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.
A two wheeled biography.
