Speaking of Jeff, he was/is a pretty special guy, and in many ways, you'd be surprised to know how he was in private, or if you got to know him well enough. I think a lot of folks thought he was just this dedicated, very disciplined athlete, with no real "fun" or social life. Almost a machine, if you will. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Take this question he asked me ten years ago which I blogged for all to see:


"If you were stranded on a desert island with only one choice of bicycle tool that you could have with you, what would it be?"

Okay, so that's random, but think about that for a minute. It was obvious that Jeff had a lot of thoughts going around in that big ol' noggin' of his and sometimes crazy stuff would come out if he was comfortable around you. You know.......

.................stuff like Trans Iowa!