Two Wheel Blogs

I finished up at work last night, and headed out to roll a nice fat ride before going home.

I was feeling it. The rain from the evening before had groomed the trails to a nearly perfect state for the Small Block 8 that I am trying out again on the rear of my bike. Things were simply great.

I noticed when I got to the dam that there were cyclists in the lot across the lake, so I headed back in the reverse direction hoping to encounter some other riders for some gab and group riding (my past 4 rides have been solo, so conversation sounded nice).

It was not 35 minutes later and I ran into Mud-Butt. As a new papa, Mud-Butt is short on time so it is rare that I get to ride with him. It was nice to catch up. He is in the process of figuring out what bike to get...so we talked a bit about this.

He is firm that the new bike should be a rigid single speed, but he is starting to think that 26 inch wheels might be better for him than 29ers. I can not argue that only he can determine what will work best for him, but he is in a quandary since there are characteristics of both 26 and 29 inch bikes that he desires.

I offered to let him ride my Badger, but he turned me down at first. I insisted that he try it, and reluctantly he gave it a throw. It was fun to ride his 26er for a bit. No doubt the 26er was not a good fit for me, but it was fun for the 20 or so minutes I rode it.

I would like to think that the experience gave him a data point to consider for his next bike purchase. In any event, it was neat to hear his take on the ride.

In total, I got in about 2 hours of riding last night. The weather was really nice, though a bit steamy. We were hoping to get rained on mid-ride like last time we rode together, but it did not happen.