Naming Names

So the Madone needs a good name. The only good one I can think of is Madeline, which plays off of Madone nicely. Any suggestions?

The Return to Gears

The bike shop called tonight and said that my Fisher was finally fixed and ready so I went down after dinner and picked it up. The new frame is a Ziggurat instead of a Tassajara. I have never heard of this model and it doesn't show up on the '08 Fisher website. The only sign of it that I see on the website is from the 2006 lineup of bikes. I am not sure if this bike just isn't posted online yet or if it is only going to be sold outside of the US or something. The listing from '06 listed the bike as a race hardtail,which means that it is at the top of their hardtail lineup and a significant step up from the Tass. It looks like the bike retailed at $3300 a couple of years ago compared to $720 for Gennie last year, but most of that price difference is due to the nicer components on the Zig. The frame is made from ZR9000 which is a material that Trek has developed for their bikes. It is aluminum with a little bit of zirconium mixed in to allegedly add strength and reduce weight. Although it may be a little lighter than Gennie it still feels heavy compared to Mikey. Another cool feature of this bike is that it was made in the USA unlike the rest of my bikes. After getting the bike home I started to put on the last few parts that I took off to build up the Surly. The pedals were quick to put on but I tried to use the old disc brakes off of the Raleigh until I can get some new ones. The brakes are made by Tektro which is pretty much the crappy generic brake manufacturer. I never realized how nice the Avid brakes were to setup until I tried to put these on. The rotors were warped to the point that the wheel would hardly spin and the pads cannot be adjusted without tools. These things suck and I wasted most of my night trying to get them to work. They are ok for the time being but they have got to go before too long. After getting the brakes on and close to working I decided to take the bike for a spin around the parking lot to test it out. It has the exact same geometry that Gennie did so no surprises there but I can definately notice the difference in quality from this bike and the SS. Besides the sorry excuse for brakes that the bike currently has, the bike just didn't feel as solid as Mikey. The grips slide around, the cranks flex, the bottom bracket isn't very smooth, and it has a really squishy feel to it now compared to the rigid fork. None of these things mean that it is a bad bike and I have had these same problems in the past they just weren't that noticeable until I started riding a nicer bike. The bottom bracket will need some time to break in since it is brand new so that problem is only temporary. Hopefully I can find some time to put down the Surly one day and take this thing out to the trails so I can give it a real review.

Although it has taken an absurdly long time for this new frame I am really excited about the upgrade. Unfortunately, Cycling Spoken Here left me with a bad taste in my mouth again. I was hoping they would cut me a deal since it took them the entire summer to swap out the frame. I was also thinking that since the bottom bracket was working fine when I took it in that they would replace the broken one at no charge. This obviously wasn't my fault so I shouldn't be held responsible right? Not really. I was still charged for the labor to switch the parts to the new frame which is no big deal because the wait wasn't completely their fault. They also charged me for a new bottom bracket and labor to install it. I really wished they would have let me know that I was going to be buying this part before they ordered it because I probably would have used this as an opportunity to upgrade to one that will last a year before breaking. I am not sure what happened to the bottom bracket but somehow about half of the threads on one side were completely stripped off. I have no idea how this happened but somebody has to pay to fix it, and apparently that somebody is me. In the end I had to pay $110 for them to fix the defective bike that they sold me. And to top things off, the mechanic told me that they still had my old frame except for a little piece that they had to send back to Trek. I thought that I may be able to get it back and use as a decoration but before I could ask I was told that one of their employees had taken it out back earlier that evening and beaten it into the ground with a rock. What a quality shop.

On the brightside, I did get to see a newly assembled BMC Pro Machine that was probably one of the nicest bikes I have ever seen. I would guess that it was easily $10000. They also had some other BMC frames on the floor that were really sexy. If I could find one of these frames slightly used for a good price it would be my next bike, but thats not going to happen. They also had a nice looking Trek Madone 5.0 on the floor in my size. It had a full Ultegra drivetrain and has been marked down to $2000, which is a really good deal. If I had gotten a little better service from the shop I would have taken it for a test ride tonight. As it is, I don't think I will ever let a CSH mechanic touch one of my bikes again and I am really hesitant to buy anything from them ever again. If it wasn't for the discounted Madone and them being the only BMC dealer in the area I would go ahead and say that I will never shop their again, but I want to reserve the right to buy one of these. Anyway, here are some pictures of the new ride.

