Let's talk about sex...

Generally speaking I'm all for it. How about you?

Next topic....

I missed the Southern Cross race this last weekend. Unfortunately I chose to do The Most Horrible Thing Ever (which turned out to be The Most Horrible Thing Never) instead, but now having bailed on TMHTE I lost the bird in hand and the one in the bush. I can't believe I missed a course that was hard enough to have people belly aching about how hard it was.... twelve mile climb up a crunchy peanut butter covered road? I missed that? And how 'bout the hike-a-bike that was so steep that this guy chose to drag his bike to the top like an unruly canine badly in need of some obedience training?

Photo ripped from the "Pouched One", but credited to the letter H (Sesame Street influenced I guess)

At least he was dragging his bike with the derailleur side up and outta harm's way. This so looks like it woulda been my kinda race since I ride a single speed and can drag it on either side. Maybe next year.

Take a look at this:
That is dead sexy magna cum laude excelsior. This fork from Niner is all carbon from tip top to dropout bottom. It just says "I'm carbon through and through. I'm sexier than a combination of a late 70's Bo Derek and the space shuttle external tank *." I would be so all over this fork if it wasn't using the updated geometry numbers that Niner is using for 2009. Since I was using 2009 numbers back in 2007 (before they were cool) I decided to go against the grain and build my MOOTS around 2005 retro-style geometry . You just watch me. I'm bringing it back, all the way around the outside of the barn, up the hay elevator, and into the loft where I can get crazy whack funky with it. Close your eyes and picture it.

I surreptitiously stole that picture from bikerumor.com and conveniently cropped it for my own use. There was also this image posted in the same article:

One commenter had this to say: "That fork looks scary! Their method of load testing is virutally useless. They obviously don’t know the loads applied to a fork in the real world."

I am not sure if the commenter is in fact an engineer or perhaps one of the many unemployed armchair engineers that frequent places like MTBR, bikeforums.net, or hermaphrodite nudie bars. He did say that their method of fork testing was "VIRUTALLY USELESS", and since I have no idea how to use a fork in a VIRUTAL manner I must admit he may be onto something. I did my own google search to see how most smart people test fork loads during "virutal use" in the real world, but this is all I came up with:

Since the Niner fork would be useless in the conveyance of peas from plate to mouth I would say that it definitely fails the virutal pea fork test displayed above. Perhaps if the individual in the experiment could adjust the tangential angle of vectoral approach by inclining his support structure in a forward direction (number 22) the fork would be more successful in serving it's purpose as a pea transport device and fewer peas would be affected by the gravitational pull of the earth (number 20). Without further testing we may never know.

George from Bike29 chimed in with a comment to defend the "virutal testing" (not the virutal pea fork test), but I'd bet he's a bit biased since he'd say anything to get his hands on a glow in the dark baby blue carbon fork that matched his glow in the dark baby blue footie pajamas (size: Boy's Extra Husky).

I better get over to MTBR and post up something in the Beer, Vacations, 650B, and Other Virutally Useful Stuff board and see what this is all about.




*Sorry. If I woulda linked the images properly you woulda never looked at the image of the space shuttle external tank that looked like a boob.