Mikeys New Home

With Ethan moving out a couple of weeks ago Mikey was able to move out of the living room and into his very own bedroom/bike shop. Ethan's old bedroom is now the home to Mikey, Ann, my repair stand, and a whole lot of worthless bike parts. It is a little light on decorations for the moment but there are a few old parts laying around to keep it from looking too bare. I may look into getting some cool bike posters or something to hang on the walls but for now it looks ok. I started using my workstand as a collector for all of the bike stickers that I have collected. A lot of parts will come with a sticker of the brand logo and over time these little stickers will start to pile up. I have a couple that I had sitting around so I decided to throw them on the stand as decorations since that bike is way to pretty to mess up with some manufacturers logo. Right now the room has plenty of space for the two bikes but things may get a little cramped when Gennies replacement gets here (more on that later). I have been thinking about getting one of these and keeping the bikes in a row instead of just leaning them against the walls. This will help to keep the walls clean and save some space. It will also make the room feel like more a real shop with the bikes displayed like this but it will probably take another bike for this to really take shape (I guess I have to buy a new '08 road bike now). Here are some pictures of the new digs.

The view from the entrance.

The stars of the show.

A wind chime that I made from an old freewheel.

Hopefully I will be able to add another bike to the stable in the next couple of days when my new Fisher is ready to go. After taking two months to get a new frame, the bike shop called me a couple of days ago and left a voicemail saying that the frame was in but that during the part swap the bottom bracket messed up. I have no idea what happened to it but I am guessing that one of their mechanics screwed something up and stripped the threads or something like that. The guy on the phone didn't say if it was something that they broke or was already broken and they just found. Considering the wait for the frame, I would expect a quality shop to at least cut me a deal on the labor costs, especially if they screwed something up in the process. I don't expect anything like this from Cycling Spoken Here but it would be nice and might restore a little of my faith in them. I want to like the shop and really do like a couple of the employees but it seems that a lot of my trips there end with me feeling like I am trying to be screwed over. If I have to wait two months for a new frame (not completely their fault), then wait another week for a part that they broke (not sure that this is even the case) and still get charged ~$85 then I will probably never considering going there again to buy something. They do have some rides that I may join in on occasionally but they will not get any of my business. Hopefully they are pretty generous with the bike when I finally do get the bike back so I can feel a little better about shopping there. I guess I will have to wait and see what the story is when the new BB comes in.

Branching Out

Mikey and I headed to Greensboro this weekend to celebrate our three week anniversary by visiting Ethan and scoping out some his local trails. It looks like Ethan has a pretty sweet set up with some quality trails just a few minutes away and a greenway system that goes to another park with more good trails. The first trails we hit were at Country Park and were a bunch of fun. They had a nice flow and weren't very technical. They definitely had a fair share of roots but nothing over the top. At one of the entrances to the trail there was a section for freeride and dirt jumping. We rolled through the jumps and decided that you would have to be a little insane to really ride that section, but it was cool to see. After riding Country Park we hopped on the greenway and road up to Brandt Lake where we rode a little bit of the trails at Bur Mill Park. The section that we rode was fun but not enough to give an accurate rating for the whole trail system. We also rode Owl's Roost trail which is also at Lake Brandt but not in Bur Mill Park. These trails were a ton of fun with more obstacles than Country Park. They had a bunch of log rolls and some really fun downhill sections. Towards the end of this trail there was a log roll that I thought I could ride over without much trouble. I was wrong. I went to ride over the log but instead my front wheel hit the first log and stopped. Unfortunately I didn't stop until shortly after hitting the logs that I thought I was going to roll over. I should have expected this since I haven't really wrecked in a while and was overdue for a good one. Luckily Mike came away unphased and I only have a couple of scratches. Overall, it was a really fun day of riding and a nice change of pace from the Raleigh area trails that I usually ride. I am looking forward to more visits to the Triad to try out more of their trails.

In other bike news, I have started thinking about another dream bike that I will never be able to afford. I don't really have a use for this bike but I just think that they are super cool. It is one of these bamboo bikes. I think that these bikes are really sexy and would be really cool to ride around town on. They are supposedly more plush and comfortable than carbon fiber, although a little heavier. Unfortunately, I don't have an extra 3k to spend on a wooden frame but maybe I will when I find that duffel bag filled with money that I am looking for. Although not very practical for me, Calfee is working with African farmers to teach them how to make their own bamboo bikes for transportation uses. Even though I can't afford one of those nice pretty frames right now I may look into building my own. I think I may be able to cut off the tubes and use the joints from Ann and bond them with some sort of epoxy. Here is a guy that built his own bamboo frame and how he did it. He is a much more experienced builder than I am but I may look into it the next time I get really bored and want a project to work on.

