Still waking up with Winter's Mistress

Lots of snivel gear still required for morning bike commutes from my house in Newtown, CT.  Decided that comfort is better than fashion for commuting and now I am wearing a backpack rather than riding with my Timbuk2 bag.  Of course, it probably would be OK if I wasn't hauling a 10 pound engineering laptop and processing power wins over everything else for the work that I am doing.

Today's ride in to work on the Qball was a mixed bag of sorts.  Still trying to figure out whether or not I like the Misfit Psycles FMe bars or not.  One thing is for sure, I definitely need a happier stem if I am going to continue riding with them but there in lies the dilemma.  The reason I went with a lower rise stem was so that I would have good place to mount my Garmin Edge but with more rise in the stem means the Edge has to sit on the bar or somewhere else.  There are mounts made for the bars but those are all made for 31.8 diameter bars and the FMe's are 25.4.   I found something on line that might work that I am going to get and see how it works which will breath more life into the FMe's.

Mr Happy saves the Day!

Mr Happy Stem

After my commute last week and the ride at the Blow Hole (aka River Highlands State Park) the stem that I had on the Qball just wasn't fitting right.  I felt squished in the cockpit.  Ironically, while my kids were riding around drive way on Friday, I noticed that one of the bikes was sporting the stem that I originally had two years ago.  On Sunday, I switched out stems and on Wednesday I got to test it out.

Oh what a feeling!

This is it!  Riding the bike I don't feel squished into the cock pit anymore and the hand positions feel so natural, too.  The Fme bars fit so well and are the perfect complement for the Monster Cross.  One thing I have found is that they they don't work well for an out of the saddle climbing position but now that I think about neither did the Woodchippers.  To climb, I find myself scrunching up in the cockpit as if I were riding a full susser mountain bike.  I cleaned every climb yesterday and without asking for Granny's assistance!

The one thing I can't get over is every time I ride this bike on single track is how soft it is compared to riding the Dillinger or even the Fetish Fixation 69er as rigid bikes.  Aluminum is just so harsh and unforgiving and it's funny, when I first got the Qball I think I rode it for 6 months rigid and hated it because at the time I just couldn't appreciate it.  Now that I have been on three separate aluminum bikes, both rigid, hardtail, and even full suspension, I finally understand when some says that Steel is Real.

Afternoon Monster Cross Commute

60 degrees when I left work at 5 PM yesterday and yet Thursday morning it was 30!  Along with Daylight Savings, these temperature extremes are killing me.  Riding home mean shedding a lot of what I rode in with.  Of course not wearing my Lobsters was a no brainer but my other gloves were too warm as well so I rode bare handed.  I have only ridden this way once before and that was off road in the middle of summer.  That was pretty uncomfortable because my hand was always sweaty and I couldn't get a grip.  Riding home last night, it wasn't that bad but I still felt awkward not having gloves on.

I decided to experiment with the route home and try to get off the beaten path.  All the online maps show Scudder Road as going straight through but that's an obvious mistake because I finally rode and it's hardly anything but straight and flat for that matter.  Nice huge climb up and blasting descent down.  I have to say though there is no leverage to be gained from the Fme's by coming out of the saddle.  Just have to gear down and pedal away.

Wearing shorts for the first time was nice although it started to get chilly with all the hills I was riding down.  Yesterday definitely felt like spring!

Morning Monster Cross Commute

Looks like the leprachaun got the better of me this morning because when I left it was actually light out.  It looks like the Stinson might be in need of a drive train replacement therefore I had to ride to work with gears this morning on the Qball.  Finally I got to ride the Qball with the Fme bars and it was interesting.  I am going to do full blown review after I have a chance to test them off road this weekend.  Yeah, that's right, my knobbies are finally going to get some dirt.  I am rolling with a pair of Kenda Klaw 1.95 tires which are over kill for the roads but I couldn't find the tubes (I didn't look very hard) for my 47c tires.

