Radimus Review: Part Two (but actually one tho)

I already kinda explained why I swapped my Optimus out for a Radimus about a month ago, so I'm not gonna bother repeating myself.

I really do like this bike so far.  It makes me wanna do bad things... or halp me when I do bad things I wasn't planning on doing.

Perspective and scale do nothing for this, but that's Heckle Rock at the bottom of Heartbreak Ridge (popular on the YouTubes).  It has been rebuilt and reworked multiple times, but this is it in its current state.  I normally come down the rock line and make the right down the slabby bits.  I missed the turn because I was going faster than normal and ended up doing a huck off the big rock totally unprepared.  I'm not saying it's huge, but watch any of the videos and 99% of the people actually RIDING this section (after a Heartbreak beat down) don't opt for the huck.  Suffice to say, as I'm happily functioning as a human and typing about how much I like this bike, everything ended up surprisingly well.  I probably had my max heart rate spike to about 239BPM for a hot second tho.

About the bike tho...

I was able to shorten my chain stay length from the Optimus.

The longer front end adds stability, and whatever the "industry" is doing be damned, I like super short chain stays.

That's with the Pisgah gear that stays on there 24/7/365, 32 X 20 e'rywhere.

Which makes my rear end tuk't as fuk't.

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm sorta long in the legs and old in the back.  The spacers I stole from my gravel bike to make things good enough are good for now.

Yeth, that makes my head part hurt.  For the long run, I've ordered some Oddity Cycles Lowrizer handlebars.

I got a chance to ride around on Boyes's super happy fun time bike in the parking lot while I was up in Fayetteville.  

He's rolling around on 70mm rise Oddmone bars, and because I wasn't smart enough to ask Boyes a bushel basket of questions while I had his ear (and break out a tape measure), I was sure I wanted one too.  That's what I ordered at first, but then after I rode the Radimus with 35mm of spacers and stem flipped putting me mebbe 10mm higher than what I was used to with the old frame, I wasn't sure I wanted to cut the steer tube to accommodate 70mm... with no way to go lower... and I can always put a not-so-obnoxious amount of spacers under the stem to get it up to 65-70mm anyways.

And yeth, I'll eventually have to put the bars on my Vertigo and try them  How could I not?

And also yeth, I'm aware that there are some hideous crabon options that would at least make it easier for me to mount a Woohoo to the bars, but this is my happy fun time bike, so if the data acquisition device gets left at home, so be it.  I can always mount it to my top pipe if I need to look at routes and whatnot.  Or one of you industrious folks with a 3D printer could make me a 22 to31.8 shim bit... ?*

I was pissed enough about the lack of forethought regarding swapping wheels and having to ride the XT wheels on back-to-back mountain rides that I came home from Pisgah Sunday evening and went straight away to robbing Paul to pay back Peter from that one time I robbed Peter to pay Paul.

Hurts my feelings a little to have the Epic Evo hanging on a hook with ded wheels but whatever.  This bike is headed to the Pisgah 55.5K in three weeks, so it gets the good shoes.  Tires will be swapped before then... to... dunno?  What's the weather going to be like 24 days from now?

I like the new Vassago head badge...

And the updated drooper hole with rubber grommet thing.

I know most of you are looking at this bike and thinking about the bike it replaced and thinking some more and...

You're right.  And you're wrong.  But also right.

But I'm also not worried about what you think... so there's that.  I'm really looking forward to some long rides on this bike in the very near future.

*I ordered some shitty shims from the internet, so mebbe they okay.

Radimus Review: Part One (but actually two tho)

I guess I've ridden my Vassago Radimus Meatplow V.9 (jeebus, there's been nine Meatplows) enough to have, like an opinion, man.

I've put in 85 miles and 15,000 feet of climbing, and even better, 15,000 feet of descending.  I've tweaked a few things, made some decisions (some bad), and I'm slowly getting my DH mojo back, although not in the manner which I had planned.

Ride #1 was two laps of Kitsuma.  

Image for non-locals who have no idea what "two laps of Kitsuma" really means.

Anyways, I went there two weeks ago because I know the descent rather well, and my foot/ankle/leg isn't necessarily healed.  High speeds, great lines of sight, and just enough lumpy obstacles to make it excite.  

What stuck out...

I built this bike about a month ago and never shook it out on a local trail.  The headset was loose (doh), and all I could think was "what else might I have done half-assed a month ago building this bike in a state of abject morosity?"  Who cares?  Might as well just send it hurtling down a mountain and find out.  

