See y'all in 2012!

Sarah and I are off to sit on a warm beach. We'll be back in early January. No phone, probably very little email, so save up your questions until then! Happy New Year!

Thanks to Phil and Mike for the random photo dump. Those are some huge snickers bars!

Snow day!

We must have gotten 15 inches here, and there were 20+ closer to the foothills, I hear. Kat and Jake took Pele out with them to go snowshoeing, while I spent a decent chunk of the day going to the powdercoater and coming back while trying not to crash the car in the snow.

Cute animals are supposed to be pretty popular, so I'm expecting a ton of views and comments on the blog...

The Secret Birthday Bike - Rusty's FS

This bike never showed up on the waitlist, because it was partially a surprise for my good friend Rusty (his birthday was yesterday) from me and his lovely wife Natasha.

But it's worthy of a writeup, since I'm incredibly jealous of it and most of the parts have been hidden in the back of my garage for like a month so that Rusty wouldn't catch wind of what was going on.

So, first, the bike is way fancy, obviously. And it's way light - 23.5 pounds as shown, and it'll be pushing 23 once Rusty puts his fancy seatpost and saddle (shown are my old junker Bonty saddle from the mid-90s and a Thomson I had sitting around) on there. If you really went nuts on a few parts (cassette, rear derailleur, tires, ti bolts, etc) I bet you could get to 22. Wow.

Geometry:
100mm travel front and rear
71* head tube, 71* seat tube. Rusty has LOOONG femurs, so it's a very slack seat tube angle, and consequently a shorter front center (65.7cm) than you'd expect given the toptube length.
109.5cm/43.1" wheelbase
62cm/24.4" toptube, 50cm/19.7" seat tube, 77.5cm/30.5" standover
44cm/17.3" chainstays
13.5" (unsprung) BB height
130mm/5.2" head tube, for a tapered steerer
Direct mount for a front derailleur, if Rusty ever decides to run one.

And of course, there's the parts spec. Rusty geeked out about pretty much every part on the bike (except a few bits like the wheels that we surprised him with):
-Enve 29" XC rims laced to DT 240 hubs (15mm front, 10mm rear)
-Easton EC90 bar, Ritchey WCS stem and foam grips, Easton EC90 post (not shown), SLR saddle (not shown)
-Fox RLC 100mm taper fork and King HS.
-M970 cranks, Crank Bros with ti spindles, Paul chainguide
-X9 shifter and rear derailleur, PG1080 11-36 cassette, Homebrew 36t ring
-Magura MT-6 brakes (I am very impressed with these) and Storm SL rotors
-Ikon 2.2 tires front and rear.

What would something like this set you back? About $6200.

How does it ride? Well, so far we've only ridden it around the parking lot, so who knows, but I will say this - it is disconcertingly light, and disconcertingly stiff. Those are probably both good things. I'll get the full report from Rusty when he's back in TX on dry trails.

Happy Birthday, Rusty!

Natasha and I conspired long and hard to make this happen. Pictures of the complete bike to come soon, once we get the hoops. Don't let Lucy chew on those rims!

29ers and Downhill

As many of you nerds loyal blog readers know, I have spent a lot of time messing with long-travel 29ers. Alex Morgan and I (independently) built the first 29er "downhill" bikes in 2005 (Exiwolf 2.3 FTW!) and did several iterations of the high-single pivot design that rode pretty well. I also got involved somewhat in getting WTB to make the now-discontinued Kodiak and Dissent downhill tires. Since 2010, several bikes in the 130-140mm travel range have come out that could be used as very light duty DH bikes from production companies, as well.

But I think what momentum there is is going away. As I said, WTB has discontinued both of the existing dual-ply tires - and there's nothing else on the market right now that will handle an aggressive rider on rough terrain. Maxxis is reportedly doing a tire, but that's still vaporware right now.

Why aren't people rushing to ride big wheels on downhill bikes? There are a couple of reasons involving fit and the expense and difficulty of redesigning suspension setups to make the wheels clear, etc, etc. But that's not the main problem, in my mind.

Neither 29 or 650b is going to catch on for long travel rigs - because gravity riding is turning into chairlift-served BMX, at least in CO. Trails with groomed, man-made features are super popular, gnarly techy rock trails, much less so. And it's pretty obvious why - getting air on easy, safe jumps and whipping around berms is fun for beginners (and, um, the rest of us too, of course), whereas technical rocks/roots/ruts/offcamber really only appeals to a select group of highly-skilled weirdos (full disclosure: I am one of those weirdos, except for the skills part).

So the future of DH/FR is endless rows of tabletops, slopestyle courses, and wooden stunts/drops with groomed transitions. Roll-over and bigger wheels don't help much with that kind of riding, and the parts and infrastructure for 26" already exist - so I don't see any other wheelsize taking any significant share of that market.

I think WTB saw this and that's a big part of why they yanked the Dissent and Kodiak (which makes me a bit sad, I played a small role in getting those tires made 5 years ago). The future is groms getting big air on A-line or some approximation, not chunder and slimy roots at 12mph.

Ugly sweaters 2011

No picture of Sarah this year, she stuck with the old tried-and-true snowballs gig. But she found me a 2 sizes too small women's turtleneck at the thrift store. Not sure what she's trying to tell me, here...

Tie is from McCalla's wedding!

And yes, I am aware that posting this kind of picture of myself is unlikely to lead to large numbers of custom bike sales. What can I say? Apparently I didn't get enough public humiliation in middle school, and I'm desperate for more.

Occupy Wall Street vs. Night Riding?

Check it out: the city of Boulder is looking to make it illegal to be on open space land at night, in order to get rid of the occupy folks camped out on the lawn of the municipal building. That would also mean no hiking, running, climbing, or biking at night, of course. Stargazing from the meadow at Chautauqua? Illegal!

I have to say it - this is a new low in Boulder city government stupidity. The protesters have *already* violated the law which requires them to get a permit for any event with more than 25 people. Apparently, as is unfortunately typical in Boulder, instead of enforcing the law or, alternately, coming up with a better solution, the city is looking to pass *yet another* law that probably won't be enforced.

Think this is stupid? Email Jane Brautigan and tell her so:
brautigamj@bouldercolorado.gov

Note that you should not take anything I've written here to be an endorsement OR a criticism of Occupy Wall Street or Occupy Boulder.

Now THAT...

...is what I call a studded tire!

Holy Head Tube!

Randy is a very tall (6' 6") guy. He's one of only a couple of people this entire year who I've built a frame for that I am not big enough to comfortably ride (for reference, the biggest person I've ever built for is 7' and 400#!)

The rear end of the bike looks *tiny* behind that 8.5" long head tube! And Randy is still going to need spacers to get his bars to saddle height! But it's not small in any other dimension either:

-71 HTA, 73 STA, 27" effective toptube!
-21.7" seat tube!
-465mm chainstays (that's at the *front* of the slot - they'll go back as far as 485mm)
-13.3" BB height for 190mm cranks
-Built for an 80mm suspension corrected rigid fork (and possibly down the road, a tapered steerer fork) with an insanely long steerer (I'm leaving it uncut at 14" and letting Randy figure out how much to cut off...)
-True Temper Supertherm front triangle (beefy!) and Deda S-bend chainstays (also beefy) with some oversized hand-bent 19mm (I usually use 16mm) seatstays.
-Internal cable routing, Paragon sliders, downtube cable routing for gears in the event that Randy wants to run them.
-Probably will be close to 6 pounds by the time it's back from the powdercoater.

This might be the biggest frame I've built this year.

My customers are weird

Lots of framebuilders have websites full of glossy, studio-shot, professionally photoshopped bikes. Then again, I am not a cool framebuilder.

So here you go. It's a bit blurry. It's, well, not so well composed. And it's staged in front of Andy's fire, getting ready to curl up for the night in it's nice comfy wicker basket. Nothing sells bikes like awkwardly posing them inside your home like beloved pets!

I'm going to need to fire the marketing guys. Assuming Andy does not show up tomorrow and murder me for mocking his photography skills. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black...

Wheel prices for 2012 (and, well, for now)

I get asked about wheel prices a TON, so I thought I'd do a quick post with the prices of some popular options to (hopefully?) save everyone some time. Of course, these prices are subject to change (usually up, very rarely down) without any notice, so treat them as a guideline rather than the last word on the subject.

Wheels are available only to frame customers. Prices do NOT include shipping. 26, 650b (when available), or 29" rims have no effect on the price, and I don't build tons of road bikes, so I have not listed any road wheels here - email me for a quote if you're interested.

Without further ado:

ZTR hubs laced to any Stan's rim (ie Crest/Arch/Flow): $350*
Hope Pro 2 hubs laced to any Stan's rim: $520*
DT Swiss 240 hubs laced to any Stan's rim: $650*
Stans' Race Gold/Podium MMX (note: weight limit!): $520
Easton EA90XC: $700
Easton Haven (15mm TA only): $700
Easton Haven carbon (15mm TA only): $1550
Bontrager Race X lite: $620
Bontrager Rhythm Elite: $355
Bontrager Rhythm Pro: $600
Bontrager Rhythm Comp: $271
Shimano XT (MT75): $390

And yes, I can get ENVE (used to be EDGE) wheels too. They are sick, and expensive!

ENVE: DT Swiss 240 hubs (QR or 15mm) laced to Enve XC or AM carbon rims: $1600
ENVE: King hubs (QR or 15mm) laced to Enve XC or AM carbon rims: $1675

Singlespeed rear hubs will generally add $25-50. If you prefer to build your own wheels, I can sell you the component parts of *most* of these wheelsets for somewhat less money.

