Big Bikes

I Guess I Have Angered
the Single Speed Gods

A while back, probably quite a while back, I started talking about how I would be racing on the gears this year. A couple weeks back I posted a photo of a mysterious box that had shown up on my porch, then I got sidetracked, found better, less sane things to babble about, and said nothing more about it. Well that mystery box contained my Sram XX gruppo...sort of.

I pulled out all the various, sweet-looking little bits and laid them out on the dining room table. First I noticed that I had received a IX, not a X speed chain (I'm under contract to use this vernacular when speaking of drive-trains from here on out). Then I couldn't help but notice that I had been sent a Rock Shox Monarch rear shock. This was not right, the bike I have decided to call Love Removal Machine is a hard-tail. Of course it took me a little longer to notice the direct mount front derailleur and the E2 fork (if you don't know what I'm talking about, it doesn't matter, and I'll only fall asleep while trying to explain).

It's just a box of drive-train

What I'd received was a build kit for a Superfly 100 full-suspension bike...and a 9 speed chain. I'm not sweating it at all though. I still have the Superfly Single-Speed I call Precious Thing to ride in the interim while this all gets sorted out, it's not like I'm suffering a maximum here.

My theory is that the single speed gods are pissed, and they don't want me to ride the gears this season, so they are trying to thwart the delivery of my proper geared bits. Look at the single speed god in the photo at the top of the post — he's terrifying. What's that? Oh...oops, that's a "single speed general," you say, not a single speed god. Sorry, that was the only stock photo the design department had lying around that depicted anything like a high-ranking member of the single speed pantheon. That's General Dejay Birtchside right there. My bad. Well, the design department's bad really. Maybe I'll tell them all to sleep in tomorrow, I think they're cracking up.

I've actually got a great concept for an image of a single speed god...he's got the big beard and everything. I'll tell them to get to work on that stat! Maybe I'll get to post it later in the week.

So in the meantime, while I've been waiting for the right XX parts to arrive, I have been clocking mad, I mean just plain irate miles on my single speed. Like 9 hours last week. That hurts. It hurts me anyway. Full disclosure: at least an hour and a half of those 9 hours was clocked on my Schwinn Varsity cruiser (on loan from the Todd Downs collection) and the only liquids I took in on those rides were brown in color and mood altering in entirely disparate ways.

I never feel this "in touch with the road" when I drink GU2o