I finally got the time to prep my Fargo for the coming season and this involved installing a final production version of our new Woodchipper drop bar. Since we've gotten several questions about Woodchipper bar set up, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share my set up. Note, this is my personal set up and it may not work for all of you and your specific riding style or focus. This set up is ideal for me for all around adventuring that includes pavement, gravel and single track. If you have questions, I'll do my best to answer.
OK....First I install the bar in the stem and set the angle of the flat portion of the bar. I like mine at about 20 degrees. I've run mine everywhere from 20 degrees to just over 30 degrees. I like the 20-25 range best. For those interested, I am using the free "Angle" iPhone app.
I then set the brake levers up. For my use, I run them at in a position that works for both drops and hoods. Some folks that are running them with the flat drop as their primary position may wish to run brake levers even further downard making the brake lever even more accessible from the drop position. Again, this is my personal set up and what I have found to work for me. I like multiple hand positions. Please also note my cable routing. I run the shift cable on the outside of the lever. I do this because it moves the cable out from underneath my thumbs (when routed on the inside). This is the most comfortable for me. Also note the Cinelli gel pad under the long flat portion of the drop. I've also used gel tape cut to length in the past but at the recommendation of a trusted friend (Meiser), I wanted to give the Cinelli gel padding a try on this round.
Here is the finished view from the top. Note how I personally like to angle the lever inward in line with the flare of the flat drop portion of the bar. This is a personal preference. One of the great thing about the Woodchippers is that you have lots of different possibilities.
One of the features that makes the Woodchipper so unique in the "dirt drop" category of bars is how we designed the bar for a more vertical brake lever position. This makes the brake lever itself more vertical. This creates lots of space between the levers for bar bags, maps, your hands and gear.
So....With that final touch, my Fargo is ready for another season of abuse. Just in time as it's hitting 70 this week and trails are opening up for the season.
Today's post comes from Tim Krueger, Salsa product manager. -Kid
A double on the Vaya? What the $#&@?
It has been asked what we were thinking when we decided to use a double crankset as a spec on a bike intended for recreational riding and touring.
To put it simply, we were thinking! Double cranksets and modern drivetrains have come a long way since the triple was the standard for those pursuits.
Triple front cranks were intended to create a larger gear range when cassettes (or freewheels!) could only reasonably have a range of 12-28 without large jumps in ratios, or making for poor shifting. Over time, technology and engineering have allowed more gears to be placed in the same space, allowing smoother shifting over a greater range of gears. As this technology plods forward, we will eventually see less of a need for additional front chainrings.
For example, the triple used to be the standard for mountain bikes. Now we are seeing compact doubles take their place on high-end mountain bikes with the advent of SRAM XX and FSA 386 technology, when paired with large range cassettes such as SRAM's 11-36 XX cassette. These drivetrains still yield an equivalent range to a standard triple drivetrain, yet are lighter and simpler.
This is the idea with the Vaya. We took a close look at the overall ratios involved with a road-based triple drivetrain. Take our Casseroll Triple for example. With a 30-39-50 front combination, and a 12-25 rear, it has a low gear inch measurement of 32.4. For those unfamiliar with this measurement, it means that in this lowest gear, the bike will travel 32.4 inches forward with every revolution of the pedals.
On the Vaya, this measurement in the lowest gear is 29.0 inches. So while on the surface, the Vaya's double appears to have less of a climbing gear than a road triple, in practice, it actually has a slightly lower gear than a standard road triple drivetrain. Even the traditional road triple with a 12-27 on the back still only has a 30.4 inch low gear.
Now, one could argue that even though this is true, the Vaya is still not as low as a touring setup such as a Sugino XD600 crankset paired with an 11-34 rear cassette, which yields a 20.9 inch low gear. And to that, you would be correct. However, we didn't design the Vaya to be a bike solely for touring. We designed the Vaya to be more of an 'all around' bike, one good for a variety of purposes. The Vaya is our road adventure bike. If you truly want that low of gearing, consider basing your build on a Vaya frameset and choose the gearing that you prefer, or start with a Vaya complete bike and change out your crankset.
Keep your eyes open, because in the near future you will begin to see a trend in cycling towards double cranksets. Because the Vaya may be among the first, but definitely not the last to be sporting the 34-50 and 11-32 combo to give the recreational cyclist the greatest all-around experience.
It was a busy weekend for Minnesotans. Many folks were focused on the Vikings vs Green Bay football game. Others were focused on the Homie Fall Fest followed by a day of recovery on Sunday. But, for about 30 of us we were focused on a fall gravel road ride in the country.