The new bike.

Ziggurat?

The fist and last name in mountain biking.

Made In God's Country.

Good old Genesis Geometry.

From the front.

The headbadge.

No need to address that huge design flaw. It will probably work itself out.

The broken bottom bracket. The picture isn't that great but the silver strip to the right shouldn't be there.

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.

Pulled the Trigger

Another sweet addition to the bike came last night when I won a set of carbon handlebars. They are the Monkeylite SL model which are at the very top of Easton's lineup. They are unbelievably light at only 135g (4.75 oz). This was the last big thing that I was really looking for on Ebay so I decided that it was time to move on from the hunter gatherer phase of this bike build and ordered everything else that I needed for now. It looks like this entire project is going to end up only costing me a little over $1200, not bad considering that this includes a workstand and some tools in addition to a top notch bike. All I need left to buy is a new set of pedals, seatpost, and a couple of water bottles. Hopefully I can snag some pedals and a seatpost off of Ebay soon or I can just use the ones from the Fisher. I am going to need to have a little bit of the labor done at a shop so I can pick up some bottles then. Nothing to do now but sit and wait for the mailman.

One of the reasons I am so anxious to get this bike built is that I still haven't heard anything from the shop about my new GF frame. I saw a thread here about a guy that broke his GF Rig in the same spot as mine (great design their Gary) and was told that they are out of those frames for 07. I am afraid that the same thing might be happening with the Tassajara and I do not want to wait any longer to ride than I have to. It has already been a month since my last good ride which is way too long.

It begins

So I have been thinking lately of building up a killer singlespeed to replace the geared bikes that seem to stay broken. It seems that when you get to my size that most bikes just don't seem to hold up. After breaking both of the wheels on my Fisher on consecutive rides I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to a more durable set. Unfortunately, I only got a handful of rides on these wheels until I cracked the frame. With the bike in the shop getting fixed under warranty for the past three weeks, I got so desperate that I set up Ethan's old road bike, Emaline, and went out for a road ride with him. That bike lasted me about 1.5 rides and 25 miles before I snapped the chain and was left stranded in Cary. So I am hoping that if I get a beefy steel frame and ditch all of the unnecessary components, like the shifters and derailleurs, that I can ride a bike for a full year without it completely blowing up. Anyway here are the planned specs for my new ride:

Frame/Fork: Surly 1x1 22" Lemon Lime Green
Headset: Chris King in mango
Stem: Easton EA70
Handlebars: Easton Monkeylite Carbon Risers
Grips: Oury in orange
Levers: Avid Speed Dial Ti
Cables/Housing: Jagwire Ripcord in Maxxis Orange
Brakes: Avid BB7
Crank: Truvativ Stylo SS
Front Wheel: Shimano XT disc hub mated to a Mavic XC717 rim
Rear Wheel: Surly New Disc Hub mated to a Salsa Delgado rim
Freewheel: 18t ACS Claws
Tires: Panaracer Fire XC Pro
Seatpost: Whatever I can get cheap
Saddle: Fizik Aliante
Pedals: Time Atac
Cages: Alloy cages in orange


This bike is going to sweet looking with the green frame and orange accessories. I have been searching Ebay for the last couple of weeks for some good parts for cheap and so far I have the rear wheel, stem, cages and saddle. The brakes and front wheel are definitely coming off of the current bike. I am planning on buying the frame/fork, headset, tires, and cranks new and I may get some of the smaller stuff new while I am at it (How much will I really save by getting grips off of Ebay?). If I steal some temporary parts from the Fisher the only thing I really need to get is a good set of carbon bars and maybe a seatpost. Hopefully I can get some pics up later of the things I already have but until then enjoy the riding.