Alright, let's ride!

This is the only place we are announcing this first demo ride, cause we need the right people for our trial. (We are gonna try it out and get your feedback.)

On Saturday July 26th (2008), we will meet at the back parking lot of Salvagetti Bicycle Workshop at 8am. Scott will be taking the new van and up to 9 bikes and 8 people on a trail ride. This also means if you have a car with bike racks, maybe you should bring it along... There is a time constriction, so the trail will be a close one (probably Golden), but it promises to be fun.

We will bring along with us a combination of the following bikes:
Giant Trance
Giant Trance X
Giant Anthem
Brooklyn Machine Works Park Bike
Black Sheep Ti 29er SS
Maverick Durance (oh, mommma! Scott gets this one first)
Jamis Dakar XAM
Jamis Dakar XCR

You don't *have* to have (or bring)a mountain bike to join us. Please bring water, a helmet, a snack, some money for a post-ride snack and a can-do smile.

We'll get you back to the shop by noon, cause Scott has to go back to work then!

See you there.

Here is the van:

This Latest Breakfast Ride

So Saturday was out of control beautiful. People came out of their homes and GOT OUT THEIR BIKES!

Even Richard, one of our customers (who works at another shop in town (WINK WINK)) rode his bike 100 miles on Saturday. He got a sunburn, too.

But then we all went to bed in the 45 degree evening with visions of Spring and Summer fun. Poof! Snow again.

I put on my snow gear at 7:15am and started on my way. The big grumpies started to come out half way to the shop because my ready-for-spring fingers were chilly (poor baby) and my face wanted a balaclava again. Turning the corner to the shop alley, I could not believe my eyes...

3 cyclists ready for a ride to get some breakfast. We all went inside and warmed up. More people showed and came in. Then some more... We finally got to 10 before we decided to leave for Snooze. Like the rock stars we should be treated like, we were rewarded for our heroics with quick seating and amazing eating. We finished up and headed back for Metropolis for some more vibration inducing beverages and ran with the day.

Thank you to the tough folks who braved the cold and snow and depression to make a great ride.

Cracked Elbow Blues

I've got the cracked elbow blues,
I have not been diagnosed,
I've got the sore arm blues,
No, I know something ain't right.

From the crash of about a month ago, I still have soreness and tenderness in the elbow. You can also, if you push in the right places (please don't touch me), find some bone chips to move around. And I can't pay a doctor to tell me what I already know. Next time I fall perhaps I shouldn't put all my weight into only one tiny sharp end of a bone.

Moving on... My plans for a personal bike this next season have me all confused. I am tempted to look at getting a new Jamis Composite Road bike for myself and pull a George Costanza by doing the opposite of what Scott would do. I've never owned a bike with full composite everything. Maybe it is time I move to the dark (composite grey) side.

But, then I see the Maverick ML8 everyday and it makes my stomach hurt to not ride it!

And then Giant goes and puts out a new bike called the Trance X0 that is going to be the *Perfect* front range bike. They didn't pull any bait and switch on this bike. It is pure evil. For those of you who have ridden a Trance, you know that the 4.2" of travel feels way bigger, probably closer to 5.5". So, I'm thinking that the X0 is going to feel like a downhill bike that can climb all day. Only riding will tell.

And then there is the other thing in the back of my mind that no one wants me to do... the ultimate bike from Black Sheep: Ti frame built up with 14 speed internal speed wheels. Sex. Dripping. Oozing. Sex.

I gotta go. Something just came up.

Fit Science - The it factor

The it factor. No one can truly explain it, but some bikes feel WAY better than others. I don't think it is just the fit of a bike, though that makes all the difference in the world on a road bike. But, certain bike brands continuously shock me with how great their bikes feel/work/function. Oh, by the way, we are talking about road bikes, definitely not mountain.

Through the years, the sleeper brands that come up are repeatedly the same: Miyata, Centurion, Some Fujis, Lugged Treks, Panasonic (hehe). After we repair these bikes, we test ride them and it is always the same response. Holy $*!^ these are SO nice, why did they ever stop making them? And moreover why do these feel so so so good to ride? I have tried to note some of the things that I have seen that makes them feel good. It still doesn't all add up to me, but it is a start of a list of things to look for when scooping up a garage sale or craigslist bike.

1. Typically, these are built from nothing but double butted steel (thicker where the lugs are and thinner in the middle with no loss of strength). This cannot be the it factor alone because plenty of "custom" frame builders use double butted steel and their bikes feel like so-so frames from anytime in history.

