Laramie Enduro!

Nice job, Andy and Mike! And thanks to Mike's wife, I'm guessing, for the pictures!

RAL 5015...

Happy Jack, I think.

Just in case you forgot...

You (and I) are sissies, because we are not GDR people.

Well, maybe one person reading this is. :)

Happy friday, all. Go ride, even if it's only for 45 minutes at night after the kids fall asleep (my GDR is "Golly, Daytime Ride?!?" these days...)

Thanks to Jon for the photo. Bags by Alpine Luddites.

Followup to the Jamboree!

Nekkid!

Tuesday Rant: Down With the Metric System!

Seriously, weight weenies, listen up. I was once one of you. Your brains are being tricked by the evil metric system.

You weigh something like 80,000 grams, plus or minus 20,000 or so. If you're really big or really small you might be outside that range, but you're probably not.

If you have a nice, light (mountain) bike, it weighs something like 10,000 grams.

To make the math easy, let's say that when you've got a couple water bottles, clothes, and some tools, you and your bike are 100,000 grams.

If you know what these are, you have a problem

So a crazy light, say, stem, that saves you 50 grams, is 5/10,000 of your total vehicle weight. That's 1/20 of 1%. To even hit a 1% savings, you need 1000g of lighter parts/frame. You can certainly pull that off, but it'll cost you multiple thousands of dollars to do in most cases.

Worst of all, it won't actually make you 1% faster, since there are lots of things that aren't affected much by weight at all (air resistance, drivetrain losses, etc).

And yet, weight weenies, you spend countless hours weighing parts (and your bikes). You obsess over the weight of everything and the first thing you do when you see a nice bike is pick it up to see how light it feels.

Yet mostly, you've never really spent time testing, say, tires back to back on the same course to see which one makes you faster. Or hired a coach, or gotten a good bike fit. Or made sure to get multiple preride laps in on a race course. Or tried a dropper post to see if it helps you go faster and save energy on the descents (it's an extra 250g, you know...) You break and wear out stuff all the time or have to make do with sub-par suspension or brakes or tires because you buy parts based on weight.

You don't care about being *faster* (or having more fun), you care about how light your bike is. And that's crazy.

Here's what I think the problem is: grams are crazy small units. But they're *discrete* units. You can weigh and count and measure them and quantitatively compare them. There is no uncertainty about whether or not one stem cap is lighter than another. You can add up the grams in your head as you fall asleep at night (no joke, I used to do this as an exercise to help fall asleep!)

In other words, grams are a terrible trap for your geeky brain. They lure you with their hard numerical precision and you start to enjoy adding them up (and even more, subtracting them). But they don't really matter. It's like spending your time counting pennies to figure out your net worth.

So as an exercise, try this: think of your bike weight in pounds. Period. Round up or down if needed. So maybe you have a 22 pound bike. If it's 21.8, that still counts as 22, because for all practical purposes that .2 pounds doesn't matter. Never think about grams again. Because grams don't matter. Then go buy a really nice suspension fork and some decent tires and go kick some ass.

Joe's Geometry Jamboree

By popular (ok, one person) request!

Executive summary: short and semi-slack racey bike for attacking the twisties in TX.

New bandsaw says, "I am not impressed"

-69.5 HTA and 90mm trail, designed for a Niner carbon rigid fork or 80-100mm travel suspension

-60.5cm ETT, 66.9cm front center, 107.8cm wheelbase. 

-42cm chainstays, plenty of room for a 2.3 and a 34t oval chainring (lotsa runout on those bad boys - I had to have Joe send me the crank and ring to double check clearances)

-295mm BB height. Just a smidge on the low side if you were running suspension but with a rigid fork you can go a hair lower and Joe likes low.

-Curved seat tube for tire clearance. Joe took it easy on me and let me use straight tubes for the rest of the front end. 

