Two Wheel Blogs

I knocked the dust off my MTB today and took it out for the first MTB ride I can recall in a long time. The excessive rain this year (and ice storms last year) has had me riding road quite a bit, and I have not even thought of riding the trails until today. I was surprised at how good the trails were (only a few mud holes that always are present this time of year).

It was a great ride, made slightly better learning a few lessons in the process.

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It's been all to long since I've had a full weekend of great riding. It was nice to finally get one, I've been jonesing, feining, straight craving some good trail riding. I got that on Saturday.

I promised I'd give you another look at my new off-road machine. Here it is.

You may have noticed the new image in the header on this site. That's one I took the day I got this bike home. I'd been looking for a decent enough day to get a for-real outdoor shot I could upload. Bikes just look better outdoors. The riding's better too, but that's another story.

I'm still up in the air for what to call it. The frame was cut and assembled by Rob Pennel of Badger Bicycles fame. Is "fame" a good choice of words? Yeah, I guess so. Unfortunately, Rob / Badger didn't finish the job, so I'm having trouble, philosophically awarding the name Badger to the final product.

I'll have to think this one over a while.

Oh, and also here's a larger view of the photo in the header.

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I don't know whether you remember my original post about my attempts to get in touch with the guys at Badger Cycles, Rob Pennel or Josh Patterson. If not, some of the background for this story can be found here, in the original story: I'm trying to get in touch with Rob Pennel of Badger Cycles.

Today I wanted to offer up to you a conclusion to that story. I'll also give up some of the details of what took place in the 5 month time span between then and now.

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Today, I make it official. I have retired the Karate Monkey. This modified Surly frame set has served me well.

It never faltered, even in failure, it never let me down. So onto the wall it goes.

I purchased this frame and fork used from a good friend who got me back into mountain biking. He rode it lightly (compared to what I did on it) for about a year or so before giving me a deal on it.

It went through many modifications and alterations. I even changed to color a few times. This "cheap" frame and fork performed well...perhaps as well as many costing 4-5 times as much.

Well, here I am at the end of my first decent cycling week of 2008. I have to figure out what to do with myself before the party that starts later. Not sure why we have this party...I think it is something to do with a bunch of commercials periodically interrupted by some bastardized version of rugby (a.k.a. the Super Bowl...can I say that without getting sued for not having explicit written consent?)

So, what is it that I have got to get done before everyone starts showing up?