Wheel innovation.

Wheel and real, infact. This last 12 months has led to some real innovation with tubeless wheels, both on and off road. The crank bros wheels were interesting because they had an uninterrupted rim chamber that meant no need for odd rim strip rituals. However, they are in my opinion far from pretty with the alloy 'tab' sticking out and a pretty messy looking spoke arrangement.

I was pleased to see both Easton and Dt addressing the issues. Easton has double threaded inserts in the rim, attaching to straight pull spokes on several new models including the Haven wheelset.



DT Swiss has a keyed insert that fits into the rim and again straight pull spokes.




Both of these look clean and the weight drop the DT Tricon hubs have allowed with the separate flanges tightened onto the hub body is sweet.

And then, you get all sorts of bad ideas...

Chris is back...

Chris Hoy is back...

And, a little reminder.



And comment...

And another...

Clutch

Tickets for Clutch are on sale for glasgow gig thursday 5th at 7pm. Rock and roll ain't noise pollution.

Chris' stag ride

Pictures here.











7 peaks around edinburgh. 5 riders. 5 hours. 2 hip flasks and a damn good time.

End of season: mind wandering.

Hokay: here we are at the end of the mtb season as it were. Yes, there will be lots of muddy wet slippery and nadgery riding. Yes there is 'cross. But looooong off-road rides are probably nearly done for the year.

On reflection, i cant seem to shake the notion i want to add a feather to my boa. Sort of try something new. I was talking to my friend Mr Vitch at the sswc in durango and he was telling me he'd been downhilling on a borrowed bike a couple of times. As in full on big stuff. That got some cogs rolling.

Then there is the influence of Dan's chats about mega avalanche style racing and lately the Trans Provence.

Hmmm.

There is an increasing move towards endurance downhill racing. There is the fall tilt in telluride and, closer to home, the no fuss endurance downhill. Then there are super d's etc.

Even nico vouilloz has come out of semi-retirement to race these type of events.

Of course, i dont think a rigid singlespeed would cut it. Nah, im thinking 5 or 6...a la jeff/nico.



And maybe a dual suspension bike...there are a few with 29" wheels this year that are worth a second and third look...

Santa Cruz tallboy.



Intense Tracer 29.



Turner Sultan.

F.Y.D.

Before the jump off.

Does DZ have ovaries?

So, good enough for Cav, good enough for me?

We'll see. Cycling glasses are a funny one. For *actually riding* you need the right lens, with a frame that gives close coverage to stop crap getting in your eyes once thrown up by the front wheel, whilst not fogging up, and being secure enough to not slip down you're nose obscuring vision and pinching off the nasal passages. A tall order.

Racing jackets are my ultimate, they fulfil all the above criteria. BUT. They are hard to put away as they are hingeless, and they dont allow lens changes for differing conditions. (Ok, ok, so i have other glasses with different lenses....blah)

After searching around, and trying various glasses from the Giro and Oakley ranges (the only 2 i'd consider tbh) i settled on some jawbones. Hincapie is a hammer and he wears them. What could possibly go wrong?

For winter i'll be swapping in the vented yellow lenses (a scottish favourite) and ill report back. Meanwhile you can see P-bomb is totally stoked with them; she thinks i look grrreat.

Palmares

Of the racing i did this year, my results follow:

Blairadam blast: 5th overall, 1st singlespeed
Bristol bike fest: 5th open male
singletrack classic weekender: 7th open male
10 at kirroughtree: 15th open male
Brighton big dog: 20th open male
Shenandoah 100: 205th overall (!) 36th singlespeed
sswc 09: 10,374th ish.

Mediocre, but enjoyable. Bring on cross.

So...

After Shenandoah, we headed down the Blue Ridge Parkway into North Carolina. From there into the Smokey Mountains. Trina has more ace pics, beautiful place, though 3 days out from H'burg and no shower was...tough...but worth it.



We cut west to Little Rock, where we enjoyed a pub quiz at a local tap room - Flying Saucer (where i had my only sierra nevada pale ale of the trip) and also did a pub quiz. At which we sucked. 0 points, seriously. What is Indiana Jones' first name?

Then into Oklahoma...



Route 66, babe.



...and Texas. After an amusing camp in Palo Duro (folk driving 50 yards to the toilet, mosquitoes and stories of the white man's relentless clearing of indigenous peoples) we went north and up into New Mexico.



As firm aficionados of mexican and border style cooking, this part was good. Fiesta time in Santa Fe meant lots of revving in custom choppers...



...and excellent street food.



And maybe the odd margaritas.



Thence to D town. Oh yes.

Larry, Larry, Oh Larry.

Larry - new 3.8" tyre from surly....

Hitting it one last time.

And then we will have to start sorting out next year...

So....New Zealand.

Oh yes.

What?

Where in the world can i be?

Recreational Equipment Inc.

REI. Yup, you can get stuff at REI. Rather than bother about whether 29ers really, really are scientifically better than 26ers, im looking forward to SSWC in durango.

10.46

Full write up when i get decent access on VC Moulin. No legs. Dust. 10.46 and disappointed. Legs empty. Bike and wheels asking for a better pilot.

Compadres Buck, Mike Ramponi and Ferrari ROCKED IT.

Yo.

Paranoid.

Work it.
Believe it.
Are you doing what you want to be doing?
Are you happy?
Are you sure that what you do is for the good?
Are you living what you believe?
Tell me - because i'm sure it's not true....sure.

Lighten up.

After all that, i decided to build a new wheel. I couldn't get the 800g of rotating mass out of my head. Here's the 'logic':
When i'm climbing, lighter wheels are better.
When i'm riding along rollers or flat or road, lighter wheels are better.
When i'm descending, the fat wheel would be better.
There is 14,500+ feet of climbing at shenandoah, and quite a lot of rollers.
The down stuff is super fun - rocky and rooty - but realistically, most of my time will be spent otherwise.

So: Whub to duster with dt comps and brass nipples. Saves me a cool 300g on the front wheel. I hope i don't regret it.

Check it...

Sierra Nevada watch.

Things to ponder...

Easy Council.
Santa Cruz/Jumgle ripped off.
Palestine.
Them Crooked Vultures.

Feeling good about beer.

All Hail the Black Market.

Stevil may have been away for a while, but he's back, baby, he's back...

All Hail the Black Market.

Bear with me.

Maxxis 29" welter weight.



wtb DH 26" tube.



Maxxis free ride 26" tube.



So, been having a few punctures. Front wheel fro most part: odd pinches on the side of the tube. Low pressure, fat rim, tube stretched too far? perhaps. Options were to stop running the fat rim, go tubeless, or use a fatter tube. Or maybe a different tube?

Tubeless with a pinned and single wall rim strikes me as unlikely. Especially as the bead seat is best described as roomy. Not using the fat rim is an option. I have a spare whub, and a spare bonty duster rim. But i like the fat wheel. Hmm.

Different tubes seemed to be the thing. I was initially thinking of running the same freeride maxxis tube i have in the endomorph front wheel. Then i weighed it. 400g. A wtb 29er inner tube is shy of 200g, as is a maxxis 29er welter weight tube. Jeff uses light 26" tubes in his uma 29er wheels. I suspect i have a few kg on jeff, but i also reckon the tubes are stretched beyond what they can take and still be robust at low pressure. So, i put a 26" wtb 'downhill' tube in, inflated to 18psi and went for a ride today. Inverted commas are because i doubt a downhill run would be possible with such a light tube. Maybe the thicker tyres help, maybe...

It was when i was halfway to where i was going i realised that i didnt have a puncture repair kit, tool, or indeed a pump with me. Clever.

Oh well, if it was a long walk back, it was a long walk back. I needed to know how the tube would hold up to being slammed into pointy rocks.

All too soon, i found out. A short uphill on double track, with a sharp left hander over and up some sharrp rocks delivers you onto a nice wee trail. THUD! rim hits the rocks with total compression of the tyre. I wait, holding my breath.

No puncture.

This is good. The fat rim stays, and i gain only 20g on the front wheel. Acceptable.

Interestingly, when compared the wtb 29" tube and 26" tube are about 1 cm different in width, but obviously the 29" has a greater diameter. If you blow a 26" tube up to the stage it is round and won't fold if you lean it against the wall, it is very close to being 700c rim diameter. So i'm guessing the extra girth is all good.

Or maybe it was all the talc i used...

Engage me.

Back up from Brighton. More on that shortly.

Want to read some books. Under the Banner of Heaven is next, by Jon Krakauer. I feel i can do that now, sit and concentrate on one thing i mean.

Also trying some new inner tubes. Yeah, dull, but 3 punctures in 5 rides after a year or so with less than you can count on the fingers of one hand? Something is up, and i think it is using a wide tyre on a wide rim thinning the tube out. The first 2 were odd sidewall pinches. Yup, a pinch but both snake bites marks on one side. Odd. I raised the pressure from 15 to 28psi then got a wire puncture (or perhaps flint) through the tyre at this last weekends race. Hmm. Going to look at a wtb downhill tube (26" - stretched to fit) or a welter weight maxxis 29er tube. We'll see.

If im lucky ill have the edge wheels prior to shenandoah that will change things again.

Meantime i shall be getting some massage on the guns and focusing.

Jones.

I now feel qualified to write a little about the Jones.

What & why: Jones frame, ti compact, diamond frame with fat truss fork.

The Jones geometry is something i have been moving towards for some years. When i discovered 29" wheels, with the kelly roshambo, i was a little upset in some ways. I used to have a beautiful Seven verve singlespeed which - at the time - i thought could not be improved upon for the riding i do. It was made after having a couple of Curtlo frames that were adapted from wtb phoenix geometry. Unbelievably, it was more reasonable financially to get a custom brazed frame from doug, than to buy a second hand phoenix. I have always liked compact frames. It allows a lot of leeway when riding technical stuff - try stepping off when the trail side is a foot lower than the trail and you discover that level top tubes dont cut it. I also like the way a long seat post can flex and take a lot of sting out of the ride. So the Curtlo's taught me that i liked a slacker seat angle, and a relatively short stretch to the bars given my height. I like a stiff rear triangle for power transfer with a lot of flex from a quality seatpost. The Curtlo's had 12" bb heights, which lowered with the Seven, to 11.7" but the bar height remained similar, a more 'in' the bike design.

Then came the roshambo - a size small frame - so i could keep similar stretch but compare the wheels. It turned my riding around. Sitting so deep inside the frame, with a bb drop of 70mm rather than 25mm at most on a 26" wheel bike led to incredible security in balls-out technical riding. It also allowed me to rail corners like never before, along with the extended tyre contact patch a 29" wheel provides. Despite fairly knob-light tyres, i could pin it with no worries in the twisty, rooty, rocky trails i prefer. Damn. The Seven sat around while i rode the roshambo.

Unfortunately, the roshambo had a steeper head angle to pull the trail back as it kept the same offset as popular forks at the time. This has all changed with the advent of 29"ers, jeff jones, and gary fishers conversations with jeff at the singlespeed worlds and hence G2 geometry. Perhaps the burgeoning 'all mountain' market with slacker angles helped as well. A bad trait of the rohambos ride was the front wheel tucking under in fast steep corners. So when a new home was found for the Seven, i had an IF made with slacker angles front and rear, and used a longer offset fork to bring the trail back. Damn near perfect.

By then, i had ridden jeff's personal 29"er with super low spaceframe design, and a 26" wheel model as well, and was impressed by the overall geometry but wasn't convinced of the short front centre. When i had a frame made by IF to use racks for some bike packing, i did however relax the geometry of the new IF more, actually to the same angles as jeff uses, but with 5mm less fork offset, and longer chainstays. The idea was that once loaded it would remain stable but lively enough to ride fun trails. It worked. I needed to use a longer head tube as i 'rotated' around the bb, but the weight distribution took some shock off the arms and made for very comfortable long days in the saddle. Hmmmm!



At this point i wanted to have a bike that was basically a cross frame with my IF/relaxed geometry so that i was biomechanically in the same position as the others, but i could ride from home to trails with less skwootching around on low pressure fat tyres. Thus was born the Iron Maiden.

This bike is pretty curious in some ways. Short cross specific fork, Road transmission clearance at the bb but 135mm spaced at the rear with 425mm stays. 71/72 angles and a 50mm offset fork. If you look at this closely, the trail, low bb, front centre and wheel base end up *very* close to Jones geometry. I *really* enjoy riding this bike. Short, quick, but it can be carved into corners and flicked around tight stuff until the tyres explode.

It was then i realised that slowly and surely i was moving towards getting a Jones frame. Particularly as i had been using a fat fork and front wheel on the roshambo for awhile. I really think the 135mm front end needs to replace a 100mm front wheel for general use.

So, a long chat by email and phone and my frame arrived. Standard Jones geometry but with an uber compact frame.

Initial rides: Disclaimer - I dont make snap decisions on bikes, and i dont gush unless i like something after using it in many situations and for enough time to come to a conclusion born of experience.

My first rides were great. The Jones is so quick in technical trail it almost second guesses your moves. I got myself in trouble by hitting stuff too fast and over-steering and tying myself in knots. Then as i became more used to the ride, i sat back, put the weight over the rear wheel and used the hips and arms more. You can lean steer the bike, but it doesn't *need* to be leaned like my IF 29"ers. It also responds much faster to steering input - i think due to the truss forks incredible front/rear stiffness and precision. As you weave between the trees, the more you ask or need of the bike, the more it delivers. There is always a little more on tap, i have so far never got to the stage that i have hit a tree or rock due to not being able to pull the bike out of a corner. The more rearward weight distribution and higher front end takes shock off your arms, and the flattened stays and long seat post mean sitting shock transmission is very low. On my usual trails, i am riding faster. Simple as that.

I have also re-discovered drops, jumps and generally being in the air. I'd forgotten how much a short back end helps the bike land from unexpected drops. In addition, the short rear end and wheelbase in general get up and over steps in the trail really quickly. Before you know it, that rise or fallen tree is behind you. All you have to do is unweight the bike, ease yourself and glide. Arms loose, you can take on prety much anything unexpected with no need to pucker and hope.

With slack angles, a 55mm offset fork and a high front end, you would be forgiven for thinking that the front end would lift on steep climbs. Nope. The relatively short front centre and the design of h bars mean you can easily keep weight over the front. Never any issues.

So what is not to like about the ride? errr....yes. Um. Well, nothing really. Is that just new bike-love speaking? No. I'm pretty objective and i have ridden a lot of nice bikes. No gushing, it is by far the best riding mtb i have ever swung a leg over. Incredibly engaging but forgiving.

Speccing a Jones is one of those 'do it justice' situations. Everything is the way it is for a reason, from the brass front nipples to the grip length.

The frame and fork you know. Jones loop bar, ESI chunky grips 6" in length and Paul components love levers, 2.5 fingers, to gore ride on cables and steel conduit where possible. Avid bb7's with shimano rt SM76 front rotor in 180mm and 160 slx rear rotor. Better braking than stock: better modulation and power. Smooth.

Stem was initially a 10 degree thomson in 110 length, to rotate me further back round the bb due to the slacker geometry. The 10 degree was too high, so i swapped out to a 0 degree. Perfect.

Seat post is a lay back thomson. Strong and long. Good adjustment. Selle san marco zoncolan. Personal choice for long term comfort. Jeff mod'ed sm 960 cranks, 175mm length, xtr pedals, king bb.

The wheels for this build were based on my experiences with the endomorph on an uma 50mm rim with the Jeff/Paul 135 mm front hub. Strong and massively shock absorbing with amazing traction through the rocks. As an experiment i had built a 29 uma 50mm rim onto a dt 240 hub, with comp spokes and alloy nipples. It worked, was stiff and seemed to take a beating. But for how long? I think if you are using a front single wall/wide rim, low tyre pressure and are hitting things, a wide front hub is a must.

In order to give me plenty of leeway i used the un-drilled rim and brass nips with comps for the front. The rear wheel is a dt singlespeed with the new 36 tooth star ratchets, a king 20 tooth steel sprocket and comps/alloy nips to a Bonty duster rim. Tubes are wtb, tyres maxxis ardent front/crossmark rear. Chain is a dura ace with sram link plate. Front cog is an old Boone ti with 34 teeth.

