Minus Ten Review - 6

I'm still not really sure what this was all about.

Ten years ago on the blog I was talking about how I wasn't having any fun setting up tubeless tires. Remember- this was 2008 and 29"er tubeless tire tech, and heck.....just getting anything actually meant for tubeless tires, was not a usual thing. So I was trying this and that, sometimes using all tubeless tech and sometimes mixing it up. But whatever I was doing, it was a struggle. A real struggle!

I almost gave up on tubeless tires back then, but somehow I kept trying, and trying, and trying..... Then it started working. I'm pretty much thinking that was because tubeless tires and rims for 29"ers started becoming really good. I'm sure it wasn't anything I actually did!

Then there is this image here. I still don't know what the heck that was all about. You know, after working at the same shop for 15 plus years nothing seems surprising anymore, but weird? yeah. Weird stuff happens all the time yet. I guess that's probably true for any place where the workers come and go with the years. So many different personalities have been there that the changes keep the weird level high. You never have time for anyone's oddities to get mundane. The average length anyone is there is probably less than five years. Then there is the "long timers" like myself. I'm skewing the curve!

The Dos Niner as a snow machine.

I also had a great ride on this old Dos Niner in the snow. Of course, it would be another 3 years before I'd actually have a fat bike, and I generally would default to whatever 29"er had the widest tires that I had at that time for snow riding.

This bike was a surprise 'gift" of sorts from Salsa/Jason Boucher. It just showed up at the shop one day with a note on it that said that I should just enjoy the bike and that I didn't have to review it. Blown away? Totally. Thanks again, by the way. I'm still bowled over that this happened to me.

I had never ridden a Dos Niner before this bike and I still think a soft tail bike is a viable design. Yeah.......you could do a suspension seat post, but that doesn't work when you are not sitting on the saddle. This bike had a rear end that did work over everything. No matter if you were on the saddle or not.

The Reba, the first widely available 29"er fork, with its 38mm offset, was kind of a clunker. It was the best thing that ever happened to 29"ers in 2007, but it was a stinker because it was flexy and it needed a lot of maintenance to keep it in tip-top shape. Later Rebas were really almost maintenance free in comparison. Anyway, this bike was really pretty good despite several short comings.