Riding Update

So I have put a few miles on the road bike, there is a great path down here that runs along Prince William Parkway in Prince William County, VA. It is about 11 miles from Manassas to Woodbridge, I plan on doing that when I get back from my honeymoon. I was going to the other day but 4 miles into the ride I remembered I had no spare or anything so if I got a flat I would have been walking a long way.

The mountain bike is great. I haven't gotten to ride it much cause both of the times I have been able to get out to the trails the bike has been completely unrideable going uphill because of the rear derailleur adjustment.

I didn't give the assembling tech the chance to fine tune the bike because I was in a hurry to pick it up and head out of state. And then the first adjustment down here was done by a young kid who didn't know what he was doing. Finally I got a better tech to adjust it and lube the shock mounts because it was creeping. Seems to be shifting well and all the creaking noise is gone.

After the honeymoon I am going to go back to Fountainhead trails and try and bust out at least a 5 mile ride.

So I have some big riding plans between the road bike and the mountain bike. I need to get this tiny pot belly I have gained over the last few months. I have started eating healthier, the bike should finish the equation.

More Pictures

I dirtied it up at the local trails though I don't have pictures of it all muddy. My god the bike is great and the local trails are better. The rear derailler is out of adjustment so that made the ride especially hard but I'll find a decent local bike shop and get that taken care of.

Enjoy!

The new toy is here!

And wow is it nice! Easily the coolest and nicest bike I have ever owned. This thing will be around for quite some time!

It is a Transition Covert, Medium, Green with the Hammerschmidt build kit. It is right around 30lbs.

It will have green Crank Brothers Candy SL pedals on it, and a front brake once I get the new adapter.

More pics to come!

Busy Busy Busy!

Missed a month but things are settling back down from the big move and work transition so I have a minute to share some news.

So the below post shows my new ride, which I canceled the order, and then reordered last week. I have also been rolling around on the BMX bike again and really forgot how much I enjoy tooling around with my friends, riding and breaking our bikes then wrenching them back together.

I am going to be jumping back on the trails soon to drop this small beer belly I have gained over the last couple weeks of not having a mountain bike. I am really looking forward to getting back in shape and feeling really good again.

Either way, I will get some shots up of each bike very soon! Hopefully within the next week. Maybe since I'm back with my friends I will get some action shots at the skate park since this is the first time in over a year I haven't ridden solo!

Another new toy!

Sold off a couple mountain bikes and will soon own my dream bike. It is pretty much this bike I'm going to post a picture of except it is green (PERFECT!).

Here she is:



I ordered almost the exact same bike there, it is a Transition Covert, the new model which isn't in production yet but should be here in early June.

Specs are all here:

New Toy Alert!!!! 2004 Raleigh Grand Prix

Accidental post back there... (don't hit enter in the Title field or else it will submit your blog).

Well Northern Virginia is home to many bike path's and cycling is very prominent in the city so I figured why not add a road bike to the stable.

I looked around, at first I was thinking of dropping 1k on a new mongoose cyclocross bike... now I know mongoose isn't the greatest out there but they have been getting better over the years, and I have a special place in my heart for them... the first bicycle I bought 100% on my own (175 dollars in quarters to be exact) was a mongoose villian. They still produce the villian today... it's almost worth getting one for the memories :).

I ended up deciding to just spend less and maybe look used. Well as fate would have it I found my bike very fast. I currently live in Raleigh, NC... fate? I know what size I was looking for 56-58cm according to online sources. I searched craigslist for each size 56cm, 57cm, 58cm. Had a couple options, but one looked really neat... well because it was all black, and I LOVE black bikes. It was the title to this post, a 2004 Raleigh Grand Prix.

I e-mailed the add late Sunday night and the individual, Rocky... fate? (best friends dog's name... ha!), responded the next morning, I called after researching the bike and swung by for a preliminary test ride. I was SHOCKED when I saw the bike. He had ridden it previously from Raleigh, NC to Washington D.C... right where I will be working next year... fate?

The bike was IMMACULATE. It was 5 years old and looked like it was just off the showroom floor. Really a stunner when it came to condition, only things I could find on it were some scrapes on the shifter/brakes probably from laying on it's side or leaning against say the Washington monument :).

