Stick a fjork in me

I did not purchase the Rock Shox RCT Pike Solo Air solely to conquer the Hulk.

No, there was a more serious impetus to my selection and actual procuring of such silliness.  Although the large squishy fjork's place in my world rests mainly on my Dickstickel Meatplow V.6 for the purposes of slaying the Pisgah, I occasionally want to be able to pull it off and put it on the VerDickgo Meatplow V.7 when needed.  The Fjox 34 Talas 140 CTD Fit was a fine fjork, but it's knobs were on the tall side.  A bit too tall.  In extreme circumstances, they would touch my my down tube.  Not a good touch.  A bad touch.  An Uncle Touchy's Naked Puzzle Basement touch.  This happened to me once on one of my other frames with a Fjox fjork, and after I sold it, the new owner mounted up a Manitou and was all like, "What bad touch?"

So it seems like everyone and their brother has a giant boner over the latest offerings from Rock Shox.  After some eyeballing of some knobbage and crowns, I determined it was worth a shot.  I almost didn't make it all the way through to the actual purchase, as just wading thorough the (what seems like hundreds of) variations was a terrific task for someone who gets stumped looking at a menu in a Mexican restaurant. 

I settled on 150mm of travel... because I'm an American.  More = better.  If the bike rides like dookie, I can always knock it down through some manner of spacers, tools and wizardry. 

What about the geometry?

I remember having a conversation with Eric "PMBAR Honcho" Wever about forks on 29'ers eons ago.  Axle to crown lengths, travel, offset... always looking for the perfect combo to make our 29'ers handle the way God wanted them to.  One of us (I don't remember who) said something along the lines of, "Remember when we just used to stick any fork with any kinda travel on any bike and we didn't care?"

History repeats itself... sorta.

The Pike comes with a 46mm OR a 51mm offset.  What that means is that I can go with the larger offset and get a little bit of that steering quickness back that I lost when I slacked the bike all out.  So I went there.  Bonus.

I skipped the travel adjust offered with the Dual Position Air option.  Two reasons.  I just can't care about reaching down anymore and fiddling with any more knobs than I have to.  Also despite the fact that the Dual comes in white (the preferred fjork color of champions), it also adds to the cost of a fjork that already costs like a million dollars.

Obviously the Hulk was not the best place to test out the base tune of a 150mm fjork.  On Sunday, I got it out on the Backyard Trails and managed to squeeze out this much travel:

The experts on things and stuff say that the Pike is very progressive and hard to bottom out, but that seemed like a bit too much travel considering the fact that without my drooper, I chose to skip some of the larger drops out at the BYT.

Sam Salman, co-owner of The Hub/Pisgah Tavern, told me to install the two (magic) Bottomless Tokens under the air cap.  I pulled off the air cap and considered his advice.

I added two to the one already in there... but then remembered that Sam is fat (in comparison to me) and rides (slightly) harder than I do.

All this work and steady progress just a week and change before the Tour de Burg.  It's looking like my 30.9 drooper post will get here before my 27.2 drooper post, so now I have to figure out whether or not to droop (a given) on the  VerDickgo Meatplow V.7 with 150mm of squish or man up and ride rigid (drooped, of course) at "the only race that matters."

Yes, all that means there is a Fjox 24 Talas 140 CTD Fit with a tapered steer tube and 15mm axle on the auction block... pretty cheap when you consider how much I rode it and how much less fat than Sam I am.  $450.  Hit me at teamdicky at hotmail dot com if you want some.

175mm steer tube... because that will answer your first question.

Sideways... because... whatever.