Best laid plans and all...

Saturday, my only "concept of a plan" (that's now considered a plan when addressing the general public) was to halp Dr Mike bleed his brakes and do a cog/chain swap, go ride a few laps at the Shart Tarck course (he hasn't seen it in years), and then go play bikes at Airline until we got tired of doing laps.  Then post-ride refreshments at Brawley's... home, shower, start laying out clothing options, prep my bike, and squeeze the sads out of my legs.

We got started on the bike work later than anticipated.  I was able to get his rear brake from going ineffectively to the bars doing nothing to doing braking type stuff like slowing down and also stopping.  We managed to get our asses on the bikes by 2:00pm... that is until Dr Mike punctured his rear tire after four miles, and the Orange Seal wasn't doing the trick nor the two bacon strips we stuck in there...

Shit.

Drive back to my house to add some TruckerCo Cream and another plug and we're back out on the trail at Airline before 4:00pm and drinking our first Brawley beer in the dark.  By the time I got home, I'd lost all desire to do any of the rest of my concept of a plan.  So goes it when I find Little Sip in the cooler before I make my leave of the premises.

When I woke up at 8:00am, I realized I had a lot to do as far as getting me and my bike ready for 40° and rain, that is, if I wanted to get to there in time to check in, get dressed, and warm up.  I grabbed pretty much all the clothing options and threw them in the backseat of the Honda Fit of Rage (because I'm not riding my bike over in this weather), drove to the overflow parking lot (assuming the main lot was full), checked in, saw the lot wasn't full, drove my car back around to the other side of the park to get ready... and forgot to anticipate just how many people were going to want to talk to me about "the bike."  Somehow, between the titty-dicking around and the conversations and nineteen wardrobe changes, my warmup (at least that's what I call what I do) was minimal at best.

Line up at the front next to what looked like an athlete to my left and Türd (also an athlete but huskier and more hirsute and in a flannel shirt) to my right.  There were loads of familiar faces in the field and some not so much.  Nineteen of us, because even when the weather is shite, you can always expect the dumb single speeders to show up anyway.  I checked out the athlete's tensioned SS conversion and saw his 34X18, so he either knows what's what or that's just what he has.  Short conversation, but pretty sure he said this was his first single speed race, but obvs not his first rodeo... but that said, are you really that much better at your second rodeo?

I digress.

In the back of my head, I tried to remind myself that this is only the first of five races, so keep it upright, try to have fun, and finishing are the only real goals on a day like today.

"GO!" and clipped in on the first try, and I'm guessing I put the "32 inch wheels are going to suck at accelerating" commentary to bed because I managed to enter the woods from the pavement in second place.  That's despite me being a 130lb, 57 year old man capable of making minimal watts.  Then the athlete did "athlete" stuff.  Despite the baby diarrhea mud, he put a gap into me like it was his job.  Although I'd been enjoying the extra traction provided by the big wheels for a couple weeks now, the Aspens are not frands with this kinda mud.  I already knew this, because I tried to use them a year or two ago at Winter Shart Tarck with the same results.

Pop out of the trail on lap one to the flat gravel road, and what feels like a tidal wave of riders came by...  Calvin, John, Türd, Brad (arch nemesis... at least in his mind)... dammit.  From second to sixth in less than a lap.

It's here... sorta.

But why?

At some point in my life, bikes and almost everything bike-related took over most of the free space in my brain.  I want all the knowledge I can obtain about anything current in the world of cycling.  Am I ever going to have Red XPLR or GRX Di2 on a noodle bar bike?  Doubtful.  Am I ever going to actually follow a "training plan?"  You're kidding, right?  Will I buy another revolutionary geared full suspension bike, single speed it, fill my soul with regrets, and then sell it soon thereafter... again?

Mebbe.

I'm always wondering if there will be anything "new" in the world of single speeding.   When a fresh hard tail drops, I always look to see if it's single speedable in a logical manner (tensioners need not apply).  Way more often than not, the answer is no.  I feel like the only thing that was ever going to happen that might tighten my pants would be a crabon hard tail with a burrito hole... but that would probably have to come from one of the big three (or four?) manufacturers, and they seemed to have lost their interest in making one geared bike cycles.