10 degrees warmer but still pretty cold.  Basically wore the same number of layers but a different jacket and shoes, yet the over booties were still necessary.  Lobsters and a balaclava were also necessary since I new that if I were riding a bike that could coast I would be going down hill a lot faster than on my fixie.

Usually I bring my laptop home in my Timbuktu bag but I didn't because I left late from work and didn't see the need to log on at home but in doing so, I didn't have any way to carry undies and all the small electronic attachments required in my IT and blogging career so I had to improvise.  I really didn't want to carry a backpack but I had to figure out how to carry warmer gloves and a change of underwear.  The underwear went into my jersey pouch along with my camera and black berry.  Extra gloves and my work badge went into a seat bag that I can use on my handlebars.  Keys for the house in the seat bag under the seat.

I didn't have time to switch tires, or wheelsets for that matter.  Over Christmas I picked up another wheelset for commuting and riding with the kids for this bike so that I could run slicks.  I know, I am kind of anal in that department as I would rather have extra parts that I can quickly switch out without having to change anything.

M-M-M Monster Cross!

The Qball Monster Cross is finished and ready to ride!  Question is, when?  When I first put the FMe bars on the bike and sat on it, it felt like the stem was too long but after a little test ride in the driveway it felt OK.  I am going to try a shorter stem.  I am hoping by next weekend people will have ridden at some of the more popular riding areas like Huntington and Trumbull and that there will be some nice trails to try this out on.

While riding around the driveway, however, I could immediately tell the difference/advantage these bars have over the Salsa Woodchippers.  The same leverage is there but so are the brakes.

If the opportunity arises, some Orange Blunts will look really nice on this bike and mesh nicely with the style of riding I am going to be doing with this bike.  I don't like changing tires and tubes, so the other day I picked up another disc wheelset for a really nice price that I am going to rig up with my pair of KendaKross tires.  So, all I need to do is switch out the wheels and now I have a commuter, kid puller, and gravel grinders!  4 bikes in one!

That was one of the reasons why I went with the Qball frame in the first place because I knew at some point I would want to try gears on it and who knew that it would actually be so versatile!  I guess that is one of the things I love about riding the big wheels.

Right now, it's rigged as a 2x9 but at some point I may even go back to a 3x9, depends on how much of particular style of riding I am going to do on it.  What I could see happening is during race season, the only use it's going to get is commuting and pulling the kids.  Then come fall, I will be choosing it to ride off road more often.  We'll see.

Fme!

I think I found the perfect Monster Cross (MCX) bar with all the fun of drop bars but made for mountain levers.  They are Misfit Pyscles Fme bars and I got a great deal on them during a black Friday sale last month:

A cyclo-style dirt drop bar for off-road use.  The FME was NOT designed for use as an exclusively roadie type bar.  Despite the flaming skull, you will still look ridiculous in spanx.  

The FME was NOT designed for use as a pure CX bar.  The purpose of this bar is to run DISC brakes, the worms at CX HQ do not like disc brakes.  They would also rather it if all CX competitors pedalled using only components of French origin...and we believe fries make for terribly limp cranks.

The FME was NOT designed for use as a pure XC bar.  While testing was completed as a primarily XC bar it was done so in the interest of science and morbid curiosity.  By our obvious calculations a bar with such extreme angles offering such a large amount of leverage would not only be uncomfortable for exclusively XC use it would likely have a reduced useable life...meaning what?  Not sure, lawyers for someone else made them say something so we did too.

I still plan on using the Qball as an MCXer because it's also my kid puller so these bars are perfect.  In fact, next month, I will be picking up another wheel set for rail trails and commutes but with these bars I will have the shifters and lever all in one place which will make riding off road a lot better.  Also, I think I will get better positioning, too.

I have new grips and matching cables that will give me a Halloween effect with the colors but I think it will look awesome.  That is going to me my project this week.