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Metro Mountainbikers Fall Social Ride 2010

The Metro MTB Fall Social Ride took place on Saturday, October 23rd on the South Side of Milwaukee.

A dozen riders met at the South Shore Parking lot and were initially greeted by a dreary, rainy morning, however, Marty had some cans of alcohol infused whipped cream to get things started and keep our minds on the task at hand. Interesting. I had no idea that this stuff even existed! Vanilla and Chocolate were the flavors of the day

We headed south along the shore of Lake Michigan and while we were at our first stop at Sheridan’s on South Lake Dr. the rain subsided and by the time we left that establishment about 11:30 the rain was done! Sampled a Racer 5 beer there!

Next stop was Slick Willies in South Milwaukee. This was our lunch stop and the Slick Willie was the burger of choice for many. Burger, 2 kinds of cheese, grilled onions and grilled mushrooms. It was delicious! for some reason I chose Buch beer here. Probably because it is more like water and the ride had a bunch more to go!

Gravel trails, railroad beds and powerline trails were much of what led us to our next stop at City Lounge in Cudahy. There was a pretty cool bunch of small jumps in the area that the old Ice Center was built on. Just southwest of the City Lounge.

Some kind of Dachshund convention was going on at the City Lounge so  it only seemed proper to sample Dachshund’s Ankle Biter Ale. A good brew! BTW, there were about 20 of the squat, little dogs at the Lounge. Apparently a club of owners gets together a few times a year there as the owner is a Dachshund fan himself and makes the place available to the club.

We popped through the St. Francis Brewery after a bit of railroad track and track bed riding where several beers made on site were available. I gave the Nut Brown a try and liked it enough for a second.

An impromptu stop at Gordie’s had us drinking the obligatory PBR.

My final stop was at Sara’s house where a passable pre-mixed Long Island Ice Tea. Sara was the lone lady on the ride so buck up next year women and join us!

While I had a 50th birthday party for a couple of friends to attend the rest of the crew hit a couple more stops.

The trails along the Lake Michigan Bluff are pretty decent with some great views and lots of nice twisties.

As for equipment, I rode my Simplified 29’er. The 9’er is currently set up as a 1×9 and that worked well for this ride. Plus, I am still loving the Manitou Minute 29’er!

Here are a few shots on my Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gasmith/sets/72157625105603055/

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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.