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+: