A Hole In My Head

As in, "I need another bike like I need..."



And yet, here is my latest build for the personal stable.

It is steel KHS soft tail frame built up as a 69er (26" wheel on the rear, 29" on the front). The theory is that the 29" wheel on the front gives you smoother-rolling and increased traction of a big-wheel bike, but the 26" wheel is easier to accelerate for climbing, and retains standard mountain bike gearing. This is important to wimpy climbers such as myself.

It's an unusual setup, but it has a certain following. TREK is even selling two different versions (single speed and multi speed).

I sold the GT 29er, a couple of weeks ago. I find a single speed MTB to be of limited use here on the Front Range. I love riding fixed offroad in Fruita, and Moab, but I rarely get to either place any more. So, this looked to be more useful.

And, I accidentally ended up with two new soft tail frames. I have a TREK OCLV soft tail waiting to be built. I figure I'll build it as my lightweight, high-performance long-distance bike, and use this one for shorter, rougher rides.

I rode the 69er to the coffee shop, this morning, then ran some errands on it. I mainly just wanted to take a little shakedown cruise on it, as I finished the build at about 11:00, last night. I think I will probably lower the stem, but other than that it works very nicely for me.

Twenty five pounds, as built. I think it will be a nice ride, off road. I plan on finding out, soon.

I am going to start mountain biking, again. I think the riding to work and for my short-distance trips gives me enough "carbon credit" to drive to Golden and back a couple of times a week.

In order to have a mountain-biking goal, I am trying to get together a 24 Hours of Moab team for next year. It's kinda pricey, but I really enjoyed the race when I did it 5 years ago. And, that was as a fill-in guy on a team with 3 people I didn't even know. I think it will be that much more fun with friends of mine on my team.

Oh, well. Got to go build some wheels.

x