Anything i'm going to change? Yep. The front wheel can take more than the rear. But it is heavy - 800g rim, brass nips and i think i may have to use a downhill tube to eke out the full benefit of low pressure (i'm pinching the sides of tubes in rocks) So, for racing im going to be using an Edge composites AM rim to dt singlespeed rear/paul Whub front, with dt comps. I will then build a rear fat wheel with an Uma rim, or perhaps a kris holm 47mm rim. One for chunky conditions, one for speed.

I am also getting some carousel design bags for the truss fork, as it is a great bike packing bike - so stable loaded.

More in time :-)~

Been ridin'

Sleeping arrangmenets.

Oh to sleep afloat in a white russian...

So what of the hammock eh? Ive been poking around as per usual and i wondered whether a hammock would be viable for uk bikepacking stuff. Good: its small and light. Potentially quite comfy, though hyper extending the knees will have to be avoided - the word is put your pack under your knees. It may be that it is colder but Marty and me are exploring the local availability of Evazote. See here for Marty's comparo. Its light and apart from being a little sweaty, it should be quite insulating. You dont need the thickness for isolation from hard ground in a hammock. It may be quite bulky as its not compressible.

We'll see. Needs more work.

What else? i'm bonding with the Jones. Not quite synergy yet, but not far off. Should be on for the Shenandoah. Wheels still to be decided. I may make an investment in the future. I may not...

Meanwhile i'll get back to practising on coloradan based/maryland brewed beers...

I miss crying's game.

There was a time, there, when crying was a daily or at least weekly occurrence. Nowadays, it never really threatens. I miss it you know. The outpouring of emotion, even if it is in confined and personal circumstances, is cathartic. Cleansing. I wait for it and it never comes. Death. Sadness, add layers and layers of hardship. No. I have been bled dry.

And i feel this. I feel the damage. Whereas i used to have an uncommon connection - now i have a barrier. Maybe it protects me, but i'm not sure i want sheltered. Is the damage i sustained too heavy to 'keep calm and carry on' or do i have to balance sense with weakness and somehow come out of it all able to move on. Who knows...

Late night ramblings fed with alcohol are never worthy of too much introspection.

Coming up..

And thats not a Primal Scream reference. Damo and Libby are due in town this week. As ever, i havent really paid any attention to details, but it'll be good to see them.

It is wilderness 101 this weekend. Looks like its going to be wet. Should be tough enough...wish i was there...

Chipps is covering ground fast...check it.

The story of cass' adventure along the west coast of the USA keeps getting better. Go on, get a brew and read.

Colorado Trail Race as well this week end. Perhaps the hardest single endeavor i am aware of on a bike. Dont be too surprised if you see a 'kent face' there shortly...



Hammocks. Fuck yeah.

Items worthy of thought.

Altitude.
Young's modulus.
100 personal items.
Brew Dog Tokyo.
Power output.
Comfort versus speed versus distance versus time.
Healthy mind, healthy body.
Pinstripes.
Being calm.
VO2 max.

As you were...

Black Medicine.

I really needed to get out for a 'non-training' type ride. Not necessarily short or easy, just involving stopping if i wanted to, going back to do a section again, rather than keeping the heart rate in a certain zone and maybe a stop somewhere for lunch.



So i headed to edinburgh. It fitted in with other things and allowed me to pit the jones against stoorey b. I also wanted to try and get to know my camera a bit better. Trina had shown me how to use the self timer, so i thought i could maybe get some pics of me riding, instead of the usual handlebar and 'bike-propped-against-tree' shots.



I spent an hour or so up stoorey b, even attempting the drop we all know as 'big red'. This starts off steep, hits some roots with a few curves, then just as traction is truly about to go, you can let off the brakes and hit the fall line. I seldom ride it anymore, probably because after some recent erosion i can only make it 40-50% of the time. When you dont make it, it isnt nice. Rocks, a tangle of roots sticking up from the ground and usually a layer of wet dirt over hard means consequences.

Needless to say my skills with the self timer were poor, so buoyed by confidence from having ridden out big red once, but missed the shot, i saddled up again.



Bam, went down sideways after a front wheel slip: tried to keep control with a foot extended as an outrigger, but no luck. Hit the ground and slid, the bike gaining as it shot down the slope in front of me.