Rocky hadn't ridden the bike in a couple or few years so he said it would definitely need a tune up. I hopped on the bike for a test ride and was shocked to find that it shifted flawlessly (once I remembered how single lever shifter/brake combo's worked), the bike rolled perfectly, each wheel true. And it was just smooth and felt too good. I honestly was shocked at the quality of this $850 MSRP back in '04 bike.

I was going to try to haggle him but I found out he only posted the bike a few minutes before I responded... fate? And I felt he should be rewarded for keeping this bike in such good condition so i didn't even bring up price. I had him hold it until the evening, got the OK from the fiance, and picked it up that night.

Alright enough blabbing, here are the pictures! Sorry for the quality, night in an apartment with a shitty camera = shitty pictures.

Transition BottleRocket is GONE!

I don't really like this post but I will put it up anyways. I just sold my prized possession. The Transition BottleRocket which I had in dream configuration is gone. Someone purchased it on eBay and I dropped it and the spare parts off at the bike shop tonight and they are going to take care of shipping it so it was the last time I will ever see it.

Let me remaniss about this bike...

I sold a slingshot farmboy 29er for at least a $300 loss and a transition Vagrant at an $1100 (I know) loss to purchase this bike for $1500. I got the bike and soon realized why it was 1500... shit parts all around, only thing I kept original on the bike literally were the handlebars, every single other piece from bottom bracket to the headset was replaced with new or new take off from another bike.

Everything purchased from Tree Fort Bikes or eBay. I swapped the parts with the vagrant before I sold that so I got wheels, and brakes from that. Everything else had to be replaced.

The marzocchi 66 ETA it came with had seen better days, replaced with a new take off rock shox dominion coil which I converted to u-turn. New headset that wasn't a 1 and one eighth conversion headset, new stem for the 1.5" steerer tube, new cranks cause his were a joke, new pedals, then a Yess ETR-D tensioner and a single speed kit and tadah... I had my dream bike, a slopestyle/freeride single speed bottlerocket.

I had the bike from november to now in may and it saw dirt... ZERO times. Work, location, lack of riding buddies has caused my complete lapse in freeriding. I have been trail riding 2-3 times a week this season so far but there is nothing within 4 hours that resembles a lift park.

Financially it was the right thing to do though, now I have funds to put towards the Sunday Model-C which I'm not 100% sure I'll ride much more! Ha!

Saving for a post on the local forum which is currently broke.

I ride alone 99% of the time, but I would love to have a nice picture of me actually on the bike (instead of the 100 photo's I have of my bikes that I take personally).

My dad goes to a lot of motorcycle rallies and there are usually photographers taking good quality photo's at scenic locations of anyone riding their bike. They ride by and the photographer takes a pic of everyone, gives them their card, then if you want to buy the photo you go to the website and look up the date/time you rode by and you can order prints or buy the digital.

Anyone do anything like that for mountain biking? A nice shot in the woods going down the trail that you can buy the digital from?

I don't want a personal photo opp just a nice professional quality still or two for the picture books. Anything like this happen at any trail days or anything like that?

Thanks!

Shameless Promotion

I don't think many people follow this blog, if any. If you do, buy my bike :-P

eBay!

New possibility to the Mix

Taj Mihelich recommended I check this out. Another one into the fold! Still awaiting an e-mail from my old LBS pro Kyle about the cost of building a Sunday, but at less than $500 bucks and only pitfall of nothing sealed hubs this has a chance!

Cruiser?

Well my BottleRocket didn't sell. Which is kind of a good thing but probably more of a bad thing. Here is my dilemma...

I want to have 4 bikes... The Stumpjumper for trail riding, the BottleRocket for freeriding, the Terrible One for... well more of a novelty now because I want to get a 24" cruiser for Jumping, street and park.

The problem is... I impulse purchased the stumpjumper, which ended up being a good thing but rubbing the fiance the wrong way, so she told me I had to get rid of one since they were both worth roughly the same amount. I almost always ride the Stumpjumper and never ride the BottleRocket (it's a shame I know) so the BR was the easy choice. BUT, it is my dream bike! It is exactly what I have wanted for the last couple of years, the problem is I just don't have anywhere to ride it.

You really need a freeride park or at least downhill trails to fully enjoy the bottlerocket, and there are none around here. The closest ones are a 4 hour drive so it is a weekend trip and I have no one else to ride with.

Even after I move to NOVA it will still be a 4.5 hour drive to the best place and once again, no one to ride with. So I have to sell the BottleRocket it only makes sense. The problem with that is, no one is buying the bottlerocket!

I had it listed on a 7 day auction on eBay, starting bid 1700, buy it now 2100, 100 bucks shipping which you didn't have to pay if you used the buy it now. I have it listed on every mountain bike classified website for 2100. I have gotten nibbles and a few empty promises (in the form of paypal invoices that never get paid) but no one has been serious.

I paid a good amount of money for the bike, and I made it at least twice as good as it was, I upgraded the fork, cranks, headset, stem, drive train, wheels, and tires and brakes. So pretty much a brand new awesome bike so I need some more money out of it than I have in. 2100 is not unreasonable for the bike, it is a damn awesome bike, especially since I am giving away spare parts with it.

I don't know if it is the economy or what but this thing should sell, not only could I use the dough, I need to sell it to fund my cruiser project that is going to get me in trouble :) (but like the stumpjumper, hopefully be worth it as it will get me riding a lot more again).

Now for what I am looking at when it comes to cruisers:

The Fit CR24 complete bike.



The Pro's:
Price (half the price of my other option)
Components (all good enough)

The Con's:
Geometry

My alternative, the Sunday Model-C:



Pro's:
Geometry
Quality
Custom Build

Con's:
Price
Price
Price

The Fit is a nice bike, it would be the one if the whole basis for the Sunday weren't exactly what the Fit is... I'll explain that.

The Sunday was designed by Jim Cielinski, he is an iconic bmx rider, I first saw him on one of the road fools where he did 20 different grinds down 1 rail. It was amazing. His whole logic behind the bike is "most cruisers have a dropped down bottom bracket giving it a traditional racing feel, on the sunday we wanted the bike to feel like a 20" bmx bike so we mimicked the geometry and raised the bottom bracket which accomplished our goal"

So the Fit BB is 1.75 inches lower than the Sunday, and the Fit bars are 1.75 inches lower than the Sunday. With the rest of the geometry being similar. So if you think of it, going from a fit to a sunday is just raising the riding position on the bike 1.75 inches, thus dramatically changing the feel of the bike.

Now the question is, just because they would feel different is one better than the other? I have no clue, haven't ridden either. I do know someone who has ridden the Sunday first hand and said it was awesome, and I have read good reviews of the CR24 online.

I might be able to get a Sunday built up for less than 1000 bucks. The fit would be less than 600. I really want the Sunday, but as I said earlier money is tight and if the bike were cheaper the fiance wouldn't be as mad at me as if it were more towards 1k.

I tell you what, having the two bikes at the local skate park and giving me 30 minutes on each would make this decision really easy!

Sk8 Cary

First real trip to a skatepark in well over 2 years. Everything is slowly coming back. Went to sk8 cary for the 8pm to 10pm session. It's a really nice outdoor park in the pleasant city of Cary, North Carolina. Skatelight, angle iron, and coping everywhere, not clean but still sticky some how.

Thought the park was a bit scaled down from the crappy photo's of it but it's actually good sized, they have a real nice half 6ft spine half 5 foot street spine mini ramp that is new which no one has pictures of. The rest of it is 5-9ft quarters and good hips and lines everywhere.

The one box jump is one good crank from a 9 foot wall and really takes a LOT of effort to clear. But it goes up to a nice 5 ft quarter with a 2ft tall 1ft back sub box which caused me to rip my pants and tweak my wrist.

The one big thing I noticed about riding in a foreign zone with no friends is that it is really hard to be motivated to push stuff to the next level. I was playing it safe all night, not doing anything which I had a high crash rate on before when I rode.

No Fufanu's, nothing to fakie, tried one ice pick slider but no stalls, did a few really nice smith grinds I was proud of, jumping was useless, didn't even jump the spine I was so mellow, and I had no motivation to try. Sucks not riding with friends...

