Showing that facial hair and a questionable past are no excuse for poor bike riding, the bike racer formerly known as Clark Natwick's experiment spent some time at the sharp end of things this past weekend. Photo by Paul Weiss, blatantly poached from here: http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/downeast-cyclocross-day-2-c2/stages/stage-2/photos/93450

Our boy Kirt Fitzpatrick managed to get some good digs in last weekend in Gloucester, in what can only be described as prime cyclocross conditions. He managed to spend some quality time alone with his thoughts off the front before, in his words, he began to feel very old. Still, it does us proud to see him doing so well. Full results and a race report of the event can be found here, courtesy of the edge-of-your seat wordsmiths at cyclingnews.com. Admittedly, the real big dogs were in Kentucky putting the hurt to each other, but New England ‘cross is still about as feisty as it gets. For a sort of surreal view of what it’s like to get spattered with mud, debate line choices, get in a shoving match with the perennial elite roadblock of east coast racing – Adam Myerson – not to mention experience just a distant sniff of the slogging hell that trying to go fast in mud and grass involves for those who are actually fast (unlike the guy writing this, who is certifiably slow), Kirt went so far as to make a video, complete with footnotes. Warning, ‘cross specificity follows:

Downeast Cross 2009, Day Two from Kirt on Vimeo.

ouch.

Speaking of ‘cross, Halloween approaches, along with the phoenix rising from the ashes that is the truly beautiful and resurgent Surf City Cyclocross Series. that can only mean one thing. People dressing in costumes and racing bikes. Dunno if I am jaded, old, or just too slow to care anymore, but somehow the idea of racing in costume doesn’t really get my man-juices flowing. Maybe it came from racing for Bob Seals way back when. Maybe it stems from my frustration at not being Promethean enough in my thinking to rig up the giant beer can outfit that I wanted to use to decimate the mid-pack of the expert field at Mammoth in 1995. Maybe I just got one too many up close testicle views at DFL races before the millenium turned the corner. Hell, I dunno. Why ask why? It’s Halloween, dammit, and THERE WILL BE COSTUMES! But I still won’t have it together enough to rig a giant beer can in time. Would probably be hell on the run-ups anyway… And people would make fun of my baseball hat turned backward style.

As an aside, just gotta point out that the logo for surf city this year flat out rules.

From here on down, pretty much everything will do that wonderful "click to make big" magic...

You can even download one for your very own bad self here. And, by the way, we’re sponsoring that there series with some Stigmata frames. No idea how the heck they intend to disburse said sponsorship yet, but the series is only half over. So there’s time. Email David Gill, or punch him in the arm this weekend, and ask what the fuck he intends to do with those sweet Stigmatas we’re throwing his way. Sure hope he doesn’t raffle them…

Since we’re talking about wheels larger than 26″ for now, and since I’ve been spending most of my time riding wagon wheel bikes lately, and since mentioning 29″ wheels is about the only thing that makes traffic spike here, we might as well take a few minutes to talk some more Tallboy talk. First, someone was asking on one of them there interweb forums if we could show a picture of the XL and XXL Tallboys. So, I snapped a pic of each and every size standing next to each other, each with exactly the same amount of seatpost showing:

Somehow, I was expecting the differences in frame size to be more dramatic than this. As it is, you gotta give credit to the engineers to making sure one of the bikes looked to hideously out of proportion. In order to be able to check the differences for sure, you gotta look at the shock/link seattube junction...

See? Medium...

Large...

X-large

... and the granddaddy of them all, MAGNUM. No, wait. Wrong caption. XXL.

Meanwhile, as previously stated, I’ve been kicking around on this nag:

Not everyone will see the humor in describing a bike with wheels that cost more than some cars as a nag. Please take that witha grain of salt. It's not a nag. It's a very nice bike with some REALLY NICE wheels on it. Seriously, these wheels kick ass. Bike is seen here relaxing on a pile of tires after a rough morning of binge and purge fun with the scale.

How nice are those wheels? Well, with a set of WTB Prowler 2.1 tires on there, this size large bike weighs 26 pounds on the nose. With tubes in the tires. With pedals. With XT. With regular old alloy brake levers and steel rotors and bolts. With a Fox F100RLC fork and a 15mm axle. Probably a half to full pound lighter than most other “more affordable” wheels, but so much stiffer and snappy that it is kinda scary. Light and stiff. Good. If we wanted to geek out and really shed some pounds, going upmarket in brakes and cranks, not to mention cassette, it would be pretty easy to get down to 24.5 or so pounds. Then if we wanted to forego traction, we could put some victim tires on there and scrap another half pound to pound, depending on where your definition of victim lies.

It’s a good bike as it sits right now though. Good enough that I’m beginning to rethink some of my general reservations about the wheel size. Had a totally mind blowing experience in the rocks and gnarl of the Lakes Basin weekend before last , confirming that what a lot of folk are saying about big wheels and rocks might actually have some truth to it. And then had a pretty damn good weekend locally here a few days ago that left me grinning all the way until this morning. Then the boss came and stole the bike back from me today. Bugger! I’ll take it as a positive sign that I actually wish he hadn’t done that.

For more good words on this bike and 29ers in general, I’ll leave you with this gem example of damning with faint praise from our New Zealand desk, one of whom is apparently overstaying his welcome in Canada. With praise like this, how can we lose?

Really, this is one of the best things in life. How else could you describe sitting in a deck chair and having some bald gorilla three sheets to the wind launch a 14-pound RC car at your head while all your friends cheer wildly and at the same time brace for impact? Heyliger proves why he is tougher than anyone, while Forrest Arakawa manages to stop laughing just long enough to snap the shutter...

Something about running off to the mountains for a weekend with your friends and families, and convening in a remote place with good food, good bikes, good trails and probably too much booze, that makes for the kind of psychic reset that eludes most of us down in the real world most of the time. Of course, when there’s the added bonus of either fireworks or guns or way too powerful RC cars thrown into the mix, things can get “interesting.”

Anyway, we packed ourselves last weekend up to the Lakes Basin, and to the Graeagle Lodge specifically, for the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship’s annual end of season ho-down. As in years past, the crew didn’t disappoint. Not one bit. We got to stay here:

And it ruled! (strange-angel with the photo credit)

We got to get a taste of some freshly built trail:

And it ruled too! (strange-angel again...)

The freshly built trail in question was the first taste of a mega-chunk of trail planning and building that the SBTS has slated for the land around Mills Peak, Haskell Peak, Mohawk Valley and the Sierra Valley, that, when finished, will have opened up 45 miles of new singletrack right across Lakes Basin highway from the already established shit-ton of trails that drop toward Downieville. Except these will drop to the east, and the town of Graeagle, where the margaritas are better:

Click to make this legible. Gonna be a whole lot of new trails to explore pretty soon!

While out sniffing around in the land of new trails, we got to leave inspirational trail markings for the more leisurely of our group:

This is how you spell "we love you" with Sugar Pine cones. Strange-angel again with the shot.

And while we were waiting for said loved ones, we had time to soak in the view:

It's probably Enervit, or maybe Gu, in that hip flask. Probably...

There was a whole mess of ass kicking climbing, followed by a whole mess of rocky sweet singletrack, which inevitably included fixing flats in one of the most scenic places on earth:

We ate like kings:

Really, we ate like kings. And Queens:

And eventually, we had to pack up and come home. Which kind of sucked. But at least we got some epic riding in, we learned about some big picture goodness, we had a blast, and we got to take home memories that we wouldn’t have found anywhere else. Heyliger’s dog might not want to remember everything, but hey, so it goes:

No dogs were harmed in the jumping of this RC car... Arakawa-san again

Huge thanks to everyone for another awesome year!