joe 6 pack and cannondale

-
in the market for a new bike. of course, i'm permanently on the market for a new bike. it is part love of looking at bikes and part confusion from all of the options anymore. i have been tormented about the 26 vs. 29 debate for months now. thankfully, i haven't lost any sleep over it yet but i fear that may happen if i don't take a solid position soon. i remember when you wanted a bike it was either a road bike or a mountain bike and that was an easy call for me. now it is road or mountain. geared or single speed. full suspension, front suspension, or rigid. and that is just the beginning. but i study... a lot.

one thing i have found is that you pay for a cannondale. i have a cannondale (not the one mentioned here). i like it a lot. i have learned since i bought it that you will be getting a level down of components for their frame and lefty fork. it's fair. the design and ride are awesome. but i do believe that $3000 should get you out of the SRAM X7 shifters. for $3000 on a hard tail bike i feel in my heart of hearts you should be able to get X9. this is no rant. cannondale knows what they are doing and it is a great selection of bikes. but please cannondale, keep good shifting within reach of Joe 6 pack.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

nowhere but up from here

-
friday the weather report looked great for the weekend. saturday morning i went in to swimming lessons with Henry during a beautiful May morning at 9:30 and walked out at 10:30 to completely overcast and a funny, stormy feeling breeze. what's going on? got home to see that storm clouds produced in seconds at some point and were about to hit the twin cities. Henry was now sick (he worked so hard to keep going at swimming lessons) and laying in bed. B and the boys were not going to the Freewheel Frolic. i packed up and headed out in a driving rain and lightning. i had heard from a friend at the race that the sport start was postponed but nothing cancelled yet. got there and saw two lightning strikes nearby. went to register and the steel at the starting chute was layed down wisely. sport took off about 1 i think. expert at 2:30 with us in comp 5 minutes behind. i have got to get better at staging because i was still in the 3rd wave when my wave (the 2nd) took off. you would
Read more

First blood

-
Image
Henry did his first mountain bike race at Elk River a couple of weeks ago. It was 3 miles. He has done a lot more than that at Theo plenty of times. The 3 miles at Hillside in Elk River was different though. It was a lot more climbing and roots than I expected. Henry had to walk quite a bit. When we walked the mosquitos would feast. It was rough on the little guy. He was tempted to quit (he even had some tears) but he kept at it and finished. It was another good reason to be proud of him on a pretty long list. Henry said some funny stuff during the race. A couple of my favorites were, "I'm getting pretty dirty, maybe I should take a bath." and "I hope I get a scratch, that would be cool." After the race he scored a digital camera from the drawing. He was very stoked. It was a good thing too it may have convinced him to give bike racing another try.
Read more

Mother's Day revenge

-
Sandwich 50 yesterday. 50 people, 50 miles. 7 7 mile laps. got there with B and the boys about 8:30 for the 9am start. 50 racers all started by touching a fence and then on go ran around a playground and then back to your bike to ride a short prologue. this may have been my favorite part of race because Wyatt yelled, "go daddy go!" the whole time. i could hear him almost the whole way. i got back to the start from the prologue and Wyatt was there yelling, "go daddy go!" over and over again. pretty sure it doesn't get any cuter than that. the look on his face was great. i could see his smile and dimples from about a mile away in the morning sun. i got into the course and it was greesy as i heard, also very tight as i had heard. i was taking it very easy as this was my warmup and i have been riding about once or twice a week for a while. i had 50 miles coming and i was being very conservative. i got about half way through and was starting to warm up a
Read more