-Built for a nice normal 27.2 post and using nice skinny-ish 35mm/28.6mm down and toptubes for a steel-is-real ride with a little give. Joe is not a huge dude either, so fat tubes were never on the radar.

-Paragon rockers for SS fun if needed, plus chainstay length adjustability.

Quick weekend race report and new DH bike stuff

Out at the NMBS race at Park City, Fuentes was 18th and Yuki was (I think) 54th in the pro men's field.

Sarah and I stayed closer to home and raced the second Winter Park Series race - I got sprinted at the line (if you're going to have to finish on 1/4 mile of flat fire road, a 34x20 gear doesn't cut it, folks) and ended up 2nd, and Sarah won her category in expert for a second straight week. Best of all, we won some pint glasses, which is good because I've broken quite a few of ours in the last year or so. The course was fantastic, the turnout was killer (530 racers, and that doesn't even count the folks who dropped out and DNF'd!) and we went to our friend Aurora's place for homemade sushi and beer afterwards - you can't ask for a better day than that!

I didn't get any pictures, unfortunately. No racing this coming weekend, so I'm guessing we'll hit up Keystone for some DH riding.


Speaking of downhill bikes - I just got done building version 3.5. I was (and remain) very happy with the True Temper Supertherm (thanks Ben!) front triangle, but there was more lateral flex than I would like in the original rear end. After some surgery on the Shimano 105 bottom bracket that I was using, I realized that the crank shaft on the external bearing Shimano cranks runs on a PLASTIC sleeve - which requires a massive amount of contact area from the crank arm to be stiff enough to work. The sleeves with pinch bolts that I was using weren't providing enough area, and were actually digging into the plastic, causing a bit of noodlieness (though in all fairness, it was hardly noticeable to me when actually riding). Still, since my goal with this bike is to build something that I would (if I weren't a framebuilder) actually pay retail price for, and the original rear end wasn't cutting it. The super ghetto dropouts that I made from angle iron weren't so great either, and the whole thing was too wide - I hit my calves on the stays when pedaling (annoying), so I sat down and did some thinking about what to change. The original rear end went into the scrap bin last week, just so I'd have to get my butt in gear and build a replacement.


Here's the end result. The new bearing setup uses an 22mm axle FSA BMX bottom bracket (bearings are inside the shell, but it still uses a through-axle). The non-external bearing setup allows the rear end to be almost 20mm narrower, which solves the heel/calf clearance issue, and it also *doesn't use any plastic load-bearing parts*. That's key! The bearing races are steel and the cranks (or in this case, the sleeve clamps) press directly against them. Killer.


As you can see, I haven't really cleaned up the fillet brazing yet, nor had time to powdercoat the rear end. Apparently, my camera also decided to focus on everything *except* the bearing/axle/pivot setup, which was what I was trying to illustrate here. Hopefully you get the idea.


Ultra-ghetto angle iron drops were replaced with Surly Instigator dropouts (which happen to match up quite nicely with the stays) that I machined out to 12mm to accept the 12x150 hub.


I also shortened the effective chainstay length to 435mm (or about 17") from 450mm. I have a hard time telling the difference, but all the hotshot downhillers tell me that short stays are good on a DH bike, so what the heck. The only problem is that I want to run a front derailleur, and the el-cheapo LX e-type one on there now (the weird seat tube won't allow a conventional clamp-on setup) only gives the tire about 5mm of room. Doh. Whenever something more DH-appropriate than the Nevegal comes out, I will probably have to scrap (or heavily modify) the front derailleur. I imagine going to 1x9 wouldn't be so bad, but I'd like to have the granny option for when I want to ride uphill. The frame itself will take up to about a 29x3.0 without any problems, of course.

Oh, and for the record, the new rear end is SUPER stiff laterally. As good or better than any full suspension bike I've had. Weight might be a tiny bit more, but I've swapped some parts around as well, so it's hard to compare - the complete bike is still around 37 pounds, frame is about 10. Plenty light enough for what I want to do, which is mostly ride the chairlift up and haul ass back down. I'll try to post when Sarah and I plan to ride at Keystone this summer so that folks interested in a test ride can meet up with us.