So all hope would seem lost for that grumpy little single speeder with an eye for newer and better things... well, other than major components... which aren't many on a simple machine.  Then I saw the 32X2.4 Aspen shown at the Taipei Bike Show in March of last year, and I was very much like "OH HELL YEAH, BROTHER.

Long story short, mountains were moved much closer to Mohammad, and I am here now:

Not entirely true, but I took the photo with just a little more work ahead, so whatever.

Things timed out kinda crazy town, and the frame got here last Tuesday and on the same exact day that the rims got to Industry Nine.  A blessing and a curse.  The folks there that could nudge this forward quickly were out of the office until Jan 5th, so I wasn't going to be riding my big wheeled beast around for a little while longer.  That said, I was able to take my time building it, rather than feverishly working with coffee jittery hands at 5:00am because I couldn't sleep thinking there was a bike in the other room not being built.  

Session One, cranks and cockpit.  Serious baby steps, other than the fact that Race Face cranks always seem to need  some random spacers NOT mentioned in the manual to get them in a happy place.  Session Two, dropper post and bottle cages... which ended when I forgot that the my handy plastic CO2/plugger tool holder needed to be drilled out to fit over the seat tube water bottle studs... but not before I shot one of the 8mm nuts across the room to find it ten minutes later under the stove hanging out with about 2.5 dog's worth of hair.

Session Three.  Wake up, drill the mount, go to assemble... and I can't find my 8mm socket now.  Gawdammit.  I can't stand when my work bench becomes this:

So at some point, I needed digital calipers, reading glasses, a dental pick, a digital torque wrench, Knipex pliers, a giant zip tie, and every Allen wrench 2-8 mm at the ready.  I shoved everything to one side and then the other looking for my absent 8mm socket.  No dice... but then the 18mm Race Face crank puller bit which had been tossed aside caught my eye and...
 

I was able to snug it all up with an 8mm Allen bit on my tiny Topeak ratchet so... and obviously, I found my 8mm socket when I cleaned up after Session Three, which also included the fun task of chopping the steer tube and even more tools on the bench and mess making.

Session Four was getting a chain length figured out with a 29" wheel thrown in there, which has led me down the road of reconsidering my decision to default to a 30 tooth chain ring when I'm pretty sure adding two teeth up front and one in the rear will result in the shortest chain stay length... but with more hassle and other head scratching to do.*  I also got the brakes dry mounted with line shortening and bleeding to do at a later session because I can only reduce the length of so many things on any given day.

Session Five was the final thing I could do without wheels in hand, shortening the brake lines and bleeding.  For an anal compulsive person such as myself, knowing full well I would be witness to any failures being left too long or trimmed too short on every single bike ride, this event calls for mucho gravitas.  Of course, I failed... cut the front what I would call just a hair too short... the opposite of what can be fixed without throwing money at the problem.  It could go without saying, but once again, I flubbed a small part of the process and had mineral oil where it shouldn't be and ended up having to do a quick bleed that shouldn't have been necessary but was.

So now?

Patience and wheels and will it all be together in time for me to ride it before Winter Shart Tarck begins in two weeks?

Your guess is as good, if not better, than mine.

* I'm going to wait until I actually get air in a 32" tire and do more precise measurements to base my gear choices on instead of AI generated numbers which are just making a mess of deciphering actual roll out...

And now that's kinda not true because I wrote that all yesterday, and after doing some best guessing on numbers at work, I came home, messed about, and found that I can get the absolute shortest chain stay length with 32X19, a .5 worn chain, and a used King cog... so there's that, I guess.

Since I got four days in a row off, and I can only clean so much gutter, I took the time to write a little something something to end the year of our lorb 2025.  Being that this concludes my full 20th year of blerhging, I couldn't let it go out with just a whisper of a fart noise, lest ye think I'd given up.

What can I say?  Work has been punching me in the dick so hard that I clock out at 5:01pm, ride home, waste an hour and a half ruminating on the day, following that with a half hour of anticipating the shit show that will be tomorrow, and then staring off into space until I fall asleep. 

There have been bright moments.  A not completely rained out trip to Knoxville with Türd to play bicycles.  A weekend of the same same up in Pisgah with Bill Nye.  A Black Metal Friday Cyclocross brewery crawl.  Leaf management...

Stellar moments.

I took today off so I could at least write a blerhg post and ride around in the sunshine later... and also avoid work.  

