Saturday, June 12, 2010

Stop The Presses...

Earlier in the week I was invited to join a few of my fellow cyclists on a jaunt into or near green county on a hundie mile ride. My friend AC is on a mission and if any of his past goals are a leader into his next he will accomplish it with ease.

I arose and checked weather.com for an outlook on today's ride. Most everyone that knows me knows that I hate riding in the rain. Not only is it not fun but I don't like doing extra bike maintenance if I don't have to. I made the call and headed down to Knights for the start. I was hoping "and" thought I could get 50 in before the rain set in. WRONG.

There was also a ride in Gate City,Va. and Yuma this morning but they started later in the morning and I KNEW that was a wash.....no pun intended,ha ha. Later I found out Dillow attended and got a soaking too.

BAck to our ride; It was about 20 in and the sprinkles arrived, the rain was very light and I could have coped with this type rain if it had maintained this all day. Wait, did I say I could cope with riding in the rain? My head must still be waterlogged! We all as a group roll around a left hand 90 degree turn, not fast but not slow either. My rear tire starts to slip out but I'm able to maintain my balance and make it through the curve. 5 seconds later the sound of metal and asphalt colliding arises. One of the guys eat it going through this turn, no major damage just some scrapes on his elbow and some torn bar tape. This ride went uneventful after the group split and a reroute home except for Jeff's flat on Cherokee rd. This ride would have been awesome if it had not rained. I'm trying to get some long mileage and pushing the limits of my back at the same time. Anytime I try to push over a metric century my back feels like it's being stabbed with a knife in the location that I broke my back, November 2004. I had no pain at all today and lately my back hasn't been bothering me at all. Now I have a BMC racemaster to clean up. Yes, I hate a dirty bike!

STOP THE PRESSES................

I recently learned that the 2X10 XX group is being pass down to it's siblings. All the way down to X-7! X-7 will have carbon cages too, WOW. I'm glad I found out this revelation before I arranged ordering this at the shop too! I may be able to save big $$ if I wait just a little bit more. They are even offering colors! I am experimenting with something.......2X9! I have a carbon FSA 29-42 crank on the Yeti now and we will see how this goes. I'm not a fan of any FSA cranks because they have so many problems but this is just a test and the cranks will be sold after the test for sure.

I really don't need 22 on a crank because one can walk faster than one can pedal this gearing ratio uphill so it really doesn't make sense to have a gear on a bike like that to me. (no insult to the peeps that like this gear though, maybe they should take up hiking?) I have ran many many many gear ratio combinations on Sheldon Brown's calculator and the best one I like for my region that I ride is a 26-39 with a 11-28 cassette. I don't see my big ring much except for the night owl recently so this would be my preem gearing set up. I know different strokes for different folks so they should offer many rings choices for these cranksets to please the masses me thinks!


Colors? Yes once again I have changed the color and design. I tried for many months to find something palatable and I also wanted my readers to be soothed and relaxed while here visiting as well. Haven't you heard how they put arrested peeps into holding cells painted pink to calm them down? Well it's not that bad here but you get the jist. I asked for feedback on all the designs and got plenty, thanks! I switched back to the gray and black (very dull in my opinion) and no one said or commented about it. I like green so I went with green this time. Like it? doesn't matter it's staying for awhile :-)




LAter G.............................

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

2x9 is where its at, dude! I like it a lot better than having a single ring up front.

Also, the green looks good!

Riding with dogs said...

No, 1x9 is where its at dude. I guess it may be 1x10 soon.

SCOOBY'S SNACKS said...

1X9? Dude you don't even have the right ratio for a 29er in that setup on your mamasita, goober

Anthony Duncan said...

I've liked my 1x9 setup so far. I think I have a setup that has way more 'useable' gears than my previous 1x9 setup on that old Specialized I had. Front 34T, rear 11-32.

I think if I had a 2x9, I'd go with what Sram is doing now with their 2x9 setups. I can't remember off the top of my head what the two front chainrings are, but from what I can remember, it sounded like a nice setup.