Sunday, October 31, 2010

Weekend Recipe: Gingerbread!

This recipe is Sarah's co-worker Karen's grandmother's.

Wow, that's a lot of apostrophes. I could have said "recipe's" instead of "recipe is" and gotten in 4, even.

Anyway.

Ginny’s Gingerbread

½ cup sugar

½ cup butter or lard

1 egg

1 cup Molasses (Brer Rabbit dark)

2 ½ cups flour

1 ½ teas. Soda

1 teas. Cinnamon

1 teas. Ginger

½ teas. Cloves

½ teas. salt

1 cup very hot water



Mix all ingredients except water. Add hot water last and mix up again.

Bake in a 9” by 13” greased pan at 325o F. for about 30 minutes.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Reductio ad Absurdum - or, my new singlespeed

This is actually more of an introduction than anything, my ride today got canceled due to (another) forest fire in Boulder Canyon, so I have very limited dirt time on the new singlespeed. A real "review" post on that bike will show up at some point, but not today.

Today, I want to talk about chainstays, why I made the stays on this bike so short, and what the pluses and minuses (in my mind) are. You can look at my godawful pictures of my spraypainted bike (powdercoating? Pfah. I'll do that when we're buried in snow!)

First, for the sake of argument, we're going to say that we have 2 identical bikes - ie, same angles, same tubes, same parts. There's no sense in comparing a 5" full suspension bike with long stays to a 24" rigid BMX.

That said, what happens when we make chainstays longer or shorter? Well, a bunch of things.

-We increase rear wheel trail. Just like the front wheel, the rear wheel wants to go in a straight line/follow you because it falls behind the steering axis (imaginary line drawn down the center of your head tube to the ground). Front wheel trail for a mountain bike averages around 80mm, with lots of variation, and higher numbers mean more "stability" (meaning, tendency to stay on a straight line). Rear wheel trail is MUCH higher - on a generic medium sized mountain bike it hovers somewhere around 1000mm, so an order of magnitude higher.

-You can easily notice the change in handling if you vary front wheel trail by 5mm or so and likewise you can tell when rear wheel trail changes (the effect is not as great, though) - as the rear wheel trail drops, the wheel deflects farther (we're talking about an angular change here) from your intended path if you hit a rock or a root at a funny angle. So if the rock knocked your rear wheel 3" to the right, the rear wheel angle relative to the front has to change more for shorter bikes, and less for longer ones.

-To illustrate a bit better, think of a bike with 20 foot long chainstays. When you hit that rock in the trail, the rear wheel still has to shift 3" to the side, but the bike's angle hardly changes. You might not even notice (of course, you wouldn't make any switchbacks, but that's beside the point...) On the other hand, if we have very short chainstays and wheelbase (say, a normal bike) the bike's angle changes quite a bit - and hence feels less "stable" - you're getting knocked off course, because when the angle of the bike changes unexpectedly, you have to actively compensate - or else ride off the trail.

-Remember that you can also make the FRONT of the bike longer (ie, longer effective toptube, slacker head tube angle, more fork rake, or any combination of the above - a longer front center measurement, for the geeks out there) and gain rear wheel trail as well. So for our thought experiment (identical bikes) the longer chainstay makes for more stability. In the real world, there's a lot more to it than that and the chainstay length shouldn't be considered in isolation from the rest of the frame geometry.

-Obviously there is more to it than "stability". Many of us like to get up on our rear wheels and wheelie/manual/hop. Short chainstays make this easier, as the riders weight is closer to (or even behind) the pivot point, which is of course the rear hub. Here the length of the front end of the bike matters less (though the position of the rider matters quite a bit). Holding other variables constant, shorter chainstay frames are always easier to wheelie/manual/etc. In many cases, that's irrelevant, since most terrain is ridden with both wheels on the ground. For folks who like to jump every little hip on the trail, though, short can be a lot more fun.

-The bottom line is that, in isolation, chainstay length doesn't mean that much. The rider preference and terrain dictate a lot, and shorter isn't always better. As much fun as it is to manual/hop/bop/jive, it's not so fun when the trail spits you off your bike on lap 8 at 4 in the morning because you can't hang on and stay on course anymore. So as with all things, there are tradeoffs involved, and what works for one person might be terrible for another.

