Big Basin road bike ride

This ain't boys in the hood, it's boys in the woods. Folks, don't do this at home, you'll just get a lot of flat tires . Yes, that's us riding our road bikes in Big Basin park, a great place for mountian bikes. Of course, this group started riding in the dirt long before mountain bikes so this was a chance to re-live past stupidities. Fortunately, nobody crashed and we were treated to riding down 25 miles of hwy. 1 with about 2,200 Aids Lifecycle riders. That's a lof of traffic on a narrow road. Don't try that at home, either.

Tig Team Euro 'cross fameset in the raw

Here's a 'cross frame that will be good for the woods. The fork looks like a normal cyclocross fork but the blades are a tiny bit bigger profile and the wall thickness of the steel is about 20 % thicker than a stock blade. Nothing like having the steel where you need it the most , especially if you are riding in the back country on some rough trails. Here it is, 14 years later and I'm still doing the wavy gussetts.......kind of a nautical theme....lobsters ? Ocean ? Waves? -Makes sense to me. An engineer would tell you that the wavy line actually helps distribute the stresses over a longer distance. An engineer might tell you that I'm full of it....he would most likely be correct on both accounts. All I know is that these bikes never come back bent , not without a really good reason like hitting a tree at 25 m.p.h. ! I finally sprung for some 1/2" cro-mo tubing for making curved bridges again...I gpt really tired of looking through my scrap tubing box for the right stuff.

Team ride # 3 and a stepthrough town frame&fork

Wow, it's the old west.....actually, it's just a bunch of tourists at Wilder Ranch state part on a wagon ride at twilight. We passed them on our way out of the park after a crash cut the ride short. One of the guys next to my truck overcooked a turn and did some backsurfing on the trail.....not a smooth ride. No broken bones, though and we managed to ride out without needing any assistance.

It seems like this is the spring of the low-standover frames. I have built two this month and I'm sure there will be more. It's a cool design that allows for the standover while retaining structural robustness........is that a word ? -I didn't think so. Hey, this is the internet so we have poetinc license....mine might be expired, though. This customer requested a flat-top fork crown. Lucky for me, there's a nice one that fits the 1 1/8" steerer and is great to work with. Monday I'll finish the alignment and do some fifnish work on the crown and dropouts. No color choice as yet.....wonder what it will be.

Tig team s.l. 'cross

The big tire 'cross bike has been making a comeback in the last year. This edition is made for 700x38 tires with room for fenders , a feat only acheived with a 405 mm length fork and some MTB chainstays. All of the tubes in the rear triangle have been tweaked a little for the tire room and to give a more interesting lines to the normally bland single-bend tubes. This frame is for a mechanic at the local shop just up the road from me. It will be primarily a commuting machine .

what do you say to someone 4'10" who wants 700c wheels ?

Well, I could have said no but I remember a bike I made about four years ago . If you are willing to be a little creative it's amazing what a few minor changes can get you in terms of fitting a wider range of people who just might be on the diminutive side. This woman has raced cyclocross on a 26" wheel bike and was really not liking the beating she got from the small wheels finding holes, rather than rolling over them. Now she can roll over them-I just hope that she can steer this bike with the same authority she steered the 26" wheel bike. If that is the case, she'll go faster.

In it's own private Idaho

Yes, it is true-this bike is now in Idaho. I guess if I were Dan Quayle I would say it is in Idahoe because of all the potatoes up there. This bike is what they call 'burly' where I live. Sturdy 36 spoke wheels with Phil Wood hubs, Tange Presitge 'ultrastrong' main tubes and a stout steel fork. It may be stylish but it can be beaten savagely on the choppy tarmac of Boise.

That set of bars kind of gives the bike a look of, "Hey, Iv'e only got 5 minutes to get to my 17th century English lit class!".....at least that's the image that I see in my feeble brain .

Is this the first official single-speed MTB ?

Back in the mid '80's I got the notion to build a single speed mountain bike. People were riding single speeds in the dirt and a few races even had a single speed class but nobody was building a bike specifically for such racing, at least until this one was built in about May of 1987. It might have been the first time I used a wishbone style seatstay, a primitive handbuilt one. The bike also had a 24" rear wheel and a 26" front , a combo that I thought would make the bike accelerate easier while kepping the front end stable and familiar. At the time single speeding in the dirt was a hard sell but once I tired it I was pretty much hooked. It was fun to sprint away from folks on thier fully laden geared bikes weighing much more .The lack of chain slap made the bike almost silent on the trail, a real treat. I guess it caught on eventually...