A couple of pictures from Thailand

Courtesy of Robin! I don't know the stories behind either of these, but apparently his S&S equipped 29er worked well for the riding there.

Sarah, Feldy and I rode some gnarly trails outside Boulder on Saturday, which I can't talk much more about, except to say that one of them is named for a coffee drink and the other for a city in California. Long story short, Feldman convinced me to ride the 29" downhill bike up the ~2500 foot climb, and then trade him (he rode my fully rigid travel bike) for the downhill. So yeah, I got dropped going both ways, basically, but whatever. We had a great time, and it was cool that Feldman finally got a chance to ride the bike he designed. He loved it, too - we've been talking about working on a DH rig for him, and until yesterday he was going to do 26" wheels, but now I think he's sold on the 29er thing (for downhill, that is - he and Karyn already have a pile of 29ers for XC riding).

Word on the street is that Lenz will be making a 6" travel 29er soon, so I doubt anyone will ever purchase one of my long-travel creations. Just to be clear, though - I'm happy enough with how the latest iteration rides that they are officially for sale. $2000 buys you a fully custom downhill frame. Shock not included. 29" wheel versions only unless you're unbelievably tiny or something and can talk me into doing one for 26" (or 24") wheels. Do I expect to sell any? Not really, but I have plenty of hardtails to build, so I don't really care. If you want a test ride, I'll be doing a lot of days up at Keystone this summer - email me and ask, and I'll be happy to meet up with ya and trade bikes for a run or two.

June 15th!

Keystone opens June 15th. I am insanely excited - check it out!

I hear rumors that the bike program actually made money last year, so they are going all out and building lots of new trails, hoping to become the Whistler of Colorado - the new "22 tabletops in a row" trail certainly sounds like a good A-line-ish start!

Sarah and I will probably buy passes - even if we don't go enough times to make it worthwhile, I'd like to support these guys for sticking their necks out and *building new downhill trails* - it's not something that happens much in our neck of the woods. If you like riding freeride or downhill trails, and you live in the front range, I think you should consider doing the same - it blows my mind that people will spend $5k on a V10 or some other fancy DH rig and then won't spend $50 on an IMBA membership or a few hundred dollars for a season pass to a place like this. For me, I'd rather have sweet trails and a crap bike, rather than a sweet bike and no decent trails.

For folks who aren't into the DH thing, keep in mind that Keystone has some really fun XC riding too - which can also be accessed via the chairlift if you so desire.

White Ranch and lightning!

Our friends Erik (pictured on his 5" travel WW/Ventana 29er) and Natalie are in town (on their way to the midwest) and we took them to one of their old stomping grounds - White Ranch. Somehow we managed to avoid getting rained on for a couple of hours, but then (when we decided to bail down the fire road back to the car, rather than getting hit by lightning) I managed to spectacularly flat my front tire (on the new DH rig, which performed like a freakin' champ except for the flat).

So, no problem. I've got a spare tube, right? I give Sarah the keys and tell everyone to go ahead, and that I'll catch up, hence breaking the cardinal group-ride rule, which is that you make sure the person with the mechanical is rolling before you leave.

So, I spend 3 or 4 minutes pumping as hard as I can with my minipump. Tire isn't getting very hard, though. Hmm. Pull the tube out, and what do you know, it's got a hole in it too! Fantastic...

But hey, I always carry a patch kit too, just in case. I grab it. Open it. Look in disbelief at the perfect, unused, brand new pile of patches. And no tube of glue. No glue. Somehow, I have purchased a patch kit with no patching capabilities. And I've been carrying it as "insurance" for more than a year. Super!

Did I mention that there's a lightning storm? And that I'm a *long* way from the car? And that my wife and friends have no idea where I am and are probably wondering what's taking so long?

I've had this sort of this happen before, so I look around for vegetation to stuff into the tire (pine needles are best, but I'm in the middle of a wide-open hillside with no trees for several hundred yards). I've managed to bump my way home on a tire stuffed with weeds and pine needles before, but it takes a while (and a lot of work) to stuff enough crap in there to make it a workable proposition. I don't have that kind of time.

That's when it hits me - we've had a really wet spring in Colorado, and the weeds are growing like... well, like weeds. Nice big green weeds. Including *milkweed*. You know, the kind that have little thorns on the leaves and thick white sap? The kind that makes your hands really *sticky* after pulling them unless you're really lucky and don't break the stalks? Yep, there's milkweed everywhere. All around me on the trail, in fact...

