Chili Shakedown Cruz

I took the Chili Con out for a short shake down cruz last night. Gave it a good run of pavement, dirt roads, roads that used to be paved but aren't quite dirt yet, and then so doubletrack that led to singletrack that led to nothing track, or as I called it last night "the place where you move to the bottom of the food chain."

The bike ran well, it's very comfortable and pretty quick. The Conti Speed Kings run well, but it's funny how quickly I forget the difference in pavement cornering between a 23mm road tire and a 35mm cross tire. There is that point when you go from riding the upper edge of the tire to dropping down to the actual side and there is that perceivable drop of the bike- took a minute to get used to that.

The shifting on the front feels a bit funky and I need to work on that, but figured I'll get the cables all stretched out first. The new Rival has a trim that the original Rival didn't- that took me a minute to figure out. The brakes work much better than my old XT's that I have on the Surly.

I have a few position things I need to tweak and then I think we'll be good. The sad part is once I get it all dialed in I likely won't ride it again until later in the summer, although it may be the rig I use to go cruise for new MTB trails that I think I see out on my road rides- time will tell.

Got in a fantastic road ride on Tuesday, road a route that I've never hit before and can't believe this great road has been out there and I've missed it for the past 20 years. The ironic part is I can see the ride that the road goes on from my house and from my office window- been looking at it forever- just realized there is a perfect stretch of pavement across the spine of it- I'll take my camera next time as there are some cool views of the mountains and lakes.

Other than that- not much else going on. Busy work weekend coming up with Reunion here at the Academy. Get to play with the new camera I bought for my office (a Canon 50D). So that's it.

Ride on.

DEA