Carbon Fridays

Still no frame yet. Waiting and waiting. I put my name in for another waiting game just the other day. After all this time you'd think I'd be sick of it, but now I'm preparing for some more. A recent opportunity came along that might jeopardize my 2009 race bike selection. In a good way. You know I'm talking to you. I am ready to throw down big time. I am stepping it up huge this winter. I want some. I want to not falter once this season. I don't want to be the best, but be my best. I want to only be slow after ridiculously hard and long efforts of endless fun and pain.

If I don't trip your trigger. Don't worry. I'll fill you in on all the juicy details anyways. I'll dangle pictures of awesome rides and awesome friends (mostly new I hope). I'll give it my all either way. I'm just down that way. I also won't promise you that I won't falter. Sometimes those days just come a long. One thing I will do is drive myself into the ground to finish with out those little evil letters DNF after my name. Those letters are just about the worst letters I've ever seen in my life.

I also promise to be myself. That's all I ever am. I am obsessively technical by nature. I don't rest til I can provide the best possible service to my clientele. I know you can't ask them, but if you did they would tell you that they sometimes wish I would shut up. Others will tell you I go to know end to make sure their equipment is the most quality, smoothest running around. I come from a backround of techs that make me question how I opperate and conduct myself every day. I thank them for that. At my most impressionable time in life and probably the peak of my personal irresponsibility, they helped influence me to be that obsessive, but professional tech.

Enough rambling. I want this opportunity though. Got in the Gunnar Rockhound Roadie's fork in today. A brand new Easton EC90 SL fork. They had a nifty little threaded portion of their steerer tube so that you install the compression plug. That way there isn't any dropping it into the bottom of the fork and such. Nice. I love Easton's carbon products. I just wish they would make a wider carbon flat bar. Same with Bontrager for that matter. Salsa's wider bars are insanely popular in carbon and aluminum. Are you guys paying attention to the market? Oh well Bontrager's Race Lite Big sweep is as light as their Race X Lite carbon bar anyways.

On another note a customer of mine finally came back to talk about her replacement for her kind of ancient Trek 1600 WSD. We had talked about getting her into a 700c wheel since Trek has kind of dropped the 650c wheel. Which isn't bad. At all. So I thought she might want to get into a carbon frame, but little did I know she was ready to roll. She didn't buy but went straight for the 5.2 WSD. It had the Ultegra SL components she wanted, and after talking about their new seat mast design, she really was interested with the smoothness it provided. I wouldn't lie about something like that. It really is smooth.

Otherwise I had to deliver that little carbon goodness over to El Jefe's so that Rockhound could get his pretty in pink Roadie shorn up. I had ridden into work so I rolled across town and plowed some snow and ice. Got to Jefe's in decent time and hung out for a while. I'll tell you this much, riding with a backpack with a carbon fork box sticking out bumping up against your helmet is interesting. Everything went as planned. Then I turned around, rode back to Coralville for a minor beer tasting session at Regal Liquors. Drank 4 samples of beer I had never had. My father showed up and decided I needed a 6er to take home and a Samuel Smith Winter Welcome. This made for a heavy slow ride home. After 20 miles on the Monster Truck (50% harder and heavier to ride than my other bikes, but way more fun on snow) I had 6 more to go. With the majority of climbing to come as I headed home, I tickled my 30t cog and lived in my 26t.

Long day, long week. Now I just need to get out and ski sometime this weekend. It is going to have to be early am or late pm seeing as I work all weekend. I'm out.