2. The geometry (of the road bikes) is typically similar in that the seat tube from the middle of the bottom bracket to the middle of the top tube is within 2cm of the length of the top tube center to center. What does this do for most people? It forces them to sit relatively upright; allows the weight of the hands to be nearly even with the weight on the rear-end. That is comfort! (note: this seems to be happening on Japanese lugged steel from mid-80s on, which the Italian manufacturers copied quickly)

Everything else doesn't matter from what I can tell. The parts hanging on the frame haven't ever made a bike for me. The frame is the glue pulling it all together. I have ridden some bikes that I am sure were not sold for very much brand new that felt better than almost any of the custom bikes I have ridden.

That said, the reason Salvagetti carries the brands we carry is just that: Black Sheep, Jamis and Giant all feel "it". They follow different rules then the old lugged manufacturers, but still get to the same place. We are very lucky to carry exactly what we love. But, the factors that led us to choose them were simple: The bikes have the it factor and people can afford them.

Section 16 Trails

Dave N (slowerthansnot) and I took a ride in the Springs with Chris S. (Generic Cycles) and Scottie B.

Dave and I took the FREX down in the morning and met at a coffee shop waiting for the others. Once assembled we rode across town to the mountains.

The climb today hurt more than anything I have experienced in a while, but it was completely worth the hour and a half or so of pain. Once we turned up onto the trailhead (the real one) we got to see some amazing views and do some insanely technical downhills. We all were feeling good and no one was under/over dressed. I was the first to take a dive off the bike. My front tire slipped WAY out from under me. I landed quickly and stopped even quicker. I got up and kept going.

Dave was next... He "french kissed" a rock. I didn't see it, and he isn't terribly verbose about falling. He was okay and we continued.

We rode Rick Boyer's special trail for the rest of the way down. We then played at the freeride park until we needed Chipotle.

Fun, fun, fun, fun ride. Thank you!

Dave - Blacksheep Steel Fixed Gear
Scott - Blacksheep Ti SS
Chris - Generic SS
Scott B. - Carl The Snarl SS Steel

Mmmm... death...

What do you get when you cross 4 male cyclists, 3000 vertical ft. of climbing and 4 SS 29ers? Tired.

Eric B. (of Ground Up Designs), Scottie B, EJ and Myself did a super secret trail in Colorado Springs. I couldn't take you there if I tried.

We started out from EJs place above a coffee shop downtown. We met up with Eric on the way to the trailhead. It was cold. So cold that I had to stop at a Starbucks... to wash my fingers. It burned severely. I guess I wasn't ready for the cold as I should've been. We made it to the trailhead and everyone warned me that we were in for a bit of a climb. Damn. Damn. %$*@#!! 8 miles on a SS going up 3000 ft. Steep, bumpy, cold. Also, for grins, there was a bit of a crackle in the air with a threat of lightening. Mmmm... death.

We rode underneath a shooting range near the top of the mountain and Eric told me we were almost there. No close calls with the shot flying overhead. MMM...DEATH!!

Eric and I stopped to wait for Scott and EJ (who were fasting at the time, so they were feeling unfresh to say the least (mmm. death.) Once we stretched a bit, we went through a secret opening in the side of the road and voila, scary tech trail.

The trail was as east coast as I have seen on the west coast. Wet, rooty, loggy, and green. I was truly a treat to be had. All of us had to walk several sections because we felt that dying on each other would really impose on our friendship. Mmm... death. Several of the sections were so scary that they had nasty nicknames. Something about gashing your head open and bleeding out half you body weight into a river doesn't seem appealing. We rode in a creek for a bit that actually moved to take over the trail. We went over logs that were 3 feet around with makeshift rock ramps. You couldn't tell what was on the other side till you were on top. So FUN.

The trail ended up coming out to a gravel access road that we flew down into Manitou Springs. We (eric and I) drank some yerba mate and relaxed.

Thanks fellas for a great ride in the Springs!

Eric - Ground Up 29 SS (prototype aluminum)
Scottie B - Vicious Cycles 29 SS steel
EJ - Redline Flight 29 SS steel
Scott T. - Black Sheep 29 SS ti

Greasy Seatposts and Stuck Seatposts

We spent several hours over the course of several days on a young woman's aluminum seatpost that was chemically bonded to her steel frame because of a lack of lubricant between the two.