New Toy

I haven't done a whole lot of riding lately due to being kind of busy (lazy) lately but I have gotten a few rides in. There isn't a whole lot new to talk about with the bike except that I got a new set of pedals off of eBay that should shave a few grams off of the total weight. Also, the broken cage finally snapped completely off on one of my rides so the bike now has one orange cage and one chrome one which looks kind of lame. In other news, my computer finally broke last night so I went and picked up this new one.


I have never been a big fan of Macs but this new iMac is really sweet. Now that I don't have anything important to do on my computer, like school assignments or work, I don't need to worry about software compatibility. The Apple machines really excel with media management, which is what I will primarily using this computer for. Plus, Apple is known for having a solidly built product which is a welcome relief after the giant peice of cheap plastic crap that was my old Dell. Another attractive quality of the Mac is that Apple is very environmentally friendly, which is something I strongly support. This is prevalent in the new iMac as it is made of easily recyclable materials and, like most (or maybe all) Apple products, it meets Energy Star efficiency regulations. I think my biggest complaint with Apple over the years is that their fans seem to have a really snobby and elitist attitude. Fortunately, I am not like the common Mac user and am not really worried about that happening to me.

I had some reservations about getting a Mac because of some dislikes that I have had in the past using other peoples machines. When I went to the Apple store this past weekend I was glad to see that pretty much all of my concerns have been fixed. Apple has taken a big step into the early '90's by making a mouse that has the ability to right click, unlike the ones that they were producing a couple of years ago. They have also changed the default method of opening of Expose to be be controlled by the mouse buttons instead of moving the mouse to the corner. For the non-Apple users out there, Expose is a feature that will show all of your open windows in a tiled arrangement so you can choose which window you want to view. On other peoples machines that I have used, Expose was opened by moving the mouse to the top left side of the screen, which is where the close and minimize buttons are located making it easy to accidentally activate this feature. There are plenty of articles about the other features of the new iMac so I will not go into those details. Instead, here are a few more pictures of this sleek machine.

One Week Later

Saturday marks the one week anniversary of my first ride with Girl Michaelangelo so I decided to go out riding the past couple of days to celebrate. I rode Harris Lake after work yesterday and felt really good on the bike. I took the hills easier than last week and have shaken off some of the rust. I am starting to feel pretty comfortable on the bike but I am still not completely back to where I was before the Gennie tragedy. I still make a lot of little mistakes, the most common being that I try to keep pedaling on my way over obstacles and end up hitting them with my pedal. It is possible that these crankarms are longer than the ones on the Fisher but I suspect that it is just bad technique. I also didn't wreck yesterday which is an improvement over last weeks ride. There was one point where I tried to go over a log and hit my chainring on the log pretty badly but I don't consider this a wreck because I never hit the ground. I thought that I would be able to clear it as I approached but the log was on a slight downhill and the lower ground on the other side skewed my judgment a bit. As I went over the ring hit and stopped the bike completely as I went over the bars and running down the hill. I was impressed that the collision didn't seem to phase the ring or the chain. Excellent work Salsa and Sram respectively. At the end of the day I had done about 14.5 miles, a pretty good day considering the heat.

Today I went out to Crabtree to ride the trails out there. I did one loop around Crabtree and although I felt good on the bike, the trails were pretty boring. I was hoping that since I haven't ridden these trails regularly in six months or more that they would be more fun on the new bike but I am already bored with them on my second trip out there. I will still ride them occasionally and go out there with group rides but I probably will not go out there on a regular basis. One exciting moment on these trails came when I passed the 50 mile mark for this bike on my computer. I figured that this was a small mile stone so when the odometer rolled over to 50.0 I stopped to collect a small nearby stone to keep as the 50 mile milestone stone. Please note that this stone is purely ceremonial and that there have been several other miles on the bike not recorded on the computer. I decided that since I came out here and went through the trouble of getting ready to ride that I should go spin through Umstead for a while to get some miles in for fitness. I ended up riding all of the trails in Umstead that are open to bikes for a total of about 24.5 miles of fireroads and roughly 5.5 miles of trail, for a grand total 30 miles worth of riding today. I really enjoyed the ride through Umstead and it was a good way to show off the new bike. When people see someone as goofy looking as I am come riding down the trail on a bike that just rolled out of a Ninja Turtles movie with a giant Reeses Cup jersey, they know that I mean serious business. The bike handled the fireroads of Umstead pretty well. I was worried about some of the longer hills on a singlespeed but I was able to make them all. There were some sections that tested out my climbing abilites and I may use this as a training route before my next attempt at Old La Honda. The bike tops out at about 15 mph on flat ground with the current gearing but I was able to test out the top speed on a long straight downhill. I think the bike topped out at around 34 mph or so with me doing my best Linus-Gerdemann-descending-Col-de-la-Colombière impression on the way down.

