Another one from the "Why not?" column

I've mentioned a few times on here that I daydream about squishy bikes and slick tired, stiff handling, STI actuated 10 speed road bikes. I have the desire to mix it up on a different kinda bike once and awhile... well, as long as I'm on a bike it's all good. I was even saving up my duckets for the big swap meet coming up in November.

Recent developments at work have put a kibosh on all future forward big ticket nonessential recreational items. The sour grapes perspective on all this would probably be that I still wouldn't like road biking, and any time I'd be out on a full squishy playing around I'd be wishing I was out on my Meatplow. Even the Nummers that will most assuredly be on its way shortly, I mean I musta won it right? You ALL clicked on the link... right? Anyways, I'm sure that I'll be able to build that up, assuming I can find some friends with some worthless (until now) 26" wheeled bike parts laying around... well that and a Spanish bottom bracket and appropriate crank.

In the pursuit of making things slightly different, yesterday I mentioned putting my squishy fjork on the Meatplow for shits and giggles. I was afraid that the fjork swap may only get me the shits, so I looked into other avenues to pursue the giggles. Thank you eBay.

It's white, it's short, it's fat... no, it's not you're average American Nabisco fed fifth grader. It's a 31.8 Titec (doh, or as Doug pointed out, a Truvativ... whatever, sadly it's not a Thomson) stem, mine for a "Buy it now" price that was hard to pass up. Why a new stem?

I won these sweet severely moto bars as a door prize at the extravagnzagelical Breck Epic. I also won a stem, but it was 120mm long and oh so gauche black. I've been sitting on them (figuratively) since July waiting for a reason to use them, and they now have their special purpose. As much as I love my MOOTS flat bars I am now enjoying the off "season". It is a time for motorcycles noises and very half-assed attempts at getting air under my wheels. It's really hard to say "Brrrraaaapppppp" out loud whilst staring down at my pathetic hands wrapped around the ends of a flat bar. The bar/stem combo also brings up my front end, and it's a bit wider to boot. I know I coulda just put some of that hideous purple spacer stack under my old stem, but "Quiet!" I say to you annoying naysayers in the back row. This is bigger than the both of us, and sitting in the cockpit and looking forward towards the trail (an imaginary trail as I haven't had the bike in the woods yet) I can almost fool myself into thinking I'm on a new bike for awhile.

We'll see how things shake down tonight on my once a year after work ride tonight, and I'll let you know.

How cool was the ridge section of the SSWC09 course?

George snapped this photo of me FAILING to make it over this rock on one of my initial attempts.

Here I am not failing after multiple tries.

And here I am riding off into the sunset looking a bit more like Mr Rogers than Roy Rogers.