Whether it's tales of calories from energy bars, gummi bears, meat sticks (lots of them), and lard (?) or the latest in battery-powered water bladders, check out the reports from Hal on the Olympia Cycling Club blog.
Well I finally got a chance to take the new Niner out for a ride and it was great (tried to get some video of it but for some reason the camera wasn't recording). Tom K. and I road around the park trails and paved part of forest paths. New snow made it a little bit more difficult than conditions have been recently but not to bad. The bike feels great!
However, there was one minor glitch that turned out to be pretty much nothing really. Still, it's worth noting. For years Deanna and I have both ridden on Specialized Toupe saddles (I think there are 8 in the house right now). They used to come with this useless little piece of plastic on the nose that would inevitably snap off at some point, usually in cold weather, creating a jagged edge to catch bike shorts (or worse, your leg). This annoying issue aside the saddles are great and have kept us coming back for more.
More recently the saddle design has changed slightly to get rid of the plastic nose piece (thank you) but inexplicably added two plastic pieces to the tail that looked almost like miniature plastic passenger grab rails from a sport motorcycle. They serve no purpose whatsoever, unless I was doubling a Smurf who didn't feel comfortable just holding on directly to me. Sure enough, half way thru my ride I swing a leg over the saddle, catch the plastic piece, and snap. No big deal, it's not like it's a functional piece, but now I've got another jagged edge on my saddle.
But wait...when I get home and look more closely at it I notice that the plastic pieces are actually bolted onto the underside of the saddle with Allan bolts, and can be easily removed with no consequence to the rest of the saddle. Pictured above is the saddle with the right side plastic piece removed, just before the left side was taken off.
Why in the world would Specialized do this? It adds nothing to the function or aesthetics of the saddle, is bound to break (it took me one ride) and it adds weight to a lightweight saddle. Oh well, it's no problem in the end, and now I can feel like I reduced the weight of my bike!
(click on images for larger view)
The new Niner is built! I posted these pics on the Olympia site yesterday as a part of review for the frame. My goodness it all came together well.
Haven't perused the online bike world for a few months. I was over joyed to find not one, but two profound portraits of the Impaler. One on the Fort Garry Blog and the other (bread and bikes) so inspiring I almost added a caption like "look to the east, young one, and you will find what you did not know that you did not know"
It's Christmas all over again!...just picked up the Air Niner that's been hanging from the ceiling at the shop for about a year now. Gonna build it up with my current Karate Monkey parts, and then rebuild the Karate Monkey with lower end parts from the basement to make more of a winter/commuter bike (or sell the frameset to Liam). And yes, the frame happens to be almost the same colour as our team kit - don't know if that's cool or dorky, or both.
It was a great Christmas haul this year! No, Christmas isn't all about getting gifts, and frankly at this point in life it's not even near the top of my Christmas concerns, but I sure do appreciate it when someone thoughtfully hands me a gift, and I appreciate it even a little more when the gift is something cool (as determined by me).
