For the first time since moving from bike-friendly Berkeley to car-crazy SoCal, I can commute to work on my bike!!! I recently transferred offices to one that is 50 miles closer to home... only nine miles away. Seeing as my hard tail was going to be getting a lot more road miles, I decided it was time to go all disc and get some light(er) 700c (aka 29er) wheels and skinny road tires. I had been using 26x1.25 tires on a second set of wheels, but you don't get a very tall gear with those - 44x12 times an effective wheel diameter of 24.5 inches. So I found an inexpensive Mavic 317/Deore wheelset and a BB7 for the rear (front was disc already). Getting the rear rack around the brake was a bit of a challenge, but nothing that a bit of engineering, rooting around in the spare parts box, and metal bending couldn't fix. Also had the challenge of finding the bracket that would allow me to mount the disc brakes on the rear end of my c.2000 Trek 8500 - http://www.socaltrailriders.org/forum/workshop/22220-disc-o-mount.html. Got it all together last week including the matching tire color (those long forgotten roadie roots are starting to show). The final touch was a tighter cluster for the road. I had forgotten how nice it is to always have the perfect gear. Between the 11-21 cluster and the 700x25 tires at 100 psi, I can really roll on my way to work. Shifting was a bit rough on the first ride, probably because the deraileur rides so far off the cassette now. But after backing the tension screw all the way out, the shifting has improved. Coming soon... a rant on the missing pieces of Vista's bike lanes.
I remember riding through Vista 20 some years ago as a kid on my cool Cherokee hybrid bike. It was before I got a car and the only way I could get around during my early teen years. I used to...yes this is severely nerdy...ride to the local used book stores to trade in books and if I ws lucky grab up some comics. Wow, those were the days. I actually read an article in Trailrunner magazine about this guy who goes back and runs where he ran in high school...I should grab the road bike and go take a journey. Thanks for sparking the memories! :beer:
