SS

Another one done....






The scalloped seatstays are very difficult to pull off cleanly in stainless, but man does it look good! Mini-six lugs on this one, standard oversize tubing, pretty light. Frame came out a little over 3 lbs. I'll have some pictures here soon of it built up with campy chorus. Should be a fabulous little bike.


In the mountain bike world, one of the greatest races around was this weekend, the cable classic. Been doing this one for a long time and this year was by far the best weather for the start that I can ever remember having. Sunny and probably around 50. I geared lower this year simply because I was too lazy to take my usual 34-19 gear off, but it felt great for this race. The start is always a mad dash on a singlespeed since there's about a 2 mile dirt road roll-out. Amazingly I made up a lot of ground in the start and probably picked up about 50 places from where I was positioned in the gate.
Once you're in the woods at the cable classic, you're in the woods for a while. The race is basically 23 miles of singletrack with a couple short fire-roads in between. There were quite a few downed trees this year due to recent storms, which meant dismounts. There seemed to be a lot of grumbling by the mtb boyz around me about the dismounts, but I was in full CX mode and started using them as opportunities to easily pass folks in the singletrack. Seemed like I could pick up three places at each one.
About 20 miles in I suddenly found myself alone, which was odd. There had been a pretty steady stream of riders all through the race, but they seemed to all be popping near the end, so I dropped the hammer as best I could to get as much lead as possible before the long railroad grade finish (which really sucks on a singlespeed). It must have worked or the other riders took pity on me for being foolish enough to race singlespeed because nobody passed me the whole time. odd. Anyways, came in 57 overall, which I was pretty happy with. Was still minutes behind the fast kenwoodies, but they train and stuff... and were on gears. Great racing to all the Kenwoodies up there!

Highlight was having someone cheer for me saying "yeah, go Ezra!!!" Guess k-racing jersey and rigid single = Ezra. They must have thought Ez shaved his beard, grew hair on his head, got taller and a lot slower.

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paint

I've been doing what feels like a lot of painting lately. It's not as much as it feels like, but I've been shooting paint over at Curt G's shop, breaking in his new booth and giving him some pointers. He's learning to paint, so spraying over there gives me a nice place to shoot, and him a chance to see someone else's technique at the same time.

Shot this S & S retrofit and a couple others this weekend. Nice little Bianchi frame that's now been touched by three local framebuilders. Chris Kvale added the rear eyelets a couple years ago, I replaced the downtube and added the couplers, and Curt tried his hand out at laying some base color coats on the paint job. The paint is my own home-brew mix to recreate Bianchi's famous Celeste.

S & S seems to be the hot ticket right now, all three frames I painted this weekend had couplers and I currently have 4 frames waiting in my que for retrofits. It's all good by me!

Here's a fun one that's available!

BBC custom 29'er with matching S & S couplers and matching Marathon SL fork!

This bike isn't actually new, it just looks that way. I refurbed and repainted it to have as a demo bike. I suspect it'll end up at One-on-One very soon with a for-sale sign on it.

It's a 21" frame with a 23.75" effective top tube, so it's a big-person bike. I like that it's proportioned basically the same as an 18" 26" wheeled bike, in the pic it's tough to know it's a 29'er.

It's designed to do it all. Currently set up as a singlespeed, but it has a derailleur hanger and full provisions for running gears. Fits nice fat tires, the tires on there are 2.3" Panaracer Rampages!

Pretty sweet build kit on there too, if I do say so myself. Paul's brake and levers, XT spiderless singlespeed cranksetup (with spot ring), super-trick nuke-proof singelspeed wheelset with Velocity Dyad rims, Truvative Team bar and stem, Cane Creek S-6 headset, Raceface post. All the good stuff... If you're one of those folks that like those gear-changing thingy's, I can set it up with gears for you, no problem.

And the paint... It just jumps out at you in the sun light. It's a house of color green pearl over black, looks like a British racing green, but with tons of metalflake to make it pop! Chrome painted in logos and of course a stainless steel headbadge to finish it off.

If you're interested, email me. You're welcome to take it for a spin. Otherwise like I said, hopefully it'll be down at One-on-One soon and you can check it out there.

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Been a while, lots going on. Went to Fruita, didn't take any pics though so you'll have to peruse Thorny's blog to get your fix. He took lots.

Been trying to play catch up in the shop lately. I've got a couple in paint right now and I'm about halfway through this 953 frame:


Mini six lugs, really light tubes. This is defintely the lightest one I've built to date. Reynolds is realy hitting the mark on the tubing now days. I suspect this one will be right around 3lbs complete.

Speaking of 953, I took my stainless road bike out for the first time this year yesterday. It was my first ride of the year on a geared bike, so it felt a little odd. It felt amazingly fast, especially after riding in Fruita on a big fat-tired mtb. That thing is so light and quick compared to my fully fendered fixie, made me feel like I was TSP.

Out in Fruita I decided to rock some fat tires, fatter than I've ever used on a 29'er. Got a set of Panaracer Rampage tires on my stans rims. They barely fit in the frame at 2.35" wide. They were a touch lighter than advertised, which was refreshing (about 680g). Still not light tires, but man did they feel good out there on the rocks. I felt so much more sure-footed on that jagged terrain that they were more than worth the extra weight on the climbs. In fact I felt like I could climb better since I wasn't trying to keep all my weight back on the rear tire for traction. THey just plain hook up. If you're somewhere a bit more rugged than Minneapolis I highly recommend them. Probably overkill for cranking out laps at buck hill or Wirth though.

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