Trek 830 to Glacier Ridge

I made a few quick fixes to my recently acquired '95 Trek 830 (swapped seat, adjusted brakes and controls, pointed the bar ends a bit more earthward), and the twins and I ran over to the school and metro park to try out our new toys. I had my bike:

and Sam had his new football rocket thing, a bonus reward for selling lot of pricey boy scout popcorn:

Winter Project: ‘95 Trek 830

My bike fleet has been pretty stable lately, so it was time to mix things up. I was sorely tempted by a 62cm Rivendell Joe Appaloosa frameset on the RBW list, but I was worried it was a bit too big for me, and it was realistically out of my Jones drained budget. Instead, I’ve been trawling Craigslist for old mountain bikes. I’ve been missing my old Rockhopper, low stack height and all.

While I was killing time in a Detroit hotel this week, I came across this old Trek and made plans to see it on Saturday. And quite clearly, I brought it home. Maybe because it needed help:

Gears for Jones... Cheap

This has been a terrible fall for riding. Rain and temps that bounce right around freezing have made the trails way to sloppy to ride. I've been riding my Jones a bit on the road, but the limitations of single speed gearing quickly become apparent then. Coupled with my desire to try a cheap, wide range, eight speed cassette, I ended up adding some gears to the Jones:

Building a Jones Plus... on the Cheap

After celebrating Jones Day with the family, I settled into the bike shop and got down to work. I keep an Excel sheet to track my bike budget (surprising, right?), and since the Jones purchase was putting me temporarily in the red, I didn't want to spend any extra on the build that I didn't have to. Here's how I put together a budget(ish) Jones LWB build:

Happy Jones Day!

Celebrate Jones day with a Jones soda! Listen to Mr. Jones!

New Soma Riff

I've been working on my fleet a bit this fall. After my Niner died, I've been searching for another bike that gives me that same feeling of confidence when charging through the rough stuff. My Trek Fuel is OK, but I can never get into a long term relationship with a full suspension bike. I tell myself I don't want the extra maintenance, or that they allow me to go too fast, but in reality full suspension bikes just don't fit my early 90s image of what a mountain bike should be or look like.

My attempt to copy the Niner was a Soma Riff, somewhat impulsively bought when ebay had a sale coupon:

The frame is only a size large, a bit small for me, but the top tube length is comparable to the Niner or my KM. Alas, the higher bottom bracket exacerbates the low stack of this frame, leaving me to use a handlebar with three inches of rise to get the bars where they need to be. I haven't used the Velo Orange Klunker bar much previous to this, and I'm not terribly fond of it so far. It's heavy, steel, and has a bit of a dead feel to it. Why do steel frames feel so good, but aluminum wins for bars?

Bikes and a Playground

Sam has been biking a bit more this fall. His usual bike ride is down the block to his buddy's house, but he's up for a longer ride now and then. Last week we headed over to the metro park:

There's a small hill in the metro park. We zipped down it only to turn it around and climb back up. "Sam, do you want to do that again?" "Sure!" So we did two intervals of hill climbing.

Billie Bar Review, with bonus Pine Tar Soap review

I placed a Rivendell order the other day to try out a few new products. My main purchase was a new bar for my Fuji. The Billie bar is an evolution of Nitto's Albatross bar: a bit wider and longer. I've ridden an Albatross copy a while back, but I didn't care for the narrow width and the bolt upright main position (the "Mary Poppins" effect).

So off came the Noodles, on came the Billie:

Fleet Update VII

Whenever I need to get my thoughts in order about my bike stable, I realize it's time for a fleet update. As I sometimes try to do, these are ranked from top to bottom in whatever the current pecking order is:

1. Riv Clem H: I tried the Clem as a mountain bike, and it wasn't great. After experiencing more modern mountain bikes, the front end of the Clem feels nervous. And after my Niner failed at the head tube, looking down at the skinny fork of the Clem doesn't fill me with confidence. It's probably fine. But since I've set aside any aspirations to ride it on trails, I can outfit the Clem for city duty: slicks, racks, baskets, and kickstand. In this build, it works well to ride around with the kids or run errands or go camping.

The Jones bars are a great spec for this build:

Far more comfortable than the stock Bosco bars, they're good for going as fast--or as slow--as I want to go. That's a rare range for a handlebar.

RIP ROS

I've been doing my regular change up in my bike fleet this summer. Riding with my fast buddies Marc and Chris had me eyeing full suspension bikes again. I can keep up fine on the climbs and smoother stuff, but they can keep pedaling in the really rough spots, where I slow down on my rigid bike to find a line. I ended up stripping down my Niner for sale, and to use the parts on it's replacement (more on that later).

I posted the Niner online in the usual places, but fortunately the buyer was a local guy. He hemmed and hawed a bit, but we finally struck a deal. As we're walking out into the sunny driveway to his truck, he noticed some paint chipping around the head tube. Except it wasn't just chipping:

Road Trip With The Boys

Jodi and Kate are off to see Taylor Swift tonight, so I decided to set up a road trip with the boys to give them something exciting to do over shut down week.

The twins were both participating in Dublin's Fourth of July parade, so we couldn't leave until Thursday. Sam marched with the Cub Scouts:

and Kate with the Dublin Youth Athletics (lacrosse):

Thursday we headed south. Our first destination was Mammoth Caves. I was a little nervous at signing the boys up for a two hour tour, when neither boy had ever been underground. Would they get claustrophobic?

