Specialized BG Fit

For a really long time now, I've been talking about getting a fit from Isaac to make sure I was 100% on my bike. It was more important to me that I be fit on the Tarmac because the Guru is custom geometry, and was always the more comfortable of the two bikes. The last round of changes I did to the Tarmac before I disassembled it made it feel fantastic, and after taking measurements, everything was identical to my Guru with the exception of the stem. The Guru has a 100mm stem flipped to -6*, the Tarmac had a 90mm stem flipped to +8*. Measuring from the saddle, the drop to the bar was identical, the Guru had a bit more reach.

To Tubeless? Or Not To Tubeless?

I was in the shop the other day, and a customer I sold a Roubaix to, who is a huge MTBer, stood there looking at me funny. In his defense, I had two 29er tubes and rim tape hanging from my neck. I had just made a StumpJumper tubeless (or 2bliss as Specialized likes to call it) and we got to talking.

Hed Belgium + Chris King = YesPlease

Title says it all. I went out on a 2.5 hour CX ride with Jude and Jeremy (wrench and sales guys from the shop and all around awesome guys) and it was fantastic. Jude knows a lot of trails in the area and he showed us some that I had never been on around Betzwood. We skipped the more MTB type terrain and just stuck with some single track and rooty, rocky dirt trails. About half of the trails I had been on before with my cross bike, and I would get bounced around and have a hard time pedaling out of things. So I was blown away today when I just rolled over roots and barely felt it. The bike is so much more comfortable in every situation. They're noticeably stiffer as well. Because of the wider rim, the tire is pulled wider and the handling is much improved, both on road and off.

The bottom line is I'm stoked. I may end up running a tubeless set of the Captain CX tires I'm running now (which are just awesome, by the way), in the future, and word of mouth is that the feel of the Belgium rims with tubeless tires is pretty close to a tubular. Seeing as how I just rotated the tires for the first time a few weeks ago, I'm pretty sure I have a lot of time before that will happen. But it is on the list. If you're looking for a custom built wheel, road or cross, look into this combo.

Wheel Build

I built up my first set of wheels on Thursday. Both Jude and Ryan from the shop guided me through the process, and Jude actually finished off the build when I ran out of time. He was even nice enough to clean my cassette for me. He's kind of awesome.

Tough Breaks

I haven't been writing anything lately because I've been riding my bike like crazy. I've been taking Power Advantage classes at the shop (PowerTap training classes) and riding at the very least on Sundays. Usually more.

My Tarmac has been up for sale on Craigslist for the past two weeks. After over a month of front end shifting just getting worse and worse, it finally got to the point where I couldn't shift in the front at all. It was found to be a fatigued braze-on and after two calls to the inside rep at Specialized, we never heard anything from them. I'm not happy about it at all, and if I buy another road bike, it wont be a Specialized. I'm not saying I will never own another one of their bikes, and I'm not going to bad mouth them beyond "I'm seriously disappointed."