Meat-up II (Electric Boogaloo)

Last fall, Bike 29 and a handful of other 29er riders gathered at the Kingdom Trails in North Eastern VT for a 29er festival of sorts. We called it the Meat-up, and it was a hoot. Some folks though it was such a good idea, that they decided to threw an event of thier own. The folks at the Crooked Cog Network is having the Big Wheeled Ballyhoo in the Midwest in late June (of which I am a proud sponsor).

Lots of folks have asked if there will be another one, and I'm proud to say that there is.
While the final details still need to be worked out, the date of Meat-up II is July 21st 2007. The venue will be Catamount Family Center in Williston VT. There will be on site camping available, but for those without tents, the proximity to Burlington will be helpful.
But here is what is different this year.

In addition to the Meat-up, The weekend will include the inagural New England Single Speed Champion Chips. A real race held at Catamount on Sunday July 22nd.
The race will be open to all singlespeeders, on any size wheels. More details on the whole weekend to follow in the coming weeks.

All in all, it promises to be a weekend of fun. Mark your calenders!

Bike 29 News

With biking season coming close, I figured I can let a few cats out of the bag to help get people fired up to ride.

The biggest cat, is in fact Catamount. Five Hills Bikes will be a proud sponsor of their ongoing summer training races. What does this mean? Well, myself, and a few other Burlington area shops will be lending a hand every Wednesday night this summer to the racers who gather at Catamount Family Center. Besides moral and tech support, we will no doubt be throwing down for some post race BBQ and "recovery" drinks.
As part of our agreement, we'll be providing demo bikes for Catamount's patrons to check out.
That means if anyone interested in demoing a 29er off road, in real mountain biking scenarios, has access. There will be more details as to what bikes will be available in the coming weeks.

There are the beginning rumblings of the soon to be legendary Bike 29 Meat-up. Details are still being flushed out, but the official venue and schedule of events promise to be one to write home about. Hang on to your hats boys and girls, this will be an event to remember.
I expect firm details of the Meat-up to be available early next week.

Bike 29 is also a proud sponsor of Crooked Cog's Big Wheeled Ballyhoo. Although they "borrowed" the idea from my Meat-up, they have certainly raised the bar. The event will be held in Decorah Iowa. With any luck, I'll be able to attend. I've never ridden in the Midwest, and I think it will be a ton of fun.

In product news, Niner has a new bike that will be unveiled at Sea Otter. I can hardly wait, and I am bursting at the seams about this bike. Needless to say, there will be one in my quiver. Optomism points to a June release, but we'll have to see. The RIP was supposed to be out in June last year, and widespread availability is only just now being realized.

More news as it happens...

Grinder

This morning started off grey, cold and blustery. I had already made plans to ride a loop that I had planned in my head today. I was not feeling happy about it, but I was going to ride even if it killed me. I knew I had Dave in, he is always good for a punishing ride, but I was pretty surprised when Ian called and asked to join.

There is an old saying here, that if'n you don't like the weather here in Vermont, wait 5 minutes. Well by the time we gathered and pushed off on our ride, it was blue bird, and warming up well into the 40s.

The route took us from Waterbury along the Winooski River to Jonesville, where we turned and went up and over the mountain (403 ft in .8miles) into Huntington. The loop we did was about 11 miles, and put us back on the Winooski, where we headed back the way we came. We had a decent head wind on our way out, but once we made the big climb the sun was beating down on us, and thankfully, we had a good tail wind on the way back. We managed to dodge a grader on the way back. There is nothing worse than pedalling on freshly graded road in mud season. It's like riding in wet cement.

It ended up being about a 32 mile ride. You can see a close approxiamtion of the ride here.

Here are some shots of the ride.
Enjoy!

Mt. Mansfield from the south west.

Gillen Pond.

Sugaring in Huntington. Obscured by clouds on the left is Camel's Hump.

Huntigton Gorge. It seems like someone dies here every year. The currents that shoot through this chute pin unsuspecting bathers underwater. Often, the bodies are never recovered. Amazingly people still choose to swim here.

Ian getting chased down by a hungry grader. Apparently, it had a hankering for some 26" wheels. Davey and I were able to roll away with ease on our large wheels.

The last waterfall before we got back to town.

I have some cool updates to let you all in on tomorrow, so stay tuned!

RIP9 Redux

So finally I have a few moments to recant the major overhaul on my RIP 9.
To recap, the bike weighed 29.25 set up with a Reba, an older version of the Bike 29 Royale wheelset and pedals. While the nuts and bolts of the build didn't really change that much, the two changes made were pretty significant.

Fork
I replaced the front end with a Maverick DUC 32 fork. Truly a thing to behold. Despite it's stout look, it is almost the same weight as a Reba, but it's packing another 22mm of travel in those legs. I felt like I was running out of travel with the Reba on this particular bike, so maybe this will be the ticket.
The Maverick is an inverted fork, the axle is mounted to the sliding portion of the fork, which telescopes into the uppers. The Reba has two lower legs connected by a crown, that slides up on the sliders. Because there is now lower casting and crown, the Maverick has less unsprung weight. Only the axle and sliders move, allowing it to soak up small bumps with ease. On top of that, the fork is very tunable. Things like the oil weight and oil height can be changed, along with the damping circuit shim stack. It can be pretty confusing, but one can really dial this fork in to suit their needs.
And it better, it costs $795! And then you need to buy the stem, and upper crown, and requires a proprietary 24mm axle front wheel.
Is it worth it? Well, for the ultimate in tunability, I think it very well could be. It will be a while before I can actually put it to use. The snow still lies thick up here.

