29ers, Smog, Pain and Frame Building

By Mike Ferrentino

Mike, a Leatherman tool and one big clump of cactus that probably plunged its way into something soft.

Thought it might be fun to start this column with a happy tale culled from the Washington Post:

“The Associated Press
Thursday, March 2, 2006; 10:18 PM

ATHENS, Ohio -- A sticker on a bicycle that said "this bike is a pipe bomb" caused a scare Thursday at Ohio University that shut down four buildings before authorities learned the message was the name of a punk rock band, a university spokesman said.

The sticker on the bike chained outside the university-owned Oasis restaurant near the center of campus attracted the attention of a police officer about 5:30 a.m., spokesman Jack Jeffery said.

Police blocked streets around the restaurant and the Columbus police bomb squad came from about 65 miles away.

The bomb experts hit the bike with a high-pressure spray of water, then pried it apart with a hydraulic device normally used to rescue accident victims trapped in cars, acting Athens Fire Chief Ken Gilbraith said. Once they had it open, they saw there was no bomb.

The buildings, including some classroom facilities, were reopened after a couple hours.

Dean of Students Terry Hogan urged students to be more careful when showing support for the band from Pensacola, Fla.

University police interviewed the bike's owner then released him, Jeffery said. Police are still investigating.

An e-mail seeking comment was sent to Plan-It-X Records, listed on a Web site for the band as its record label. The label does not have a published phone number.”

Remember kids, bikes don’t kill people. But cops who think they might be bombs can get a little sketchy...

This was a long push down behind the Orange Curtain. Normally, I don’t last long in this environment. This trip was a full month. But it had its moments. Got to sneak out to the 24 hours of Old Pueblo and watch people hurt themselves. Unfortunately, the story angle I was working on – as in the self-induced agony of solo racing – fell totally apart. Trying to get photographs of racers as they disintegrated, really capture some essence of agony in a pure and painful form, turned out to be futile. It was all hugs and tears of happiness and massive doses of endorphins. People were fucking radiant. So much for the gritty and dark angle, back to the editorial drawing board...

However, there was this guy racing solo there, and leading the class for a while until he went blind during the night (seriously. But he got better), doing his own experiment on whether 29” wheels really do roll faster than 26” wheels. Dave Harris, who rides and coaches for Team healthFX, concluded a three stage experiment using PowerTap strain meters to measure whether he was faster riding and racing his Trek Fuel or his Salsa Dos Niner. The final results are here:
29er VS. 26 Blog Dig around on the site, and his blogs in particular, and see the rest of the results. Interesting stuff. Apparently, bigger wheels don’t really roll faster. He’s getting a whipping over on MTBR.com’s boards for not being scientific enough, but as far as I know, is the first person to do some actual testing based on power output as opposed to the usual uninformed seat-of-the-pants zealotry that the 29” converts apply. Swear to God, they are making single speeders seem almost rational and even-tempered.

At the other end of the spectrum, Travis Brown was relating to me how he and JHK would go out on training rides last year, on identically spec-ed 26” and 29” Fishers, and being about the same size and shape, would swap bikes during the ride. According to Mister Brown, whoever was on the 29” bike, regardless of terrain, would pull away from the 26” rider.

Mike drove to the 2006 Old Pueblo hoping folks would be suffering. They were happy. That sucked.

Why am I paying attention at all? Well, aside from a test of four different 29” bikes coming in our July issue, there will be also a Gearhead feature going into the pro and con of the wheel size. Hopefully without judgement. My own findings are that they work real well in some places, and not so well in some others. After playing around on the things for six years now, I’m still not convinced that they will make me more of a man, or cure cancer...

From Old Pueblo (Old Pueblo where about 3000 people showed up to have a very mellow and fine time in the desert (huge props to promoter Todd Sadow for putting on one of the most casually cool races I’ve ever been to), back to California for the Tour Of California road race (Tour of California) which was a huge budget, high profile affair full of flash and glitter. It was good to see World-class racing come to the states, but I wouldn’t go waving Old Glory to hard about the powerful US placing in the results. As the bike sponsor for one team euro team said “The Italians want to know where to go find girls, and the Spaniards want to be sure the stages are over in time to get to the outlet malls. They’re not really making the race a priority...” Given that it was still February, dammit, and this was a way to get some miles in the legs without having to get shelled out the back of Het Volk or Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne, covered in cowshit, beaten by cobblestones and half-hypothermic, I can’t say I’d blame anyone for treating the TOC like a vacation...

Mike's forehead visits the Handmade Bicycle Show. His nose showed up too.

And from there to here, San Jose. Home of the Handmade Bicycle Show (Handmade Bicycle Show). Morgan and I are hunkered down in a Travelodge room with iron burns on the floor and a perfectly fist shaped hole in the wall. About a mile up the road there are sixty or so framebuilders showing off their craft. We got to get some breakfast in us, smuggle the dog out of the room before we get popped an obscene amount for violating the cleaning rules (how is it that they would object to a dog being in a room with a burned up floor and a hole in the wall? Nevermind. Hypothetical question), and then go take pictures of purty bikes that are the exact antithesis of the bike industry’s current direction. Should have a story about it in the mag one of these days. In the meantime, here are three dots...