Sunday, April 16, 2006

bunny weekend

Had a great weekend, no riding to speak of but fun none-the-less. Friday afternoon Marcy, B, Chance and myself went out of a walk and ended up clearing some new trail behind the house. It should be a pretty nice section and it will allow us to ride right from our back yard since it will connect to the trails back there, killer. I also got some wrench time in this weekend. Marcy's bike is finally up and running. Thing is pimp now, I think she'll be psyche when she notices the differences. I also got some lovin time in on my Dos Niner, I finally cut the steerer down so that I don't have the goofy stack of spacers on top of the stem. I felt like such a tool with that oreo stack up there. Much better now. I also finally got around to installing the pop-lock on the fork and putting the new handlebar on all in preparation for the SRAM order coming in this week (please, please, please come in this week!!!!). If all goes well, I hope to drop Dosey off at Bikeman on Wednesday so they can hook me up. I've decided that since I haven't used grip shift since my very first mountain bike that it probably would be best for me to allow the pros to set the bike up initially and I'll go about screwing it up from there.














I did manage to get in some cross training in this weekend. The bro and I played some ping pong on Saturday night (feel the burn!) followed by watching the Paris Roubaix tape for the first time. That Hincapie fall looked scary. Guy looked like he was riding a unicycle for a few seconds there. Too much beer and chips plus too little sleep meant that yesterday (easter) was a bit slow starting. I think that I managed fairly well at Easter though. I sampled a bit of everything that was available for lunch but didn't eat myself into a food induced coma as I usually do. Its a minor victory but a victory none-the-less.

So, I've been thinking about running the Dos as a 1x9 recently. A good deal of people do that around here on their 26'ers. Our climbs here in Maine tend to be steep and short so a granny is almost never needed. I haven't touched the granny on my fuel in the last three years of racing but I worry that the Dos' larger diameter wheel will be just that much harder to turn that I'll be wanting the granny. Not sure what to do so I've decided that I'll install the triple crank with the small ring taken off and the large ring replace with a bash guard for now and see how it goes through the first part of the season. If all goes well, I'll sell the xo front shifter and derailleur. If all goes not so well, I'll put them on. No harm, no foul. Bikeman.com has a good article about the whole process here.

2 comments:

Jason said...

I've often thought of that too. Althogh maybe a 2x9 WITH a granny. For my style I hardly EVER touch the big ring.

rick is! said...

on my 26'er hardtail I ran 2x9 with the middle and big ring for a year before i converted it to ss. mount snow was the only place that I ever considered using the granny. It usually seems faster to walk if you're grannying it...