Wheels
With the aforementioned need for a proprietary 24mm front hub, I needed to rebuild the front wheel.
And while I was at it, I decided that I may as well try out one of the new Stan's rims, the ZTR Flow. I made the jump to tubeless. I built a lot of the Stan's ZTR 355 rims over the last year, but they were not suitable for my weight (don't ask, let's just say I'm a clydesdale). In January, they released the ZTR Arch, which is a beefed up 355, and the wider ZTR Flow rim, suitable for heavier riders, or getting aggro on full suspension bikes.
Because tire changing will now be more complicated, I also decided to try a Kenda Nevegal tire, in anticipation of the impending soggy trail conditions. These tires, while not light, have high marks in grip and cornering ability in sloppy riding conditions.

I also ran a tiny cockpit mod, the Avid Matchmaker. It's a cool little clamp that replaces the rear clamp of one's Avid Juicy hydraulic brakes, and allows you to directly mount a SRAM X0 or X9 trigger shifter. The only real benefit of this clamp, is that it frees up a bit more space on the handlebars by removing the shifter clamp. The actual weight of everything it replaces is 18g, which is how much the Matchmaker actually weight. You can adjust the trajectory of the shifters too, which is a nice feature for those that have to have it "just so".

The final build weight now is 29.07lbs, I suspect that had I kept the Rampage (679g), the bike would be about a 1/2 lb lighter. The Nevegal weighs in at 786g.


This was not an exercise in weight reduction, rather a significant performance upgrade. I still need to crack open the Maverick and set everything up the way I want it, but all in all, I'd say I have great confidence in the new set up.

We're talking about making a road trip down south in the next few weeks. Southern New Hampshire has some trails that might be rideable within the next few weeks.

First Day Back

It was a little like the first day back at school.
I did manage to get right back into the flow, only mis-scheduling 1 repair,and only for a minute. I was able to pull it all together with time to spare thankfully. I spent most of the day doing really lame stuff like cleaning and inventory.

I also got a ride in this morning. I had to drop off one of the cars for a tune up, and had no way back home except for my bike. It was 19°. I took Kermit, figuring that a single speed up the slightly uphill 4 mile ride I had ahead of me would help keep me warm. It was blue skies and no wind, so the only time I really felt the cold was in the hollows or the shade. It was actually a very pleasant ride.

I also took some time to see what I was up to this time last year. We've come a long way.

So while we wait for winter to ebb away into mud season, I will be providing some cool project and product updates that I previously lacked time for.

Up next, a full report on all the upgrades the RIP9 received this winter.
Stay tuned!

End of a Season, Beginning of a Season

Well, the time has come to finally start thinking about bikes. Despite the 18" of snow that fell last night. Today is the first day Five Hills Bikes opens up again with a regular schedule.

It was a great winter, hectic at times, but I got to spend it with some of the coolest and most professional people I have ever had the opportunity to work with. I am of course talking about the great folks at Burton Snowboards. Winters can be very tough for small business owners in VT, and they gave me the resources to persevere through the long dark months of poor bike riding.
I went snowboarding a bunch. I remembered why I used to love it so. And there is still a few good days left in that sport for me too. Yessss!!!!
Still, I need to get in shape for single speed season. Kermit and I have some work to do.

Bandersnatch

Named after Lewis Carrol's mythical monster that travels the land at great speed, gobbling everything up it sees, this bike promises to do just that.
With a modest build, this machine weighs in at a respectable 26.5lbs. Not too shabby for steel.

The weather is turning. We still have a lot of snow on the ground, but it is melting fast.
We will probably have at least one more decent snow storm before all is said and done, but I'm OK with that.
I've had a pretty decent winter on the snowboard, and I will be sad to see winter go in that regard. I am really fired up for biking though. If only there was some way to keep all the snow at the mountain, and have everything else be nice and dry for mountain biking....

5 P.A. 2.0

Back and better than you can ever imagine.

This time, it was left to it's own devices. It boiled in the fermenter for 2 weeks, then bottled and left to condition for 2 months. Oh, it is smooth.

So very smooth.

Cheers to you Nat! Another fantastic brew.

Weekend Update

Despite winter's unrelenting grip, it does actually feel slightly spring like. We received at least another foot of wet snow yesterday, but this morning's temperatures are well into the 30s. Once the sun crept over the Worcester Range, it really warmed up. The snow is wet and heavy and melting fast, but the snowbanks are still 3 feet tall and higher. I spent about an hour and a half shoveling already today. Hard work, but it beats having the deck fall off the house under the weight of 2 tons of snow. While I was taking a break out there, enjoying the quiet, I noticed it wasn't so quiet after all. The birds were making a racket. It sounded like spring. Music to my ears.


I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when I arrived at the shop and found that Brown Santa had delivered a set of custom Industry 9 Single Speed wheels. I love these wheels. This is the first time I have almost been torn away from my old stand by, the Bike 29 Royale.
This particular wheelset has custom color blue hubs laced to the Stan's Arch rims with silver spokes. A very tricked out package.

Rebel Yell...

...is what is in the bottle that Maggs is christening his bike with.
We are getting closer to completing the bike overhaul we started in Jaunary.
The big updates this time include a White Industries ENO crank, and a Chris King wheelset laced to Velocity Dyad rims. Bright yellow rims.
Way cool.