*Note that all Stan's wheels are laced/built by the Notubes guys unless you'd prefer them built by my wheel guru Steve Lawlor (highly recommended!) for an extra $100.

New stuff out the door

Shipped out Kurt's FS bike and Andy came to pick up his near-opposite rigid hardtail today as well. Interestingly, Kurt was getting an FS to join the hardtail I built him a few years ago, while Andy was doing the inverse and adding a hardtail to join his FS.

As always, a quick geometry summary.

Kurt's 29" FS:
-71 HTA, 73 STA
-18" seat tube, 24" (61cm) toptube
-100mm travel front/rear, with a TALAS fork that can go to 120 travel (and slack back the HTA by a degree) when needed.
-45cm chainstays, 29" standover
-Direct mount derailleur, tapered steerer, all the new stuff.
-For all-around XC, with TALAS for the gnar (if needed)


Andy's 22# Rigid Wonder:
-71 HTA, 73.5 STA
-20" seat tube, 24.6" (62.6cm) toptube
-Zero travel! But suspension corrected for 100mm if Andy wants some bounce down the road.
-44cm chainstays, 32" standover
-Direct mount, no taper, nice XTR 2x build. Sick!
-For going uphill fast, and downhill somewhat less fast than on his dualie, probably.

WW Bikepacking!

Apparently you can actually get lost and have an adventure - on a bike - in Florida. Who knew?

Thanks to Luis for the picture.

$10,000 bikes?

As much as I hate to admit it, it's cold out, and I am killing time before going out to the shop to suffer (yes, on a Saturday! I'm like some kind of bike-building monk in my Waltworks hairsuit!) so, I have to shamefacedly admit that.... I read something on Bikeradar.com.

And yes, that's a picture I took of myself this morning. The skull is the skull of one of my enemies. Probably Feldman.

Specifically, I read a pretty vapid article about $10,000+ road bikes.

The author makes some good points - namely that A) rich people buy crazy stuff and don't care much about the price, and B) companies make money selling the bikes. Both perfectly legit reasons for them to exist.

I have a bit of disagreement with the third major point he attempts to make, though - that the technology "trickles down" to cheaper bikes. This is certainly what it might seem like to the average consumer - XTR or Dura-Ace or Record comes out in 10 speed (or 11, or whatever) and not until a year or two later do the more-reasonably priced Ultegra/XT/Chorus versions come out. Sweet! Now I can have 11 speed for cheap, thanks to some rich folks buying lots of expensive bikes with Record, right?

Not so fast. IMO this kind of innovation could easily be applied across the range of components - there's not much that is inherently more expensive about a 10 speed cassette versus a 9 speed one, so if Shimano wanted to roll out a new system across SLX/XT/XTR at the same time, they could easily do it. They've made an upfront investment in doing some new design work, and that cost is relatively fixed - to make the XTR derailleur into an XT one, just use a bit less fancy rollers, make some stuff from aluminum instead of crabon, and don't spend as much machine time taking off that last few grams of extra material. There's a little extra design time/cost there, but not much.

No, Shimano (or whoever) rolls out 10 speed in XTR first because they want lots of people to buy XTR, because they will make more money that way. Once the novelty has worn off a bit, and they've gotten everyone who will buy XTR purely for 10 speed to do so, they'll roll out the SLX and XT and get some more money from the less spendy crowd. It's purely a sales and marketing strategy (note that I am not saying there's anything wrong with that), not a case of super-expensive parts somehow driving everything forward. If nobody on earth bought XTR, Shimano would still make money hand over fist and still roll out new stuff for us average Joes to buy on a regular basis.

The really new and innovative stuff comes out of left field (Stan Koziatek, Wes Williams, I'm looking at you guys...) Road bikes are pretty much the same as they were 100 years ago, except for the materials used to make them. More gears? Sure, big deal. More aero? Yeah, but the position of the rider is still the most important thing, big deal. Lighter? Yes, there have been some impressive improvements there (remember, though, that Major Taylor used to race on a ~14 pound bike - in the 1890s!) These are incremental improvements, not radical innovations, and the people who say that their old Peugot from 1982 is just as good as your $5k crabon wonderbike are half right. So there's really not that much trickling down.

Lighter weight isn't innovation. More gears isn't innovation. Here's some stuff that would really be game-changing:
-Frame materials that can change their stiffness (or other characteristics) on the fly.
-Something with better traction and toughness than rubber. Don't laugh, I would be surprised if it doesn't eventually happen.
-Telescoping foot "wheel" systems that can handle suspension duties/change effective diameter at the same time as they provide traction. Yes, I got that idea from YT's board/Hiro's moto in Snow Crash.
-Low power onboard radar/infrared/navigation/something that assists the rider in picking lines (like following your fast buddy down the trail?) or warns of other users around blind corners.
-Or probably something else I'm not smart enough to think of.

