Matt's Bike Thoughts

    Nextie and Light Bicycle are two Chinese manufacturers of bike wheels. The Chinese make really light  carbon, and at pretty great prices. I purchased a set of XC wheels that I'm using as my gravel bike wheelset with DT Swiss 240EXP hubs and ultralight rims - the set weighs about 1200g and takes off like a rocket ship. The total cost was $1,415, with $137 of shipping costs.     However, at the end of 2021, have supply chains been sufficiently wrecked that local carbon is a better deal? Or, at least, a more palatable deal? Let's compare some wheel builds on Nextie, LightBicycle, as well as some domestic wheel manufacturers, like ENVE, Zipp, Roval, etc.     We'll start with ENVE and use them as a benchmark. Then I'll configure a comparably specced wheel from Nextie and Light Bicycle and report weight as well as total price. Finally, we'll look at other brands, and see what makes sense. An aside - aero? on  gravel??      ENVE's blog...

     Alright, now that the Salsa Cutsmoke is gone, I've been craving a fast drop bar bike. I thought I'd be happy with the Woodsmoke flat bar build and small tires, but I'm running into some limitations! Namely, the chainring is too small, and there's some annoyance with having to swap to a rigid fork/seatpost for more competitive gravel rides. The flat bars are an aerodynamic problem and  a comfort problem. Lastly, the handling is just not appropriate for road rides, though given the limited gearing and aerodynamics, I can't really spend that much time at the speed where that's a problem.     However, the acceleration is amazing, and the short (417mm) chainstays are incredible for power transfer and stiffness. I like that. Can I get that and even more?      This has me perusing a road/gravel bike. Why a slash? Well, let's look at my stable at this point in time: Soma Saga - Heavy duty steel touring bike with racks, fenders, dynamo, 50mm tire...

According to Strava, I've put about 56 miles on the  Fezzari La Sal Peak (initial review here) . I've had the chance to try it out twice at Green Mountain (a popular Denver trail system) as well as Maryland Mountain (with the relatively new downhill-only mountain bike trail, Fast Money). These are some of my favorite trails in the area, and Fast Money is the trail that inspired me to get a full suspension bike in the first place. tl;dr: I'm returning the bike. Marketing Claims This is my main beef with the Fezzari, and it came out in my initial unboxing review. Water Bottles Let's talk hydration. Virtually no longer travel bike can take two water bottles. Salsa's new bikes can do it, but rely on Superboost for their wheel standards (yuck). The La Sal Peak website claims multiple times to be able to carry two water bottle cages, and this is a pretty big selling point for the bike. 2 water bottles "Holds Two Bottles" again without disclaimer Almost all revie...

 The Ripmo Deore build costs $5299, while the XT build is $6899 - that's a difference of $1,600. That's a lot of money - where is it all going? For the most part, the components are all the same. Let's look at the differences: Every Deore item is XT Brakes - $425 Rotors - $58 Cranks - $160 Bottom Bracket - $33 Rear Derailleur - $120 Shifter - $63 Cassette - $165 Chain - $46 Handlebars are the Ibis 800mm HiFi (which is made of carbon fiber). $169. Seatpost is a Bike Yoke Revive instead of the KS Rage-i dropper. Posts are slightly larger on the BIke Yoke. This is a $400 dropper. Stem is an Industry Nine A318 instead of Ibis. $155 stem. All told, that adds up to $1,852 of components. So if you bought a Deore Ripmo and upgraded the entire thing to this kit, you'd have spent $253 more than just buying XT to begin with - but you'd have a bunch of Deore stuff, too, which you could probably resell for more than the difference. This assumes that you're not paying for lab...