Monday, August 27, 2007

Winter Park finale, mini-vacation

So, Chris has my camera, so no pictures until I get it back, but you can see a little bit of what Sarah and I were up to at Gooney Riders.

The Tipperary race is a classic, and for good reason - it's got almost every kind of terrain (from wet roots to perfect hardpack), it's long (almost 26 miles, 4k+ feet of climbing), and it's been going for more than a decade. Plus it draws the big names - Jimmy Mortenson narrowly beat out Lance Armstrong on this course in 1999, and this weekend's race drew JHK, Heather, Georgia Gould, Keri Barnholt, and a lot of other top pros. I've raced it three times (counting this last one) and until Saturday, I'd never made the start on time. I don't know what my problem is, but I seem to never make the starts of the races that start across the valley in Frasier.

In any case, I actually managed to make my start (the announcer was saying "3...2..." as I rolled up to the line) and I immediately launched a glorious solo attack on the initial 3 mile flat fire road section. Needless to say, I quickly spun out/blew up and settled back into the pack. Ended up dead last into the singletrack somehow, but picked it back up and passed a ton of folks on the initial long climb and descent. I fought back and forth with 3 or 4 guys in the middle section of the course, then blew up spectacularly in the last 1/3 of the race and ended up 9th of 36 finishers. My lack of time on the bike since the shoulder injury definitely showed - I was pedaling squares by the end of the race. Jeremy won and set a course record of 1:41 - that's over 15mph on a serious mountain bike course with a lot of climbing. Wow! Notably, he and Heather (who won the women's pro race) both rode 29ers. Cool.

Sarah bonked and finished in the middle of the expert pack somewhere, but held on for the series overall. Tary was 2nd or 3rd and won her beginner series, and Brian K ended up 4th overall in the very competitive expert 30-34 category. Good times. We hung around for the raffle, in which I won a 26" tire (yay!) and a cheesy compass/whistle/thermometer thing. Sweet.

Sunday was a sweet, epic ride, followed by a lot of beer drinking and stupidity. Check out gooneyriders for Eszter's take on the shenanigans, I might write something up when I have some photos to share. Let's just say that the weekend included almost 8 hours of riding and the consumption of a herculean amount of alcohol and ice cream. Best weekend of the summer, IMO.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

They totally copied me!

Was I the inspiration for this with my "free IMBA membership with bike" program? Probably not, but big props to Trek for putting THEIR money where their mouths are. "One key aspect of the program will create a US$10 'tax' on all full-suspension bicycles sold by Trek beginning August 1st, with the projected total to estimate US$600,000. That money will then be donated to IMBA (International Mountain Bike Foundation) to support its trail usage and advocacy programs."

I'm not sure why hardtails aren't worthy, but whatever. Full squishers are probably 90% of Trek's mountain bike sales anyway, and $600k is nothing to sneeze at.

Natalie's pink singlespeed


Ok, maybe this isn't that interesting, but I thought it was a nice picture. This is a frame that I originally was building as Sarah's new race bike for this year. But thanks to some big-time stupidity, I managed to set the head tube height on the fixture wrong, and so I hung the front triangle on the wall and started over - doh. As luck would have it, our good friend Natalie in Tucson can ride a bike that's almost exactly the same toptube length and bar height (albeit with a lower saddle) as Sarah. So one thing led to another, I finished the bike up with some Paul dropouts and a few geometry tweaks to make things ride right, and Natalie has a new frame. Best of all, I have one less potential yard ornament taking up space in the garage.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

New Mexico trip report

The primary reason for this trip was to visit with my pops (who lives in Jaconita, which is about 15 miles north of Santa Fe), my sister (visiting from New Haven), and my pal McCalla (friend since 5th grade). So to start things off, here's a shot of the fam. Note the mismatched dogs (Abe is 110#, Zoe is about 6#). Don't ask how that happened. Note also my sweet choice of matching shit-brown shorts and shit-brown T6 t-shirt. Lookin' sharp!

On Friday, we rode a complicated ride with McCalla that started with a shuttle to the Aspen Vista trailhead (just below the base of the Santa Fe ski area) and climbed about 2.5k feet up to 12,056 (according to McCalla's GPS). Here's a shot of the high-altitude radio towers and the view (the ride goes up the peak on the left above us). Pretty cool to be high enough to be COLD when it was 95 degrees in town. The combination of trails (Raven's Ridge to Winsor to Chamisa to something else to Dale Ball) included over 6000 feet (honestly, maybe 7000) of descending, dumping us out about 1/2 mile from the Plaza in downtown Santa Fe. Sweet!

