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Tour of ‘Tosa

Rode my Smitty at the Tour of ‘Tosa as part of Team Joyride.

The first task was to locate several playing cards attached to various features in and around Hansen Park and Underwood Parkway. That went pretty well and we were on to task two which was a scavenger hunt/landmark hunt around Wauwatosa.

We did just well enough, finishing 6th, to miss out on the Tri-oval of Doom race that finished off the day and settled the top spots. Here is a video of that 50-lap race of carnage on salvaged bikes!

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Urban Ride Around Milwaukee

Smitty MonstercrossI took a longer than expected fall ride on Tuesday. After I voted, went to the post office and the FedEx Store I started to meander west on the Oak Leaf Trail and by the time it was done I’d ridden through the heart of the city, down 92nd St onto the EW Connector, to the Hank Aaron and through Downtown before heading back north on the city streets and the Oak Leaf. It was a nice ride and i saw some areas of town I hand’t seen in years if ever.

I rode my Smitty Monstercross and found the 30-mile ride very comfortable. I mostly rode on the streets and paved trails but I did take about a 1-mile MTB trail ride in Hoyt Park and hit some gravel too. The Smitty worked perfectly!

You can check out the Garmin 500 track here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/55338259

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Getting a Smitty Ready for the Long Haul

I’ve been working on this Smitty as a candidate for some extended riding and touring for next season as well as a ride that can handle lots of gravel and occasional off-road excursions. Sort of a Monstercross meets Touring bike.

In keeping with the Smitty theme of doing many things as doing them all well, I set this bike up as a more traditional touring-type rig than the more urban-oriented Smitty’s we typically build with an internally geared hub.

For this particular set-up, I went with a Large Smitty frame to stretch the cockpit out a bit because I know I wanted a fairly short stem with some rise to get Woodchipper bars where I wanted them and to get the handling of the bike crisp both on the hoods and in the drops.

The drivetrain is pretty traditional with a sweet, gold RaceFace Dues mountain bike front triple crank and a 12-34 9-speed rear cassette. An Ultegra rear derailleur does the job in the back while the Shimano SLX front derailleur in the short cage version does the trick up front.

Since this was one of the first Smitty prototype frames we had gone with linear pull brakes on the back (current production Smittys have a disc in the rear as well as the front) so an Avid 5.0 V-brake is the choice in the rear while a Shimano disc is on the front.

The Salsa Delgado rims, laced to Shimano XT hubs with DT 2.0/1.8 comp spokes, are shod with Continental 700×42 Cyclocross Plus tires. The Continentals offer good puncture protection and the reflective “Reflex” sidewalls are super when the ride runs late.

For the present I’ve been working on getting the bike as comfortable as possible while doing 25-30 mile rides in preparation for longer jaunts to come. So far, so good. The basic riding position is very close to what I want with only minor tweaking left to do.

Remaining to be done are the addition of fenders plus front and rear racks. I don’t see myself doing fully self-contained touring yet but the versatility of being able to carry a couple of days worth of gear and provisions seems like a good idea plus the bags sure coms in handy around town!

A possible upgrade to STI levers is also a possibility. I really like the bar-end shifters but the wide Woodchipper bars coupled with the way the Woodchippers angle out puts the shifters out in the breeze quite a bit but to date that has not been a problem so we will see what we see!

More on this evolving rig as it happens.

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Lots of new Pix on Flickr!

Well, we’ve been busy in the shop as well as riding and testing a bunch so site updates have taken a back seat to building and fun but that didn’t stop us from taking a bunch of pix of both Schlick Cycles bikes as well as several new models from Simplified Bikes.

Check out the Flickr Group here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gasmith/sets/72157622844120179/

Here are a couple to warm you up!

Tony’s Smitty with the Gates Carbon Drive System Belt Drive!

Out trail testing a Simplified 26-inch Singlespeed MTB

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Tony’s Smitty CDS

We delivered Tony’s Smitty built with the Gates Carbon Drive System a couple of weeks ago and he is already sending in glowing comments!

Tony’s Smitty was built with Paragon’s Sliding Drop to allow us to tension the belt and because Paragon makes the mount with a break at the stay necessary to install the belt.

We used the Shimano Alfine 8-speed IGH along with a 46T front belt wheel. Gearing is great with the Schwalbe Big Apple tries. The bike is just a total blast to ride.

Direct from the Cat’s mouth:

A friend of a friend at MREA just rode the bike and said he had an out of body experience. Freakin hippies!  Lots of questions all day!

and

I had another 10 or so people ride it at MREA today and nothing but amazement was reported. Everything from “Never saw a belt drive before” to “what’s up with this tires …… wait, what the hell is up with that belt!”.  The smile on their face was worth the ride alone.  Just an epic ride, Greg!

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Smitty Built up as a Singlespeed

I built this Smitty up as a 29’er Singlespeed mostly to show the versatility of the Smitty frame but after riding it a couple of times I am going to keep it around for a while! One reason I want to put some miles on it is to test out our eccentric bottom bracket in off road conditions. The EBB has proven to be super for commuter version of  the Smitty and adding off road cred would be great.

Single Speed Schlick Smitty
Schlick Smitty Singlespeed