Saturday, May 28, 2011

Wanted: Orange Bike

It's Ramona here, hijacking Linc's blog in hopes that some of his biker friends can help me out.  Apparently the garage no longer has room for my disco-era purple Norco bush pilot and a new one is to take it's place.  I'm so confused as to what kind of a bike to get.  I've ruled out the cruiser bikes since I really want to be able to trail ride but have no idea what I should be looking for or how to size the frame correctly. 

Right now, my bush pilot is a 19" frame and has been adjusted to "fit" me but I sort of sit over my peddles now because the frame is too big.  I don't feel like I have great control on trails and my mozo's apparently aren't very great shocks...

I have a lot of shoulder/ neck/writs/back/hips and knee pain so I need something that is nice to my body.  My physio therapist gave me a big lecture about needing to learn to become a cyclist (and listed many reasons why this would be good and Linc says he didn't pay her) and that I won't be running again (she says she had no idea that the rest of my family are cyclists).


I want to use the bike to commute to the store/library/physio/etc but also get exercise and ride the trails.  Any ideas?  Right now we're thinking either a 29-er with front suspension or a full suspension bike.  Any thoughts or advice on that?



Anyone have anything for sale (I could even work it in so you could have my collector's bike in partial trade)

Oh- and I really would like an orange bike but will not be basing my opinion on the color like I have seen a mom and son do in a bike shop

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Spaghetti Spokes?

I snapped a spoke at Grand Beach last weekend.  It took me 30 seconds to wind up around the others and continue racing, and 30 hours now to rebuild the wheel. 
Ok, I've only spent about 2 hours completely taking the wheel apart and rebuilding it.  I've got them all mildly tensioned and beautiful, ready to true (radially and laterally).  Someone is going to say, "why didn't you just replace the broken spoke?"  Well all the spokes nearest to the cogs were seriously chewed up from overshifting (3 times in races last year) so I wanted to replace all 8 of those.
Leonard Zinn has been my technical assistant.  His book "Zinn and the art of Mountain Bike Maintenance" makes it look easy and it actually seems to be working.  It's my first wheelbuild, and I'm excited.
These pics were taken before tensioning the spokes.