Saturday was a return to my old favorite ride - the Quemazon/Pipeline/Guaje Ridge/Cabra loop in Los Alamos. The Pipeline and Guaje Ridge portion is part of the uber-cool (go do it next year!) Pajarito Punishment race course. As we did it, it's a steep/rocky/technical (see the picture of Sarah on Quemazon) 3000 foot climb to a LONG (almost 10 miles, I think) singletrack descent.

The really interesting thing about most of the riding in Los Alamos is that it's been extensively restored after the Cerro Grande fire 5 years ago. Not only are there no trees (you can see the burned remnants), there's a lot less soil, too, since the tree roots (and other plants) helped hold it together. But things are recovering really nicely - the aspens have moved in and are almost 20 feet tall in some places. This shot is from about 3/4 of the way up Quemazon.

The views of town from the trail are pretty neat, now that those pesky trees aren't in the way. The Guaje Ridge and Cabra trails have been lovingly restored by the local mountain bike club and they're in great shape - honestly just as fun as ever (or more so, in the case of Cabra). Definitely worth a trip if you're passing through northern NM.


In any case, lots of fun, though the 7 hour drive wasn't so great (my back is still sore - I'm no good at long drives these days). I miss NM - hopefully I'll be able to move back there someday. Here's a final shot of Cabra trail.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Check out the Waltworks 'Cross Team...

Well, ok, to be fair, it's just Nick. But he's pretty fast, so that's good enough for me. Some of the guys at Mud and Cowbells took some shots of him at 'cross practice yesterday. Check him out, what a stud!

Big long post about NM trip coming soon, with pictures.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

No fun pictures today

I'm back on the bike at 90% or so, though I'm still kinda slow on the downhill, due to the shoulder being pretty weak. I'm going to have to do some exercises before I hit the climbing gym this winter to rehab, that's for sure.

Good longish ride with Steve Z this morning - we're both used to riding with larger groups and/or slower riders, so I think we both surprised ourselves with how thrashed we were after 3 hours of hammering. Haven't ridden that hard (other than racing) in quite a while. I thought I was pretty hardcore doing my 3 hour ride, but Sarah actually took the 6:50 bus to Ned (I was on the 8:10) and only got back at 1. That's a solid 5 hours. Damn, girl...

We're off to New Mexico to ride some of my old favorites (Quemazon, Pipeline, Guaje Ridge, Winsor, Dale Ball, Captain Jack's) and some new stuff that McCalla plans to show us (Raven's Ridge?). Should be fun times. We'll be gone from tomorrow (Thursday) through Sunday night, so don't bother trying to call - my phone will probably not work at my dad's place. I probably won't check email either, so don't expect a reply until Monday if you send one.

I promise I'll take some pictures in NM and post 'em.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Downhill bike finally *done*


So I've been through a few iterations, and some various forks (at last count, a WB135, A Lyrik w/eccentric hub, an old Hanebrink, and a modified Y2K Marzocchi Junior T) but I think the setup is now finalized. This sucker takes corners like it's on rails and the combo of the big wheels (with beefy dual-casing Nevegal tires) and 6"/6.5" of travel front and rear make it pretty much capable of running over anything you're dumb enough to hit. I've named this model the El Guapo ("Jefe" was taken...)

I'm really happy with the new fork - Feldman got it off Craigslist in trade for some old crap brakes, and I sent it in to WB for a new left stanchion and some seals and bushings (as well as the fork guards). The fork (which is essentially the same as the current Groove 180 and Groove 200 forks, except for it's 2001 era damping leg) is perfect for 29" wheels, because it's got plenty of clearance under the crown for the wheel (you do have to raise the lowers all the way up, though) and it's got a sweet 120mm axle spacing setup - which lets you use a 120mm hub, or a DISHLESS 110mm one (which is what I'm doing, since I already had a 110 wheel). Very cool, especially for this application, since I want the strongest front wheel I can manage to build. Combined with the 150mm/12mm thru-axle rear, this is probably one of the burliest 29er wheelsets you can get. I could have gone with Kris Holm hubs over the Rhynolites, but I'm only 150 pounds, so I figured the Rhynos would be fine.