I'd guessed at the cockpit, and decided to go ahead and embrace the "low" of "long, low, slack."  My bars were about 30mm lower than I was used to, and unfortunately I'm not as flexible as I used to be.  I felt like I was craning my neck to see up the trail... and getting my thousand yard stare back is currently my biggest issue in re-establishing full mojo levels.  Also, on my second run down, my right braking finger hurt.  Odd.

Flash back to coming home from Breck Epic when I had to do the "two brakes one cup" bleed on the Meatplow V.7, so I went ahead and did it to these brakes when I got home... and then never rode the bike.

Yeth, my levers were just set too far out.  Easy fix tho.

Ride #2.

Okay.  I'd convinced myself the BEST way to get full-mojo retrieval would be to hit up the Trace Ridge, Spencer Gap, Fletcher Creek, and Bear Branch area.  Lots of high speed descents with little exposure, some gnar-tech, and very, vary familiar terrain.  But then I get a text and why not Heartbreak Ridge and Kistuma?

I'll tell you why not?

I never "fixed" this:

I knew in my brain part that this was too low for this tiny quinquagenarian with long legs and a tall saddle height, but I did nothing about it.  I had trouble getting up the technical bits of the climb on Old Toll Road, but once I hit the Firehose section of trail above Heartbreak, all hell broke loose.  Imagine riding down a giant ditch filled with loose rocks similar to the varying sizes of artisanal loaves of bread with some microwaves and old tubed TVs thrown in the mix.  With too much weight forward, I came close to losing it altogether once, and when we got to the top of true Heartbreak, I broke out my multi-tool and moved as many of those mismatched spacers under the stem (about 30mm worth) as I could.  The true top of Heartbreak is a little rowdy, but by the time we got down and over to Kitsuma, I was feeling much more like I was riding "my bike."

Ride #3.

Once again, instead of heading to my familiar happy place, there were other things to do.  I hadn't ridden all of new Black Mountain, and that's just not enough, so we decided to throw in Buckwheat and Bennett Gap.  What did I screw up this time?

Since I couldn't stand looking at the mismatched spacers, I stole the ones off the garvel bike because it's not gonna see action any time soon.  I also flipped the stem because I'm planning on getting some risers from Oddity Cycles, and I wanna see if I'm getting close to where I wanna be.  What I shoulda been doing was...

I don't like dragging these XT wheels around.  I appreciate their existence in my life, as they allow me to have three built mountain bikes at once, but they are heavy... and not as stiff as I'm used to... and narrow.  Had I thought about how the next month is going to pan out, I'd have realized that I won't ride the Epic EVO again until... mebbe November?  That and with Hydra hubs, I can (can't I?) just pull the cassette off WITH the free hub body, so swapping the rear wheel back over to single speed would take a minute... but then again, those wheels still have the heavy DHF 2.5/Aggressor 2.3 mounted up... and the Cushcore is on the XT wheels... and I'm riding (pardon, "racing") the Vertigo Meatplow V.7 the next two weekends coming up...

I could feel the difference hauling those other wheels up the mountain on the second day for sure.  At least I ran into some of the Industry Nine guys at the top of Clawhammer and got affirmation that pulling the Eagle cassette of with the free hub was easy AND totally okay.

Buckwheat and Bennett Gap did not fare well in that huge storm we had back in August.  It was not the same trail I just rode in June (or was it May?  or April?).  It definitely challenged my joie de vivre.  I'm used to being able to let it hang out a bit on middle (upper lower?) Bennett, but not today.  Being that the recently rerouted Black Mountain had recently been completed AND built to drain properly, it was a much more buenos fit with my re-mojoing.  Lower Black always delivers as does Sycamore, so at least it all ended on the highest of notes.

We are becoming frands... but it's gonna get even better soon.

That's the ride part of the "review," which is probably backwards to how real "reviews" are done... but more details about the bike tomorrow.

West Virginia Whirled Cup/Van from Man-Tuk't Tour: Part Three

We woke up late (again) in Fayetteville and walked to breakfast.  Along the way, we found so much candy in the streets from the homecoming parade the afternoon before.

What's wrong with these kids today?  Was there a hundred tossers and only one child?  When I was young, it was a street fight to get a pack of Sweet Tarts.  THIS IS THE GOOD STUFF.

Anyways...

After a late start and a later breakfast and some last minute planning, we were off to ride in the Cranberry Wilderness.  It was gonna be a tight fit tryna get our ride in AND make it back to Snowshoe in time to watch the Women's Shart Tarck, but we're not the sharpest bowling balls in the shed.

Park at Cranberry Glades and pee in a field of flowers... and also bees.

The plan is to ride Kenison Mountain.  Looks like an "easy" 20 mile loop.  Nothing is easy in West Virginia except finding street candy.

Headless Bill Nye getting sendy in the Bear Aware Zone.

We slogged our way up the gravel, to the "rolling" climb through moss and roots and rocks and mud bogs and general mayhem for 8.5 miles all the way to the "payoff," a 1.15 mile descent that drops 1,000 feet, a definite test of my re-mojoing.

It was a hairy bear.  It was a scary bear.

Hold up.  Let me unpack my adjectives.

It was fucking steep, fast, and gnarly.

Get to the bottom, come to the wide creek (crick in local parlance), and I ask Bill Bye if he remembers when we used to toss our bike shoes across a creek and why weren't we ever worried about the expensive and sometimes irreplaceable hardware on said shoes.

"I member."

We both take off our shoes and somehow I'm faster with that task, enough so that I'm on the other side of the crick getting ready to put my socks on as Bill Nye enters the water.  I warn him that the rocks at the bottom are extra slippery.  I look up just in time to see him get to the deepest part... and down he goes.

FUCK.

He went in, his bike went in... and what's that floating downstream?

His shoe.

Dammit.

He's in no place to make chase with his bike in tow, and I've already got a sock halfway on, not to mention my foot/ankle/leg doesn't wanna run across river rock.  Problem being, we still have a seven mile climb back to the car... and this isn't the Van With One (non) Red Shoe Tour... so I start making like Gollum across the river rock on the banks.

I try to cut the shoe off once as it went past and missed.  Back to the bank for more Golluming, and it looks like I got one more shot.  I have to get a little more risky with my next attempt, but I manage to get the shoe this time.

Shoe retrieved, Bill Nye pissed that he's wet, me happy I didn't bust my ass (although it did go into the water with my phone in my hop pocket), we get our shoes back on... and then none of it matters as it rains on us on the climb back to the car.

Now we're bee-lining back to Snowshoe to make it back in time for Shart Tarck, and somehow we're pulling into our parking spot and walking up the mountain just in time to hear them calling the women to the line.

Watching the Shart Tarck up close was much buenos.. and despite what it looked like on Red Bull TV, I was glued to the action.

That was them coming past the second to last turn on the course, and as soon as they went by, I turned around to watch the Jumbotron at the bottom of the hill to watch the sprint finish.

Stick around for the men's race which is just as excite, and right as they were finishing the last lap, we were socked into a cloud.

West Virginia, you so funny.  They don't call it the Sunshine State for nothing.

The rest of the weekend was a blur.  I got a quick solo ride in before the men's downhill on Saturday... making it back just in time for the start of the race.  Kinda becoming a theme.

I got stung by a bee while spectating, and it seemed like everyone I've ever met walked by our position high up on the course (we weren't walking all the way down again).

Then it mighta been time to head to the top of the mountain to make party with Handup.

It is a pretty place to be pretty.

Got myself a funny hat.

There mighta been free beer and some dancing and Shaggy mighta foisted me into the sky on the dance floor and I mighta spent a lot of time talking to people from Charlotte.

Up late on Sunday but comfortably early for the afternoon starts of the XCO races.  The women's race was abnormally boring with Evie blewthe field away, although the grin shining through her pain face was amazing to watch.

The men's race was abnormally excite as the top group had a lot of big names in it all the way late into the last lap.  Obviously Bill Nye standing on the corner here just a mile or so from the finish was all Blevins needed to see to inspire him to win a World Cup XC race, a first for an American since 1994.

It was kinda chilling to watch the podium ceremony.  I don't think it coulda been more emotional (if you have emotions).  Big Bike Mike and Hubbs treated us to a home cooked (not van life) dinner that night, and then we headed back to reality on Monday, mine being four hours in the waiting room at the vet for Boppit.

The end.

West Virginia Whirled Cup/Van from Man-Tuk't Tour '2: Part Two

Wake up at the Tea Creek Campground and head to the Shoe.  Get there and go for a ride on the back country trails that used to be pretty cool (back in the '90s) but seem to be slightly ignored now that people would rather pay for lift tickets than access to even more WV XC trails.  