So, I shit you not, I glued a patch onto my tube with milkweed sap. And it held pressure for several hours (though it was flat when I went into the garage a while later just to check). The stuff definitely doesn't dry as quickly as rubber cement, and it's not vulcanizing, so the patch isn't going to meld to the tube like it should, but it saved my butt from a good soaking and possible death by lightning strike. Milkweed kicks ass.

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First Ned ride of the year

Sarah, Pele, and I hit Nederland this afternoon. We had to wait out a little lightning storm, but managed to get some fun riding in on just slightly damp trails. Ned has a TON of moisture this year - the usual seasonal swamps are frikkin' lakes right now (as you can see in this first shot).


Here I am trying to look cool amongst the aspens. In fact, I am running over the rock I was trying to avoid. Nice one.


Sarah chose to avoid the rock. Nice one.


Final shot of the Eldora ski runs (you can't see the cool snowcapped peaks in the background, unfortunately) from the West Mag trails. Weirdly enough, we didn't see a single other rider on the trails.

It's... sort of... done!

And no, I haven't gotten any "real" riding in on it, but I've taken it off some sweet jumps at the research park and ridden Betasso on it. Rides nice, though I need softer springs for the fork and the rear shock (surprise, surprise) doesn't get the 2.25" stroke it advertised. Gotta do some cable stops and such as well, and countersink the bolts that hold the chainstay bridge in place - my calves can rub them when climbing, which is really annoying.

For those of you who are interested:
-37 pounds as built. Still needs a front derailleur and a shifter, though.
-5" travel fork, 6.5" travel rear (in theory, in practice, 6" due to the shock stroke being too short)
-150mmx12mm rear generic hub, 20mm front generic hub, Rhynolite rims and straightgauge spokes.
-Nevegal 29x2.2 tires, generic tubes.
-LX crankset, eggbeater pedals, LX rear derailleur and cassette.
-XTR integrated brake/shift lever w/XT left lever, XTR/Deore brake calipers.
-El cheapo Kalloy riser bar and stem (the bar weighs an amazing 450 grams!)
-Thomson post and flite saddle. With the 410 post, I can just *barely* get the saddle high enough to ride XC on this bike.

Who the heck called me? Also, Twinsix in the news...

So I got a voicemail yesterday from someone whose name I couldn't make out, calling about "switching to a rigid fork and some other stuff". The guy didn't leave a number, and the number that I have on my phone for him is:

482 247 01234

Needless to say, I am baffled. If you're the nameless fellow who called me from some weird number with an extra digit (international?), send me an email or call me back and leave me some info on how to contact you!

Check it out, they even mentioned me!

My shock better come today. Come on, BTI... I want to finish building the DH bike...

Interesting link

I'm a basketball nut, as some of you know - just reading some stuff by Paul Shirley on Slate -
click here to read it. Pretty good writing and sense of humor for a pro basketball player - I like it better than Mark Madsen's blog! Paul just wrote a book, too - which I might have to go pick up and read soon.

Downhill bike part 4... closer

Here's a shot of her, getting moderately close to being actually rideable. As you can see, there's no drivetrain on there yet, the rear shock is missing, and there's a tire issue on the front, but I anticipate that I'll be ready to roll once I have my new shock (a bottom of the barrel Marzochhi air unit) from BTI tomorrow.


I built a new brake arch for this Y2K Marzocchi Junior T, so that it'll clear a 29" wheel (the lower crown has been moved up as well, enough that this fork will work with a 2.5"+ 29er tire). Not pretty, not light, but workable for now. The fork itself is actually quite nice - 5" of relatively plush open-bath travel, a 20mm axle for some extra stiffness, and a nice bolt-on disc mount (picture below of the hilarious 2-adapter brake setup). I actually had one of these forks (albeit the QR version, not the 20mm) on my *first* ever downhill bike - a 5" travel Mrazek that was pretty much the biggest piece of crap ever. The fork was great, though, until I turned it into a pretzel doing a largish jump/drop on the old Stickline trail at Beaver Creek. Let's hope this one does better...

Pictures of Fuentes from Fontana

Thought y'all might enjoy these. There are a bunch more, but I decided to pick the best 3. All of Fuentes in the Fontana XC, where he finished (I think) 28th. Not too shabby!

Sarah is Sick/Race report from Kevin M

Sarah got very, very sick at her conference (to the point where she slept for nearly 20 hours when she got home and could barely talk or walk) so I've been playing doctor Walt and not getting much work done the last 2 days. I'm behind on email and phone calls, my apologies if you're waiting on communication from me. She's getting better and should make it in to work today so I'll try to get caught up.

