this winter i got around to riding and tinkering with my ’96 stumpjumper mountain bike that i’ve had for a while. i built it up for a rosarito-ensenada ride a couple of years ago and just used it as my riding-around-the-neighborhood bike since then.

i didn’t mean to make it a weight weenie bike, but after changing the front suspension from a rockshox indy sl (which was already really light) to a rockshox sid, i just kept changing things here and there until i shaved off nearly 4 pounds.

here are some of the components that made the biggest difference:

at this point it’s going to be close to a $1 a gram to go any lower, so it probably will stay at its current weight. overall the ride feels great and pretty sturdy (although i’m a light rider at 140lbs). this summer i’m going to pick up one of my road bikes that i left at my mom’s place in california and will probably take that through a similar process.

on saturday after an early workout, eric and i drove (i drove, stupid rock/paper/scissors) to pasadena to see the end of stage 7 of the amgen tour of california. last year the same race was in shorline village and the year before that in redondo beach. the main attraction this year of course was that lance armstrong now racing for team astana is out of retirement and was racing the event.

the last part of stage 7 was a 5 lap, 10 mile loop around the rosebowl, so we watched from the 500m to the finish mark, and got to see them pass a total of 5 times. that was actually the first time that i had ever seen lance armstrong in person, and even though it was 5 times it was less than 5 seconds each time.

i brought my sony cm1 hd video camera, which the more i use, the more i fall out of love with. it’s actually pretty good for what it’s marketed as, capturing quick, short hd video that looks pretty decent. it really isn’t a replacement for a video camera though. my new main gripe with it is that it seems that instead of taking photo-photo-photo and making it a movie, that the sensor “scans” the picture. When things are moving really fast, the “scan” is different from start to finish. So my R/C helicopter’s blades look like they’re bending in flight, and these cyclists look like they’re bikes are shorter than they are. i’ll probably hang on to it because like i said, it’s great for some things… but i’ll probably end up buying another hd camcorder for higher quality stuff down the line.

for as long as i’ve been building bikes, i’ve usually forgone thrift and comfort for lightweight and a “race-like” look. i’ve gotten older (lately it seems exponentially so) and wiser and i finally bought a bicycle seat that doesn’t hurt when i sit on it. i’ve always rode the selle italia flite saddle on all of my mountain bikes, but today i swapped it for a WTB Speed V Comp saddle. It’s 400 grams (almost twice the weight of the Flite) and $29 (a quarter the price of the Flite) but it’s comfortable as hell and short of me becoming a mountain bike racer, I doubt i’ll ever look back.

this morning eric and i were supposed to do a bike ride, but when i left my house at around 9a, it was freezing cold. i put on my arm warmers and rode the 4 miles to his place and by the time i got there, my nipples were so hard, it was obvious it was too cold to ride.

so we went and had breakfast at the local coffee shop and ended up playing 9 holes at the dominguez golf course. it’s actually not half bad, considering the $13 green fees and the fact that we were pretty much the only people out on the course. for not having played golf in quite a while we both played pretty well and we’ll hopefully start playing golf there more often. towards the end of the game, costin showed up, played the last few holes with us and then he and i headed to the hustler casino.

i’ve only played poker at hustler a couple of times and i’ve never gone alone, for fear that i would make a habit of it. i bought in with $100, and played pretty tight. after about the fifth hand, the announcer said that there would be a drawing for a table to spin the wheel. my table won and the 9 players split $500, so that $55.50 put me ahead. over 2 hours, i won about 10 pots and in the end came up $41.50 ahead, although if you don’t figure in the bonus money i got, i actually lost $14 playing poker. but a win’s a win and it’s always nice to walk out of a casino ahead.

anyway, time for nap!

two things i hated most about that last rosarito ride (aside from almost dying of dehydration after a night of terrible diarrhea) was that my feet and butt were killing me by the time i finished the ride. i think in past rides, i had done it in a shorter amount of time, so these things hadn’t bothered me as much, but lately, even on short rides this has become a problem.

so i replaced my worn out, 10 year old pair of cycling shorts with the new pearl izumi 3d race classic short, which has 3x the padding of my old shorts. i also got new road shoes. the diadora road shoes that i’d worn for the last couple of years had always fit ok, but after while, my small toe always got cramped up by the poor front design of the shoe. i picked up a pair of sidi zetas, and while i haven’t done a ride in them yet, they feel amazing compared to my old shoe.