Signs for trails that don't exist anymore, missing signs at intersections, or just plain faded out to the point of being illegible from the sun.

Bill Nye found a place to huck his meat on Lower Beaver Dam, a trail that I have decided is maintained by all the water that flows down it.

Obligatory WV moss pic.

Obligatory WV sunset pic.

At some point during the day, we watched the downhill qualies and poked our noses around over at the XC track.

Wake up for day one of actual downhill racing to what I consider the best van life breakfast money can buy (that can be made in ten minutes).

We made our way down the entire course over the duration of the race and ended up under an empty Red Bull tent.  Then the visitors arrived.

Wilson from Kona who we didn't know was Wilson from Kona until we bumped into him at a brewery in Fayetteville a day (or two) later... because who remembers?

Missy Giove came by to deliver an IPA to Bill Nye.

Shaggy stopped by to just be Shaggy.

I said, "Hey, Bill Nye.  You should walk over to the finish line jump and get a picture of someone hitting it."

And this is the first guy who came along when he posted up:

"Okay.  I got one."

At some point the race ended and we found the remains of the Whale Tail feature that Snowshoe built at the bottom of the course that the UCI did not like... and we made it into a giant five man teeter totter for awhile.

We headed up to the top of the mountain and somehow ended up having a beer or two with some guy who was at some point "from Charlotte" but is from another planet now.

He was not the most fascinating human there that night, but the bar was set pretty high (as were some of the humans).

We woke up the next morning kinda late... and headed back to Fayetteville.

Why Fayetteville... again?

Wolf Creek was that much fun.  We hadn't seen it all, and we both wanted more.  That and spending more time in the Jon Danger Zone sounded optimal.

Smaller group means more time to play around.

Meat hucked once more... and a pinch flat with Cushcore followed.  Surprise!

And that's how we ended up at the same brewery we started at on day one and met Wilson from Kona who we didn't know was Wilson from Kona the first time we met him.

Then we settled back into Casa de Danger to actually watch the downhill race that we only saw flash past us all day without having a clue who won.

Chumpy was not impressed.

I'll keep this up next week since nobody reads blerhgs on Fridays if they read them at all.

West Virginia Whirled Cup/Van from Man-Tuk't Tour '2: Part One

Good lorb.  I'm in a daze.

That was a hell of a trip. I'm just gonna hit the high points.

We bee-lined our way outta Charlotte directly to Fayetteville.  I'd been paying attention to the social media coming outta Andy, Danger, and Boyes from New River Bikes, and Wolf Creek Park seems like the place to be.  So many other trails in WV are just old hiking trails, but these were built for bikes of the mountain sort.

Bill Nye hucking his meat.

Easy to navigate and everything you wanna throw a mountain bike at.  Flow, jumps, hucks, super-hucks, features, and rock gardens that will beat your dick clean off.

Bill Nye, Jon, and Boyes sent it down this slabby ladder roll-in.  I, on the other hand, did not.  My head is still not there yet.  Of course, some guy who musta been 65+ years old came along, said he'd never done it before because he was always alone out here, and then he hit it with us as witnesses.  

Mebbe someday.  Just not till I get back to that point.  That bumpy blind commit didn't give me the warm fuzzies.  Baby steps.

After we got done with the insanely rock-tech filled Moonshine, we headed to the Bridge Brew Works which is like three baseball throws away from the trailhead.

Then back to Danger's place to live that glamorous van life in his driveway.

Also, my angry foot got angrier that day.

Up kinda late the next day, stop at New River Bikes, head out to Tea Creek.

We had a "plan."  Ride up the road, ride "down" Tea Creek Mountain Trail  Andy audibled something to our plan tho.

Red Run... supposedly "down".   447 feet down in 1.8 miles... full of rocks and roots that make it "pedally."

Up something or other and then on to the "descent" down Tea Creek Mountain.

Once we hit these rocks, I was able to recall that I rode this like a billionty years ago back when we had maps printed on paper and this trail was listed as "not suggested for bikes."

Eventually, we got to the descent we'd worked so hard to get to... with very little daylight left.  I started feeling slightly better on the bike, but not so much as the woods got all dark on me.  Finish and we dunk our taints down in the creek and stay the night at the campground right at the bottom of the trail... which we paid for with a check... because Bill Nye had a checkbook?

I wonder how long before people don't even know what that is...