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Thursday, April 1

Do you think I'm a nasty girl?

The new Niner crabon frok showed up yesterday. I was at work when it was delivered, but I got an email letting me know that all was well before 3:00PM.

Delivery Date / Time: 31-March-2010 / 2:48 PM Driver Release Location: MET CUSTOMER WOMAN

Apparently either Frankenstien or Tarzan work for UPS now.



Anyways, I came home to an empty house and got right to work. Just as I always do I attempted to document the process with my camera, and just as I always do I took one shitty picture and then forgot about the camera until after I was done.

That would have been a shot of the installation of the 110 headset race with the cool race tool from Cane Creek, but it really just captured the moment that I decided not to bother capturing the moments anymore.

Before I installed the frok I read the installation manual. It's a good thing I did since this thing has more rules than an English boarding school. Some of my plans went awry pretty quickly due to some game changing rules. I found out that using an old school Thomson stem was a no-no with crabon steer tubes. The only other 70mm stem I had was the $15 Truvativ that was on the Death Stick which is 31.8, so I also needed the 31.8 bars as well. I had George cut the frok before he sent it to me, so since I had measured it for the Thomson and the Truvativ had a shorter stack height I had to make some compromises. Another rule from the Book of Niner Armaments was that thou shalt not have any spacers above thine stem. One spacer shalt be one too many and five would be right out. This meant more compromises.

Once I get my position "dialed" this will look slightly better and less half ass. In the end I took the path of least resistance in terms of headset color choice. Since the black 110 was already in there I went the lazy single speedy route and left it in there. At least I added some purple for the Liberal voters.

Did the frok perform as expected?

Yes, it did drop the weight below the 20lb mark... my first sub 20lb SS ever.

I woulda done that cool photo shop thing where I pasted the enlarged scale shot on the photo of the bike hanging from the scale, but this laptop does not have Adobe Photo Shop, and I have no idea how to use the already loaded photo editing software. Fail. No more cutting people's faces off things and pasting them elsewhere until I resolve this issue. My apologies.

Obviously I spent no time on getting quality shots of the bike. I wanted to get back in the house and work on getting my laptop all wireless and shit. I pissed away an hour on that project and was only met with failure and disappointment. I did manage to free up my lap in order to satisfy the foster kitten's need to be close to my crotch 24/7.

And that's the way it will be for awhile. I hadn't the time to mention it earlier, but The Boy spread his tiny wings and flew last weekend. Now I am faced with the daunting task of moving Fajita into his old room, The Pie's office out of the bike room into Fajita's old room, and last but certainly not least, the re-annexation of The Pie's office space back into bike room space.

No proper bike room would be complete without music, and the tinny speakers on the laptop were not quite doing the job. Unfortunately I had compatibility issues with my ten year old Gateway speakers, so out to the garage I went to procure a solution.

This is the boom box my later father bought me almost twenty years ago. Line in jacks? Check. Old mixed tape still in the deck? Check. Power cord that needs to be wiggled every once and awhile? Check.

Happiness abounds.

13 comments:

Luis G. said...

Yummy... only thing holding me back is the way the fork looks paired with the thin steel tubes of my frame.

Are the newer Thomson stems safe for use?

allan said...

The carbon fork looks awesome but I think the real big news is the addition of "Turbo Bass" to the bike room.

Anonymous said...

Where did the boy fly off to? He's still planning on being our pmbar start/finish grunt, right?
ew

dougyfresh said...

that is one fine bicycle!

I like the boombox better. when are you bustin' out the cardboard for a proper b-boy jam?

I'll have some carbon brownies [err I mean goodies] to share with you tomorrow.

CB2 said...

Good thing the bike is sub-20; once you experience the "Turbo Bass", you can't turn back. Forget earbuds on long rides, you're gonna want to trailer that thing.

ant1 said...

i'm gonna assume the black headset is an april fool's joke.

Anonymous said...

Please explain the stem and spacer restrictions. Killing my buzz with this stuff. I've seen many a carbon steerered road or cross fork without these challenges...just curious.

BTW, I do realize that this is an MTB fork, and thus in for a bit more abuse than the aforementioned plastic.

Keep on truckin'

dicky said...

Older style Thomsons w/pinchy cam ~ bad. New stems w/standard split at the rear ~ good. The Boy will be at PMBAR as promised. Turbo Bass does indeed rock. The stem needs to mount at the top of the steer tube so it lines up with the expansion plug which reinforces the crabon.

Anonymous said...

Fork looks ok, but how about some pics/weight of the cat?

Anonymous said...

Looks like this years PMBAR will be froked with peril.

Leave the bridesmaid dress at home ok?

Eric 2

Anonymous said...

Good luck you rigid single speed excuse maker. Where is the Nomad when you need it?

Anonymous said...

welcome to the under 20lbs SS club then. that fork has been on my list for a while. looks great. have fun with it.

Anonymous said...

that pretty fork will die in Pisgah