Nov. 25, 2022

#optoutside

Since REI started closing on Black Friday and encouraging customers to go outside, I have tried to do it (like I need a reason) and motivation today really helped. It started with rain and I couldn’t talk myself into a long hike in the rain, so I started to prep for indoor climbing when the sun came out. I know Uwharrie doesn’t get sloppy (or have erosion issues after light rains) so that is where I went. This is also the trail where I originally broke the Salsa Dos Niner 12 years ago, so it was nice to ride it there again

I had planned a longer ride but my elastomers in my Thud Buster completely disintegrated, I haven’t used the seat post in years, so not surprised. The failure gave me time to catch the second half of the UNC v NC State game

Sept. 24, 2017

Good morning. Prepping the Salsa Las Cruces for a gravel ride.

In the end we rode 17 miles of gravel and closed to vehicles but open to bikes Forest Service roads. None of the trails or FS roads were marked, so we had to “guess” and cleaned a ton of spider webs… The webs are one thing, but when the large spider is in the middle of the web and starts crawling on you, it’s less pleasant!

Nov. 19, 2014

Salsa visited Revolution Cycles and gave us the chance to ride a stable of bike. The Salsa Mukluk, a fatbike with 4 inch wide tires, next to my normal Surly Karate Monkey 29er.

August 31, 2014

 

It’s the last day of August – everyone knows what that means – Cyclocross starts! In North Carolina, we can race from Sept to Jan (almost every weekend and sometimes twice in a weekend) So it was time to put the bikes back together: The orange bike is the race bike, a Salsa Las Cruces, this year it is upgraded with Stans wheelset from my mtn bike (if the tubeless set-up holds) and Thompson stem and seat post from my tri bike. The green bike, a Salsa Dos Niner, will be the pit bike if the frame fix I did works. I broke a weld a couple of years ago and can not find a welder who can fix Scandium (a type of aluminum) and Salsa would not honor a design flaw, so I filed a piece of aluminum to fit in the tube at the weld, tapped two holes and bolted it together, it did not hold together when I tested it mountain biking, but I am hoping just jumping on and off will not strip the threads again. The rest of the Dos Niner was assembled using spare parts, including the crank set from my 1993 Trek MTB. At the end of the day, Sam made a cake!

Jan. 16, 2012

Crap! What a bad day! I was enjoying my third day of mountain biking this weekend when this happened. Snapped the frame, clean break…. I am hosed!!!