Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Saturday, November 3, 2012
New Drivetrain Ride
Me and KC hit it from my house at 6 with lights blazing. Rolled thru Rockburn Branch, down Valley View and over to BaltCo for some Vineyard, Santee Shortcut Branch to Hilton Maintenance Shed. Down the swoopy middle Buzzard's Rock trail. Then swung over the Swinging Bridge to finish up on Ridge to Connector to Morning Choice to Rockburn Branch and out.
12 miles on the dirt and lots of SEGs, especially on the Buzzard's downhill.
New drivetrain was super sweet. Quiet and crisp. KC must have been hating riding the uphills behind me and my new 34T low cog;-)
Couldn't get these two songs out of my head the entire ride.
Friday, November 2, 2012
New Drivetrain On the Cheap
Been suffering from poor shifting on the Monakey lately. Ordered up a new drivetrain on the cheap from Jenson:
- SRAM PG 950 11-34 cassette
- Shimano LX non-shadow rear derailleur
- KMC Z72 8 speed chain
- Salsa 32T Single Speed ring
Cost was $100 shipped for the lot.
Started wrenching at about 11:20 last night.
Broke the cassette apart and pulled out the 9 speed spacers. Rebuilt it with old 8 speed spacers and a 13T and 11T from the old 8 speed cassette. This gives me a nice big range up to 34T (an option that wasn't available in the PG 850 cassette) but makes for a big jump between the 13T and the 17T cogs (that I seldom use anyway).
Mounted the frankencassette, chainring, chain, and derailleur with no issues. Pulled off the grips and the Avid SD 2.0 levers that I'd grown to love so much. Removed the Paul Thumbie Ultegra 8 speed shifter too. Replaced the cockpit with XT lever on left and an XT/XTR 8 speed frankenbrifter on the right. As I was dailing in the gears, the thumb lever began to malfunction. Ugh, this was just about to be a 70 minute job. Pulled the cable out and replaced the shifter pod with an extra that I had in an 8 speed XT trigger.
At 1AM she was all done.
So the story goes:
- New frankendrivetrain - $100
- The dogshit that I rode thru and got on both tires on the way to the shed before wrenching - Priceless
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Trails Are FIne
Sandy, Schmandy....
Lots of leaves and stickety sticks down, but relatively little storm damage out there. Me and KC put in at Belmont and rolled Rockburn Branch, Ridge (end to end), Cascade, Lewis and Clark, Morning Choice, Farm Field. Log Trail had a big tree down near MC. Ridge has a tree down across the Baler Bypass.
Other than that it's hard to believe that 6.5 inches of rain fell out there. The creek at the bottom of the Farm Field, that changes every storm, looks excatly the same as it did last week.
Trails are in good shape for riding. Only a few usual spot puddles. It was hard to stay on the trail at times...so leaf covered that it was easy to lose your way in the dark.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Breaking news...Just in
Maryland admits that everybody could have gone to school and work on Monday and Tuesday, but still decides to declare a Statewide State of Fuckit and take off the rest of the week too.
Cascade Hike
Pretty clear from landing to swinging bridge. Cascade alternative has got a huge tree down though.