The 50 mile milestone stone.

Todays ride also brought about the first casualty of the new bike. I noticed at one point during the ride that one of my water bottles was shaking a lot and upon further inspection I discovered that the cage has broken on one side. A lot of times I will use a broken part as an excuse to replace it with something better. This is not one of those cases. I tried to zip tie the cage back together but it looks like the other side is close to breaking as well. I am not sure if I will be able to salvage this one. This is a little disappointing because these were the only orange cages that I could find anywhere but I can always get some in another color and paint them myself.

The broken cage

I am starting to think that I may be the only one who really likes the green and orange color scheme. I took the bike to work with me Friday and while chatting with a coworker who saw my helmet sitting at my cube, I mentioned that I brought my bike with me and was planning on riding after work. His only response was "Its not the green one is it?". I guess its ok as long as I like it.

More Riding

I have been out on a few more rides at various trails and I am starting to really like this bike. Here are some random thoughts on the riding.


The singlespeed thing is pretty challenging on the hills but I expect after a while I will be able to power over most of them. If you listen to the people on the singlespeed board at MTBR, riding with just one gear will greatly increase your power in a matter of weeks. I am not totally convinced of this and I'm sure that just like any miracle diet pill, results may vary. Right now my average speeds have been comparable to when I was riding a hardtail so it doesn't look like riding single will slow me down much, if any at all.

The rigid fork is still fairly comfortable most of the time and the ride isn't any worse than Gennie over the small stuff. The only time I really feel it is over the bigger obstacles, taking the bike of off drops, and on fast descents. Even at these times the ride isn't terrible and I will definitely keep it rigid for the time being.

Yesterday I went out to Crabtree and had a really good ride. Most of the hills out there can be powered over without much trouble and the bike flies through the flat flowing sections of the trail. The bike really handles nicely and takes turns really well. I think this is at least partly because of the tire upgrade over the stock Bontragers on Gennie.

At one point during yesterdays ride I came up behind another rider as he was trying to go up a short but fairly steep section of trail. As I approached he tried to downshift and ended up dropping the chain, forcing him to get off of the bike and hurry out of my way as I stood up to ride past him and inflate my ego. I usually don't like to watch people fail but it feels good to see someone on a full suspension bike with all of the bells and whistles move over for a bike with one gear and no suspension.

The only bad thing about the riding lately is that the heat has been brutal. For the out of towners, it has been up in the low hundreds the last few days around here with a heat index of around 110 most days (All temperatures are in degrees Fahrenheit). I have been carrying just the two bottles for water and putting all of my gear in my jersey pockets. This is a little less convenient than the camelbak but it is nice to not have that extra weight hanging on my shoulders and to be able to let my back breathe a little. Most of the trails that I ride around here are fairly short and keep you within a few minutes of riding from a water fountain when refills are needed.

The Maiden Voyage

Well I finally got out for a ride today on the new bike. Overall, it went pretty well. I went to Harris Lake to ride and did all of the trails once plus an extra trip through the beginner and intermediate trails for a photo op. In the end I did 11.33 miles with an average speed of 8.7 mph. The photo op ride was a pretty casual pace and I also had to do szome backtracking at one point to recover a water bottle that I dropped, which dropped my speed some. All things considered, it was just as fast as I would have been on a geared bike. Here are some observations from the ride.

The Good
The Feel of the Bike - I was worried that the rigid fork might be a little harsh on the trail but it turns out that it really wasn't any worse than Gennie. The steel frame and carbon bars did a good job of dampening out trail buzz and making for a pretty smooth ride. There were a couple of bigger roots that were a jolt but the cheap fork on the Fisher wasn't that much smoother than this rigid setup. I didn't take the bike off of any drops or sweet jumps, which is probable where I will really feel the lack of suspension.

