The Goings ON

I got out for my first Sedona ride of the year today.  Gotta love Sedona season.  Its sorta this line you have to draw between filling the fix to ride, and oooh the riding there is sooo good, and self deprivation because it involves driving an hour and a half to escape our sort of winter here in F-town.  I know for some of you this is a standard occurrence anytime you ride, but here we are used to pedaling the trails from the driveway and so the commute is cause for guilt in the winter....besides there are other things to do.   Cole and Scott the Hobot and myself made the drive down this day and hit the trails starting with a new little secret.  We ran into some guys building some improvements and rather than be rude and riding through, we waited for them to finish and chatted them up a bit.  It was sort of weird,  them being the ones responsible for this fine, but secret creation, and us being its uninvited users.  There is sort of a weird possessiveness that comes with this territory on USFS land...or at least so here where mountain biking is so big and social.  We felt like trespassers and yielded right of way to the elders blazing this path.  All for the better though.  In our wait some friends from our parts came along and we wound up with a group of eight for the duration.  We decided to that our first little jaunt wasn't enough and headed over for one of my favorites, a technical bench cut with lines so tight they make J-Lo's ass look like jello.  There is nothing fast about this trail but it has some pretty big moves.  The kind that make your heart sink into your stomach and force adrenaline to take over every time without fail.  And there are always consequences.  I was riding Karen's bike today.  Moustache #7.  The GT looking one with the 5 inch fork.  I stole it from her while she is out of town.  Building bikes for people your size definitely has its advantages.  This bike rips.  The Rootbeer Float the kids were calling it.  It seems so perfectly balanced and that big fork just begs to be pushed through the tougher, bigger, rockier, straighter lines.  It begs to go down and fast and to hit all the drops along the way.  But it doesn't stop there.  Its a respectable climber too.  I cleared more than I would have expected on such a bike, including the tight uphill switchbacks.  Damn.  I may not give this one back.  Karen rode the General Lee for the better part of the year last year so I may just do the same with the Rootbeer Float.  


I made it into the shop a little bit this week despite getting sick.  The first two days were cleaning up from the December bike building present making madness.   Some new organization is in order.  Then onto the exciting stuff.  Forks.  One for Bobby "the Volcano's" Breezer Lightning that I traded him and one for Jessica's touring triathlon bike to come soon.   Bobby is getting his fork dirty, so I hope your files are ready to go.  Sculpt this baby up. Well that said here's some pics. 

Here's a tool most bike shops don't have, a crown race cutter.  This evil girl turns the O.D. of the fork crown race seat to exactly one tenth of a millimeter larger than the I.D. of the headset's crown race.  For 1 1/8" steerers this is 30.1mm.  For one inch there are two sizes (JIS and Campy) and of course I had to figure one out which is which the hard way and that said...most bike shops don't have this tool.  Cheers.