dancing the bike room jig

There has been alot of moving and shaking going on at "riding with dogs" headquarters. When I say moving and shaking I'm referring to bike frames and parts. With the acquisition of not 1 but 2 Niners this past year for me, Melinda has been long over due for a new bike or frame or whatever. I've been on her to find something new but in a mostly male dominated sport there just aren't alot of choices out there for women. Half of them are spec'd low or have foo foo paint jobs and Melinda just doesn't like foo foo color schemes. After much discussion and an attempt on a demo Niner she decided to stick with the BMC but this years model. Rather than buy the whole bike, she just went for the frame and swapped over all the parts. She's been upgrading parts and really has her bike decked out. It's easily the nicest spec'd bike in the bike room.

After a couple of days of riding the new frame she complained about smacking her pedals on roots and rocks she had not previously hit. After a bit of over due research we realized there was a bit of a geometry change in the frames. Her new bike was set up to run a 120mm fork and her old frame a 100mm. I made another call to the LBS and she now has a new Rock Shox SID on the way, wow!


I spoke of moving and shaking and it's not all been on Melinda's side of the room. The JET is in the process of a facelift as well. I did a bit of researched, asked alot of questions, thought about it and then re-asked some questions and then made the call to replace the current Reba SL fork with a new 2012 Fox F29 RLC 15mm thru axel fork with the Kashima coating, I love saying that word, Kashima, it just rolls off the tongue. Anyway the part in question was my Mavic wheelset, I wasn't sure if it would convert to a thru axel but after many questions I was told it would. Well, the fork came in and I immediately went to work trying to convert the front wheel to accept the thru axel but it was a no go. I'm not placing blame anywhere so don't anyone get huffy, I should have done my homework a little better and I wanted and needed a new wheelset anyway so what the hay.


After much debating and pricing I finally placed an order, then today I changed that order to something slightly different but I'm gonna wait until the wheels get here before letting the cat out of the bag as to what.











Until then the fancy Kashima will have to reside here on the couch.


Since my discovery of the crack in my road frame yesterday I've given some thought to what to do in my predicament. I'm not making any decisions yet mainly because there is too much going on in the way of upgrades to the fat tire bikes right now but I have had my eye on a certain steel frame made by Surly for a loooong time.










I've had a soft spot in my heart for the Cross Check for sometime but due to my lack of CX racing and commuting I've never pulled the trigger on one. Maybe later in the summer if I pull a couple of overtime shifts I might be able to acquire one of these bad boys and swap over the parts from my road bike. I know it's not a true road bike but I'm not a true roadie either. I don't race on the road nor do I do metrics or centuries or anything like that. A frame like this for me could be a road bike, a commuter, and a singlespeed/geared CX bike.

I'm not making any decisions, I can't afford to right now but who know what the future holds, I'm just thinking out loud. Man that Robin Egg blue looks weird and cool all wrapped up in one big ball of steel. I like weird and cool.