Here's Barry's frame, in all it's glory. Such as it is. Probably more glorious to ride than look at - at least I hope so.
This is because Fox is popular, and I wasn't on the ball, basically. Fox has been running ~2 weeks out on getting small fork orders out forever, so my modus operandi has been to order the fork when the bike is ready to go to the powdercoater - everything shows up around the same time, I ship it out, all is well.
Also, for those who are curious, here's a picture of the chamois, and a description courtesy of Jeff:Jerseys and bibs are Alchemist. Hard to match every chamois to every butt; however, we tried a number of different chamois, and this one rose to the top. Pic attached. Variable density padding and lightweight, but very supple. A couple of us rode this chamois through the Breck Epic (6 day MTB marathon stage race). We wouldn't have chosen anything different. Our rear-ends were happy.
You are correct that the jersey is full-zip and race-cut.
Preorders are over, folks. Jerseys are still available ($60), however (sorry, no more shorts or bibs, that was a one-time deal):
No, I'm not talking about Al's favorite magazine. I'm talking about bikes for very large humans.
In any case, a couple of pictures for a lazy Sunday (well, not that lazy, I did finish up the frame - Sarah is deep in thesis mode and my weekends are more and more like weekdays lately). And a new setting! The back deck, somewhat damaged by Pele's furious anger and great vengeance directed at the UPS guy. Someday I will get around to fixing that railing.
If you show up and talk to me at the meeting, I'll give you 10% off any Waltworks product you want. Of course, hopefully we have such a huge crowd that you'll have a hard time even finding me!The time has come to show Boulder that mountain bikers are not a special interest, we are the very fabric of this community.
Take Action
1) Show up on Wednesday 2/9 at City Council chambers 1777 Broadway (intersection w/ Canyon) at 5PM.
2) Bring a friend. Bring lots of friends.
3) Sign our petition. Click here
4) Email the Open Space Board of Trustees, keep the message positive, and tell them, "I support BMA's modest proposal." Click here
5) Join the BMA Guerrilla Army to get mountain bikers off their asses and to this meeting. Click here
Um, what are you talking about?
On Tuesday, February 1st at 9:26 pm, Boulder's Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) Department recommended the continuation of a total ban on mountain bikes in the West Trail Study Area (the open space between Mount Sanitas and Eldorado Springs Dr). To justify this decision they cited "irreconcilable visitor conflict" and said new shared-use trails were " not a reasonable option from either an environmental or a cost perspective."
To see BMA's retort and our modest proposal, click
here. We are confident that modest bike access in the West TSA can be successful if we focus on solutions rather than exclusion.
What do I do at this meeting?
Show up. Sign up to speak. Don't repeat what others have said before you. It's enough to just get up there and say your name, your address, and "I support BMA's modest proposal." But feel free to say more if you'd like to. Your comments will dispel the myth that all mountain bikers are 20-something, meat-headed, adrenaline fueled, selfish people with no concern for families, our community, or our environment.
Above all else, keep it positive!
BMA's advocacy team will be there with green BMA t-shirts on. Ask them questions when you show up.
Some points to consider
* Know that the Open Space Board of Trustees (OSBT) is not the same as open space staff. Staff opposed bike access, but OSBT has not made ANY decision yet regarding bikes in the WTSA. They are unpaid appointees and deserve our respect.
* If you are angry, please show up, but do not speak. We MUST continue to put forward constructive, pragmatic solutions if we are to succeed.
* Get there early if you want a seat. OSMP staff will be downstairs defending their recommendations. Don't bother talking to them, they have made their position crystal clear, and there won't be any change. Walk by, go upstairs and get your seat. There will be overflow seating with streaming video downstairs and some of us will be milling around outside the building.
* There will be people in the room who hate bikes and will be looking for debate and/or confrontation. Take the high road and do not engage!
IMPORTANT DATES: Mark them on your calendar!
Open Space Board of Trustees Meeting: Wed, Feb 9
City Council Hearing on West TSA: Tue,Mar 15
For those not in the know, I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It's a very small town full of geeks, basically, and mostly is famous for being the birthplace of the atomic bomb (I am not as proud of this as some Los Alamosians, but that's neither here nor there).