Challenge Course

The other night, Kate wanted someone to go for a walk with her. This doesn't happen often, so I got her quickly out the door before she changed her mind. Rather than pace around the neighborhood, we headed for the metro park. On approach, we did an excited fist bump when we saw that the challenge course was finally open.

Clem Again

Regular reader(s) may recall that I journeyed up to Ann Arbor to buy a Rivendell Clem Smith Jr last summer. That particular bike ride didn't end particularly well--I didn't care for the Clem's bars, hated the tires, found the saddle too painful to ride, and was frustrated by the poor shifting. At the end of a summer of biking and tinkering, I was too fatigued to deal with rebuilding the Clem to my specs, so I shipped it off to the distant land of my birth (Oregon).

I still had a thing for Clem, though. After selling my Stache, my bike fund was again flush. I was half heartedly looking at a Chinese carbon frame (again), but couldn't find the motivation to order anything. But when a Clem frame popped up on ebay, my bidding finger flew into action without hesitation. And that's how I ended up with Clem #2, in a color not as nice as my previous Clem's mustard gold, in paint that is significantly more beat up... but with part picks that are my own.

City Bike Update

One post in, and my Fuji America has already gotten a pretty major update. A wave of bike changes cascaded down to it:

- I sold my Trek Stache (yes, the one I just bought). 29+ wheels are really just too much for me. Too slow to turn; not agile enough. A fellow down in Dayton is really enjoying it, so it has found a good home.

- That left me with just one mountain bike, my Niner ROS9 B+. That's all well and simple, but I like to have a second mountain bike to give me some variety on the trails I've been riding for 20 years. I rebuilt the KM from a city bike back to what Surly intended, a rigid single speed 29er. One of my favorite bike types.

- I still needed a practical bike for running errands and pulling the kids around. My first thought was to convert my Black Mountain Monstercross over, as I had done in the past.  I took it for one last ride as a fixed gear drop bar road bike:

New Bike: 1981 Fuji America

Part Two of my good mail day is almost exactly opposite of Part One. Part One, if you look back a post, was my 2016 Trek Stache, a fairly modern mountain bike: formed aluminum frame, tapered head tube holding onto a suspension fork, dropper post, through axles, and plus sized tubeless wheels.

Part Two is nearly as old as I am:

It's a 1981 (I think) Fuji America frameset, non-aero brake levers, Nitto stem, and Grand Bois Hetre 650b tires. Yes, I'm trying yet another 650b conversion, on a bike that came out when I was nine years old.

New Bike: Trek Stache

In my last post, I showed three bike boxes in my garage. Two of those contained my newest mountain bike, a '16 Trek Stache (one box for frameset, one for the big wheels). I demo'd this bike when it was new, and while I wasn't blown away by it, I was impressed by the great job Trek did in packaging a big rear wheel in a short frame. When I came across this bike on (Boston's) Craiglist for a very reasonable price, I didn't hesitate much.

Since I first demo'd the Stache almost three years ago, my riding has been slowly moving in a more modern direction. On a trail with a lot of downhills (for Ohio...), like Chestnut Ridge, I now prefer my slack ROS 9 B+ over my KM. My hope is the Trek can build on the strengths of the Niner.

My Stache was a custom build with mostly Bontrager components. The original owner had some Trek connections, clearly:

A Good Mail Day

City Bike Churn, More Sam

Of all my fleet, the role that probably gets the most turnover is my city bike. This is the bike I ride the most often, if not always the most miles. It's my trailer puller, family rider, grocery getter, and occasional camper. Many times, I end up using a bike that just got bumped from it's main job: an old mountain or cross bike, pressed into civic duty.

My latest city bike was my old Raleigh Technium. With no luck selling it, I invested in some new bars:

Sam at the Pinewood Derby

Sam started up Cub Scouts this year, and he's been enjoying the variety of activities they offer. This Saturday was his first Pinewood derby race.

Sam spent one scout meeting and a few evenings getting his car ready, and we arrived bright and early Saturday morning for the weigh in:

We were a bit under weight, so a bit of extra weight and hot melt glue had Sam right at the five ounce limit.

New Tires, Pedals, Bars

I haven't been doing much riding this winter. We're sitting in the unfortunate intersection of not cold enough to freeze the trail hard, but not warm enough to make soggy road rides enjoyable. And with Henry and Jodi being sick for much of the last month, I've been mostly sticking around the house. Actually, maybe that's a reason to get out of the house.

As riding weather draws ever closer, though, I've been puttering a bit with my fleet. On my Black Mountain Monstercross, I changed up the drop bar for a Jones Loop:

Note to Self: Fatbikes are Slow

Some of my blog posts are a sort of public service, some are purely financially motivated, and some are a sort of online scrapbook. Every now and then, however, I make a post that is basically just for me. Something to read to remind myself of something.

This is one of those posts. It's for me to read whenever I think about buying a fatbike, as I did over most of the Christmas break.

What I want to remind myself is: fatbikes are slow. Not slow in an enjoyable, leisurely cruise with the family sort of way, but slow in a crawling, painful, struggle sort of way. A way where, during today's fatbike ride, I literally got off the bike and checked to make sure a brake wasn't dragging (they were not)

In some ways, I'm getting wiser about burning money on bike junk. The old me would have ordered a fatbike this Christmas, ridden it a few times, and realized how slow they were (not trusting my memories of my Gravity Bullseye, Salsa Mukluk, or Raleigh Pardner... clearly I have a ways to go to achieve wisdom).  The ever-so-slightly wiser me instead borrowed a fatbike from a tall friend for today's ride.  My friend Sean loaned me his Charge Maxi while he's trying out my Niner ROS B+: