This is Saturday and that's me off the back, in the distance, fighting a bike that wouldn't stay in one gear for any length of time from the wet gravel getting thrown by my front tire. Photo: CornbreadIt was a good weekend of riding. Saturday was tough with mud foiling my 10-speed drivetrain on the Chili Con Crosso and banishing me from my original group in favor of pavement and smoother pedaling.
Sunday I chose my singlespeed El Mariachi 29er and met up with Jim Craig's crew in Panama for the pre-ride of the Panama Enduro course, which is gonna' be pretty sweet this year. Jim took his local knowledge and set up a sweet little gravel 40-miler. It's got some good sized hills, some nice scenery and excellent roads, for gravel aficionados, that is. That race will be Sunday the 14th of March, Panama, Nebraska. Details are at the AngryCowAdventures.com site. Czech it.
Saturday will be the PCL's Lincoln-?-Lincoln ride, which will be a big question mark, but will be big fun. Don't kid yourself. Have you ever done a PCL event that hasn't been a blast? Come riding a bike fit for gravel and ready to ride about 50-60 miles. That's what I'd say... I'm guessing the call will be to go out against the wind and come back with the wind. I could be wrong here, but that makes for a nice ride... So come out and ride, 'eh? It'll be a heck of a good time. Details will be up soon on the PCL blog. Oh yeah, you know you wanna' check that one out...
Hopefully this week I'll be building up the new gravel bike I'll be racing this season. I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best... I have all the parts I need to build the bike. The tires are even aired up.
2 comments:
Hey, sorry to hear about the drivetrain hiccup, Brother! That sucks. I hope you were able to get that shook off on the following days ride.
That wet, nasty gravel raises Cain with any drivetrain. Even my ol' Blackbuck got a froze up single speed freewheel from that one ride we did a couple years ago now. Make no mistake- gravel roads are tough in more ways than one!
AMEN! Man, that's why I ride a singlespeed so much during this time of year. It's true that you can at times even mess up a SS, but it's a lot tougher than a bike with ten closely-spaced gears packed into a 130mm hub. That was just a poor choice on my part Saturday, and yeah, I made a much better choice Sunday. That said, by Sunday the roads were in a lot better shape. The 'cross bike would've been in a lot better shape.
THAT said, I'm planning to run a 9-speed rear end on my Vaya, both to allow the seamless cross-over use of my disc mountain wheels (since I now have a couple of sets of super nice wheels in my possession, and might want to pull 'em out for the Vaya), and also to give it some extra dirt clearance, so it's not as easy to foul up in x-tra nasty conditions. TI could get ugly this year... And I'm not coming to go home early. I'm bringing a dirt colored bike for a reason. It'll be able to handle getting dirty! LOL!!
Have a great Texas vacation, my Brother. Travel safely and I'll talk to ya' soon.
Cheers,
MG
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