Its winter in Colorado. Damn its col… O sweet it’s Spring in
Colorado. Ahhh, soak in that warm sunsh…
shit, its winter in Colorado again.
Today I departed for what was
supposed to be a big ride in the mountains.
It only took about 20 minutes to realize that today wasn’t my day. It felt like I had jet lag. I’m actually not sure at all what jet lag
feels like, but if it feels anything like the wind-down after 10 days of
working my ass off, riding my ass off, and then partying my ass off, then I had
it. And I don’t have much ass to
lose. Not to mention that my body was
still recovering from the 4 ½ hours spent on my new 31 lb full-suspension the
day before. It was a shred-fest. More on that later. So after a few short miles this morning I turned it around;
something I rarely, if ever, do. I’ve
spent countless rides in the doldrums, only the dregs of energy left in my
body, pushing on and through, coming out the other side usually feeling
worse. It’s not a pretty sight, and
today I decided against it. Good thing I
did! A few hours after returning home,
at which point I would’ve been somewhere high in the mountains, a white cloud
engulfed the hills in front of me and proceeded to dump snow. Never have I been so happy with my decision
to give up and be lazy. Cheers to being
a quitter.
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| Not my pic, but much like I saw this afternoon. |
Speaking of quitting, shouldn’t
Lance just give up? Jesus man, everyone
knows what you did, doesn’t care anymore and you still can’t tell the truth? That “confession” bullshit was so lame. Oh, you’re being SO sincere Lance. But only sincere enough to hopefully get your
ass out of trouble. You can just keep
lying about everything else that doesn’t matter and hopefully no one will
notice. And hopefully not many people
did. I did completely waste a couple
hours of my life watching the first Doprah episode, and still haven’t seen the
second. It was pathetic, that’s it. Rant
over.
Back to cool shit. I actually used my day in a semi-productive,
semi-expensive, semi-exploratory manner.
Sorry, I’m kind of sort of a little bit non-committal sometimes. Anyways, with a new build on the cusp of becoming
a reality, I needed to make some moves.
Luckily, it’s a singlespeed, so not many “moves” need to be made. I have already secured bars, stem, post,
fork(YOU!), wheels, brakes, etc. How am
I supposed to make all of this stuff go around? Right, cranks. A few minutes of perusing the interwebs
(which usually catches me like a fly wherein the giant spider comes in to suck
my brain dry) were all it took to find my match. SRAM’s new XX1 crankset. Still comes in a “normal” bottom bracket
configuration, lightweight, and the hottest shit going! Boom! Ordered. Done. Then I packaged up and sent my fancy crabon
fibre Lefty off to Mendon Cyclesmith for some much needed maintenance. Maybe a much-needed overhaul. We’ll see. Next up I get an email from some guy at some
shop telling me that some color choice for my new frame was only some number of
weeks out. Good to know that I don’t
have to succumb to the Henry Ford marketing model from the 30’s. “You can have any color as long as it’s black”
is not a good marketing option for modern-day bike companies.
So it’s snowing right
now. Yesterday was a bit different. I was slightly (tremendously) hung over, but
couldn’t pass up the opportunity to enjoy shorts and t-shirt sunny weather
coupled with dry trails and a new shred-worthy steed ready to rock and
roll. I made my way to the nearby Heil
Ranch trail, which at its best is a rocky trail, at its worst a complete
clusterfuck rock garden. I ride this
trail about once a month, and the succession usually goes like this:
O sweet, rocks, obstacles, challenges... damn
I’m feeling good, this is hard but fun, really making me work... okay a little bit is
fun, but can I just get to some flowing singletrack... no! More rocks! Your
hands hurt? More rocks! Oh your back
hurts? More rocks! Wanna go uphill, downhill, sideways, in/out? More rocks!
Screw this; I’m not coming back for a month.
In fairness, the builders have done their best at creating a sweet trail
system out of a boulder field, and I’ve been riding it on a hardtail. On this day my experience was different. It was my first time on a full-suspension in
over 6 months, and one with more travel than any bike I’ve owned. As I made the initial climb the feeling I had
forgotten quickly came back. Just sit
back, grind, and let the front/rear do their work. No need for carefully executed line
choices. Just plow right into, through,
and over those pesky little trail obstructions.
And when the trail goes down is when the going gets good. It didn’t take long for me to gain a fair
amount of confidence in the Shinobi’s capabilities. With new found confidence in my machine, it
was only my own confidence in descending and skill that held me back. Let er rip!
4 ½ hours, 36 miles, including a trip through Lyons up to Hall Ranch, a
spin around there and back down through Heil Ranch one more time was all it
took for a good day.
I learned a lot about the
Shinobi yesterday, but many more rides need to be had on this machine to give
an objective review. First, it descends
better than any bike I’ve owned. That
might be obvious considering the 140mm of travel up front, but I think it has
more to do with the geometry and slack head tube angle. What was most surprising to me was the
climbing efficiency. I honestly could
not tell if the back was bobbing at all while climbing! And when standing up and powering to get up a
steep or techy section, it seemed to leap forward without any hesitation. Considering I climbed over 4400ft on a 31 lb
bike and left without feeling much tire in my legs means it must be an
efficient climbing bike. The handling
felt good, but a lot more time needs to be spent on it for me to completely
figure it out. Overall, it is definitely
an incredibly stiff, burly, and capable machine. The FUN is back!
And then I made rice cakes. Never should your ClifBar expenditure exceed beer. As I am writing this my roommates are devouring them. Fail.
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| Dick's Power Mix |
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