I had several concerns when designing this sucker, notably:
-Lateral stiffness. I can honestly say that this frame is the stiffest full suspension frame I've ridden. The combo of the massive front triangle tubes (45mm downtube, 38mm toptube, 32mm seat tube) and the 22mm axle pivot (using a sweet Primo bottom bracket from Dan's Comp) mean that there's practically no lateral flex or play. Honestly, I think it's almost as stiff as a hardtail.
-Reasonable wheelbase and chainstay length. Given that I wanted to run a front derailleur, and I was limited to crappy E-type ones (the "e" is for "excrement") the chainstays had to be a little longer than I could have otherwise made them (they're 440ish mm, or about 17.3"). I will probably end up doing another rear end with <17" chainstays at some point - there's plenty of room to do it, if I throw the lousy front derailleur out the window. The bike manuals and wheelie-drops fantastically (or, as well as I can manual or wheelie-drop anything) so I think I made this goal as well.

-Reasonably light, indestructible. I'm not going to say nothing can break this frame, because nothing survives being run into a tree, or a parked car, or whatever at 20+ mph, but I think I can reasonably expect to still be riding this sucker when I'm 50 years old. The front end is made from a great tubeset called Supertherm, which is essentially True Temper's high-end double butted OX Platinum tubes, made 40% thicker. You would have to be an absolute monster (or do something unbelieveably suicidal) to damage those tubes. The rear end is bulletproof .75"x1.5"x.049" 4130 cromoly, and trust me, it's not going to have any durability problems either. Best of all, the whole thing weighs about 11 pounds with the shock, which is pretty comparable to a conventional/disposable aluminum downhill frame - and I bet this sucker is more durable in the long run. The bike complete, as shown here, is only 37 pounds (admittedly, it's 38 with "real" downhill pedals). Hell, I could build it up with a WB F135, and some nicer parts and a shock with a lockout (or some propedal valving), and it'd be a reasonable 32-33 pound trail bike.

Basically, I love this thing to death. It's probably my proudest framebuilding accomplishment. I think long-travel steel bikes make a lot of sense (durable, repairable, not any heavier than the other stuff out there) now that I've built it and ridden it. Mucho thanks to Feldman for design work, creative ideas, and Craigslist scumbaggery. And a big thank you to Ben at True Temper for providing some very unusual tubes for the project. Eric at WB deserves a round of applause as well for his quick work getting the fork repaired and tuned up.

I think the 29" wheel thing is going to find it's way onto the radar for freeride and downhill in the next few years, if my experience is anything to go by. And I promise this will be my last long, annoying post about this bike. Really.

Oh, a final note. You can buy this bike (well, not this one, but one built for you) - custom geometry, any amount of travel (within reason), blah blah blah. $1700 gets you a frame, or $2k gets you a frame with fancy schmancy shock of your choice. Party on.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Shots of Tony's frame, brief race report


I thought this frame came out looking really nice, though the photos don't look as good as real life. It's a custom front triangle mated to a slightly tweaked Ventana rear end - built for 4" front/4" rear travel, 71.5 head angle, 455mm chainstays, and 13.4" BB height (without sag). I was surprised to see that the frame (without the shock) weighed exactly 2900 grams - that's really not too bad, especially considering that I wasn't particularly aiming to make it light. With a fancy shock, you could easily end up with a <7 pound frame. Cool.

In other news, today wasn't my day at the races - I was planning to just ride hard up the opening 2000 foot climb and then dropping out/pulling over, since my shoulder isn't really up to race speed descending. The field was super fast, with JHK and other luminaries in attendance. And I felt like crap - managed to sneak into the top 10 or so near the top of the climb, but blew up so bad subsequently that I had to walk a couple of sections. Didn't have the legs, c'est la vie.

Fuentes flatted, Brian felt terrible and finished 17th, Sonya bonked, Yuki flatted 3 times (but still finished!). Sarah was the only one who had a decent race - she finished first in her expert group, and 12th overall out of all experts and pros (and she even beat a couple of the pros!) So at least we salvaged one decent ride.

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Boulder Short Track Finals


Boulder Short Track is over for 2007 - I was sad to see the series end (especially since I wasn't able to race with my bum shoulder) but the finals were great fun to watch, and the Waltworks/Fuentesdesign team threw down big time. Fuentes (shown on his Waltworks 29er w/custom Actiontec suspension fork) duked it out with Sager and Mike West for the entire race before finally ending up 2nd (and 6th overall). Nice work Fuentes!

In the women's A race, Sarah had a terrible start (back around 12th) but passed a bunch of girls to move up to 6th by the finish - her best race of the year at the short track. She also ended up 4th overall for the series and took home a cool $50!

Team Tuffgirls Sonya Looney was right ahead of Sarah in the final race (5th) and in the overall (3rd). Nice work Sonya!




Nick broke his chain, but still finished strong and took 8th overall.






Even resident pro roadie Rolf showed up to represent the Fuentesdesign colors. He had a solid finish and beat plenty of guys, in his only mountain bike ride of the year so far!