Friday, August 22, 2014

New Ride!

bar bag n GPS

secula tail light

medium GB bar bag

overview

The new ride is a 2012 Salsa Vaya. This is a great bike. Last year after a ride I stopped in at Old Spokes Home and hopped on it. With little adjustment it seemed like a perfect fit. I felt I was ready after being back on the road for 4 years to jump in and know what I really wanted to be riding.

Luckily Glenn still had this bike on holdover from 2012 as it has the SRAM double still. I dropped off my old wonderful Pacer as trade-in and had them match it as much as possible exactly for fit, as the Pacer was my personal version of FitWerx developed over 4 years :)

I worked with Justin to determine the build, largely based on the experience of Justin, Harris and Glenn I got a wonderful build.

We chose the Barlow Pass 38x700 which I proved work as high speed bomber cyclocross tires on class 4 rocky and rutted roads, zooming along and bunny hopping all the while! We added a SON hub to the stock wheels, the Edelux

The bag is a mounted on a Velo Orange rack.

Same old WTB Valcon that is SO comfy for me.

SKS fenders.

Double wrap of Salsa tape.

Friday ride...August 15







store at Rt. 15 and Cabot Rd.


I managed to get out for a Friday ride last week. Theoretically we work 4 long days but as the owner I often work Friday also. This was a wonderful ride, perfectly cool and one of my favorite routes. 52 miles of rolling roads that are not too busy and lots of lakes on the way. I also stopped at the most interesting tiny store on Rt 15 and Cabot Rd. There was a hand written sign that said "open until 11:30 today". It was a room maybe 16x20 with shelves on the walls with soup, cereal, tuna, bread etc. A home type fridge with cold drink and coffee. Really neat place.

Monday, August 4, 2014

First post since winter!

New ride, Vaya 2012 holdover.

Rail bridge.

Path along rail bed where bear was!

Barn along Middle Road.

Long bomber downhill into Barre.

Along rte. 302

Reservoir for Barre.

It's been a looooong time since a post popped up here. I have been super busy with work, being a builder and all. I got out for a ride this weekend and met Clifton at Espresso Bueno in Barre for a delicious breakfast burrito and coffee. I rode over on the dirt along Middle Road, which is particularly rough right now, but fun nonetheless. It is definitely nicer on the 38mm Barlow Pass tires! The new bike has been fantastic, more on that later :) We headed back out up Washington Street to where he had come from at the Park and Ride. He headed off to meet the family while I rode on to Reservoir Road and back to Plainfield along Reservior and Brook Roads. This road is a blast, one endless gradual downhill! This loop is part of 100k populaire I want to run next year to pull in more VT riders for the brevet series. It was one of the nicest rides I've done this year.

It hasn't been much of a rando year for me, 2 DNF's and 1 DNS! I have at least been contributing by helping run the VT series with a group of 4-5 others. A bit of a learning curve this year, but looking forward to it next year!