Celebrity makeover

Yesterday I spoke of a project that I was entertaining. I've seen alot of people run the squish on their SS 29er's and very few seem to complain except for a select hardcore few that have reasons I cannot always comprehend. I guess the main reason I have yet to put any squish on the Karate Monkey is because of the lack of funds. It's hard to justify throwing down $400+ on a fork "just to see if I like it". I also have been telling Melinda I'm going to upgrade her fork for a while so it just didn't seem like a good idea. I've always enjoyed running the KM fully rigid, it's a great bike and it handles great. It does get a bit sketchy coming down a long decent full of roots and rocks but I don't see a whole lot of that here in East TN. I've always told my self I just need to work on my skills a little bit which is true. It's a rigid bike, what else should I expect.
Anyhow with my recent vacation off the KM and the purchase of the Haro/Mamasita I now have a fancy Reba w/lockout to play with. Instead of fine tuning my technical skills on the KM they got worse with my lack of riding it. I've been playing around with the idea of swapping the Reba over to the KM for just an experiment. I have been kinda hesitant on this because in the event that I do like the squish on the KM I don't have the $$ to be throwing down on another fork. With not a whole lot going on yesterday and the possibility of an SS race in a week I decided to give it a go just for a week or so.

Both KM and the Mamasita were muddy so I made quite a mess during the transition. I had a trail of dried mud from the bike room through the kitchen and out the back door. I did manage to clean up the Mamasita some what because it would have been alot worse. It had about 7 extra lbs. of nastiness caked to it's frame and wheels.

The Karate Monkey's rigid fork, looking good.

The Reba awaiting it's new duty.

The Mamasita broken lying in the floor, Moonshine wasn't too happy about it being on her bed either.

After the damage was done I have to say it wasn't bad looking.

I took her out for a spin later that night with a few of the guys. The trails were pretty slick and nasty but the Reba Karate Monkey combo performed better than expected.

My plan yesterday was to go up to Bays mtn and get some fire road miles in and check out the new "C" trail we're building. I can't remember the correct name, it's named after some species of tree abundant to the area that starts with a "C" but I'll get it soon enough. I had a few errands to run that took a little longer than planed before I hit Bays. As I was on my way to the Mtn I realized there were a few things I forgot to do before my ride with the guys tonight. I didn't charge my lights and I need to experiment with my new camera mount. I decided to scratch the Bays ride and head back home to get some stuff done. I was planning to try out the Hero cam with my new handlebar mount and filming at night as well. The dogs haven't been out all day so we all gathered in the yard strapped on the cam and did a few test runs around the yard trying out different mounting locations on the frame of my bike. The dogs had a good time and I came up with some interesting mounting positions.

The ride last night was slow but good, the trail was just too slick to get much speed without piling it up off the trail. I filmed all kinds of good footage but when I got home to review it, I was not surprised to find out that it was too dark to see anything. Night riding with the Hero cam is out. Not all was lost I discovered a mounting flaw that needs to be addressed and we had a good ride.

The Icycle is coming up next weekend and my debut for 2009 is still up in the air but the Karate Monkey is ready for action if it's called to duty at Fontana Village. I just hope I have it in me to push that gear all over the course for back to back laps. It could possibly be the first Hero cam race footage.