Two Things

My custom Pofahl Signature bike

 Friday it was rainy for most of the day so I decided to work on the old Pofahl Signature custom bike I have. If you've been around here awhile, you know this bike. But if you are fairly new here, I'll hazard a brief introduction.

In 2007 I showed Ben Witt, then owner of Milltown Cycles in Faribault, Minnesota, a sketch I had made in the early 2000's of an idea I had for a frame for a 29" wheeled bike. Ben got excited about this, tweaked out the idea based upon my love of my 2003 Karate Monkey, and came up with this design based off my sketch. 

Ben then sent the BikeCad drawings to Mike Pofahl who brazed up the ChroMoly tubing into what you see here. This was always a dedicated single speed idea, so there are no cable stops for gearing. The bike was intended to be a flat bar bike and Ben Witt designed a killer looking handle bar and sent it off to Black Sheep in Colorado to have the design made for this bike in titanium. Well, that never happened because Black Sheep basically "ghosted" Ben and despite multiple attempts to contact them, Ben finally had to give up on the idea. 

Not too surprisingly, about a few months after Ben gave up on getting his design made by Black Sheep, the custom builder there made a handle bar eerily similar to Ben's renderings. But.....whatever. That's the story no one knew about this bike, and since it's been, what? Sixteen years ago? I figure the statute of limitations has expired on keeping back that story. So, I don't mind telling it here now. 

The bike as it appeared a year ago.

No matter, and back to today... I had been running the Pofahl with drop bars for years now and over the last few years it has been set up with a short, 50mm stem. I also had an ancient Bontrager Inform saddle on it. Well, I retired those two items for a bit longer stem and a different Bontrager saddle. That older Inform design used to accommodate me okay, but now I'm older and things have changed. 

The stem seemed to me to be a bit too short. I could have lived with the 50mm stem, but I thought something that might stretch me out a bit would be better. I found the perfect candidate while going through the stem stash. It was a Redshift Sports ShockStop stem with their "out front" GPS mount. 

While digging through the saddle stash, I found a saddle that seemed very similarly shaped to the newer Ergon Allroad saddle. I compared them and they are so close in shape and length to be nearly identical. Only the way the top was formed by the cover and padding was really any different, and in that it was a cushier saddle than the Ergon one is. 

And wouldn't you know? It's a WSD Bontrager saddle. A woman's saddle. Cool with me. And what about the changes? Well, they are good. I plan to do a country ride on the bike soon to verify this. 

Oh yeah....I swapped out top tube bags. So there's that as well! 

The "Guitar Ted Podcast" is back with one of the more popular topics concerning gravel riding - Dogs. 

We talk about that in context of our (N.Y. Roll and my) experiences and other things, of course. But the dog thing is probably the big draw here. 

One thing I didn't mention, and I hope to when we talk about dogs again on the show, is that there is a bit of "privilege" as a bigger male when dealing with dogs versus when you are diminutive or female, or both. Dogs can and will size you up, so my experiences with dogs might be tempered by that a bit. 

Take for instance the image I chose for the podcast episode tile. That was from a solo ride I did in 2017 in Kansas. The image was taken at the point which I had talked to these two dogs long enough that they were giving up being concerned anymore. I think maybe up to ten minutes was spent here.These dogs finally realized that (a) I wasn't a threat, and (b) I was a pretty large human that wasn't afraid and was not going to be easy to take down. Despite the fact of one being a huge Great Pyrenees and the other a slightly smaller breed of unknown to me origins. 

The other thing I forgot to mention is that if you are in a group, it's best to stick together when dealing with dogs. They know when they are outnumbered and will look for a straggler to pester. Yes, the old saw about outrunning your riding partner and leaving them to deal with the dog is partially true. 

Anyway, if you haven't already listened to this episode, it is about an hour long. Click here or go to your favorite podcast provider and look up "The Guitar Ted Podcast". Thanks to CORE4 for sponsoring this episode.