When I was growing up, I spent plenty of time hiking around and shooting at my friends with bb guns (paintball is for sissies) but sadly, I did not ride bikes. In fact, it wasn't until I was in graduate school and visiting my parents that I realized what I'd been missing out on all those years - Los Alamos county probably has just about as high a concentration of singletrack trails as Crested Butte. It's insane.
So I was pretty excited when I got a chance to build a bike for Aaron, because he lives in Los Alamos (in fact, we went to high school together, though we apparently never knew each other). So while I don't get to ride those great trails, something I made will.
Hi Walt (& readers), Rick Vosper here, director of Airborne Bikes. Thanks for your interest in our little company.
Some background: the current incarnation of Airborne has no relation to the previous titanium vendor except the name. Our frames are all 6000 series Al that perform well against other quality production builders in terms of weight, appearance, stiffness, and strength (we know this because we test ‘em).
I agree that Dirt Rag’s use of the phrase “undercutting” is unfortunate, because we’re about value, not price. And that difference is critical. Our goal as a brand is to offer best performance per dollar, not cheapest bike per category. It’s an important difference, I think. For sure we don’t make one-of-a-kind hand-crafted works of art like Waltworks does, and we don’t expect to sell Airborne bikes to your customers, with two important exceptions:
First, we want to be the bike that customers like yours—guys who’ve been riding for years and really know their stuff—would recommend to a friend or family member who is interested in getting into the sport and understands that discount bikes tend to fall apart if subjected to the rigors of real offroad or CX abuse.
Second, we want to be the brand people like your customers go to when they’re interested in an entry-level bike to add to their own quiver. Maybe it’s a gravity guy who wants to try ‘cross because it looks like fun, or an XC rider who just wants to mess around on a pump track with a dirt jumper. Point is, these folks already own state-of-the-craft bikes and want equipment that will work well for its intended purpose…without investing thousands of dollars up front right away. If they try the discipline on an Airborne and like it, heck, they’ll be buying a Waltworks or other fine handbuilt bike soon enough. And we’re OK with that.
Which brings us to benchmarking. We start by looking at a category (a hardtail 29er, for instance) and finding the existing model or models (we usually end up with 3 or 4) that we’d recommend to the friend or family member referenced above. (In the case of the 29er, we chose Fisher/Trek’s excellent X-Callibur, a bike we’ve admired for years). Then we set out to make a bike with comparable performance at the best value we can. Typically it ends up between 20-30% less than the comparable Trek, Scott, GT, or whatever.
Do we succeed? Well, yes, we hit the value premium we’re aiming for. Do the bikes really compete with the benchmarks? Spec-for-spec, yes (our new website will be up later this month and you can see for yourself, including the feature-by-feature comparisons). Do Airbornes ride as well as the benchmarks? That’s for riders (and magazine editors, like the folks at Dirt Rag) to decide. But as for us, we’re betting the company on it.
On the downside, they're more work (gotta miter the blades to the correct angle, not just slap in the plug-in drops and then bend as needed) but that's ok, because there is one other HUGE plus, in my book:
Trust me, it actually makes sense (and it's dangerous, as you can see from my facial expression). You can read all about it at the Bicycle Colorado website.
Hi,
I would like to write something about Your 29er frames at www.team29er.pl - the biggest 29er site in Poland and I hope to get much more info about it, because on Your blog there are no details, not many photos etc. Could You send me photos and write about shown frames, Your passion, history...? I'm really interested in 'Fat bike for Mike' - but maybe You've got more unusual projects?
As some of you know, Edge composites had to change it's name to Enve, because of some sort of European trademark snafu. Actually, that may be irrelevant - I'm not sure that has anything to do with me getting a good deal on a few of their 2010 forks (with the old graphics).
Any component group you want, any color you want, etc, etc. You pick the parts, I design and build the frame, and you get an Edge 1.0 for $225, or an Edge 2.0 (better for bigger folks, as it's 75g beefier) for $200. I believe they retail for something like $700 and $500, respectively. 
I found a couple of these old steel carts on Craigslist and bought 'em for a song - planning to make some shelves for them and use them for extra storage (I need it badly) in the shop.