In my case, I wanted to encourage myself to be active on the bike and enjoy really feeling/working with the trail, rather than just blasting down at warp speed as I've gotten in the habit of doing on the suspension bike. This bike (106.9cm wheelbase, 9cm of front wheel trail and 97.9cm of rear wheel trail, for those who are curious) is intended to do just that - both the rear and front ends are very (by my standards) short. For comparison, my previous singlespeed was 108.5cm wheelbase, with the difference about evenly split front/rear. My (just retired to become my brother's) full suspension bike is 108.9cm, with most of the extra length in the rear.

In other words, it's not a race bike, it's a play around bike for when I want to try to wheelie drop every log step or jump all the little jumps on a Ned trail. If things are super fash/gnarly, I'll probably break out the full squish (yes, I built myself 2 new bikes this year... bad Walt - more on it when I get it built up) but for everyday XC riding, I think this bike will be a lot of fun.

Ride report of some kind in the next few days, along with initial thoughts about the Black Cat swingers, once I've had a chance to give them a fair thrashing.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Fresh tracks

We tried to steal a "last Ned ride" (typically this is a joke, since there are 10 or so "last" rides before the snow actually falls) today - and succeeded.

I finally built up (post about it tomorrow) my new singlespeed with the silly short 16.5" chainstays, and I have to say... I was sliding all over the trail! Barely in control the whole time! I'd try to stand up and put some power down and the rear wheel would just slide out - it was awful! Sometimes I rode right off the trail and didn't even realize it...

Of course, there was 4 or 5 inches of snow.

Pictures of the bike and a brief ride report tomorrow after I ride some dry trails on it. I can already say I wish I'd built it for 100mm travel instead of 80. Doh. But it's darn fun anyway.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Quick sneak peak for Steve


Not a whole lot to say - 4" travel, tapered steerer, 44.5cm chainstays, 29" standover and 29" wheels (syncronicity?). Pretty all-around geometry - 71/73 and 13.5" (before sag) BB height. Intended more for stiffness and durability than super light weight, but the frame is still under 7#.

Still waiting on the BB and cranks, then she'll be on the way.

As an aside, am I alone in thinking of almost all bikes as female? It makes no sense, really, but it's not really a conscious thing.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Mountain Bike Magazine: 650b is an "innovative flop"

First of all, no, I don't subscribe. My name ends up on a lot of industry mailing lists, so I get a lot of free unsolicited magazines. And I generally read them while I'm on the can. Mountain Bike is pretty much dreck.

With that in mind, I'm trying to decide if their colorful (and idiotic) chart on pages 28 and 29 of the current issue - which places 650b wheels in the same "innovative flop" category as the Slingshot and Proflex bikes - means that the wheel size is dead, or if it's actually the opposite...

I do know that I want those 5 minutes of my life back that I wasted reading a magazine that includes a how-to on blowing snot rockets (pro tip: keep one hand on the bars).

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

New trails, brah!


Ok, it's 1.5 miles, it's 3-4' wide crusher fines, and the total elevation gain/loss can't be more than 100 feet over the entire length.

But now I can RIDE SINGLETRACK TO COSTCO, bitches!

Seriously, kudos to BMA and BCPOS for making it happen. Now how about that new Betasso trail, guys?

Monday, October 18, 2010

In the wild




Thanks to Brad for the pictures. I would actually say he looks less silly than I did on Marcus' 36er - but not by much.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Lazy Sunday!


Well, not _that_ lazy. I did get most of a frame built for myself. It might be of interest to the geeky folks out there (before anyone points it out, yes, the crossbrace between the toptube and seat tube isn't there yet).

The bike is intended to be a long-travel trail/freeride setup. Here's the rundown, with annoying commentary:

-145mm rear travel. Yes, that's a lot. No, the rear end is not custom, it's just a "customized" selection of rocker/shock to get the travel I want. Yes, I can do this for anyone. The unsagged BB height is a little over 14", which is on the low side for this much travel, but I like low BBs and non-excessive amounts of sag.