Race report: Ok, well, he didn't actually ride his Waltworks in this race, but it's still a good read:
K29er blog


Next up, here's a cool picture of Reven on her "Dragonfly" Waltworks. Thanks for the pic, R!

Downhill!

It's close. So very, very close. So close I can hardly contain myself...


Here's the swingarm, shockmount, and swingarm crossbrace. I thought about doing an all square/rectangular theme for the rear end, but I had a piece of .035"x1.125" round tubing sitting right in front of me that was already the right size, so I just welded it in.


Here are the chainstays tacked up. I'm not super happy with the dropouts, so there will probably be another rear end built at some point (with super-short chainstays, to boot) using Instigator drops, which weld right up and have a nice built-in disc mount.


Closeup of the swingarm/chainstay after I welded it up. Not much too exciting here. Man, this thing requires a lot of little welds...


Wheel installed (with a Kenda Nevegal tire). This rear end is 450mm, but there's a TON of room to go shorter. I'll probably do a 430 or 435mm rear end as well just so that I can compare them head to head. And also so that I can use some better dropouts than the crappy ones I made.


Final shot for the night - this actually doesn't do the tire clearance justice. You can easily put a 3.5" tire in there if you want to. I have word from reputable sources that a DH-worth 29er tire will be available at some point this summer. Keeping my fingers crossed...

Long, cold ride

Jung, Scott and I set out from Boulder at the late, late hour of 12:30 today to try to ride a biggish ride. Weather looked threatening, so we figured we'd go uphill until it got bad, then flip it and head home. 45 miles and 4800 vertical feet later, I'm toast - we climbed up Boulder Canyon/4mile/Wallstreet/Penn Gulch to the Peak to Peak highway, and then rode back on jeep roads and a bit of singletrack. Sounds fine, right? Well, except that it started snowing/sleeting/raining hard right about when we got to the top of the climb. It took me 10 minutes in the shower before I could really feel/move my toes! I'm pretty sure we were all close to hypothermic.

Good thing the race tomorrow got canceled due to the rain (and kudos to Team Evergreen for caring more about the trails than a few bucks). I would have sucked bad after this sufferfest.

Anyhow, blah blah blah. Here are some pictures. Scott was breaking in his brand-new Johnny Cash black Waltworks singlespeed today, too. I think he likes it.


This first shot is Jung and Scott after this poor motorist buzzed us. Don't mess with guys on mountain bikes, man. I especially like the orange flags - in case someone ELSE is crashing their car off of the road into this drainage ditch, you want to make sure they see the car that's already in there in time, right?


Scott grunting up Penn Gulch. There's about half a mile of this "trail" that's just not rideable on a singlespeed. Scott and I managed most of the rest, though my legs are furious with me now. Jung, the sissy, rode quite a bit more on his geared bike.


Speaking of Jung, here he is. Jung and I installed a brand new drivetrain on his bike just before this ride. Nice move. I think the mud and snow/slush/rain probably took about half of it's life off on the first ride. Whoops.


Final shot of the post - Jung and I celebrate with whiskey upon completing the climb up Penn Gulch. I'm not normally a whiskey drinker (note the look on my face), but this stuff (can't remember the name, but it's made right down on Blake St. in Denver) was wicked smooth. Kept me warm for about 30 seconds, which is when the snow started coming down.

Restoration, racing, and rain?

If you look closely, there's a Waltworks fork hiding under that crazy early 90s paint job - this was a fun project, doing a "semi replica" (some of the old parts don't exist any more) Fat Chance fork.

In other news, I surprised myself today by riding a smoking fast lap at Betasso (our local default ride, that I believe I've described before). My old record for the 3.5 mile loop is 13:30, but that was a speed I went 5 years ago when I was training hard and racing well (and riding a bike with gears). Starting a business and getting married pretty much ended the racing "career" but I thought I'd ride a hot lap for old time's sake. I turned a freaking 13:45, on my singlespeed! That made my day - nothing like proving to yourself that you're not (quite) over the hill. I feel like I might even be able to *beat* that old time!

So I also signed up for a really weird race this weekend - the "Burn" mountain bike time trial. It's a 22 mile race with racers sent off at 30 second intervals - insanity! Most of the fast pro guys are out of town at Fontana, so perhaps I stand a chance of being in the top half of the field. We'll see. Unfortunately, the forecast is calling for a high of 45 and rain up at Buffalo Creek, so I'm not sure I made the right choice signing up... first race of the year should be fun, not freezing cold and miserable. Gotta figure out what gear to run, too, as I'm pretty unfamiliar with the area.

BTW, if you want to do this race, you can preregister until midnight tonight on Active.com.