Also, a few people asked about the fork going on Mike's snow bike, and so I took a quick picture. Ginormous tire clearance, rack mounts, disc only, etc. Nothing super exciting - but it should be good for it's intended purpose. Last winter I built about a billion of these on contract for a small company (well, ok, maybe 40 or 50) and building this one made me flash back, just a bit, to the monotony, since it's pretty similar.
I did a new style of direct mount for this bike - used a Paragon unit, slipped/brazed into a piece of 1 1/4 x .058 to get the proper standoff from the seat tube with the 100mm bottom bracket shell. Should be super solid and reliable, and solves the annoying problem of finding a front derailleur that will work with the wide shell/fat tire combo.
I have contracted some variety of Creeping Crud and will be doing mostly computer work today, just FYI. Hopefully it will pass quickly. I'm not all that bummed, since it's like 10 degrees out, but I'm missing my track session with Nowork too. 
I was reading your blog the other day and saw the Yao Ming post and you were so right! That bike was down right dangerous and Gunnar was smiling about it. I know there arent that many people in the world taller than 6'10" but clearly none of them are riding bikes. Talk about a frame building niche. So when I saw your post I just wondered to myself...could Yao Ming at 7 feet+ tall make a 36er wheel look small?
Combining this curiosity with my frame building partner telling me how good Rattle Cad is (another free bike design program), I decided to kill two birds with one stone so to speak. It turns out that Rattle Cad really has come a long way since it was released as open source code. When it was first released it made nice pictures but was useless for frame building. There are still a few things BG101 does that I find useful that Rattle Cad doesnt but it is just a matter of time (toe overlap plot, drivetrain plot, general printing is terrible, and lack of BB junction (three tubes intersecting) miter template.
As far as the design of the Yao Ming 36er goes, I didnt get too deep. I located the three contact points in space like I said in the first email. I gave him 225mm cranks (arbitrary number) and compensated the BB height for equivalent pedal/rock clearance as my hardtail. I messed around with the head tube angle and fork offset to get (maybe?) toe clearance for a size 25? shoe (about 200mm). I also shot for a trail number between 70-80mm because I thought that is what other 36er builders did. I included a suspension corrected fork (100mm) because, hey, you never know.
The tubing selection and chainstay length were just picked by eye. I tried a 2.5 inch down tube as you suggested but it just looked too fat (aluminum). So I matched it to the oversized headtube at 44mm. In the end I think Yao would approve. He is right at the cusp of making a 36er look too small, which is saying something, but I bet it would be the best riding adult bike he has ever owned.
See? Not very scientific but there it is.
Walt,
Im sending another version of the bike with water bottles this time to give some perspective on how big this bike is...they look like Barbie water bottles. Also, I contradicted myself, the down tube is 2". And Rattle Cad only displays 175mm cranks in this type of view. So those arent really shown correctly but the overlap I mentioned is right.
I often run into the stereotype that all steel framebuilders (or all custom framebuilders period) are wool-shirt wearing, bearded grouches who only build lugged randoneur frames.
On the other hand, I (yesterday) built a fork for Ian that uses a 15mm quick-release through axle. This is something that I had never done before, but I felt it was appropriate for his use, not to mention the fact that these axles are becoming more and more common for XC bikes, and if I want to keep building forks for people, I'm going to have to figure them out eventually. Of course, the bearded grouch builder response would be "there's nothing wrong with a 9mm quick release"
-I had to make the dropouts. I *should* have ordered in some 3/4"x.120" 4130 and put it on the lathe, then tapped the other side to make the threaded dropout. Instead, I made the dropout in 2 pieces - one piece of 4130 turned out to 15mm (the slip fit) and one M14x1.5 nut which I turned down to match the OD on the lathe. Talk about a dumb way (from a time/effort perspective) to do things...
I'm fairly happy with the results, though, and the next time around, all the things I learned should make it go much quicker. There will be an upcharge ($75) for these setups, until someone starts making a plug/play dropout for them that I can just weld in (hear that, Mark?)
Not pictured is Bob's Tiemeyer. If you can't make out the lettering due to the crappy Iphone photo, that's a Primus Mootry, Zinn, Waltworks, Waltworks. Every bike on the track custom and handmade within 30 miles. Sweet!
