Big Bikes

Dirty Deeds And The Dunderchee

In the interest of not totally destroying the Superfly on some rock-strewn group ride, I have made my Ferrous more appealing over the past couple weeks. The first thing I had to do was add a suspension fork: a Rockshox Reba SL 80mm. Due to the fusion of my spine (this is not a joke, my T 1-10 vertebrae are fused with two steel rods) I cannot handle a rigid fork.

There's this kind of one-upmanship that goes on in single-speeding circles regarding how dumb of a bike configuration you ride. "Oh you're running a two-to-one? Aw, you gotta run three-to-one dude." "You're running a freewheel? Weeeeak bro-bro, you gotta run fixed!" Suspension fork? What the crap! You are a massive pussy, I can't talk to you anymore, you're dead to me..." and so on.

On the gearing thing...I run big, dumb gears pretty often. On the fixed thing...have fun (not having fun). Don't get me wrong, I have mad, I mean furious, just plain angry respect for people who kill it on fixed gear mountain bikes, but that doesn't mean I want to partake. A guy who rides a fixed gear mountain bike is not far removed from a Ferret Legger (if you have a minute go read that article I've linked there, it is frickin' hilarious). You respect him, but you know he's fucking nuts, and you know you want nothing to do with what he's doing.

But the suspension fork thing...just plain can't do it, and I literally have a doctor's note to get me out of it. Actually my surgeon never wanted me to ride a mountain bike again, "If you didn't have a congenital, degenerative disease causing you back problems, you would still have back problems due to your lifestyle." "So will I be able to ride a mountain bike after the surgery?" "NO! What, you wanna screw up all my great work?" He was a funny guy.

So ya, I've got a suspension fork. Today I'm going to pull out the travel spacer and jack the bugger up to 100mm. The front end of the Ferrous is twitchy and steep and by my rough guess-timations, the offset of the Reba decreases the mechanical trail, making it even twitchier. I generally prefer a slacker front end. Back when I rode 26" bikes made by Independent Fabrication, I would run a 100mm fork on a frame designed around an 80mm fork. I always thought the stock head angle on those bikes was too steep anyway. At one point I even ran a 135mm Fox Talas...that was dumb. Except on downhills.

Not sure which bike I'll bring to The Wicked Ride of The East Sunday, maybe I'll bring both. I'm crazy like that. Hopefully I'll see you there.

-t