Wednesday News And Views

Catching up on a few things. Here's the latest mish-mash of stuff on my mind.....

Heated Grips: Wow! The weather right now is about as far away from needing heated grips as you can get. But can you remember that just last week it got down into the upper 20's for night time lows? Yup!

Well, I was testing these A'ME Heated Mountain Bike Grips for the Cyclistsite.com back in that cooler weather. They actually work really well too.

I know some will say "Yeah, but pogies work and are cheaper." Yup. They sure are and they do work, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that they work "better".

While run time is not much better than a couple of hours, the time it does run makes pogies unnecessary, and I don't like pogies cumbersome look and performance when you have to be pulling your hands in and out of the things. (I do, because of photo ops, and other reasons) If you have yourself set, and the hands are staying put, plus your ride is very long, well then, pogies are it. I have some, and I'll use them in extreme situations, but these grips will get some play for sure. They lowered the price on them just recently too, which makes them even more attractive. You can read more about them here in my review.

Velocity A-23 Wheels: I just got a set of Velocity A-23 wheels for my Black Mountain Cycles Monster Cross bike. These are the final wheels I will be slapping on that bike and I will be living with those for the foreseeable future.

I ended up with a bit of a custom build, since I got 28/28 hole wheels instead of the 24F/28R build they usually do at the Comp level. Mine still are radial laced up front and on the non-drive side rear. The drive side is two-cross. We'll see how they hold up.

It also will be interesting to check into something I accidentally overheard about these wheels at Frostbike. That they ran well sans tubes. Hmmmm.... Interesting. 

One thing Velocity does is that they hand build and sign their wheels before they are sent out. So, "Jacobi", I am counting on you and your handiwork! I did check them out when I received them and they were tensioned very well, and they were very true. More to come on these wheels here and on Gravel Grinder News.





The Gravel Metric -- More Gravel from Seth Deming on Vimeo.


Speaking of Gravel Grinder News: You gotta click on the video and check out what the NCC-HAC guys did for their upcoming gravel event on May 29th. (Warning!: Loud, angry music! You might want to turn your volume down a tad, or not!) This production is awesome, I think. I am very impressed at the creativity and passion shown here for gravel road riding/racing. Very cool.

Snow Dog Down: 81 Days and counting..............

Wednesday News And Views

Catching up on a few things. Here's the latest mish-mash of stuff on my mind.....

Heated Grips: Wow! The weather right now is about as far away from needing heated grips as you can get. But can you remember that just last week it got down into the upper 20's for night time lows? Yup!

Well, I was testing these A'ME Heated Mountain Bike Grips for the Cyclistsite.com back in that cooler weather. They actually work really well too.

I know some will say "Yeah, but pogies work and are cheaper." Yup. They sure are and they do work, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that they work "better".

While run time is not much better than a couple of hours, the time it does run makes pogies unnecessary, and I don't like pogies cumbersome look and performance when you have to be pulling your hands in and out of the things. (I do, because of photo ops, and other reasons) If you have yourself set, and the hands are staying put, plus your ride is very long, well then, pogies are it. I have some, and I'll use them in extreme situations, but these grips will get some play for sure. They lowered the price on them just recently too, which makes them even more attractive. You can read more about them here in my review.

Velocity A-23 Wheels: I just got a set of Velocity A-23 wheels for my Black Mountain Cycles Monster Cross bike. These are the final wheels I will be slapping on that bike and I will be living with those for the foreseeable future.

I ended up with a bit of a custom build, since I got 28/28 hole wheels instead of the 24F/28R build they usually do at the Comp level. Mine still are radial laced up front and on the non-drive side rear. The drive side is two-cross. We'll see how they hold up.

It also will be interesting to check into something I accidentally overheard about these wheels at Frostbike. That they ran well sans tubes. Hmmmm.... Interesting. 

One thing Velocity does is that they hand build and sign their wheels before they are sent out. So, "Jacobi", I am counting on you and your handiwork! I did check them out when I received them and they were tensioned very well, and they were very true. More to come on these wheels here and on Gravel Grinder News.