Since I just glossed over the past three weeks like they never happened, here's some good news.

I had a flat tire in Pisgah going too hard in the paint down Trace Ridge... well, sorta.  I heard a pretty loud KA-TUNGG from my rear wheel, and then things felt a bit squishy, but instead of stopping, I just rode on hoping to make it down to the bottom before I needed to address the issue.  Upon close insptection, I could only see a small amount of sealant near the bead, an obvious indication of a pinch flat... do we still call it that with toobless tires?

Anyways, dump some water on it... no bubbles... commence to hitting it with CO2 (once I got done being flustered by an inflator head I've never used), and voila.  

TruckerCo sealant.  This stuff just works.  I don't know how many times it's sealed a puncture without me knowing it, but it's definitely taken good care of me over a dozen times that I am aware of.   Aside from some sizeable tears, it's only not worked when I forgot to check to see if there was any in my tires.

Have you checked your fluid levels lately?

You should.

I've made it known that I hate to ride with a pack.  A hydration pack.  A fanny pack.  If it straps to my body in any fashion in order to greaten my cargo capacity, I dislike it for one or more of my catalog of reasons I despise them.

I won a Tsuga hip pack at the Ridge Runout Gravel event back in... September?   Seems like a year ago at this point.  Anyways, I'd also won an expensive (to me) Rambler Tote (also from Tsuga) that I've used probably ten more times than the zero times that I've used the ass sack.

Since work was stressing me out so much that the idea of packing for two cold days of Pisgah garvel and trails was overwhelming, I just started throwing shit in a bag to be sorted out later.  I made lots of bad clothing decisions on Saturday's garvel (and also Pink Beds, no recommendo), and I paid the price.  I ended up strapping on the Tsuga hip pack just so I could have an increased ability to carry more wardrobe options.

It doesn't hold a whole lot, but it did the jerhb.  The best part was, I'm assuming due to the wide flat supportive bits that sit on my hips, I barely noticed that I was wearing it at all.  Also.... two cold rides in Pisgah reminded me that I should most definitely be carrying an emergency blanket AND fire starter shit.

It's always a "problem" for a simple single speeder.  There's very little technical innovation to get us excited.  I listen to scads of bike-related podcasts, but sometimes I find myself listening to an hour long conversation about something like the new Giant Anthem, and I'm really wondering is this is a good use of my hearing parts.  I know more about the Campagnola Super Record 13 and SRAM XPLR than I know about US presidents or basic geography, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

That said, every once in awhile, I get something to chew on.  The Fox 34SL.  Industry Nine SOLiX wheels.  A cosplay steer pipe.

32" wheeled rigid single speeds...

I was pretty stoked when Shimano updated their brakes back in June... although I had to listen to a lot about the new wireless shifting stuff... which while seeming pretty nifty neato, it's just not my bag.  I never really gelled with the 9120 brakes I had on the Epic (and for awhile the Radimus), and just stuck with the 9020 version which is (ZOMG) twelve years old?!?  They worked fine, were plenty powerful, I could adjust the reach on the fly (and in my sleep), and I adapted to the quirks of occasional two brakes/one cup bubble bleeds.  I became pretty proficient at maintaining them, and was also pretty familiar with the innards and had plenty of spare parts.

And I didn't wanna commit to upgrading three redundant single speeds to the new-new because I hate different brakes on (sorta) different bikes that get used for a similar purpose.

But since I was selling the Radimus and a whole buncha parts at the same time, I thought mebbe now was the time to embrace the future which is now.  After speaking with a couple people I hold in high regard, the term "game-changer" kept getting tossed about.

You win, Shimano.

Since I'm YOLO'ing the big wheel project, I decided I could at least up my brake game on the two bikes I'll probably end up riding the most, the Optimus and the future Biggus Dikkus.  I feel bad about abandoning my "no Vertigo left behind" policy, but if the 32er works out, the Vertigo is mebbe gonna see the few garvel single speed bike cycle sport races I might do, and...

So there's that.

I can't convince myself to upgrade to the new pedals tho... being that I have a new set of now "old pedals" in a box on the shelf.

SO TAKE THAT, SHIMANO.

Now... SOMEONE BUY ALL MY OLD BRAKES... or the barely used XTs that are up on that same shelf... or that Santa Cruz crabon flat bar I'm too ashamed to put on the marketplace... or...