Crap. A few scrapes on me, a few on the bike (4th ride and its already looking like its been in the wars, which is probably a good thing...) and quite a nice shot.



Then i headed for the pentlands and out towards nine mile burn. A screaming tail wind back to flotterstone, and over to mortonhall. After a panini and coffee i dropped down to stockbridge and managed a quick amber nectar prior to installing a new tube (a patch job earlier on stoorey b went bad) and wobbled back along the water of leith.



Just what i needed.

666

This is my 666th post. Spooky eh?

few things, just got 2 rl burnside albums. Dirty swamp rock blues. Played with jon spencer blues explosion, never a bad thing, and generally rocked the house. For the cheekies it will be up soon. You know what im talking about.

Other peoples adventure:

Cass and co are away...see here.
Eric has been out too.
Dude called jeff boatman who makes bags for jones truss forks was out there recently.
And chipps is hitting up the pyraknees. Ill be updating with his progress as it happens. The power of modern technology.

Ride!

And, seeing as its a special post...it needs a special pic.

Shoe goo.

What do you do if you rip the sole off your cycling shoes?



After a wee bit of reading around, and a swift amazon purchase, i used some shoe goo, and with the help of my trusty mole grips, my sidis are back in business.

All smiles.

Questionable decisions. This year has been somewhat of a transition year for me in terms of racing. I have never 'trained' before, i have never changed gear for races before and i have never worked at different feeding and fluid intake strategies. One for the reasons for this is that if something doesn't work, you are likely going to be off the pace.

I have had numerous successes - using nuun tablets, hammer nutrition perpetuem, changing to a lower gear and learning to pedal with a higher cadence by using a 39:16 on my fixed gear a lot.

A lot of this has been about shenandoah for me. I haven't ever done a race that has been so hard. Don't get me wrong, it isn't hard to finish per se. But it is hard to go fast on a rigid singlespeed. There is a lot of climbing, and there is a lot of hard, technical singletrack descending. In order to go faster than last year several things have had to change.

For 10 at kirroughtree i intended to use a small 1 litre wingnut bladder pack, 2 flasks of honey stinger gel (with 9 packets in total in them) and bottles with nuun, restocked every 2 laps.

Each lap is 8.6 miles with 300 m of climbing/descending, and i was hoping for at least 10 laps in the 10+1 hours you have.

All went well for 3 laps, which was good as id felt pretty wabbit the week before and was concerned i had a bit of a cold, or was just plain tired.

Then i started to have wildly fluctuating energy levels. The gel was giving me some energy pretty quickly, that then seemed to cause an absolute crash shortly afterwards. Fluid was a struggle as the course is relentlessly technical, so it is possible that i wasn't actually getting the best from the gels due to poor hydration.

Nevertheless stomach cramps started followed swiftly by catastrophic legs cramps. At hour six i ate a cheese roll and trina made me a bottle with hammer perpetuem and i rolled a couple of slower laps. After that i was able to ride on, albeit with continuing cramps.

Lesson? gels don't work for me. Hydration *is* massively important and the gels seem to require more fluid than i could get on board on a rough course.

So: i need to mount another bottle cage to the jones (thank you King Cage!) and go back to the hammer with occasional other bits and bobs.

Boilermaker

First proper ride. Impressed. Thoughts shortly. Meanwhile im supping a brew, eating beef, and boilermaker beans.

Mix:
2 cans pinto beans,
3 chopped yellow oinons,
4 heapoed table spoons molasses,
2 table spoons worcester sauce,
a good number of dashes of hot chili sauce,
a half jar of hot salsa (commercial),
a triple of bourbon (at least),
1/3 jar of FRESH dijon mustard,
a half pint of amber or dark beer,
4 rashers of charred bacon.

Cook in oven at 180c, or 350f for 30 mins with lid on, then 30 mins with lid off after a stir. Keep looking and take out when reduced to a nice slop.

Yo.

Member

Adventure cycling, a good bunch. There is an interesting article in the latest issue of their magazine of the pros and cons of how to load a bike. Front vs rear, high versus low.

And also, Aaron teasdale has a great gallery of TDR/GDR pics.

Go lookee...

Pinner.

Ready for action.