Krampus first ride

I've had my Krampus built up for about a week now, but extreme cold, darkness, and work have kept me from doing anything more than riding up and down the block. Conditions looked to be great for my first real ride on Sunday morning: cold but not terribly so (21F), and the trails were nicely packed, courtesy of our local fat bike crew. I headed to P1 full of optimism.

My first sign of things to come was when I dropped my chain in the parking lot, about 10 feet away from my car.

Krampus Build

It felt like it took me a long time to get the Krampus together, but I guess it was just less than a week. It's not quite done, but done enough where I could take a chilly spin up and down the street:

 

A new bike, and, uh, another, and wait, one more!

It's been a busy and destructive month for my bike fund. As I mentioned in the last post, a few weeks back I picked up a Trek 620 on our local Craigslist:

It's in pretty good shape for a 30 year old bike. I figure I'll update the wheels, bars, and pedals, and have a drop barred, geared road bike again with nice, flexible tubing and a relatively low trail front end, for not much dough.

Niner + Knard = NiKnard

Yesterday was unseasonably warm but very rainy, which made it a good day to spend some time in the garage with my help, building up my 29+ project. I tried fitting the Knard on my existing rear rim (a 23.5mm wide IRD Clyde), where it measured 65mm wide at the casing. It actually had enough clearance to turn, but it rubbed slightly at the chainstay where my wheel was a bit off center and out of true.

Anticipation

Aside from seeing a movie with the family ("Frozen", slow start but then it improved), I spent much of today finally lining up some parts for my next build. After my experience with the Krampus, I've been kind of 29+ obsessed lately. Finally, here was something new and different that I could sink my teeth into: not just a lighter widget, like my idea for a carbon frame, but a bike that truly made a difference in riding. Fun but also low tech, a good combination.

After some internal debate between a Krampus frameset and Carver Gnarvester, I settled on the third choice: see what I could do with my Niner SIR9. I won an auction today for a never used pair of Knards, almost two for the price of one, which set off my chain of buying:

Global Fat Bike Day and the Krampus

In the rush between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I think many people overlook the other holidays, such as today's celebration of Global Fat Bike Day. The guys at COMBO had scheduled a meet up at Alum Creek P1, and our friendly local Trek store was there with some fat bike demos. I had previously demoed a Moonlander at last year's COMBOween, and pretty much hated it: slow everywhere, ponderous to turn, and did I mention slow? But when I saw the Trek store would have a Krampus demo, I kissed the kids goodbye and was out the door.

Indian Run Meadows with the Cousins

Cousins Greyson and Jackson are staying overnight with us, so right after dinner, we hit the road:

There's still a lot of construction along the Avery road bikepath, so we cut through the Trabue Nature Preserve. Of course, we had to stop at the pond:

Loading up, Sam said his favorite part so far was relieving himself in the pond. I won't show that picture! But that boy sure has some range.

We were quickly on the road again, heading for the evening's destination, #28 Indian Run Meadows Park.

 

This is one of the kids' favorite playgrounds, mostly because it has two well-separated play structures that make for an exciting Monster game. This time, we also played with swords. And jumped off stuff:

 

Is it wrong to ask your kids to jump off something for a good blog photo? I didn't realize blogging would present such ethical conundrums.

Another issue I wrestled with was a Krampus frame going for only $425 on ebay. A great price, but it has some issues that I'm not sure I would like (short head tube, slacker front end). Maybe some more 29+ frames will come on the market soon. In the meantime, I let the Krampus go with only one bid. Not too much remorse here. Not much. Now maybe a new town bike frame, on the other hand...

One down, 30 to go.