eric and i are planning to put bike rides into our regular work out routine. hopefully this weekend i’ll get a chance to try this new stuff out.

brightroom.com posted the pics from the rosarito to ensenada bike ride from last month. every year they try to add more security to make it more difficult to download the photos, but nothing can stop the all-powerful print screen button :)

al rode with us too, but he can’t remember what his number was, so no pic of him.

this weekend was the final rosarito to ensenada ride. i think this was the 6th time i rode the event and unlike past rides, i took this one pretty slowly. i hadn’t done much training for it and i rode my knobby-tired, retro mountain bike so it was harder than it had been in the past. spending that much time on my bike though, riding through a familiar course had me reflecting a lot on past rides. my first ride was the fastest and most hardcore, and the tandem ride with taka was definitely the most fun. at times, this one almost seemed like work, but being the last event made it special anyway.

most of this trip was just a carbon copy of the other rides: getting lost on the way down, eating tacos, fighting about politics, drinking beer, waiting in long ass lines at the border. for the first time in all my trips to mexico though, i got the montezuma’s revenge :( i’m not even sure what it was from (maybe this popsicle, or maybe when i rinsed my toothbrush). the whole trip i was making fun of eric for being so cautious about the water so i kinda deserved it i guess. saturday after i went to sleep it hit me pretty hard and kept me up all night. by sunday morning i was so dehydrated that i felt like i had a major hangover and the ride back home was pretty miserable. today my system is cleared up, but i still feel like i got beat to shit. not only is my whole digestive system fucked, but my bicycle seat wasn’t properly adjusted so my ass hurts, the mountain bike puts me in a different riding position so my back/neck is sore, and for this 4+ hour ride i wasn’t wearing any sunscreen, so my arms are burnt to all hell.

anyway, at least this was the last ride. probably the worst of all rides and defintely the worst experience in mexico but at least i was there for the final event. in a way i’m glad that there’s not going to be one next year, ’cause otherwise i’d have to come up with an excuse not to go. other than a cancun trip that taka wants to go on, i’d be happy if i never cross that border again. hasta la vista mexico!

here’s me and eric right before the start of the event. i filled my shorts with boxes of nerds to throw at the kids.

i wasn’t planning on riding this weekend, but both eric and al hit me up so we decided to do the pv ride that i did last weekend. we kept a much faster pace than the last ride, and on the downhill coming over the backside of pv, i hit a top speed of 44 mph, which is pretty damn fast on a bike. i’m sure i’ll cruise through the event, and i’m planning on riding relatively easy anyway and enjoying the experience.

the ride we do is 25 miles and most of it is climbing with a very fast descent from the top. i’m gonna do my best to do the ride at least once a month even after the rosarito event, ’cause i really need to keep the gut in check.

in this retro bike build that i’m doing, i’m cannibalizing a lot of parts off of a 1996 gt karakoram. i decided to just take off the stem/handlebar set together and put it on the new bike. once i had it on there though, i realized i didn’t like the stem because it was too long, an ugly shape and had stickers instead of laser engraving. so i found in my stash of bike parts a stem that i liked, but the stem that was on there was a single bolt which meant i’d have to remove the shifters, brake levers and grips which would be a hassle since i had already got everything wired and tuned up.

so to save myself the hassle, i busted out the dremmel and just cut the old one off. this particular one is going for about $5 on ebay so it was no big loss and a big savings of time. the new stem had a multiple bolt design, so i could just clamp it directly on.

so i’ve decided to build up an era-specific mountain bike. mountain bikes in the mid-90′s were my main hobby. Back then i didn’t really have the money to buy the cool stuff, so i just bought the magazines and dreamed about it. i actually had a pretty decent setup that i eventually built up, with a lot of it being hand-me-downs from my buddy ken who was a great friend and a really hardcore rider.

having now gone through some many bikes and builds, i’ve decided to go back to my roots, and build a bike with components from the mid-90′s. this is really when mountain biking became a sport and again when it was most important to me. ebay is a great resource for the build since old (vintage to me) parts are pretty easy to come by, and for only a fraction of what they used to cost. so of course i started the build with the most important part of any project: the shoes. the answer (maker of the manitou suspension fork) accelerators were like $150 back in the day and i picked up this brand new pair (still has the seal that covers the cleat holes) for $10.50. sure the colors are tacky by today’s standards, but the nostalgia’s so strong, i really would’ve paid the original price for them.

beautiful aren’t they?