The Ride - There wasn't anything really special about the feel of the bike or the geometry except that it rides like a bike. It isn't anything revolutionary, but the bike went where I wanted when I wanted it to. The handling isn't sluggish or twitchy, just fun.

The Gears - I was worried that 34-18 might be a little steep to start out with but I cleared almost every hill out there. The only time I had to get off and walk was the big hill in the double black diamond section, which I would rarely clean on a geared bike. The big whoop-de-doo just after this hill almost stopped me but I was able to power through it, just not very gracefully. The rest of the time I made it up the climbs without much trouble. I didn't miss the gears at all.

The Weight - The front end of the bike is really light and easy to lift over logs and obstacles. Overall the bike is about 5 or 6 pounds lighter than Gennie was, which makes it a lot easier to take up the hills. The rigid fork helps out there too due to the lighter weight and efficiency compared to suspension.

It Worked - I must not of screwed anything up too badly during the build because I was able to get through the whole ride without breaking anything.

I Didn't Get Hurt - My last trip to Harris Lake ended up with me getting stitches. No such trouble today.

The Saddle - I was a little worried that the saddle wouldn't be very comfortable on the trails seeing as it came off of a road bike but I didn't have any problems. The WTB saddle on the Fisher was really comfortable in regular clothes but was a little too cushy once I started wearing cycling shorts. This saddle doesn't have as much padding as that one but is still plenty comfortable with the chamois in the shorts, at least on this length of ride. It is also very easy to get behind on the downhills, which inspired some confidence.

The Bad
Creaking Bottom Bracket - There is some sort of creaking noise coming from the bottom bracket area. I checked the chainring bolts and they are good and tight so I don't know what is causing it. I think it might just be a crappy BB but those are cheap if I want to replace it sometime.

Snake on a Trail - There was a snake on the trail that I almost ran over. It was just a black snake but I am like a little girl when it comes to snakes. I didn't see it in time to stop so I just rode right past him. He never moved that I saw but I still hammered up that hill as hard as I could.

Chipped Paint - Towards the end of the ride I decided to go ahead and meet the minimum requirement of one wreck per ride. The back wheel washed out from under me while I was going through a turn and when I fell the handlebars swung around and the brake lever hit the top tube leaving a nice scratch in the paint. Oh well, I guess it can't be pretty forever.

Where Was Everyone At - Surprisingly, I only saw a few other people on the trail. Usually I try to avoid the crowds but there should have been more people there to gawk at the beauty of this bike.

I Am Out of Shape - No surprise there.


I am hoping to get back out tomorrow and ride some more, but for now here are some photos of todays ride.

Mikey relaxing by the lake.

From the front.

Close up of the front.


Disc brakes work good.


Pretty good chainline.

The saddle.


The view from the rear.

It's done... for now.

I got the bike built up tonight but it was dark by the time I got finished so the only riding I got was a quick spin around the parking lot. The bike looks really good, even with the red tires that I don't like too much. Not much to tell from the ride today except that I am more upright than my old bike and that the nicer housing makes a huge difference in the stopping power of the brakes. Hopefully I can get a good ride in tomorrow but I may end up seeing the new Bourne movie instead. Either way it should be awesome. Here are some pics of the bike being built and the finished product. I'll give a ride report sometime in the next couple of days.

Just home from the shop.



The King headset looks great.



The complete bike.


From the front. (Pardon the messy room)


The cockpit.

Starting to Build

Unfortuneatly the UPS guy came yesterday when no one was home so I had to wait until today to get the rest of my parts. Everything looks really good, especially the mango colored King headset. The only disappointment of the bike so far is that the tires have a red strip around the bead and I am not sure how good that is going to look with all of the orange accessories, but this is only a minor detail. I may end up getting some larger volume tires as well cushion the ride some anyway so if I do that I can just throw these on the geared bike, which needs new tires as well. Now that everything is here I am starting to build up the bike. I started earlier this evening by spraying the frame down with Framesaver and I am now waiting on it to dry. I already have the water bottle cages mounted on the frame and am hoping to get a couple of more parts on later tonight. The frame needs to sit and dry for a couple of hours but after that I am hoping to get the bottom bracket installed on the frame and get a few of the other parts ready to go on. Then I can throw the rest of the bike together fairly quickly tomorrow and sneak in a test ride before it gets dark. Here is a picture of this thing of beauty waiting to dry.