Heart of Steel

Last weekend, we had a break in the weather: dry and temps in the 40s. It felt like spring after what's felt like weeks of temperatures in the teens. Saturday, I took the Camargue on a library and beer run, and Sunday I headed out for one of my favorite loops on ye Olde 650B Trek. The roads were nicely cleared, but some of the smaller trails I'd planned to ride on hadn't been cleared:

I had to push it up this icy hill, then continued to push for probably another half mile along this icy bike path:

New Trek Day

While I was out running around with Henry on Saturday, I saw our local Trek Store had their used kids' bikes at 50% off. They had a 16" Trek Mystic in pink that I thought would be perfect for Kate... but I didn't buy it, figuring it would make for good father/daughter time if I brought her with me the next day to get it.

Of course, the next day, it was gone.

Helpfully, the Trek guy called around to their other stores, and the Westerville location had the same bike for sale. We trekked up there (ha!), and $55 later, Kate had a great new bike:

A History of My Road and 'Cross Bikes

Time for installment #3 of my bike history (full sus bikes here and 29er hardtails here)

Update: hardtail 26ers here.

My road riding started on my pop's hand me down Schwinn. Typical early 70s bike boom, with Ashtabula cranks, steel rims, etc. But I'll start this history with the first road bike I actually bought:

1. 1991 Bridgestone RB-T

 

(not my bike pictured). I was heavily influenced by reading Grant Petersen's Bridgestone catalogues throughout college, so when I went road bike shopping, a quick spin to the Bike Gallery and this RB-T was mine. Must've been the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at the University of Washington. The Suntour drivetrain never shifted very well, but otherwise this was a great bike: good clearances, a nice frame, good geo. They're actually still quite in demand today, and I wouldn't mind finding one now. Mine was a 59cm, probably too small for me, though.

650B revisted

I went to a trail work today at Alum P1. We did a lot of cleanup on the beginner's trail for next week's race. This week's work day was sponsored by local bike shop roll:, so they had some demos on hand of some of their new models. Since lunch wasn't ready, I was the first to hop on an Anthem 27.5 3 (MSRP $2250) for a quick demo after work was done:

They had just built up the bike on Friday night, so I was the first to really ride it. It was a size Large, too small for me, but the biggest they had in the demo fleet.

I only rode for a mile or two, so take this with a grain of salt:

Dear 650B, It's Not You, It's Me (rerun)

A bit slow on the blogging front (until my new bike arrives next week), so I thought I'd dig something up out of my archives. As I was riding my Stumpjumper FSR:

around Alum Creek today, I thought about how well this bike does... everything. It downhills like a son of a gun, of course, but it scoots right back up the hill, too. Turns with a flick of the wrist. Easy to pick the front end up, or swing the back end around. What are the advantages of 29ers, again? That's a bit painful to say, as I've been mostly riding variations of a rigid 29er single speed for the last many years, but the FSR just makes everything so easy and fun, it's hard to find any faults in it. I guess it doesn't have the clean, lean lines of a steel single speed. That's something right there. Maybe my old knees are starting to tire of single speeding...

Anyway, if I backslide and end up buying that 26er Gunnar Rockhound I wanted 10 years ago, or a Surly Troll to put 650B wheels on, I'll make it easy for my reader(s) out there to call me out as a hypocrite, since just last fall I wrote this on mtbr.com: