My plan is to beat Harlan Price (or not)

It is now the time on Sprockets when we make our bikes ready to make great bike race. That Feedback Sports Alping digital hanging scale (with 55lb capacity) is gonna be the death of me. My old worn out treads had to go to make way for something with some edges on it. I had a new Crossmark to replace the Ignitor in the rear and four 2.35 Rampages to choose from for the front. With the aid of my scale I decided to make my front selection based on weight... disturbing.

Two of the Rampages weighed the same:

A nice plump 750 grams for a front tire with plenty of sexy time knobs and volume.

The other two also weighed the same, but different:

Same tire, 40 grams heavier. That's almost a tenth of a pound of rotating weight, massive rubber knobbed rotating weight. Meh. I guess I now have one back up race tire and two tires destined for the Death Stick. I know this happens all the time, but having the tools to discover it in my own bike room? I will just have to think less about how much money I have in "heavy" tires and think more about how much faster I am with the reduction in rotating weight.

After all the tire swapping (and even more grip douchery) the Meatplow has come down in weight. It was originally...

but now it's getting a little more thin air climbing friendly...

That's over a quarter of a pound dropped with proper tire selection. Now I am well within striking range of having a sub twenty pound "race bike". Assuming my crabon frok gets here sometime this month I'll be showing up the Six Hours of Warrior Creek gun fight with MG42 full auto belt fed machine gun.

And if it doesn't get here? Well let's just say that I will shed a tear and hope for a brighter tomorrow. I feel it will probably most certainly be here before I get to my more climbing heavy races like the Trans Sylvania and the Breck Epic, so I'm just not gonna get too emotional if another month goes by sans crabon.

In other news...

Harlan Price, a man larger than the mountains he rides upon, announced his intentions to make a mockery of the single speed class on Cyclingdirt.com.

Cycling Videos on CyclingDirt

How 'bout that? Another tired pro with swollen vertebrae looking to beat up on us unsuspecting single speeders. Maybe Gunnar has a spare cane for you Harlan. Anyways he will be racing the Trans Sylvania Epic and also four of the NUE Races on a SS, no doubt giving The Pflug a run for his money and pushing the little people one step further away from the podium. Harlan says he will focus more on socializing and fun, so perhaps this is the year we will see him doing kegstands the night before the Shenandoah 100. I do like his idea of winning the single speed Stars and Stripes jersey at Marathon Nationals in July and then burning it on the podium. This would be even better than my non-appearance at the 2006 24 hour Worlds podium ceremony, and a much more fascinating spectacle for Cyclingnews.com. Burn it Harlan, burn it like a... you know, it's pretty hard to think of a politically correct burning reference. Just burn it Harlan.

BTW: Harlan is racing for a good cause, so check it out: Team CF.