Minus Ten Review- 34

An image from the first Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitational by Matt Wills

Ten years ago on the blog I was happy to announce that the first Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitational had been a rousing success. It featured a wrong turn that made it 152 miles and was therefore the longest ride I had ever done previous or since that time up until the 2015 Dirty Kanza 200 when I made it 154 miles. "Unofficially" that first Death Ride was still my longest ever single day ride but I did not count the ride to the start nor the miles to home from the finish. I figure it is still the longest ride I ever have done because it is approximately 5 plus miles to the old starting place one way. I figure I did about 162 plus that day. But I'll never really know for sure. The best part? I did that ride on my single speed Karate Monkey.

So, in "official terms", my longest ride ever is the 2015 DK200, then the first Death Ride, then last weekend's Gravel Worlds at 145 miles. Pretty good for this old man, but I can do better!

There was some banter about 29"er stuff on the blog ten years ago that I posted on, but the "big" news was trek World where we got a sneak peek at the 2007 line up from Gary Fisher Bikes, (Remember- only Fisher had 29"ers then. There were no trek 29"ers)  There were a lot of cool bikes added to the line up for '07, as the 29"er revolution started gaining ground about this time.

The Ferrous. remember that bike? Almost cool....

The frame I was most smitten with, and surprised by, was the Ferrous. It was a "production custom bike". The detail on the frame was amazing. Everywhere you looked it had some cool little tacked on applique, decal, or feature that was like something from a small custom builder. Not a "big" corporate entity like Trek/Fisher.

Not only that, but it had a full drive train! It wasn't just another single speed. Although, it had an eccentric bottom bracket so you could single speed the bike. Triple ring cranks. remember those?

I wanted one, but I had so many things in the hopper at the time I just couldn't justify getting one. A friend of mine did, and it was quickly discovered by him, and almost every other Ferrous owner, that the bowed out seat stays would catch your heels. Worse, several of these ended up braeking. The Ferrous was a one year model.

Makes you wonder if there are any left sitting around in garages out there anywhere.