Ludwig

I blew up the R7 fork on my single speed last night. I am a tad bummed. I bought the fork used from someone on the MMBA bulletin board this winter; it is always kind of hit and miss with used parts. 90% of the parts I buy are used.

I like bikes. I really do. I have been accused of being a Ludwig, probably because I was the last racer in Michigan to give up his cantilever brakes. I am not a Ludwig; it just takes a lot to convince me to change. My current geared bike is 17 years old, I just replaced the frame, fork, and components a couple of times. It started out as a 1992 Cannondale and slowly morphed into a Barracuda, then a Kona, then a Litespeed, then finally into my Felt hard tail.

At the same time I owned my Cannondale/Barracuda/Kona/Litespeed/Felt, I have owned sexier bicycles, as the picture of my Yeti will prove, but I am faster on the tame trails of Michigan with my hard tale. I poured over my heart rate data/split times to prove that to myself. At any given heart rate, my time to complete the 7 mile Murray Lake loop is almost 2 minutes faster on my hard tale. Or, comparing the same lap times between the two bikes, my average heart rate is about 4 BPM lower on my hard tale. Right, I spent a summer figuring this out. The disc brakes worked much better on my Yeti than the V-brakes on my hard tale, and full suspension certainly smoothed out the trail, and my Yeti clearly handled better but I am faster on my Felt. The Felt is much lighter and I guess that is the thing. It is hard to build a 21 lb full suspension bike. In a perfect world I would have kept both bikes but I live in an imperfect world full of mortgage payments and dance lessons. Something had to give, and it was my Yeti.

This winter I had the Chris King rear hub serviced and had the SID rebuilt even though I wasn’t having issues with either. I am about to replace the drive line even though it works fine. My bike will not be an excuse this season.