It was a beautiful fall day here in Minnesota. Some might say it was the perfect day. I agree, it was perfect. About 30 of us gathered for the Rawland Gravel Tour. It started just southeast of Northfield where Sean and Ben live. I rode my trusty Fargo loaded up with food, water, my camera stuff and a bunch of stuff in my frame bag. To say the day was one of my best days on a bike is an understatement. It was sunny. It was cool. It was warm. It rained. We saw a rainbow. We laughed. We ate. It was pure joy.
So, I leave you with a few pictures. Hope you enjoy!
Thursday June 11th, 2009
| 0 Comments | Kid Riemer
During the last few years, there has been an unquestionable rise in interest in 'ultra' style cycling events. Not that long ago, these events often went unnoticed. There was little opportunity to 'follow the action'.
That really seems to have changed recently. The internet, blogs, podcasts, SPOT trackers, GPS units, sat phones, and other technological advances have made 'coverage' of long distance, remote races possible in ways that we never would have imagined not that long ago.
Like it or not, these advances have made it possible for us to watch what's going on. It turns a multi-day mystery into a multi-day event we can all enjoy.
You can see that on the right side of this page we've added a 'Where the heck is Joe?' link. It provides a link to Joe's SPOT Tracker as well as to the Tour Divide Leaderboard.
I'm sure Joe has a busy day ahead of him taking care of last minute preparations. While he's doing that he's probably busy 'trying to rest'. I'm sure many of you have experienced the weirdness off 'trying to rest' and understand the difficulty in that.
A couple interesting facts about this year's Tour Divide Race. Based on the published roster, I see entrants from 6 different countries. That list includes:
Austria Canada Germany Italy United Kingdom and the United States
Within the United States, 18 different states are represented:
Alaska Arizona California Colorado Connecticut Florida Iowa Kentucky Minnesota (Go Joe!) Ohio New Mexico North Carolina Pennsylvania Tennessee Texas Washington Wisconsin Wyoming
If you think about it, that's a pretty darn diverse list in a field of 41 racers. We wish them all a safe and fulfilling adventure.
Hopefully some photos of the fun...wait, did I say fun? from Trans Iowa 5 will surface.
But in the meantime we wanted to be sure to throw out the congratulations to Joe Meiser, head of our Product Design and Development team.
Joe won the 5th edition of the Trans Iowa event this past weekend. We'll get the details from Joe in the next day or two, but suffice it to say that 320 miles of gravel in under 25 hours deserves some major kudos.
Monday, I shared a brief video of my Kokopelli Trail ride. I had an ambitious plan. Some things went well. Some did not. I had planned on heading out on Sunday, but the weather forecast wasn't great and I decided to head out on Saturday instead. I was three hours into the day, I changed my plans. Instead of riding to Moab in two days with a campout, I decided to keep going and ride it in one day.
I had crazy weather on this day. Temps were relatively mild but I had severe wind, rain, dust storms, and even some hail/snow! I was actually thankful for the little bit of rain. I would have been in trouble had it really rained. Thankfully, it was just a little bit of rain and it kept the dust down and firmed up the soil, making my ride faster.
Because I changed plans mid ride and decided to do Fruita to Moab in one day, I decided to roll the last 30 miles into town on pavement. I was crushed as I had been pedalling for 9.5 hours straight with little rest. The last 30 miles were no cakewalk either thanks to more wind and rain. Finally, the weather broke for good and I rolled into Moab.
That's a wrap folks. While I didn't do the whole Kokopelli, I did end up riding almost 120 miles in 13 hours. All in all a great test of body, mind and equipment. Just what I was looking for from this trip.
I finished the night off with a Subway feast and then rode up to the Slick Rock campgrounds in the dark to meet some friends from Nebraska, Colorado and Montana. The wind was gone and the stars came out making for a perfect evening.
What a day! I will never forget it. It was without a doubt one of my more difficult days of riding ever.
The Kokopelli Trail is a 130 or so miles long and links Fruita, Colorado and Moab, Utah. It's a beautiful mountain bike trail filled with amazing singletrack, stunning views, solace and mountains. Really, it has a bit of everything. Most folks spend several days riding this trail. I was looking for another experience. I was planning on knocking it off in two days but my plan did not go as planned.
I'll be sharing my stories over the coming days. I'm a bit worn out but pretty darn excited about the trip. Take a look at this short video and check back here for more stories and videos.