-43cm chainstays/109cm wheelbase (42.9" for you SAE freaks). It's quite possible that I'll hate the super-shortness of this bike (it's a solid 2" shorter wheelbase than most 29ers in this sort of travel range), but I doubt it. Yes, there's a catch. I'll get to that in a minute.

-69.5/73 head and seat (effective) angles. That's assuming a 120mm travel fork. If you throw on a 140mm (which I eventually will) everything slacks back about a degree.

-44mm head tube for tapered steerer fork. Natch. I'm gonna run a Fox, I think. Probably order it this week.

-23.2" toptube. Yes, that's very short. But with the slack front and and 44mm rake fork, I wanted to keep the front center under 66cm (there's no magic to that number, it's just close to what I tend to like).

-Big long head tube (140mm) and seat tube (21"). I have very long legs - the bike has 31" standover, so I will have tons. I will still need some spacers and a high-rise bar to get the grips to the height I want. Should be reasonable to loan this out to friends of similar height without too much adjustment, though, which was also a (minor) design criteria.

-No ability to run a front derailleur. I just simply do not need more than 1 chainring, ever (I'm not bragging, that's just the way it is) - especially with the advent of wide-range 10 speed cassettes. This bike won't accept a front derailleur due to the pivot/chainstay positioning, so 1 ring is all I get. For a customer, I'd probably use an 83mm BB shell (this is 73mm) and an ISCG for a Hammerschmidt or something if more gears were needed.

-Tubing is 4130 for the seat tube, heat treated 4130 head tube, and Supertherm everywhere else. The frame is about 7.5# with the shock, which I think isn't too bad. Honestly, I don't care at all what it weighs. Heavier is fine, I want to be able to get a workout riding with my friends and wife, then bomb the downhills. Maybe this thing will let me keep up with Steinwand...on his hardtail...when he's drunk. Yeah, right.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Brian's Cross bike


Just in time for 'cross season, though it sounds like Brian has some other commitments this year. Nothing like a carpet of leaves to ride on!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Eszter's race report


24 hour world championships race report is here. Great job, Eszter (and great photos, Chris)!

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Moab - the more complete story

I think the biggest story of our race at the 24 hours of Moab is how miraculous our luck was. Consider, if you will:

Neither Macky nor I had ever done a race at night in our lives. Macky, in fact, had never *ridden* at night with lights until his first night lap, and I had done a grand total of 3 night rides (none longer than 90 minutes) at Marshall Mesa in the 3 weeks before the race. Yet somehow we were better at night (my laps were only a few minutes slower) than during the day, while other far more experienced teams faded badly.

We had no significant mechanicals, though Macky had his handlebar light fall off on one lap (he finished strong with just his headlamp) and I bent my derailleur hanger jumping over a fallen rider (trust me, that's the best option when someone yardsales in front of you when you're going 25 mph) and couldn't really shift for the last half of my final lap. Oh, and I dropped my chain a few times on the first lap. But all told, no flats, no major mechanicals, no crashes, no injuries. Crazy, especially on that course.

Our support was nigh-nonexistent. Macky's dad Bob helped keep us laughing and our lights charged, but we basically sat in the dark in camping chairs under our EZ-up eating pretzels and babbling incoherently. Most of the other "pro" teams had RVs and mechanics and all manner of junk. Yet somehow all our bikes kept working and we all made it to the start in time for our laps.

We didn't even preride the course - I needed to work on Friday, as did Cameron, and Macky didn't have any way to get to Moab earlier. So my first race lap was my first time ever seeing the trail - it was actually hilarious, because I'd crank around a lapped rider, then have to stop and get off to walk because I'd taken the exact wrong line, meaning that the poor person would pass me back, get passed again, and then have to watch me do the same stupid thing 100 feet later... I'm glad everyone was friendly and helpful about letting me by. I tried to give words of encouragement (or at least a friendly ring of the bell) to everyone I saw. I would never think that 1200-some people could share a racecourse that easily. Great stuff.

