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...

I took my Salsa Woodsmoke out to the Maryland Mountain trail system, and even with the 27.5+ tires, I could tell I was underbiked, and it was making the whole experience harder than it needed to be. This inspired me to start looking at full suspension mountain bikes, with a wary eye towards geometry numbers. You see, I'd owned a 2019 Jamis Portal A2 before. It was awful. It was slow and uninspiring going uphill or on the flats, and it wasn't terribly confidence inspiring on the descents. The long reach and slack seat tube angle gave me nerve pain in the hands, even with ergo grips, 50mm riser bars, and a 35mm stem. The long wheelbase made it hard to steer and corner. I hated it, and decided that I must hate mountain bikes in general. Then I got on the Woodsmoke, which I loved riding, and that changed everything. The bike was comfortable, efficient, and fast. It was far more fun on climbs and descents, and the shorter chainstays really helped with cornering. Setup as a comfort/t...

 With the downfall of the Cutsmoke , the nice drop bar gravel kit on that bike is going to become available for scavenging. I probably won't build out a mechanical brake gravel or road bike - I'd rather get a nice complete build that has everything fitted out. So, what can I bring over? Brifters - Ultegra R8000 11 speed Hell yeah - the bar end shifters are fine, but the brifters are so much nicer for a road/gravel build. And I don't think it's going to matter much for a road touring bike. I've never had an issue with my brifters, and my bar ends (while reliable) are more annoying and finicky. Brakes - Spyre SLC Hell yeah - the Hayes CX brakes on there currently aren't great. This will drop weight and improve performance. Rear Derailleur ? GRX 812 This is a possibility - I need a rear derailleur to match the Ultegra brifters. The GRX 812 has been fantastic with the 10-42 cassette I've been running. It's a 1x specific derailleur, so I would need for this t...

Alright, it's been about six months with the drop bar Woodsmoke, and I'm on the verge of another change. I've named the drop bar Woodsmoke `Cutsmoke`. Overall, it's been great. I got it fully setup and tuned and fitted for bikepacking. I have not actually gone bikepacking on it due to illness, injury, some work stuff, and a busy life.  Unfortunately, it has some issues as a drop bar bike. The 67.8 degree head tube angle is pretty slack for a drop bar bike. It doesn't feel stable at speed. And the high stack + steerer tube + angled stem feels pretty wonky at speed while descending on the road. It handles rough gravel and singletrack superbly, but it's just not a great application as a road or gravel bike. No shit! Meanwhile, the medium Woodsmoke has been absolutely stellar - with the fast gravel wheelset on there, it's extremely quick. The flat bars work great for the head tube angle, even on gravel. It has a larger frame triangle, so the frame bag is bigger ...