Yes that whirring sound is wind. That section in the vid is about 8-10 miles and it took me almost two hours.
Greetings folks. Hope you all are enjoying your year and that the 2009 riding season is off to a good start. 2009 is going well, both for Salsa and for me personally. As you have likely noticed, I personally have been blogging less. That's because I've been riding more. I've got some fun riding plans for the upcoming year. I'll be sharing those adventures here throughout the coming months.
I spent the bulk of the past 6 months riding my Salsa Fargo. Since the very first prototype of the Fargo arrived, I've been peddling and planning a 2 week adventure tour for later in the year. I love this bike. It has seen thousands of miles and provided nearly as many dreams.
Recently however, I've decided to challenge myself a bit more. I decided my adventure would take a different route and would require a different bike. I'm not sure where this newfound confidence has come from, but I wanted something a bit bigger and more challenging. Risk more and receive a greater reward. As such, I've committed myself to do the Colorado Trail in a 530 mile two wheeled, self supported, ultra light adventure.
I'll be riding my Salsa Big Mama. I finished this final build last fall and got a few rides on it. I'm in the process of final set up and gear selection. I'll be doing a tune up trip later this month with a Fruita to Moab to Fruita ride. This trip will involve many hours of riding, lot's of picture taking, and overcoming some challenges. I can't wait. I'll also share my final bike set up on or around that time. I tell you this, it is going to be one sweet Big Mama.
Thursday March 26th, 2009
| 0 Comments | Kid Riemer
One of the goals I set for myself this year was to do at least one overnighter each month. Calling that a goal doesn't exactly sound right though. A goal sounds like work and these overnighters are definitely not intended to be work. They are meant to be a nice quick way to have some fun, get in a mini camping excursion, sleep outside under the stars, and breathe some fresh air.
A few years back, Grant Peterson of Rivendell took to calling these overnighters Sub-24 Hour Overnight (S24O) trips. I don't always agree with Grant but I think he hits the nail on the head with his thoughts on overnighters. If you want to read more about what Grant says about S24O's you can do so at www.rivbike.com. Click on READ and you'll see some stuff about bike camping and what to bring. Another site you may enjoy is www.bikepacking.net.
My outing last night would officially qualify as a S9O on the Rivendell scale, but to me spending a night outside is priceless. That doesn't always mean I get the best night's sleep, but it is worth it to me anyway. At the most basic level I just like being outside.
Because I wasn't going to be out long it was easy to keep a very light load for the outing. Even lightly loaded there were plenty of things I could have left behind I suppose.
Here's my gear list from last night:
Fargo with Wildfire Designs frame bag Mini pump, tube, 3 Allen wrenches, tire levers MSR Titan kettle MSR Pocket Rocket stove and gas cannister Princeton Tec Apex Pro headlamp 36 oz Nalgene bottle with water 2x 24 oz water bottles Ridgerest camping mat full length GoLite ultralight backpack An old ground cloth Marmot super burly down sleeping bag, too warm for the conditions Matches, tea packets, granola bar Puffy synthetic jacket My lady's digital camera (shhhhhh!) and a super light mini tripod
The temperature was just barely below freezing which felt pretty warm after a winter with some good cold weather. It also meant the ground was hard so my gear and I stayed mud-free.
A quick ride took me to my stealth location for the night: under a stand of pines where it makes being seen at night virtually impossible, unless you are prancing around with a light on. Best of all I had a sweet unobstructed view of the downtown skyline just a handful of miles away.
It was an uneventful night. A bit of wind now and then, but basically a peaceful night that let me think a lot.
On the ride home this morning I was going through a small park a mile from my house and had the good fortune to have a fisher run across my path about 10 feet in front of me. Not the Gary Fisher type of fisher mind you. I'm talking about the animal type of fisher. That's only the third time in my life where I've seen a type of weasel out in nature doing its thing. No pics though as the camera was zipped up in my jacket pocket. It was a very dark brown, almost black fisher about 28 to 32 inches long I'd say.
I did experiment with using aero bar extensions as my sleeping pad carrier last night. It worked well. Road bars and the wide sleeping pad I was using were a bit limiting. I think it holds more promise in the warmer months of holding both my sleeping bag and a sleeping pad. Look for some more experimentation with this in the future as I think it could work very well with mountain handlebars. Potentially, a more intentional bend of the current aero bar extensions could hold both items out in front of the handlebar with no brake lever interference.
And yes, folks. Put that one down in the record books! Kid Riemer is using aero bars! Booyah!
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