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:

I had this bar already setup from a previous build, so it was a matter of just a few minutes to swap out the old bar and swap in the new. Each set of bars has their own noodle for the V brakes, so the swap was quick.

I'm not sure what to call this drivetrain: 2 x 1 x 9? No front derailer, I'll manually shift to the 36t ring if I ever need a lower gear than what I can get on my 40t "big" ring. It works well for flat central Ohio: I use the 40t for most of my riding, I can shift to the small ring for towing the trailer or a camping load.

If you look close, you can also see my new tires. Vittoria Hyper something, 38~40mm wide. That's a nice size for everyday riding. They ride maybe 80% as good as a Compass tire, but only cost about 30% as much, and have 0% of the mounting hassles. They mounted up square and straight on the first try. I'm happy with them.

Up front I still have my Ironweed bag. It sags some after I took out the plastic stiffener, but my stuff doesn't rattle anymore. It's hard to imagine riding without something like this bag. It's so convenient for running errands and carrying small loads.

I had Monday and Tuesday off this week, which turned out to get a good choice. Tuesday especially had temps near 70 degrees, so I rode out to Sawmill road for lunch and a stop at the library. On this windy, 20+ mile ride, this bar was mostly OK, but for two things:

- I missed the drop position when working into a headwind
- My shoulders were a bit sore the last few miles, I think from the relative width of the bars.

In the end, I spent this morning switching back to drop bars, but with gears. That took a bit longer, but I appreciated the drops on another windy ride into Dublin:

It's good to have some handlebar variety in my fleet of four bikes.

I was trying something new today: I picked up some used Catalyst pedals off one of my email lists:

The big thing about these pedals is that they're... big. The platform is long, a good inch longer than my already long MKS Lambdas (AKA Riv Grip Kings). Just one ride to date, but I like the performance so far. Hard to get used to the appearance, though. It's like having a paperback book stuck on the end of each crank. More on these later.

My other handlebar news involves a set of VO Klunker handlebars I bought for my old Raleigh. I'm not getting anywhere selling this bike, so I figured the 3" rise of these bars will make up for the low stack of this old frame while I ride it around, waiting around for a buyer:

Nothing more than around the block shake down rides so far, but so far, so good. The riding position is upright and quite comfortable, which is just what I need for family rides.

With the trails soggy, I've been playing with setting my Karate Monkey up as a roadster for the spring. My first attempt was with an upside down Open Bar:

This initially felt pretty good, but had too much drop for me, even with the upjutter stem. I swapped the bars back for my regular mtb bar, a Ragley Carnegie:

I had the random thought this winter to try a three speed hub. In my newfound wisdom of spending less money on bike junk, I'm simulating it by approximating the typical three speed ratios with cassette cogs:

I can see why gears came about. When I ride this, I always want a bit smaller steps, and maybe some more top end and low end... and there you are at seven or eight or nine (or more) gears.

Sharp eyed readers will notice the mismatched pedals above. I did a quick lap around the block like this to compare the big Catalyst pedal to the Grip King. Wearing Crocs, I could easily notice and appreciate the additional real estate of the big pedal. They don't look quite so odd on the KM...

Last up is my Niner ROS9. I bought the biggest B+ tire I could find, a Vee Trax Fatty 3.25:

And I swapped the sus fork for a rigid fork, because that's the kind of rider I am:

 The front Fat B Nimble "3.5" went on the rear, fits fine:

Only one snowy ride, but it worked OK there.

An interesting side note is that my fancy dropper post doesn't seem to work below about 45 degrees or so. Maybe a nice flexy titanium post might be more my speed, but I need to spend some more time on a (functioning) dropper to see what it's all about... which won't happen until maybe June or so.