As the Wheel Turns

The other night Kim pops down to the basement to see what I'm up to.

"Oh just swapping all the fancy bits from the orange bike to the black bike".

She rolls her eyes and say "It's like a soap opera, I can't keep up" as she turns back up the stairs.

She's right.

I've raced 4 times this year, and haven't raced the same set up yet.

First race of the year, I rode the Soma rigid because I had been enjoying it over the Winter.

Winding trails, I decide to ride the Karate Monkey as a HT to try and not loose so much time on the descents.

An annoying creak began to plague me, and no matter what I tried, I couldn't eliminate it. Out of frustration I swapped all the fancy bits to the Soma. Guess what? The creak didn't go away. But it was too late to swap everything back so the Soma it is (creak turned out to be the rear QR).

I did pretty good too; Winsted was my best finish so far of the year. But I realized even w/ a suspension fork, I wasn't making up any ground on the descent, so I might as well ride rigid.

I pickup one of those fancy Chinese plastic forks, which lopped a pound off the front end of the Soma. The weight savings probably didn't have any effect on Singlespeed-a-polooza, but I liked how it was stiffer, yet not harsher than my steel forks.

Last Friday I broke a spoke on my main rear wheel. My backup wheel has some oscillation in the hub. I replaced the axle to no avail; there was still some wobble. Now I'm not going to listen to my brake rub, so I build up the Karate Monkey that was waiting to be built in to a "Monstercross" bike, with it's rigid steel fork (It had BB7's installed, which have more pad clearance than Juicy 5's).

Boy did I miss that bike. It's one of those things where you don't realize how good you have it, until you try something else and come back to the original wondering what the hell you were thinking.

So now all the "race parts" are back on the Karate Monkey. "Mary Jane", will make her racing debut with the rigid carbon fork Sunday. Ironically, I rode her Tuesday w/ Juicy 5's and my backup wheel, and didn't notice any brake rub.

Guess I could have left well enough alone.

(glad I didn't)

(don't name your bikes)




(naming your bikes is ghey...)