Given it was my first time back on a 20 inch in a LONG time I still could have done more. The rental knee pads didn't do much for making me comfortable and after about a hour and a half my hands got sweaty which caused grips to get slick and I lost all confidence, that was also right after the nice slam off the sub box (just caught the coping come back in from a double peg stall on the sub).

My flow is all but gone, manuals are the same. They were starting to make a reappearance towards the later part of the night but I just couldn't flow the park because you have to go big and commit to make a real nice flowing line and I just wasn't ready for it.

Maybe a few weeks from now I will be back, I really do need to upgrade a few parts though, my brakes have so much flex I have no trust in them whatsoever.

Here is an older pic of the park, everything is bigger than it appears.

Terrible One

My mountain bike was in the shop getting wheels trued. I only had one option if I wanted to ride yesterday (75 degrees and sunny). That was to bust out ole faithful. The only part I have changed on my Terrible One 21 inch Barcode in the last 5... YES 5 years is the rear tire and tube, not because it was flat but because the tire was so old it was cracking and I popped the tube removing it (Snafu rim job, 130psi max, tight as shit even after 5 years).

I put a new aitken tire on the back and the snafu knob job up front is still in like new condition so I left it alone. I rode some local trails that are sponsored by the city, everything is rollable and they are kind of small but just what I needed to get back in the groove of the 20 inch bike.

After about 4 runs I was clearing easily and had a big thirst for something larger. Tonight (Sunny and 80) I will be heading out to Sk8 Cary to get some park action.

Sad thing is, all my friends are up in Michigan and I have no one to ride with down here, really sucks. Sad story I know but I'm sure I'll have fun being back on the bike nonetheless.

Like I said, I have ridden alone 100% of the time so action shots of me riding are going to be rare, BUT I can take shots of my bike!

Here it is, same configuration for at least the last 5 years, I must say though, the rear rim is shot, but it still functions :).

Bike Check circa 2004:

Frame: 21" Terrible One Barcode
Fork: Odyssey Race 3/8"
Stem: S&M Redneck
Headset: Solid Needle Bearings
Bars: Terrible One Small
Bar Ends: Diamondback Aluminum
Grips: Terrible One
Brake Lever: Gold Finger
Cable: Odyssey Linear Slic
Brakes: Tektro
Seatpost: Generic Aluminum
Seat: Kink Aviator or something (has a pic of a plane on it)
Seatpost Clamp: Kink
Cranks: Odyssey 4130 Thermal
Chainring: Kink 36t
Pedals: Odyssey Unsealed
Rear Wheel: Profile Racing Cassette Hub 36h 14t Cog
Rear Rim: Odyssey Hazard Lite Chrome 36h
Rear Tire: Odyssey Aitkin
Front Wheel: Odyssey hazard Lite Black 36h
Front Tire: SNAFU Knob Job
Nuts: BizHouse Nads rear Primo Jewels Front
Pegs: Terrible One

Diablo 3

COME OUT! I NEED YOU!

Sorry, but really, I have been teased with the dream of diablo 3 since diablo 2. I did my time playing WoW (somewhere around 200 days played in a year and a half or two years...). Blizzard you owe me Diablo 3, with no monthly cost. Just a $50 game I can enjoy with all my friends.

My cost to play WoW...

$40 Game
$40 First Expansion (only one I own)
$360 2 years worth of subscriptions

I know you don't want to give up that revenue but I promise I will never purchase an expansion or renew my WoW account so you will be losing no money from me!

How much does weight matter?

I put a quick 5 miles on the Stumpjumper today. About 4.5 miles into the ride I felt a vibration in the bike, it got bad enough I pulled my headphone out to hear a loud rubbing like the tire was making contact with the chain stay.

I knew I needed to have the wheels trued but I didn't think they were that far out of alignment. I flipped the bike over in the middle of the trail and realized the zip tie holding my brake line in place broke and the brake line was catching the nevegals.

I pulled the slack out of that area and rode to the truck where I used some Velcro to attach the line to the chain stay. I noticed that my wheel was really close to one side of the chain stay and had a bit of a wobble so I decided to call it a day and drop the bike off at the shop.

Now when it comes to biking, I love to wrench on my own bikes, but I try to stay away from derailleurs and wheels cause I tend to make the problem worse every time.

Out of curiosity and realizing this was the first time my bike had been to the shop with only a little mud on it as opposed to being covered in it, I asked "How much do you think that weighs?" Now for a bike shop I'm sure that question is gold because if I don't like the number I spend hundreds of dollars reducing the weight and maybe get 2lbs out of the 1000 bucks into it.

Luckily for me, I was aiming for sub 30lbs, I had read on the specialized forums that Large Stumpy FSR Experts are in the range of 27-28lbs. I half expected to see 27.5, especially after I went tubeless, but I was not too shocked when the scale read 29lbs. Luckily that was within my range and I know nothing short of thousands of dollars will get me much lower.

Plus the bike is a "trail" bike not a race bike, I use it as a trail bike, more so, I use it as an all mountain bike. I beat the living hell out of it, bomb the downhills and pedal the uphills, what's the use of shaving 2-3lbs with new wheels, bars, stem, seat, seat post, pedals, cranks or whatever else I would have to change to lose the weight? For my riding there is no benefit to shaving the weight.

Thus I grinned and said great when I saw the scale, I dropped the bike off, asked for the wheel true, and to their demise went on my way.

Side Note, the bike shop I dropped it off at is an extremely professional shop with the best of employees, by no means are they dicks that just try and sell you a bunch of shit you don't need.

ISP's try per use fee model

Rant On.

Let me jump on the bandwagon with everyone else right away and say this is BS.

As a network engineer let me go ahead and say this is BS.

My main reason why: Have you ever been charged for how much television you watch? Of coarse not.

I don't think this new per use model will be the end all for ISP's. I also don't see it working at all. I think what it will come down to, and it is already there it's just the speeds are con strewed, is people will pay for the bandwidth to their homes. They will get dedicated access, and the service provider will always be faster than the access.

So in this framework, I decide to pay $50 bucks a month which in the future gets me 5mbps up and down, I get a copper Ethernet hand off from the provider, plug in and I'm good to go.

I don't think it will end up how it is right now where we get this crappy advertised 5mbps down and a few hundred kbps up, which is a joke, and then are based on use. Fact of the matter is ISP's need to get their stuff together and stop using coaxial cable and come up with something better that isn't a shared media.

Rant off.

Mountain Bikes

Here is a picture of my 2008 Stumpjumper FSR Expert, Blue, Large, Demo/Test bike. I absolutely love this bike. I have Kenda tires on it that are tubeless and I also have a wireless computer on it but otherwise it is the same.

This bike was purchased used off eBay for $1925.00 delivered. Was a price I couldn't pass on. The seat stay is new as the stock one had a dent in it.

Here is my Transition BottleRocket, Medium, Blue, in it's current form. I also have a pair of Maxxis Minion tires for it for the muddy days. It has a Yess ETR-D tensioner on it and is running in single speed configuration. This bike has a Rock Shox Domain 318 180mm shock that I put the U-Turn assembly in moving it on down to 160mm of trave.

The bike is for sale and is listed on pinkbike for 2100 bucks.

I for a quick moment, had a Vagrant and a BottleRocket at the same time. I bought the Vagrant new for $2000 from thefixbikes.com. That is probably the last time I will ever buy a new bike as they are just too expensive. I lost my ass selling it but I also took all the good parts off of it and put them on the BottleRocket.

Here is a pic of me on my terrible one sprocket stalling a large corporate piece of art in East Lansing Michigan. I posted this on pinkbike and someone commented saying they remember towing that car from that spot as it was a sidewalk... lol.

Here is a picture of my road bike venture. It is a 2008 Trek Soho S. Singlespeed. I commuted 7 miles each way to work a couple times in it but carry too much crap to continue to do it. I sold this one for more than I paid for it! It was a slick bike though, everything black, internally routed cables, single speed. The epitomy of simplicity!

Here is the one that got me into trail riding. Boy I had fun on this guy. This is a Slingshot (Grand Rapids, MI) FarmBoy 29'er that was a 3x9 I made into singlespeed when the shimano hub went sour.

This was one clean cool looking 29 inch bike and I had a bunch of fun on it. Wanted to get into the full suspension realm so I let it go. Don't totally regret it yet as I love my Specialized but I may down the road, especially with this picture up.

I purchased this one used off of the mechanic Jim at Holt Pro Cycle for a steal. Sold it for 100 bucks less than I paid for it.

Hope you feel caught up on my Mountain Biking escapades, I will try and catch everyone up on the rest of my hobbies soon.

Hello and Welcome

Welcome to my first blog post. The intent of this blog is to delve into my hobbies. Specifically what I am doing with my hobbies and what is going on with them.

I will talk about a lot of different products in the mountain bike, freestyle BMX, pistol, computer game, and networking world as those are all hobbies of mine.

To start off, if you haven't noticed I like to keep my paragraphs short and sweet. I will do a quick round up of my hobbies and where I am at with them right now.

Freestyle BMX:

Just got my bike built back up and solid though I haven't rode it yet this year, have been getting really into the mountain biking so haven't had time to jump back on the 20 inch bike.

My bike is a first release 21 inch Terrible One Barcode, built up on terrible one, s&m, and odyssey parts for the most part. The only part to change on this bike in the last 5 years was the back tire. Other than that it has been about the same since about 6 months after the 21 inch barcode frame made it's debut. The bike is solid, I haven't ridden much since sophmore year of high school (2004) but plan to slowly get back into it, would be really into it if I were back in my home town but moving away from home has changed my priorities.

Mountain Biking:

As said above I am really getting into this now. Started off in the freeride/DJ realm as I was transitioning from skateparks and dirt jumps. But now I have moved over into the trail riding realm. I am an avid single track rider and am sporting a 2008 Specialized Stumpjumper FSR Expert demo bike. I absolutely love it and have been having a ton of fun riding through the trails on it.

I also own a baby blue Transition BottleRocket. It is in single speed form and is really for slopestyle/lift parks. Being in Raleigh, NC I don't get to ride it too much as there really isn't anything like that unless you take a day trip to the west side of the state, and with no one to ride with that doesn't happen. It is actually up for sale though I think I would rather just hold on to it.

Pistols:

Well I love guns :). I have owned many pistols ranging from good ole Smith and Wessons all the way over to a couple really nice Heckler and Koch, but have currently settled on a Glock 19. I am a fan of the 9mm cartridge, mainly because of cost of shooting, but also because of it's balistic performance.

I don't shoot as much as I did when I was up in Michigan so I have been pondering getting a big ass revolver since I just use the glock for home defence. I have my CPL (Concealed Pistol License) but I don't carry much as I really only leave to go biking or to work and neither are good places to have a gun.

Computer Games:

I have a home made PC. I got most of the parts of newegg.com and some off tigerdirect.com. I will give my first opinion piece right now. TIGERDIRECT SUCKS! I tried to like it but just had way too many issues, the messed up too many orders and newegg always had the best price and never messed anything up.

I am currently running ATI/AMD though I will probably go back to nVidia and intel for the next build. The only games I am really playing right now are the latest flavor of Call of Duty and Left 4 Dead. Some good ole counter strike: source pops up every once in a while.

I also have a new aluminum 2.4GHz Macbook. I upgraded it to 4GB of memory and have been somewhat pleased with it. I can tell you right here that in my opinion it isn't worth the money. The best thing about it is the trackpad, and I am going to go there... the worse thing about it is the software.

I think I may think (if that makes any sense) that because I use it in a corporate environment. I wish that PC's had as nice of asthetics and the trackpad, then I would be fine without having a MAC.

I have a 1TB time capsule also, it's ok. I had my old gaming machine running Windows Home Server before and I kind of wish I would have kept that but oh well. I just needed storage and that was an easy way to get it and go to N and gigabit, even though that time capsule can't push gig even though they are gig interfaces. It's actually a rancid performing product, it just has the interface and ease of use that is lacking in the cisco/SAN world.

Networking:

Meh, I won't talk about this too much. I am a cisco dork so you can imagine I have my whole lab at home with a bunch of old gear (I actually have a new ISR 881 with wireless-N which is AWESOME). 

Well I hope you enjoyed the intro, I am going to copy and paste a few of my posts from my other domain over here but this will be the inagural first post. Hope ya'll (my North Carolina accent) enjoy! Hope you guys (Michigan Accent) enjoy!