Blackbuck as Phoenix...rising from the ashes

The OS bikes Blackbuck single speed has been my fav steel SS that I have owned or even ridden, really.  It is not the stiffest or the most expensive or the lightest, etc, but it is smooth looking (el sueno, perhaps?...muy guapo?)...anyway, those 40's coupe' bend seat stays and elegant steel tubes are stitched together in angles and dimensions that make for a lively trail bike SS.  The EBB is solid and quiet.  I liked it very much.

But it was a casualty of newer and shinier frames as testing required me to get on a couple of other bikes for the last two seasons of riding.  So I had no use for the little dear and had pilfered some parts off of it leaving it like a half-picked over carcass.  Gruppo buzzards, as it were.  On the hook it languished, ribs all exposed.

So I thought about building it up, even began spinning wrenches, actually, to be a bike path SS cruiser but I came to realize that the old Karate Monkey was better suited for that.  So the languishing continued.  I thought about getting it back on trail but it had some things that were stopping me.  The wheels I had built were super solid and rolled great, pairing the White Industries SS hubs (freewheel type...old school) with Stan's Flow rims.  That was an over 2000g set of wheels with the freewheel on there.  Ooof!  It also had a non-tapered HT so I had no fork to replace the 80mm travel Manitou Pro with.  Not that the fork sucked...it was a great fork...but I wanted to go to a 100mm fork and I wanted to get to a 15mm axle dropout for future proof-ness.

So, I needed some parts and a plan and a reason to do it at all.  Not like I need another bike to ride, you know?  Then, while I was riding the new Stumpy carbon SS on a couple of more techy, winding trails, it came to me that it might be interesting to have a slightly tweaked SS option compared to the racy but very tasty Stumpy carbon.  What if I had a slightly slacker HT angle, maybe 70 degrees static?  Then keep the back end as short as the settings allow for, not really all that short, but just under 17.5".  I would also gear it down a bit as well and run a long 180mm crank to help in low and slow sections of trail.  That would give me a bike that would give up something in overall weight, but may be juuust a bit sweeter on steeper, more demanding trails.

Then some hubs and rims showed up and they needed a place to go.  The new build will drop some weight off the hoops.  I wrangled a fork, a new handlebar and stem, oh, and some brakes too.  So now I had a plan and a reason in some new wheels to test.  Ok then..off the hook it comes and into the work stand.  Stand by.  Should be fun.

Rain-out consolation ride

Well, since the road trip was a wash out, Ed the Tall and I headed out on a Sat morning to a trail a hour or so away that should bear the wet weather pretty well.  We ended up getting 3 hours or so of single track riding on our single speeds, Ed on his beloved Selma, and I on the SS Stumpy with the new SID World Cup fork on there.

Ed had never been there and so it was a treat to show off the trail and it's joys.  We seldom get the chance to ride as much singletrack as you can handle in a day.  Typically the trails in SO Cal are pretty short in length, but this one goes for miles and miles.  The soil is mostly decomposed granite so it bears up well in wet weather.  We were dressed for some soup but it never really was too bad at all.  I am sure glad that we had a rack for the bikes though instead of shoehorning two sloppy 29ers into the back of my trusty 3.  I was using the Kuat NV Core rack and that was solid and stable for the trip.  I did have to take off my tool bag from the saddle to eliminate some handlebar interference.  Super easy to get bikes on and off...very nice.

Ed had geared down for the cancelled trip and I never did, so I was jealous of his 32x21 gearing and 180mm cranks.  I need to regear when I come here again.  34x21 is not enough for this trail and my old legs.  And I think I am moving back to 180mm cranks to see what that feels like after being on 175s for a while now.  We shall see.

We both had on those Gore Phantom II jackets we bought on sale and those have been just great for this season's use.  I peeled the sleeves off to see how it was as a vest and sleeves or not, the jacket is a great balance of water shedding, warmth, breathability, and, most especially, wind-proof-ness.  Love it.

The carbon Stumpy is a very competent bike and although it is not a 'trailbike' SS by nature, it never held me back.  The SID fork with the RCT3 damper was stunningly good for SS use.  I ran it in the middle platform position with the low speed compression dial two clicks 'in'.  Fabulous for the way single speeds are ridden.  I had a stable fork with basically no bob out of the saddle but it would move when I needed it to with only a feeling of 'firmness' to the travel.  Super, super, super and the open setting was so much better than the old Fox it replaced.

Sweet bike for sure.

I think that trail requires more riding and soon.  You can make this into a dawn to dusk trail day if you have the moxie.

Clean bikes...for now.

Gore Phantom jacket with sleeves removed.

Red version of that Phantom soft-shell jacket.

Brothers of the knicker.

Well this sucks...

...rain killed the road trip.  Was headed to Camp Lynda, but this changed all that.  All dressed up and no place to go.

Carbon delivers the goods

This has been the longest time I have been on a carbon HT now, at least by a little bit, and the only time it has been a single speed bike and I am pretty darn impressed.  It is quite possibly the highest performing SS overall that I have ridden...light enough, stiff enough, very, very smooth riding, climbs like magic, aggressive handling but not over the top.  Great high performance all day bike.

Carbon is such a black box in many ways but if this is a good example of what it can be...and it looks to be exactly that...then we are living in a good time to be a bike rider in search of tall mountains and winding trails.

I still think that when you get right down to it that steel is still the best for value VS. performance in a hardtail bike but this Stumpjumper SS is amazing.  In fact, I think I need to go ride it again.

Be right back.