Most of my (not original) dumb ideas will probably never happen (and I imagine some people will argue that what I'm describing isn't really even a "bike"), or we'll all be too busy playing World of Warcraft to actually ride bikes in 20 years, but my point is this - the really cool new stuff is not going to happen because a lawyer wants a bike that's 50g lighter than his dentist friend.

Jim, I think she's dead.

These Lennox saws always treat me well - I think I got 2 years and probably 500 cuts out of this one. But when they start breaking teeth, things go south in a hurry - just one was missing when I started the cut that killed this poor thing.

Waiting to finish up Guillaume's Fatbike

Yes, Nick, it's fat rear (and front) Thursday. Featuring Guillaume's fatbike front triangle, a couple of terrible pictures, and some rambling thoughts from someone who does not really ride fatbikes much but has built maybe a dozen of them.

Guillaume's is a new-wave fatbike - it'll have clearance for the 115mm Big Fat Larry (yikes, that's a lot of rubber!) accomplished partially by some careful chainstay manipulation and partially by offsetting the entire crank out to something like a 70mm chainline. To compensate, it's also using a 170mm rear hub (thank, Anvil, for making a dummy axle for such a beast!)

For those folks wondering about the geometry, it's nothing crazy, except that Guillaume has legs that go up to his elbows (he's 5'9" tall and runs his saddle at 79cm! Holy cow!)
-71 HTA, 73 STA.
-22.8" toptube, 19.2" seat tube (yes, superfreaky)
-45cm chainstays, 12" BB, built for a Fatback carbon fork
-Clearance for some godawful huge tires, set up as a 1x9 or SS
-Nice Paragon low mount dropouts to keep the disc caliper out of the way of the rack mounts.

There are a bunch of bikes on my *personal* wish list - geared hardtail race bike (yeah, like I'll be racing once the Bean is born...), FS race bike (ditto), 36er (waiting to get some decent rims/tires in the pipeline), new townie (that will still go when the mercury drops below freezing), and maybe even a cargo bike. Alas, none of them will fit in my limited shop/garage space, so all of those projects are on the indefinite back burner.

So why not a fatbike? I do love to ride in the snow, after all. Here's the problem: Boulder does not have the kind of snow you'd want to ride a fatbike on. We have periodic big dumps of slushy junk that partially melt, then turn into ice - almost never the consistent, packed or semi-packed (or at least consistent depth - it's always windy here too) snow that you'd need to enjoy riding a fatbike. So, alas, no fatbike for me, unless I move somewhere with consistent snow and packed trails of some kind.

But I enjoy building them anyway, and sending them off for people to enjoy, all while cursing the mud and ice on the trails here.

Fat Front...Tuesday!

Ok, ok, boring, I know. But Greg sent me this nice picture of the fat fork I built for him and I figured I'd post it.

I promise there will not be a "Fat Front Wednesday". I'll try to think of something interesting to write about instead.

Fat Front Monday

I'll be honest - I have never really understood the appeal of putting a 3+" tire on the front of an otherwise "normal" XC bike. But it seem to be the popular thing lately, so who am I to argue (also, since I've ridden fat front/rear, but never front only, I'm not in a position to judge). I can sort of imagine it's like having a short-travel suspension fork on the front of the bike in some situations - and cornering traction probably rules!

In any case, thanks to Joel for the "obligatory old crappy cabin" photo.

Now Available:

Waltworks children's bikes. A perfect fit every time, guaranteed! Your little one will be riding in no time.

Thanks to Steve for the pic.

File under: Hell Yeah!

...now Mark just needs to make pretty much all his other dropouts in post-mount too. And a 15QR fork dropout.

File under:

The Bean is (going to be) a Boy

Many blog readers already know this, but Sarah and I are expecting our first child in April. Today, we found out that "the Bean" will be a boy, which is pretty neat, and also makes it/him quite a bit less abstract (and hence, much more terrifying...)

In any case, you needn't fear that the blog will become nonstop baby idiocy. I promise. But I do want everyone to keep in mind that in the April-May timeframe, I may be working very intermittently as the Bean's emergence will probably take up quite a bit of my energy. I do not think this will affect anyone currently on the waitlist, but you never know. I'm going to do my best to get ahead a bit in anticipation, of course, but I ask for your patience in advance, especially when it comes to answering emails and phone calls in that time period.

As an aside, WW team stud Nick Stevens and his lovely wife Diana are expecting twins (one boy, one girl) just a few weeks before us. Can you say "epic rivalry at 2035 UCI Worlds?"

I will update this post with a few annoying ultrasound images later this afternoon. Those folks who are friends with Sarah on Facebook can see them there, too.