So really, the race went as well as it possibly could have. I am betting I could have taken 3 or 4 minutes a lap off my times if I'd been riding and racing all summer as I normally do, but given that I spent a grand total of about 6 weeks actually preparing in any way, I think it was a smashing success.

The course was about as fun as anything that isn't singletrack could be, I'd say. Plenty of rock ledges (both up and down) to challenge your technical skill, plenty of super fast sections to test your nerves, and best of all, the course got faster and easier as you covered the loop - the most physically and mentally difficult sections were all in the first 1/3. That was really nice on the later laps when everything hurt.

Here's a shot of us on the podium with the Trek/Honey Stinger and Hammer Nutrition guys. I was really bummed not to win this race - but I'm not going to whine about losing to a group of really nice guys (who I've known for years and used to race against every weekend) who get paid a salary to ride their bike. Honestly, I think I was the only person on the podium who doesn't get free bikes at the very least. Maybe I need to enter the "guys who built their own bike" category next year...

Monday, October 11, 2010

As usual...

Eszter has outdone me: 3rd place at the WORLD 24 hour championships in Australia. I don't know how to use Dave's computer to insert the link, so just cut and paste this:
http://www.onlineresults.com.au/Results/Comp/World_Solo_24hr_Championships_2010/Cat/World_Solo_Championships_Elite_Women

2 of the WW dream team on the podium on the same weekend - been a while since that's happened! Congrats Eszter!

Coming home with the hardware - but no jersey

I'll do a longer post (there are plenty of entertaining stories to tell) when I get home, but for now, suffice to say:
-We broke the old Moab lap record (in your face, Seedorf!) but did not win - Jay/Ross/Kalan/Len broke the record by even more. At mid-morning, we got the gap down to about 30 minutes, but they pulled back away. Congrats to those guys - their lap record (22, same as we did, but they finished about 40 minutes ahead) will probably stand forever.
-We also fought hard against Colin Cares' badass Hammer Nutrition team, and only ended up beating them (they also did 22 laps) by about 15 minutes. Great job, guys!
-It was really cool to stand on the podium at a national championship. I'm guessing that will be the only time that happens in my life. Got some pictures of the awards(none of the race itself, unfortunately), I'll post them when I'm back.
-I did not sleep even a single minute during the race - I was way too keyed up. I felt fine until about 2pm yesterday, and then I crashed. Slept 14 hours last night and I'm still exhausted.
-I do not want to ride a mountain bike again for at least a week. I'm going to yoga and the climbing gym, thanks.
-I was not the slowest rider on our team, nor was I close to the fastest, and I accomplished my twin goals of not embarrassing myself and not getting hurt.

Thanks to everyone who texted encouragement (some of you at like 3am!) I had a great time, and hopefully we'll be back next year to try again for those stars and stripes jerseys.

Friday, October 08, 2010

In Moab

Don't expect answers to emails or phone calls until I return (Monday evening). I will attempt to keep y'all updated on the race, but no guarantees.

Thursday, October 07, 2010

24 hours of Moab and what's up next

For those who have way too much time on their hands, and for some reason want to follow the race, we are the "NM All-Stars". I believe Granny Gear will have some real-time race standings available, I believe here.

For those not in the know, our initial goal was to *win* this race outright (and I suppose it still is), because it's most likely the least competitive (most years) national championship category that exists - by this time of year, almost all the serious pros are taking time off or racing cyclocross (or going to 24 hour worlds, which is also this weekend - go Eszter!). Those who are still racing can choose from solo, duo, and mixed categories.

We thought, with a team of all 4 pros (though my pro status is pretty dubious at this point) we'd have an easy time beating a field of what are usually mostly expert teams.

So much for that. We're facing a Trek/Honey Stinger team that includes Jay Henry, Ross Schnell, Len Zanni, and Kip Biese. They are all wicked fast. Ethan Passant and his CB crew are also coming. They will be ripping it up.

In theory, we might plausibly match up with either team, but our odds of pulling on stars and stripes jerseys are now reduced to around, I'd say, 10%, at best. We'll do our best. My original goals - don't get hurt, don't embarrass myself - still apply.

If there's internet at the race, I'll try to post a few updates as the day/night progresses.


