Friday, January 29, 2010

Another justification for my Breed

Another great night/south knox ride.  Rode from the shop out to Iams, through some random single track and back to the shop with a quick run through downtown/campus.

Finally got to try out my new White Industries hub and freewheel as well since my stock alex branded hub kept craping out on me.  Thanks to Felt I am getting a good chunk of the hubs cost credited back because of the multiple failures on the stock freehubs...Gotta love a company who stands behind what they sell.

Also, even though she will hate seeing her pic up on the interwebz Jessica is starting to show quite a bit.  This is her at just a bit over 11 weeks.































There is a purdy new hub in dem dare spokes

Friday, January 22, 2010

Dirty South Ride

Finally posting pics from our ride from the shop through south knox a few days back.  What I was guessing would be a 2ish hour ride turned into a 4 1/2 hr adventure all through south knox.  We rode from the shop to some trails that will remain unmentioned, through Hastie and where it really got good was from the top of Red Bud Rd their is this "trail" Jon had ridden a while back that was a screaming fast and slightly sketchy decent that me and him tried to follow which soon disappeared after dropping down a ass in the rear tire kinda steep decent that we didn't want to push back up.  We ended up bushwhacking maybe a mile basically pointing towards a street light we saw in the distance, popped out at some peoples back yards and found Jonathan and Contador waiting patiently with beer in hand at the BP station.

After that it was a chill cruise to the hippies place for some pizza, beer, and nerf gun battles.  From there on the pace quickly turned to seeing stars with random attacks and what not all the way back to the shop.  Good times were had by all...including Jonathan

Jonathan feeling a little sketched out on the mix of snow and ice we found near Iams


















I promise Jonathan isn't checking out the Venezuelan sensation's ass.....


















Me and Jon trying to find our way back to civilization

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

First real snow ride in Knoxville!!!

Finally, I can't believe it has finally happened but we got enough snow in Knoxville for it to have some "decent" accumulation.  So after work I decided to hop on the Gunnar and ride from basically Harpers to Hastie Park and back for a little mixed terrain action.  The ride was great, the snow reflected so much light that on the greenways I just shut off my lights entirely and only turned them on for road sections to avoid becoming a hood ornament.  There was maybe 1 1/2" of snow most places on the greenway and singletrack.

Highlight of the day was ridding up a hill on sevierville pike that a truck accompanied by the expected rednecks were having a hard time getting up....when I asked if they needed some help the responded with a short and quick "NO"  Ahh, I can't wait for the day the masses realize using a 4000lb vehicle to move 200lbs of human makes no sense at all when all you really need is a sub 30lb bicycle to handle the vast majority of peoples trips.  Anyways here some pics from the ride as pictures are always more exciting than me going on and on about daily nothings....





Sunday, January 3, 2010

When the Inevitable Happens

Hope you have a company like SRAM willing to go over the top to keep their customers happy.

We went on a pretty cold ride today at the ridge, good times despite the 20deg. temps.  All was well, felt surprisingly good bike handling wise considering I have ridden nothing but CX bikes for about 3 months until this ride until my ride was cut short by a good sized stick that managed to find its way into my spokes.  Somehow it not only trashed my derailer hanger, but also the cage on my derailer was bent badly, the chain had a few bent links and also (this is what blows my mind) the derailer was pushed so hard into the cassette that it broke a tooth of my 11 tooth cog and bent my 34.

I was pissed and swearing off geared bikes and finally calmed myself down and thinking logically.  Realized I could just order a new cage and not entire derailer and that tooth wasn't important anyways and I was also able to straighten the 34.  I checked quality the next day and they don't stock the x-9 derailer cage I need to fix my derailer so I call SRAM to see if I can buy one from them and they were out of stock but offered to send me an X-O cage for free.  Now I am realizing why I sold all my shimano for SRAM a while back.  A few day pass and finally a package from SRAM shows up at the shop and those bastards sent me a brand new X-O derailer for free, this is after I told the guy on the phone a stick is what trashed my derailer in the first place...nothing warranty at all.  Go, run to your LBS and buy everything labeled SRAM because those guys rock.

My Skutt for the last 3-4 miles



















Waiting to re-group