We first used the torque of our palms to get the post to spin. Because it was a cheap seatpost that was two pieces of aluminum temperature bonded, it broke off at the top. We then gave it a healthy dose of helper fluid to break the bond. The fact is that the bond was from the bottom of the post to the top. After about a 24 hour soak, we went back at it. This time we drilled a nice clean hole in the post in order to insert a piece of tooling steel in there to get some nice torque. 2 of us with cheater bars provided in the neighborhood of 800 lb/feet of torque (I'm guessing here) and the post literally shattered. Our next idea was to open up a channel to get the fluid further into the frame by using a saw blade to slide a channel into the post. After about 45 minutes of this tedious procession, we had made a small slit part of the way down. The post still did not budge. We let it rest for a while with loads of caustic fluid hopefully finding its way to the chemical bonds. Our next idea was to put a quill stem inside the post, tighten it down and hammer it out. We quite literally broke the stem in half attempting to hammer out the post. (Some laughter may be necessary here) Finally, we decided to try reaming out the post from the inside out. We were going to attempt to shave the post to nothing. After a few hours of removing small amounts of post we made a call to our custom frame builder, James from Blacksheep. He explained that we would be doing this for many many hours and it may not work quite as easily as we were imagining. We decided to let the customer decide whether she could afford our labor or if we needed to call the project done.

I have to say that the young woman was both sad and understanding. She immediately saw the bright side of the situation, that being that her next bike will be fully adjustable and will have a nice slippery seatpost.

By the way, she bought this bike at VeloSwap. Yet another word of warning about buying from an unknown source. Check to make sure the seatpost was greased.

29ers 29ers 29ers

This may be an obvious post, but I want people to know about this.
29ers are 700c mountain bikes. The tires would be like 700x60s. Big tires. Big rims.
The 29er technology is finally catching up to the frame builders who reached their stride really quickly. If you haven't ridden a 29er in the mountains, you need to.
Advantages:
They roll over things more easily.
The foot print that the larger tire makes is much larger (25% and up)
Climbing is easier because of the last 2 listed
Because of the size of the tires and wheels, suspension is much less necessary for the rough stuff.

Disadvantages:
Still not much of a selection on tires and forks
In tight singletrack techy sections, you may find you need to go slower to clear quick turns.

All in all, if you are over 5'7" you may be a candidate to go faster with less effort. We are getting in Kona Unit 29ers for demo and I would love to show off the ti black sheep that gets parked at the shop. We believe that if you go on a familiar trail that is not ski lift style, you will go faster. The builder for Black Sheep went about 15% faster on his favorite loop in Fort Collins, on his first ever 29er ride. That was enough for me to be impressed.

Favorite 29 tires: Maxxis Ignitor
Favorite 29 frames: Black Sheep
Favorite 29 rims: Salsa Delgados (I hear rumors of Mavic soon...)
Favorite 29 fork: Black Sheep (lots of healthy flex)

Have fun. Go ride.

Evergreen Ride - Wine vs. Whine

We set out to ride in Evergreen at a reasonable hour and it was damn cold in Denver. I wore some nice wool socks and heavy cycling shoes to keep the toes warm. The rest was layered up and I brought 2 pair of gloves so I would comfortable no matter what the weather. As soon as we arrived in Evergreen, it was obvious that we had all over dressed for the occasion. I was able to get down to shorts (with diaper) and a lightweight wool jersey, but the feet would have to stay warm.
So, we set out to ride and within one mile Dave lost his chain. We tried several things, but it was actually broken, so rigging it was out. He has lived in Evergreen, so we left him to walk back into town with an agreement that we would meet him at Creekside Winery. We continued on our way. Not more than 15 minutes later, Andres broke his chain clean in half. We got him up and running, but decided that something wasn't right with the world... something was just weird. So we carefully rode for another 8 or so miles up and down around Three Sisters and found our way downtown.
We were met by the staff of Creekside Winery and they showed us where Dave was. Somehow, the owner knew that we were having a rough day, so he talked us into having lunch. They seated us out on the deck right beside the creek. We ordered a bottle of wine and some amazing sandwiches. The butternut squash soup was exactly what was needed for all of us to come out of our funk. If you are in the Evergreen area, make sure you go by Creekside Winery for lunch and some wine. Thank you to the staff and cooks for such a day saving meal.
Andres - Mountain Cycle - broken chain
Chris LGB - Black Sheep Full Suspension - Actually feeling sluggish
Dave - Fixed Surly Cross Check - broken chain
Scott - Black Sheep SS 29er - Hot Feet

Toes-Tea

5 of us set out to ride on the 9th of OCT. We knew it was going to be cold. Hah.

