Hiatus

How could we have nothing to write about in the first weeks of spring? Pretty simple....sick for a week and a half, sprained wrist for two weeks, shit adds up. Kenneth is done fiddling with his Cove and has nothing cool to write about on the tech department, and our so-called team apparently does not know what their responsibilities...responsibility, singular, that should be. Anyways. Maybe they'll figure it out.

Anyways since they've been slacking, my injured ass has had to step up, and Kenneth's working ass and olddd camera have had to help. Fooling around with a sprained wrist:

Devil's Advocate

I love Toronto's scene. That's why I'm always critical, because I want to see it back at the lofty heights it reached before. If I come off as being overly harsh to Dropmachine or Pinkbike, so be it, I want things to change.

By extension, I want to support Canada's small-time bike scene in any and every way possible. I'm waiting for the day I can proudly say I bought a local frame. As some of you know, all of my life I've been riding Specializeds. I love the feel, and with the most recent iteration, I feel like I'm riding the best street...er....streat frame out there today. But come on, I'm riding a frame designed in California and welded in Taiwan. Hard to be proud of that.

Enter Dobermann bikes. They founded their company on the premise of not being a big guy, like Specialized is. They brought with them the new school of street geo, high BB, tiny back ends, and steep head angles. Really continuing where Norco left off with their Reynolds frames. But front and centre was the idea of customer service. You bust their shit? OK, they'll weld it up. Alain and Gabo prowl Pinkbike, looking for their beloved Dobermann name. They do custom shizz, if you so desire it. This, to be perfectly honest, is the frame I'd like to be riding. Specialized geo made in Canada. Perfect.

Look around online. No, look at Pinkbike. The Dobermann riders are essentiall an army of yes-men, and ANY criticism of the company or frames, no matter how trifling, and you are swarmed with angry Dobermann riders. This is where I come in. It's come to my attention that Alain wants to discuss my Dober-hating. Well then...

I want to see Dobermann progress into more than just "the next .243". I choose to criticize because I want to see them move forward. If no-one lights a fire under their asses, they'll get lazy and stop progressing, only to become stagnant like .243. Are they even still in business? Who knows?! That's my point. Don't want to see another promising Canadian brand go down the tubes. Yes, I am very often hard on them, but someone has to be. Not everyone has the online confidence or online eloquence (if I do say so myself) to speak against them like I do. So obviously I have to be the Devil's Advocate in almost every case.

Alain, ya dig?

Word of warning

Be very careful about who you let represent you.

Duke's Cycle: Go fuck yourselves. You have done nothing to earn my money, I will never go back. I don't care if every other shop in the city closes, I'll walk to Eastside in K-W. If the topic of your service, screw it your store, should EVER come up in conversation, I will tell people about how you fucked me over. Give me a single good reason not to, please. I held off on publicizing this, when mentioning the situations you put me in to friends, I defended your bullshit until I couldn't possibly justify it to myself.

Specialized: You guys have kept your word and hooked me up with new frames, against all odds (dents, long forks, etc.). For this I am extremely grateful. I'll do my utmost to tell people about the generosity of your warranty. I love the way the frames ride, how the frames are designed (mostly...), and the light weight. But DAMN, Duke's has made me seriously reconsider riding a Specialized.

General public: Stay the fuck out of Duke's. There was one employee who was a decent dude, who kept me posted...he left the shop and with him left any customer service. They never told me they got my frame, they never started to build it, you name it. Stay out at all costs.

Regrets

I feel like I owe Specialized an apology. The shop I've been dealing with (they'll remain nameless unless they REALLY fuck up) has been thoroughly incompetent and careless, and made it seem like Specialized's fault. When really, despite their reputation as being a corporate monster (which is definitely deserved), they have an awesome warranty policy.

Dented, cracked bike that's 3 years old, that has been running a fork 40mm longer than stock? Sure, we'll warranty it! Matter of fact we'll give you a brand new, 2008 frame, a P3 instead of a P2! Cracked that one? Alright, we'll give you another one, just wait two months.

And sure enough, they did ship it at the end of February, and it was the most desired, popular frame they've released in the P.line yet. Matter of fact if they released it as frame only, it would sell out in days. Anyway, they got it to me as promised, yet I've been chirping them online and in person. You may think 2 months is a while to wait for a frame that's been out since November (Hell how do you think I feel?), but they got it to me right when promised.

So props, Specialized, for having better customer service than certain companies (ahem Dobermann) who built their brand on having awesome, non-corporate, policies.

Pics soon.

Customer Service Tip:

If you make a loyal customer wait 2 months for a frame that's been out since November....












...Make sure it's in one piece when it arrives.

Custom, part III

On my extensive travels around the internet, I've come across some neat part tuning. Let's forget about Greg Melms, he deserves a post or two unto himself.

First off....Derailleurs. From MTBr:

Just to show how easy it is these days to get a reall light rear derailleur:

DA 7900 standard: 165g
pictured are all standard parts which later get replaced: 45g
tuning parts: 21g
removed cable adjustement bolt. not needed since you still have barrell adjusters on the shifters.
tuned DA7900: 143g

Note that i still use the standad plates. There's lighter carbon plates available but i still have them on my old DA...those should be another 5g lighter or so. i just thought that close to 140 is low enough. I also didn't install the Titanium spring. I would have needed to modify it too much since it didn't fit perfectly...so i still use the almost 2g heavier standard spring instead.

the DA once again fits perfect also with a 11-32 cassette in the back.

He later on mentions buying his parts at Toronto-Cycles, the weight weenie's paradise. Crazy that he could drop 22g off of Shimano's top road derailleur, crazy that there's more weight to be lost, just plain crazy...I worked out that I could get my X.0 into the 160g range. Such an expensive, addictive game.

Wheels! Still from MTBr:

Ok... looks like the forum seems to be slow these days with un-interesting posts. I just received these pictures from Jeremy over at http://www.alchemybicycleworks.com/

He just finished my latest wheel build and should be shipping them out to me shortly (so don't ask about ride impressions as I haven't received the wheels yet, and it is -9C outside (15.8F for the imperial users)

-"tuned the cassette body by replacing the stock 6902 bearing with a lighter 6802 bearing"
-"replaced the non-drive bearing with a ceramic hybrid"
-"internally butted the rear axle"


The build specification:

Front wheel:
Tune King Hub 28h (tuned)
28x PST TB 1422 Pillar Titanium bladed spokes
28x Aluminum Anodized Gold Nipples
Alex XCR Disc Rim 28h

Rear wheel:
Tune Kong (tuned) w/ Titanium Freehub Body
32x PST TB 1422 Pillar Titanium bladed spokes
32x Aluminum Anodized Gold Nipples
Alex XCR Disc Rim 28h

Total weight = 1185g

Absolutely ridiculous. Tune makes the lightest of the light stuff, and yet he manages to drop 6.5g off the front hub, and 15.7g off the rear hub. Attention to detail, mind-blowing. Just for some perspective...If he put on two Eclipse tubes and two Schwalbe Furious Fred tires, his complete wheel build would weigh 1887g. I weighed my rear wheel with tire, tube, cog, spacers, and chain tugs a while back...2175g. To be fair to myself, chances are he doesn't subject his wheels to what I do, and since then I've learned a bit about wheels and my next build would probably weigh in at around 2kg clean, but....damn.

I could add more, but I won't.

One way to look at it

First off, let me apologize for the distinct lack of content lately. Winter's ending, I have sweet fuck-all to talk about, mainly because I have no (nice, cool) bike to modify and obsess over. I WILL produce this spring, I promise.

Random thoughts: Right now, the status quo for street/park/jump mountain bikes is singlespeed, rear brake only, hardtail. Any deviance is met with questions and/or admonishments, depending on who sees it.

I started of riding with 2 brakes and gears. No good for for the gears, I rode and still ride a lot of XC and commuting, but I found out I can do both without gears. The front brake, I like doing tricks with. As I broke shit, I eventually reverted to the standard singlespeed, wishing I had gears. I took the rear brake off for a summer, that was really cool. Went brakeless for a week, killed my tires and terrified myself, finally reached the balance point. Despite my best ambitions to the contrary, I ended up with a singlespeed mountain bike with only the rear brake. I dabbled in front brakes, never lasted (because I would fuck it up, I still like using them), and so on.

But things change. Time passed, I got used to it. Kept riding trails and street, even tried brakeless again! The weight bug hit me (that's another blog for another day), and I had other shit to worry about. Now I find myself about to put gears on, from a funny situation. I have a singlespeed hub and BMX cranks (Primo cranks, know how hard it is to make that work?). People are asking me why I'm putting gears on (why not? It's a mountain bike and it'll go faster!), rather than the opposite.

I came to the interesting conclusion the other day; people asked me similiar questions whenever I rode brakeless. Why am I really putting gears on? At risk of another autbiography, my riding this season really went in the wrong direction. Spinning is cool, and I learned a lot of that, but I was going in the direction of tech everything, rather than what I'd like to be doing, fast stuff, gaps, no fakie, just balls-out speed and flowing. I put gears on, instantly I'm going faster, and I can't do fakies anymore. Perfect. Now I have to 360 where I would 180, now I clear 15 feet where I was clearing 10 before. To sum up, it's a new challenge. I have to adapt my style, right down the basic way I approach riding my bike (not tricks, just riding it). Much like going brakeless.

tl;dr brakeless is the same thing as gears.

Think about it. Weird, eh?