Random photos of stuff I finished up

...Bean has a cold so this is all you get, a few pictures and no words. Colors are "Red Baron" (ie ~RAL3000), JC Black, and no powder yet.

Bill's 36er!

Yep, it's another 36er! No fancy colored rims this time but I think she still looks pretty sharp!

Thanks to Bill for the photos. And yes, that is probably the only XX1 equipped 36er on earth. Great drivetrain (you can now even get a 26t, which is even better, but Bill is running a 28) for a bike like this if you're not going to just go with an 83mm shell and granny gear-only setup.

15mm through axle fork with faux-lugs

Just for Garro - booty shot!

Pics from Nate!

Wasatch Crest, baby! 650b, Fox, King, Stan's, Thomson - all the good stuff.

Also, Bueno Ave, SLC.

Quick rant: I'm tired of "enduro" everything

I'm going to show my age here, but I'm getting fed up with the constant use of the word "enduro" for new bikes, clothes (hey, Mavic invented baggies!), races, etc. And honestly I'm fed up with the whole concept as well.

A bit of background: enduro motorcycle racing (which I used to do, very badly) consists of a long ride at which checkpoints (which generally you don't know about in advance, though there are rules about where they can and can't be) are randomly scattered. Each segment will have a certain amount of time allotted, and penalties are assessed for coming in either faster or slower than the required time - meaning that you have to try to ride some sections very fast and some sections fairly slowly. The cool thing about moto enduros is that you can do them with your buddies, have a long fun day on the trail, and you can do well even if you're not the absolute fastest rider if you plan well and the sections are timed in a way that suits you. It's just like a normal day of trail riding but with some competition added - a great concept that would work well with some tweaks for mountain bikes, right?

Enduro mountain bike racing, on the other hand, is just basically downhill racing, as far as I can tell. Yes, it's annoying and somewhat tiring to ride a long travel bike to the top of whatever downhill section you'll be timed on, but the time allowed for transfers is so long that you can walk (or in the case of the Winter Park Enduro World Series race, some of the transferring is just done via chairlift - and hilariously they *canceled a stage* when the lift wasn't operating correctly!) If you are wearing full armor and a fullface helmet, the race is just a downhill race. Call it that and let people ride the lift, or alternately make the climbs difficult enough to do/timed such that a reasonable amount of effort is required. Or time some really pedally flat sections as well as DH jump runs so that riding a 7" travel bike won't be ideal.

The whole idea, as I understand it, of enduro racing is that it's like a ride you'd do with your buddies, with a competitive element added (much like moto enduros). It's quickly evolved into something totally different and that sucks - the ideal should be that an XC dude or a DH gal should both be able to have fun and have a chance to win. XC racing favors climbers, DH racing favors descending/bike handling, and the ideal enduro would make both of equal importance. As constituted now, it's just descending that matters and it's mostly the same folks that win DH races that win the enduros.

Enduro bikes are going the same way. An enduro bike should be a bike you'd take on a ride with your buddies on any random day after work, not a super-slack long-travel rig that's really only fun on the descents (though, to be fair, some of us do ride bikes like that on XC rides on occasion). A lot of the "enduro" bikes I see are really just sort of short travel DH bikes (the Trek Slash, for example, runs a 66 degree HTA and 110mm of trail - have fun holding your line on a technical climb...)

Here's my suggestion: set up enduro races so that the amount of timed riding is about equally split between descending and flat/climbing terrain that also requires good bike handling skills (ie technical flat rock garden sections or climbs, flat sections with lots of sprinting out of turns and cornering, etc) Time transfer stages for each category such that an average rider in that category will have to try fairly hard but not kill themselves to make their start time. Slower climbers will have to try a bit harder, or leave their armor and 35 pound bikes at home.

Nobody should be sitting around for 20+ minutes waiting to start a stage, ever. Ideally you should have just a few minutes to catch your breath and be off again - the race should not take all freaking day unless it covers a LOT of ground.

Set it up so that you can ride with your friends (ie let people swap around their start times as needed) as long as they're in the same category.

Assign categories *after* the results are in - ie the fastest guy wins, but then the 20th place guy wins the next category down. Still plenty of reason to go try as hard as you can, but a more random way to assign prizes for lower categories and eliminate sandbagging.

Serve beer afterwards.

To sum up: I want some cheese with my whine, and I am really tired of hearing about "enduro" everything, but it could awesome with some tweaks.

Photo Sunday!

We're off to the zoo in a few minutes. Thanks to Tom (who is now a CTR finisher!), Fuentes, and Megan for the photos!

Toothpocalypse!

I'm about halfway through my multitude of dental appointments (4 crowns, some fillings that need to be replaced, it sucks) and I have been sort of managing to get some work done as well. Here's James' front triangle (I'm waiting on some dropouts). I'll probably be working some weekends and late nights to try to catch up, since I've still got at least 2 long trips to the dentist left.

For those who are interested, it turns out that all my bike riding might have played a role in my awful teeth - it turns out that if you are dehydrated a lot, your saliva can't do it's job and protect your gums and teeth - and if you forget to drink water while exercising, which I do a lot, it's pretty much meth mouth time. So drink water, folks. Or pay thousands and thousands of dollars for crowns.

