Its been awhile.

Well its been awhile since my last post. A bunch has been going on and I have had my hands in a few too many projects. Here it goes.

-One of my cycling buddies crashed it up pretty good at a crit a couple weeks ago... Long story short, the handle bars swung around in the crash (20ish mph probably) and cracked the Top tube pretty good. Fixed it up for him and his Specialized Tarmac SL3 is on the road again.

 Ready for compression

 A fancy package from SRAM came today. Nice.

 At only 8 ozs heavier than my steel rigid fork, I think the Reba will stay on for awhile.

 Standard Byke Co. knocked out another killer custom DJ frame. This one is for my brother. Pretty crazy how things work out in life. My brother bought me my first Standard for Christmas, and now I was involved in designing this custom frame for him!>

-Got my Moped running pretty good. Now has a ridiculous expansion chamber pipe on it. 34 MPH. It will soon have a 70 kit on it and it should cruise at 45 all day.

Moped stripped down for some cleaning.

 My buddy Jason is a Professor at ISU and his students built a "Cyclodrome" for a class project. This is actually "Unofficially" the worlds smallest Velodrome. At only 25 meters around, its even smaller than the Red Bull mini-drome.
 I brought four bikes with me. My Custom Standard 250-S Cruiser, Bamboo bike, Ibis Tandem and my cross bike for some friends to borrow. I took a lap on each and it was a blast. The surface was EXTREMELY slippery and finally decided I would race my 250-S.... and the Tandem!!! People thought I was nuts and riding the tandem wouldnt be possible because of how tight the turns were. Well I proved everybody wrong and rocked it on the tandem with my friend Kim stoking on the back.
-The race worked like this. You had two time trials and your fastest time over 6 laps seeded you into a bracket. Once you were in the bracket, we raced Pursuit style (two people racing against each other). First person to catch the other rider won, or the first person to finish 6 laps.
First heat, I started off fast, got one lap in, and on the leading turn, washed out terribly. My bike flew off the track, hit the wall and bounced back into the velodrome. Lowered my tire pressure, and knocked out the fastest 6 laps on my first go. 19.68 seconds.
Second Heat, I was still figuring out the track, but with no falls and trying to stay on the red line, I came in at a blistering 18.28 seconds. Over a full second faster than my first lap.

 Run number one. If you want to see how slippery it is, watch my foot slip and slide around before I start. Those were skate shoes with plenty of rummer on the bottom too.

 Tandem run. So fun. In the turns I could literally feel the fork flex from so much torque on the bars through the tight turn.

 Pursuing Kim Topp. The Womens World Champ, and Tandem World Champ!

The last race came down to me and a guy named Chris. We started and Chris wiped out on the 3rd turn. Bummer. I gave him another shot because I really didnt want to win that way. Second race, same thing. wiped out on turn 3. The third race was the final, it took a couple laps but I finally caught him and they called the race.  I won! I am the World Champion of the worlds smallest velodrome! And I won coolest bike with my Ibis tandem!

Because this was the World Championship of Cyclodrome racing, the Men's and Women's winner both get a trophy and a World Champ Cyclodrome tattoo from the one and only Dan from Yankee Doodle Dandy Tattoo in DSM and the owner of ICHI Bike. Awesome!!!! Me and Kim will be getting out matching tattoo's on Tuesday!

 Here is the tire mark I placed on the wall when I washed out. Pretty insane. Thats about 7' high!

Jason shot this picture after the cyclodrome was taken down. He didnt wash the mark off the wall and it will most likely stay there. Located at the King Pavillion in the College of Design building at ISU, its likely going to get some interesting looks. Kind of like this one.

Bamboo Cross Bike. Done for now

Well here she is! After several weeks of building I finally put it together to make sure everything works/feels good. Took it out for a test ride last night, and despite it being built up with a bunch of super random parts I had just laying around, it. rode. awesome.  And what do you know, I'm sitting here and all of my teeth are still intact! The front end is MUCH stiffer than my first frame, and the geometry feels spot on. There is still a lot of work to do to finish the frame and make it look pretty, but for now im pretty burnt out on it until I find a carbon disc fork for cheap. Heres a couple pictures along the build...

Top tube repairs on a S-Works....

Last week Maria was out on a ride, while clipping in, bam....slipped out of her pedal and her lady parts landed right on top of the already fragile top tube of her Specialized Ruby. Cracked.
Ive been working with carbon fiber recently, and it looked like a super simple and quick repair. The tube wasn't seperated, but there was a healthy crack right across the tube.

I sanded it done for further inspection and then wrapped some 12k tow in a 45 degree lay-up base layer,  extending a couple inches on either side of the crack.

 Ready to wrap

 MMMMM WET

 I laid the top layer of carbon in a tighter pattern to fill voids.

 Bam! Two days later! Done! Too bad the carbon doesnt match the rest of the frame, but hey, at least its ridable again!

