Thursday, August 28, 2008

The 8th Wonder

Introducing the final bike (at least for a few days, anyhow) of my collection:



As you can see, it's a Chili Con Crosso with some nice components that I've been squirreling away since winter. I just got the wheels and glued them last night- Russell did a bang-up job on them, and I've got to give myself a little pat on the back for going with green nipples:



I was tempted to go with black, because then the wheels would go with anything and not be so specific to green bikes. But I took a chance and went with green. How daring- Nay! heroic I am. It's also got a matching green headset and a custom painted Alpha Q fork (that came with it).

Alpha Q

Last but not least, we gutted the front Red shifter, because it's a 1x9 build. When I want to switch it to a road bike, I'll put the shifter back together. It comes in at 17lbs exactly right now. The whole shifter would have put it over. Think about that.



Another thing I never got to blog about (How terrible! I know.) due to a busy work schedule was the 12 hour race at Crystal Ridge. I wasn't really looking forward to it, because I didn't remember the course fondly, but I really enjoyed it. It was a nice day, and I was feeling really good. I remembered parts of the course and conquered a lot of things this year that I hadn't last year. I was only a wee beginner, of course, and this go-round threw into contrast how much better I've gotten, and even how much endurance I've collected over the summer, since New Fane.

But it was an awesome day. Looking up at the ski hill from the bottom, you could see people racing their way down the switchbacks, the vultures hovering overhead for any missteps, and the very nice meadow flowers and grasses covering the reclaimed land. It was cool and a little damp in the morning, but it turned out to be a lovely early fall day. I think it might have been that day, or maybe one or two before, when you could first smell or sense that summer's coming to a close. It was nice to see everyone again- it seemed like we hadn't seen the mtb crowd for months. In fact, 24-9 was the last time Cale or I were on a mtb. For shame.

But I digress. I'll see some of you this weekend at the CX clinic in Madison :)

5 comments:

Nick said...

How did you gut the shifter without ruining the shifting mech?

I put Rival on my 1x9 Kona, and ended up thoroughly demolishing the internals because I didn't know there was an easy way to get them out. It's not a problem since I have no intention of ever running double rings up front, I just felt like a ham-fister.

Rachel said...

GOOD GRACIOUS, WOMAN

Snacks said...

You slip in a small allen wrench from the front underneath the lever and slide it along on the inside bottom of the hoods... There's a little groove you follow, and that'll drop down to where you can push out a pin that holds a few things together. That's about it, actually. You take out the loose bits and you're good to go. I haven't tried to reassemble, but apparently it's not too bad.

The Shed Master said...

Just don't get any dirt on them fancy wheels!

bluedog18 said...

How you like those Sun Vista tubulars?