We decided on Golden Gate Canyon State Park and left at 7:30am from Metropolis Coffee. The temp in Denver was around 42 when we left. It was misting on the way up to the trail, but nothing major. It seemed to be around 35 to 40 degrees outside. We had prepared well. All of us had on lots of layers. I personally went for 2 layers of wool on top with a wind/rain layer on the outside. I wore long cycling pants with short on over them, and shin guards for fun. We headed out only to find that it was too much clothing. I shedded a few items here and there after the first long climb, mostly to protect against sweating a great deal (don't want it to freeze). We continued to climb up lots of beautiful singletrack until it finally turned back down. I think this is when it started to snow/sleet lightly. It was absolutely beautiful. We all kept commenting about how quiet and perfect it was. As we approached the top of Windy Peak, it began snowing big flakes. BIG ONES. On October 9th! It was nice since we were all warm enough. Then we started getting cold.

We all cycled through losing feeling in different parts of our bodies, mostly extremeties. This all changed as we got into the creek crossing section of the trail. Lots of water on airy cold feet meant that I started seeing ice on my shoes. Not too good. From the last creek crossing was a really long climb on jeep trails with stumps for feet. We all agreed that it was good timing, cause we did warm up for the most part. We finished up on the road because we had some mechanical problems.

We all thawed out on the way back to Denver.
All in all it was a great ride. Hard to explain why, but it was amazing.

Dave - Surly Fixed Mountain - Surly Steel Bars
LGB - Black Sheep F/S - Push Fox parts
Greg - Indie Fab F/S - Sqwarshy
Danny - Giant Trance - Whored out as usual
Scott - Black Sheep SS - Boing

Nederland can snap your bars

Woke up at 4:30am. Had coffee.
Rode to bus only to miss it by 1 minute. Dave was waiting there for me.
Chris showed up. I was still not awake. Not even close.
...
Got to Nederland and had coffee at Happy Trails (the big caboose near the bus stop). If you are in Ned and don't go to the caboose, you are missing out. Their bike shop is great too. Randy is a top notch guy.

Went to the "high school trails". I don't know my way around up there, but I can tell you, we went right a lot of times. The trails were in perfect shape. My only whiny pants complaint is that it was a little bit chilly; God bless arm warmers. We rode up and down through aspen-leaf -carpet-tight singletrack. It felt like a movie; it felt insane and great. Even the dirt roads were fun. All of the climbs were doable, some much tougher than others, but all could be cleared. I'm not saying I cleared all of them, but I will.

THE STORY GETS GRIM.

Our general direction was the southeast side of Ned heading toward Boulder. We started down a county road that was washed out from recent rains. Long sections were washboards. I almost lost my hands several times, because I was trying to let the tires and fork do what they needed to do to clear. We took a hard right and were all together talking. It got steep again and we got aero to coast as fast as possible. Chris and I usually have bursts that are a little faster than Dave, so we got ahead. We stopped at the next major turn and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. We turned back to see what was up. We rode back about 3/4 mile to find Dave walking his bike. He was holding himself funny from a distance and was definitely limping. As we got closer, we could see his pants were BLOODY. Closer, we could see his left shoulder was covered with some nice dirt. Closer, we could see his handlebar was broken in half. Chills. Absolute sick feelings. Dave was riding through those same washboards that I almost lost control on. He was going very fast and his bars SNAPPED. "Pow!" was what Dave heard, then he was sent tumbling. He cracked his helmet and cut his forehead... but he remembers everything.

I ran to a house right next to where we were. A young woman named Pamela (thank you again, you are great) ended up driving us all back down to Nederland to go the the medical clinic there. The clinic snuck Dave in very quickly and bandaged him up. Dave is one of the toughest people I can think of and I saw him wince a few times in pain. They ended up having to remove a chunk of skin so that his knee would heal properly, but no stitches.

So, we went back out riding. Just kidding.

We headed home on the N bus, to catch the B bus.

What a day. Hope you feel better Dave!

Chris: Black Sheep full suspension Ti - Push industries upgrades
Dave: Surly Cross Check - nerded out to no end
Scott: Black Sheep SS 29er - silly light, cheap parts