New Developments

I went on a great ride yesterday. I am planning to go camping on Sunday and I am going to bike to my destination. Yesterday I packed up the tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, clothes, etc, etc, in my panniers and went out and killed some miles. It was a great day for a ride, the end was a little hot but it was perfect otherwise. I have a spot reserved at Afton state park, all told from my place it will be a 45 mile ride. One of the guys from work is going so we may end up leaving from Minneapolis from his place, if that is the case it will be more like a 32 mile ride. That is okay, I am just excited to do something of this nature. I have been wanting to go camping via bike for a while now and I finally have the opportunity because the girlfriend is leaving Friday for her family's cabin and won't be back till Tuesday but I have to work Friday and Saturday.

Also it looks like the new Mukluks will be available very soon so that means I will have mine pretty quick. I have decided to go with the 16" even though it is a tad small. I can throw a different stem on it and get that bend back seat post. I would rather it be a tad small than super big so if I have to bail off the seat I don't rip my boys in half. So I am super excited because I have been craving a big dirt sandwich and some stinky river rides.

I am pumped for this weekend. I will certainly have a post on that after the weekend. For now, here is a picture from yesterday.

Same shirt, different day.

Long weeks at work and long commutes have made for less actions in the last couple of weeks. Just kind of waiting for school to kick in. Once that happens I will have a little more free time to do things like ride for pleasure, so that will be nice. I'm still having dreams of fat bikes, so much so I have decided to add more rubber to my CrossCheck. I am going to go from the Continental contact tire which is a 700x32 to the Continental Touring Plus tire which is a 700x45. So that should be a kick.

I attended the Salsa bike demo at Carver Park in Woodbury, where it's all good in the hood-berry. It was pretty fun. I got to speak with John, Eric, and Justin of Salsa bikes and they were all good people. I had a nice talk with Justin about the new line of bikes they are bringing out and where everything is headed. I also, of course, got to test ride some bikes. I rode the Horsetheif, Mukluk 2, Warbird, and Colossus. If I was into full suspension mountain bikes the Horsetheif would be a bike I would look into for sure. It was light, it climbed like a traditional 26 inch wheeled mountain bike and it was nimble in cornering. The Mukluk was a riot of course, that will be the fat bike I end up getting. It has been retooled so that the bottom bracket is a little higher and thus shortening the chain stays, that in combination with the new head tube geometry make the new Mukluk a very fun bike. The Warbird, which is aluminum, borrows from some of Cannondale's success with the Synapse road bike. They took the chain stays and made them really long and then they flattened them. So even though the bike is aluminum, with the fat bottom bracket and the frame design it rides really comfortably. It handles well in really rough stuff but not so good in like hairpin turns and such. If you are looking for a comfortable road bike for long distance biking and such, this would be a good option. Finally I rode the Colossus, which Justin called "The road bike for mountain bikers." It is steel but until I was told so I was under the impression that it was aluminum because of how light it was. I took a few hot laps around the parking lot, and I was really pleased with how well it handled and how fast and responsive it was. It had a fair amount of gitty-up but really shined in how much speed you could keep going through corners and coming out of corners.

All in all it was a great experience. I will most likely be getting my Mukluk here in September. I'm excited.