Stem Sell Research

I did make it to the Presbyterian Criterium in Uptown Charlotte Saturday night. I did not however obtain a VIP ticket, so I had to prepare to take care of myself. For those of you that would be concerned about such things I have discovered that if you remove the bladder from the new Camelbak Charge 450 you can fit six cozied Budweisers inside the insulated compartment.

I did not stay for the whole crit. Bill Nye showed up and coerced me to leave for some Indian food in order to keep me from drinking all six Budweisers in the hopes that I would feel good enough in the morning to join him on a 50 mile road ride. Despite his best efforts I ate some good Indian food and still managed to avoid the road ride early the next day. Victory!

Saturday something odd showed up in the mail. I received an anonymous unsolicited envelope with no return address. What was inside?

$66... five unmarked bills adding up to sixty-six random, unsolicited, American dollars which, according to the postmark, originated from somewhere here in Charlotte. I do not know where or from who this donation came from, but since there was no return address I figured I should take the time to let this special someone know I did in fact get it, and it will be used for making great bike race in the near future. If you are watching me from across the street I am blogging this morning naked... just for you. You're welcome.

I obtained a critical piece of gear for the Tallboy over the weekend.

Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Back in April I got a new carbon steer tube friendly stem to accommodate my wider in the stem area 31.8 bars. This is also when I had to declare the whole "25.4 is dead to me" thing.

The unfashionable spacers are now gone and the bike looks sexier and much more MTBR approvable as a result.

Recently I found out that Mark Weir is harshing on my whole 70mm Shimano PRO FRS AM/XC MTB stem gig. Wanting to be just a little bit more like his arch nemesis (that would be me, he just doesn't know that) Mark went out and got the very same 70mm stem, although in a much more hetero looking black, for his Downieville crushing carbon Nomad.

Notice the spacers on top of the stem as another indicator that this a huge role reversal of my "If I could be like Mark" post from December 2008. The student is now the master, but the master is still a master cabbage patcher.

Not wanting to be outdone I had to take this to the next level. There's no way I can put the same stem on my carbon Santa Cruz machine and not appear to be copying the illustrious Mark Weir, so I spent some time doing my research and ended up with this:

A better look? Sure.

This is the Shimano Pro Koryak stem, also in the very awesome 70mm length. What makes this better than the Shimano PRO FRS AM/XC MTB stem? Not only is it a stem that Mark does not have on his Santa Cruz it also has more rise. How much more rise? The FRS only has 5° of rise while the Koryak has a whopping 10° of rise. That's twice as much rise as Mark's silly copycat stem, and it's just as black and hetero looking.

What's so great about a 10° rise stem? Having a 10°rise stem means that I can flip it over to -10°, put a bunch of spacers under it, run a riser bar, and then post pictures of my cockpit on the 29'er forum on MTBR to be mocked by my peers. That makes this stem worth its weight (140 grams confirmed) in gold.