Hey, I am in Colorado With bikes

Two days of driving landed me in Lyons CO, a town of ~2000 just north of Boulder.

Dave Chase, of Redstone Cyclery, invited me to join the regular Tuesday night ride, which has been going every week, year-round, since 1999.

Being it is the first week of daylight savings time we had glorious sun for the start. Twenty riders gather and roll off to Hall Ranch. This is a daytime-only county park, so up and down before dark. The main feature here is the Rock Garden, up the natural rock of the ridge. A challenge in both directions. I was suffering with engine trouble on the climb, though the On-One Carbon 456 with Mary Bars was handling it well. Felt better coming down--with three step over the bars endos. Need to blame the cockpit nut again!

Wednesday again was a pleasant day. Chad was my guide for Picture Rock Trail, again starting from the bike shop. Fairly smooth easy grade, then the rocks started again. Colorado has rocks. Rocks in the Rocky Mountains, who'd a thunk? But I like rocks. Just takes some getting use to. There is a different rhythm to rocks I find fun and interesting. On the Titus FTM Carbon with On-One Midge dropbars this time. First ride out and I seem to have hit the suspension setup fairly well. Ran the Pike U-Turn fork at 120mm and never changed that on the trail. No crashes. A few Woo-Hoo moments, and a break to help a cute woman with a broken derailleur hanger/RD.

Tomorrow is the Front Range Cyclist Bicycle Show in Colorado Springs. I will be setup with six bikes, frames and bars from On-One and Titus. Stop by and we can trade stories.

Monstercross or 29er, circa 1993

In the early '90s I spent a year or two riding my Trek 750 Multitrack cyclocross bike (steel using Trek's 26" MTB lugs) as my mountain bike. 45mm tires just fit in the rear, though I usualy ran 42mm for clearance. Rode that bike everywhere and loved how it rolled over things.

Dreaming about full width mtb tires (and 2.0" tires were still considerec the normal width then) for it inspired me to design this bike.

It was a mountain bike then. More likely to be called a monstercross now. And similar to my current favorite bike I had built a few years ago, "Hermie".

I can do almost anything on Hermie. From road rides to back country trails. If I could have only one bike, this would be it--or the one that will follow it.

See you Out There,
-shiggy