The Gravel Metric -- More Gravel from Seth Deming on Vimeo.


Speaking of Gravel Grinder News: You gotta click on the video and check out what the NCC-HAC guys did for their upcoming gravel event on May 29th. (Warning!: Loud, angry music! You might want to turn your volume down a tad, or not!) This production is awesome, I think. I am very impressed at the creativity and passion shown here for gravel road riding/racing. Very cool.

Snow Dog Down: 81 Days and counting..............

Moving On Now...

Well, now that it is May, we can move on to our regularly scheduled blog here! Let's take a look at what has been going on of interest around here.....

As you can see, I slapped a suspension fork on the Sawyer. It does happen to be a G2 100mm travel fork, so it is perfect for replacing the rigid fork that was on it.

I took it out to the Camp and rolled it around out there to see how it would handle. It is pretty interesting in that the Sawyer has a slightly slacker head angle than say, a Superfly hard tail, so you can feel that in the handling. I think it makes the bike pretty fun, but there are some around here that wouldn't like the slightly more stable handling. It is true that it doesn't have sports car quickness, but it does beg to be slammed over in corners and ridden a bit more aggressively than your garden variety XC grade hard tail. I like it.

Next stop for the Sawyer is to strip off all the dangly bits and turn it into a single speed. I think fatter tires will be also making an appearance.

The other new thing I got my hands on was these heated grips. That's right. Heated. Grips.

They actually work really well too. Six different levels of heat, and the hotter settings are, well.........hot! I can totally see using these in really cold weather for commutes and snow biking. Actually, they are pretty soothing on lower settings, so if you have sore hands, or issues with dexterity, maybe these would help with that as well.

The grips are tacky, even un-heated, and of course, they are lock ons. Pretty unusual stuff for cycling, but I see on the website that they also make these for ATVs, motorcycles, and more. A drop bar version is also in the works.

Run time on the Lithium-Polymer battery is about 3 hours. Made in the U.S.A. by A'ME. Expenderiforous! $300.00 plus $10.00 for the mounting kit. Worth it? If you want to ride in the cold, but yer hands won't let you, I'd say, quite possibly. Definitely better than riding indoors!

I'll be putting up a much more detailed review on The Cyclistsite.com soon.

Moving On Now...

Well, now that it is May, we can move on to our regularly scheduled blog here! Let's take a look at what has been going on of interest around here.....

As you can see, I slapped a suspension fork on the Sawyer. It does happen to be a G2 100mm travel fork, so it is perfect for replacing the rigid fork that was on it.

I took it out to the Camp and rolled it around out there to see how it would handle. It is pretty interesting in that the Sawyer has a slightly slacker head angle than say, a Superfly hard tail, so you can feel that in the handling. I think it makes the bike pretty fun, but there are some around here that wouldn't like the slightly more stable handling. It is true that it doesn't have sports car quickness, but it does beg to be slammed over in corners and ridden a bit more aggressively than your garden variety XC grade hard tail. I like it.

Next stop for the Sawyer is to strip off all the dangly bits and turn it into a single speed. I think fatter tires will be also making an appearance.

The other new thing I got my hands on was these heated grips. That's right. Heated. Grips.

They actually work really well too. Six different levels of heat, and the hotter settings are, well.........hot! I can totally see using these in really cold weather for commutes and snow biking. Actually, they are pretty soothing on lower settings, so if you have sore hands, or issues with dexterity, maybe these would help with that as well.

The grips are tacky, even un-heated, and of course, they are lock ons. Pretty unusual stuff for cycling, but I see on the website that they also make these for ATVs, motorcycles, and more. A drop bar version is also in the works.

Run time on the Lithium-Polymer battery is about 3 hours. Made in the U.S.A. by A'ME. Expenderiforous! $300.00 plus $10.00 for the mounting kit. Worth it? If you want to ride in the cold, but yer hands won't let you, I'd say, quite possibly. Definitely better than riding indoors!

I'll be putting up a much more detailed review on The Cyclistsite.com soon.