Two Wheel Blogs

Boys, we're no longer part of any "niche." Slowly but surely this 29r thing has taken off, and with so many new offerings in 08, the stage is set for a take-over. Okay, maybe that's a bold statement...

More on this in a momento, but here are a couple of sub-par pics of the monkey I took the other day...

And before I catch any crap, let me say this was my first attempt at bar tape wraping, and it wasn't the prettiest. The grips look really big, but after some riding this weekend, they've begun to conform and compact to my hands. These things are amazing, they're super plush, takes some of the beating out of the ride.

I had alot of great riding this weekend. Yesterday, I headed up to Blue River to do some more exploring. I found the last remaining singletrack, and was once again not let down. It was awesome riding, and the weather coudn't have been better. I rode solo most of the ride but towards the end I jumped in with a group of 5 riders from the KC area.

These guys were members of the Earth Riders group, the people who maintain the trails. They gave me some good info on the Earthriders.org website and how I could find dates to come help with trail maintence.

Here's the layout on these guy's bikes, 4 twenty niners, and uno 26r. Also during the ride I saw plenty of other riders, near half who where riding the big wheels.

Today, a group of us gathered at Landahl. We started riding around 10 and it was pretty chilly. There were six of us on this ride, 4 of which were 29rs, and two full squishy 26rs. All of our 29r's were singlespeeds too. The ride was great, Pawl took a nice drop with his brand new Specialized Pitch. This was a cool bike, it was also one of the squishy 26rs and Pawl landed the drop like butter. We played around on the tabletop drops awhile, and then proceeded to Suicide hill. Properly named it is best described as hairy, and at the bottom it opens up to a giant grass hill. It would be safe to say I think we all hit about 45 mph coming down this thing. I could feel the cheeks flabbing with the wind. It was truely amazing, nothing better than a tear jerker downhill.

There where a ton of people out riding today and yesterday. I'm hoping this wasn't our last good weekend to ride, but if it was, we did it up in style.

Back to the debate on wheelsize, check Guitar Ted's blog post on 650B's. I think with the onrise of 29r's, the people who like niches have come to develop a wheelsize that's in between. It's no doubt that the big companies are starting to catch up with the 29r thing, just check out all the new tire offerings, new bikes, and new wheel offerings like the Crossmax from Mavic.

I have a feeling that within the next year, you're going to start to see a whole lot more of the big wheels running around. We'll see, but I'd put my money on it.

One more last note... I say we plan a ride this thanksgiving weekend up at Castlewood. I've heard alot of the place, and I'm off thursday thru sunday. Unit, what'd you say to going up Saturday or so?