Bueller? Paging Eric Nutter

Eric, your bike has been done for a while now and I haven't heard anything from you via email or gotten a response to my phone calls - please call or email me, let's get this bike in your hands and rolling.

Random Sunday Night Photo

...Sarah's got a scientist friend in town so I'm working overtime. Some post mounts for an industry pal's fork here. Kind of a PITA to do these on my forks but the world has moved on from ISO, methinks. The threaded inserts get joined last (after some final filing to fit them up a bit tighter) to keep them where they need to be. I actually TIG welded these ones (sorry, no pictures) as an experiment - lesson learned, brazing them with LFB is way easier.

The PM saves about 30g over an ISO tab + adapter, for those of you who are actually counting grams on a steel fork. It's enough of a pain that it'll cost you an extra $50, though. So if you're a $1 for 1g kind of person (the normal threshold for a serious weightweenie disorder) you're better off with some WCS grips.

Too bad, because the Willits disc tab is still the most stylish thing on any of my forks. So pretty...and so obsolete.

Random Saturday Night Photo

...taken by me! I actually hosed off Stupidmobile this afternoon and figured this was probably the cleanest it would be for a long time.

Random thoughts:
-40cm chainstays are still awesomely fun.
-I might need a dropper post on there soon.
-Cateye bottle cages suck.
-Bontrager gave me some fun tires to play with - the 29-0 and 29-1 are pretty kickass. I'll post more about those at some point soon but suffice to say if you want to go put your tongue on the ground and race, they are awesome. The 29-1 is actually a pretty good all-arounder too if it's not too wet and/or super technical.

No longer made in the USA?

As some of you may know, Fox is filing for an IPO. Buried in the SEC filing is this little gem:
"Improve operating and supply chain efficiencies

We intend to improve operating margins in the medium term by enhancing our design and production processes to increase efficiencies, reducing new product time to market and lowering production costs. Specifically, we have begun the process of moving a majority of the manufacturing of our mountain bike products to Taiwan and intend to complete this process in 2015. We believe this transition to Taiwan, once completed, will shorten production lead times to our mountain bike OEM customers, improve supply chain efficiencies and reduce manufacturing costs."

As many of you know I recommend Fox forks to those customers looking for suspension. It will be hard for me to continue doing that in 2015, so in the meantime I'm planning to do some test rides on White Brothers forks - which I have not ridden in many years. 

What a shame. Fox was profitable (at least according to the filing) to the tune of $14 million last year. Selling stock and moving overseas would make sense if it were impossible to compete while manufacturing in the US, but that's obviously not the case. 

Anyway, rant over. Sad announcement. I wish all the folks at Fox the best as they (presumably) prepare to get laid off.

Martin - done

Here it is, still naked and freshly soaked to remove flux:

Now, geometry geekiness:

-69/73 head and seat angles, 93mm trail

-61.5 (24.2") effective toptube and 66.9cm front center

-41cm (16.1") actual and 40.5cm (15.9") effective chainstays (sliders slide back to 43cm/17" at full throw)

-30.5cm/12" BB height

-Clearance for a nice fat rear tire and 1x or SS drivetrain

-For a 100mm tapered fork

-Curvy for function (seat tube/tire area) and form (toptube)

-Tubes are a mix of True Temper Verus HT, Deda (chainstays) and Nova (seatstays)

Note that the slider inserts shown are my dummy ones for the frame fixture and holding everything together while welding - Martin's not planning to ride this thing fixed/brakeless as far as I know.

Beginner's luck?

Redcoat says:

Inaugural ride complete!

Ride is very smooth, you can be proud... balance is easy, really does
feel like riding my own bike but with a different weight distribution.
Back fits Sarah well, and has plenty of scope for adjustment as
planned.

XT brakes are the dog's bollocks; I can see a upgrade for my mountain
bike going on the list in the coming years! I like the 15mm bolt
through system; not putting the thread in the fork, but rather on the
bolt, seems like a better idea. The American Classic wheels ough hold
out... if they can handle the downhill track at Winter Park, surely
they are strong enough? I guess I saw a few tandems just riding bog
standard Corima carbon road wheels at the Tour of Tucson, which can't
be even close to being as strong as these. Well, time will tell!

It doesn't feel heavy. I'm going to go get the bath scales and weigh
it. I'll write you back. (update: 38 pounds, so not very light, but not shameful for a coupled bike with mountain bike stuff on it).

Here's a few pics. Thanks again so much. We are totally into it, so much fun.

Cheers RC

Couple random things back from the powdercoater

Apologies for the lack of posts this week, all my old climbing buddies are in town for the OR show so I've been socializing and riding (and even building bikes a bit) rather than posting.

Finished up the wedding present tandem and got it back from powder - I think it came out looking very nice. Hopefully it rides well too - I'm far from a tandem expert.

Also got Bill's 36er back. Black like my heart. No, I'm not secretly making the bikes for Intense. That one is my friend Lances (650b! In Utah! Crazy!) who was, of course, in town for OR.