Winter park - the longer story

Picture of Yuki at the summit. Pretty cool view!

First off, the first race of this 6-race series is always the most competitive - because it's a hillclimb (a 5 mile, 2000 foot hillclimb). While you'd think that most folks would skip something so painful and boring, you'd be wrong, at least in Colorado - and there are quite a few roadies who show up for this race (it's totally non-technical and many people ride 'cross bikes) who won't do another mountain bike race all year. So I rolled up to the line with 32 other pros - a huge field by Winter Park standards. There were some fast guys represented, and my goal was to finish in the top ten, or barring that, the top half of the field.

From the gun (or the guy saying "go", to be more accurate) the pace was fairly moderate, and after about 2 minutes, Colby Pierce (wicked fast road pro) and I attacked. The lower slopes of the climb are pretty steep, so my 34x20 gear was working well and I felt pretty good. And we were putting a pretty big gap into the chasers - I couldn't even see them on many of the straight sections anymore. After about 20 minutes, though, my lack of any racing this year caught up with me, when my legs decided to drop the anchor and I blew up like the freakin' fourth of July. Colby gapped me on a flatter section (on his way to setting a new course record by a couple of seconds) where I was a little spun out and that was it - I was in survival mode for the final 15 minutes of the climb. 4 guys managed to get by me, and while I hung on to within about 30 seconds of second place, I had nothing left at the top to try to sprint for a podium spot, so I ended up 6th in 35:18. Super pleased with that, though I felt like I could have A) trained a little bit (this was the first even vaguely hard effort I've done this year) and B) taken the Weirwolf 2.5" front/Ignitor 2.1" rear tires off and swapped them for something faster rolling and lighter. Would tires have made enough difference for me to stay with Colby? No freakin' way, but I might have had a shot at 2nd instead of 6th if I'd had a pound less rubber to drag up the hill.

Notably, Anne Trombley set a new course record for the women as well, breaking 40 minutes, which is freakin' awesome. She beat plenty of male pros. Good job, Anne!

Interestingly, the bike setups were: Colby: geared 69er (with a skinny 'cross tire on the front and a rigid carbon fork), Zach: 29er 1x9, a couple of cyclocross bikes, Kenny on a 1x9 26" setup, and then me. So the big wheels are making some inroads in the pro field, I guess. But the legs still mattered the most - I think Colby would have won on a freakin' BMX - he was only about 30 seconds off the course record.

It's also worth noting that while I thought I was quite the stud, 45 year old Charlie Hayes actually BEAT my time by 4 seconds, racing in the SS category. If Charlie had raced pro, he'd probably have done even better with some better competition, I think. What a stud!

I nearly collapsed at the top and then rode down a bit to finish up with Sarah and cool down my legs. She had a great race as well, taking a full 4 minutes off her old best time (she rode a 47:37, smoking fast!) and finishing 5th or 6th in a stacked women's expert field of about 25 or 30 riders.

Taryn had a great ride on her Waltworks to finish 1st in the women's beginner race, and Brian was 6th in expert 30-34. Yuki, who generally does better on flat courses, took a minute off his time from last year and finished 22nd in pro. Oh, and "Sandbagger" Nick Traggis won the expert 25-29 race on his Waltworks 'cross bike by like 2 or 3 minutes. Race with the pros next time, dude!

The race was HUGE - almost 600 total riders. Kudos to Winter Park for putting on a great event, as always - if you live in the front range, you owe it to yourself to come do some of these races. Check out the Winter Park Series here.

It was great doing a race again and seeing all the old familiar faces - said hello to Unger, Barnsie, Aaron P, Tom K, Ian, and many more. Made some new friends, too - all the 29er folks seem to bond on sight, for whatever reason. Works for me!

A final picture: Yuki, Junko, me, and Sarah.