Next week I'll hopefully have some pictures of a new 6" travel 29" wheel full suspension frame I'm building for myself to replace my DHL-smashed current ride (which I'll race in Moab, btw). It has some interesting features and should be worth the attention of all you bike nerds.

I'll also hopefully finish up a few things (Wolfgang, your dynamo is finally here) and get some solid work in, now that I'm done "training" for Moab. Time to do some work, ride on the weekends, and start hitting the gym to get back in climbing shape. Season's coming to an end...

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Absolute randomness: Department of You Gotta be Kidding Me

Was anyone else aware that Germany recently (4 days ago) paid it's final reparations... FOR WORLD WAR ONE?!?

For those of you who want to read about bikes, I apologize. I'll do a bike post later today or tomorrow, but I figured y'all are mostly geeky enough to appreciate the absolute weirdness of a country still paying reparations for a war that nobody currently alive participated in.

Your Wednesday Boulder Idiocy

As usual, the Daily Camera has the scoop. Folks, getting drunk and pretending to be a cop is really, really stupid.

For that matter, so is riding around at night without lights, but the DUI and impersonating a police officer is a couple orders of magnitude more dumb.

Monday, October 04, 2010

24 hours of Moab: Anyone need a ride?

So after last year's sickness debacle, the NM All Stars (Mike McCalla, Cameron Brenneman, Macky Franklin, yours truly) are racing 24 hours of Moab. Really actually racing this time. We have some tough Crested Butte all-star competition for that stars and stripes jersey, it looks like.

In any case, I'm driving out to Moab sometime on Friday. I hate driving by myself, so if anyone out in interweb-land needs a ride to the race (from Boulder or Denver or somewhere in between the front range and Moab) drop me a line. I'm planning to drive back either the evening after the race (if I'm not too exhausted) or else Monday morning. Plenty of room for bikes and your gear.

Saturday, October 02, 2010

Weekend rambling, steel and ti

I get a lot of requests for ti frames, or at least requests for an explanation of why I don't build them. Here's an email I sent back to one such fellow in response that sums up my feelings.

Hi David -

Properly built, ti and steel ride about the same, and can be built stiff, flexy, or anywhere in between. They both last a long time and can be repaired if they break.

Ti, as a material, is about 70% of the weight of steel, but as a complete bike frame, it's not quite that much lighter, because you need to use a bit more of it
(mostly larger diameter tubes) to get an acceptable ride and strength
(steel is much stronger as a material). So in the end, a ti frame is
about 10-15% lighter (a 4# frame in steel would weigh roughly 3.5# in
ti, in other words).

The problem I have with ti, and the reason I don't build with it, is
cost. A good custom steel frame (say, mine) is $1200 plus or minus a little bit. Decent custom ti starts at around twice that much, so you're paying an extra $1000+ for, at most, a half pound of weight savings. That's $5/gram, which is WAY too expensive - if you want a lighter/faster bike, you're better off spending that money on wheels, drivetrain, or other parts, where you can easily cut off several pounds and gain a lot of nice functionality. That cost difference applies for non-custom frames too - a nice non-custom steel will run $500-800 or so (obviously they vary a lot, but I'm assuming you're getting something relatively nice/lightweight), ti will be roughly $1200-1800.

Note that those numbers are for straightgauge 3/2.5 titanium. There are 6/4 butted ti tubes available which will save another half pound of weight, but the cost is astronomical - you will probably pay in excess of $3000 for a custom frame built with those tubes, so you're still basically at $5/gram.

If you're already buying the nicest parts available, then ti makes sense (ie, if you're planning to spend $5k or more). Otherwise, I feel it's a waste of money.

Ti won't corrode, which is great, but neither will steel if you give it even a tiny bit of care (ie, apply some framesaver, don't leave the bike out in the snow all winter). So to me, that's a non-issue. If you spend 5 minutes a year taking care of your steel frame, rust won't be a problem for decades.

Bottom line: to me, ti is not worth the money. I could build myself anything I want, and I ride (and race) exclusively steel bikes. Channeling Stan Lee, 'nuff said.