Have a broken frame that is out of warranty? Ill do carbon repairs for dirt cheap (Think about a tenth of the price that Calfee charges) I fully stand behind all my work, but I cant guarantee anything and you are fully responsible for yourself. I can sure save your frame from heading to the dumpster if you don't want to shell out the cash for Calfee.
-Ride on

A visit to Standard Byke Company

Made another visit to Standard today to talk about some new projects...
Getting some final work done on my 29R, as well as a cyclocross frame for this season. Also talked about my brothers DJ frame and gave Rick and Steve some frame drawings. Some pretty sweet frames will be coming out of Standard here pretty soon! They are killing it down there and constantly raising the bar on custom frames. Spent a couple hours down there today BS'ing and while we were at it I shot some photos. Enjoy!

Bone Bender 2011!!!

Well this past weekend was Bone Bender. What a great time.
We left early Saturday morning to head down to Lawrence, Kansas. We left Ames in some real shitty weather, and it was cloudy and cold all the way until we got into Kansas (Apparently known as the Florida of the midwest). We got there around one or so, checked into the hotel, had some beers, stopped at an awesome sandwich shop then hit the trail.
We rode the entire race loop and under first impression it was rocky as hell. The first 15 minutes of the trail was rougher than shit on my rigid and there werent too many good lines. Oh well! The rest of the course was awesome. Perfect singletrack, cool techy rock sections, downhills, not too many uphills, creek crossings and so on. The last section of the trail was some pretty techy rock uphill stuff, so I usually just walked it. When riding a single speed, you realize that sometimes running hills is faster than trying to pedal them.

After the ride, we went to the packet pickup at 23rd st. brewery, Good food, and great beer. They had a delicious House Porter and a pretty darn good Pale. After the food, we went back to the hotel and we started having a couple drinks and did some last minute tune-ups on maria and amys bikes. Brass Monkey was the choice of drink for me that night, and might have been the source of my problem that I will later discuss.

Race Report:
Woke up nice and early Sunday morning to get prepared for the race. Got the tent set up next to our buddies at Geoffs bike and ski, and the dudes from Rassmussen bike shop. Hell, partying with those guys during the race sounded more fun the riding for six hours!

Anyway, the race was a Le Mans start which was awesome. They started us on the bottom of a big gravel hill, had to run up, grab our bike and ride about a half mile before we dipped into the single track. I knew there was going to be a huge bottle neck, even with the Le Mans start, So I got the whole shot and was the first on my bike.

I spun my ass off down the road but quickly got passed by all the geared fast people. On the first hill in the single track, I had to dismount but I quickly got up the hill. The ladies were telling me towards the back of the pack there was a ten minute wait to even get into the single track. Bummer! I was getting past a lot, but stayed on the tail of Aaron from Geoff's, for awhile at least. Lap number one came in a 52 minutes and it felt great. My legs felt better than even and the rocks werent bothering me too much. I dont think I drank nearly enough water so on lap two I grabbed a new bottle and made it my job to stay hydrated. Lap 2 was about 53 minutes and I was still feeling top notch. I was pacing myself with my heart rate probably never getting above 150.

Lap three is where it all fell apart. I stayed in the lead all the way until the last 10 min of the lap. I cramped. Bad.  I seriously thought i was out of the race. I sucked down a full bottle of cytomax, had three gu packets, 3 electrolyte pills and a energy bar hoping to solve my cramping legs. But I was going to finish, Every couple miles I ate some nutrition and drank water and my legs seemed to loosen up. Cool. Lap three was 1:03hr. Ten minutes slower. Lap four started. Even worse. It was to the point if I stood up to climb, or dismounted to walk a rocky hill, my legs would lock up. Quads first, then calfs then hip flexors.  I limped my way on lap 4, ending with a 1:13hr lap. I wasnt the only one cramping out there either, I went back and forth with a couple people with each of us stopping to clench our legs in agony. Lap five my body hated me. In addition to my legs cramping, my fingers, hands, triceps, and neck were all starting to cramp up. Damn, maybe the amount of alcohol I consumed the day prior wasnt such a good idea. Hydrate kids!!!!!!! Lap five I put the pain behind me because I knew I wanted to finish the race. I was not backing out. The last two laps were 1:08 then 1:06. Got past by another SS dude on the fifth lap which ment I came out in 3rd place. Not bad for how terrible I felt. Overall it was a a pretty damn good race aside from cramping. Ill for sure be back next year to do it again and hopefully finish on top of the podium!

Racing bone bender rigid was a big mistake. The amount of rocks on the trail killed my hands and arms, next year I will have front suspension for sure. I thought the course was awesome on the SS and had no complaints there!

After the race I was wiped, but It was great getting to hang out with the folks from Iowa City and Des Moines. Kim, Amy, Maria and Heather came down with me and they made the weekend a blast! Who new racing with a bunch of women could be so fun... Ha!