Todd Snider – Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues

The Build
RockShox Reba SL 2.9 100mm Fork
Fox Float RP2 Shock
Race Face Deus XC Cranks and BB
Shimano M540 Clipless pedals
Sram 990 11×34 Cassette and 991 Chain
Shimano XT front and Shimano XT Shadow rear deraileurs
Shimano XT shifters
FSA OS 150LX stem
Ritchey WCS Carbon handlebars
Salsa Juegos grips
Hayes Stroker Carbon Hydraulic V6 brakes\levers
NoTubes Flow rims on Hope Pro II hubs
Geax Saguaro 2.2 tires
Fizik Gobi saddle
Thompson Elite seatpost
and a piece of shitty old foam to mount my Forerunner

weight is about 28.25 lbs, should be a svelte sub-28 after I make the wheels tubeless.

Picked it up from Rage on Saturday, a few hours of tweaks and new parts in the ManCave to set the front and rear sag, and it was ready for a shakedown ride on the golf course with Kila. I immediately noticed a couple things – the fit felt pretty good, nothing I couldn’t enjoy with a few minor adjustments, but I was a tad more stretched out in the torso than on the Blur.   The seatpost slipped down on a few jumps, and coupled with leaning far forward, this position really hurts my balls.   The 4mm allen fixed it with a quick twist — to the seatpost that is , not my balls.   The bike is solid and stiff like I hoped, not overly plush like some of the bikes I’d tried, but the big wheels smoothed out the ride and emulated some of the effects of suspension. I climbed the staircase at the church on my first try, and rolled down some of the runoff-washes feeling smoother than I’d expect from 4 inches. The suspension i also like better than on the Blur – there is no VPP to stiffen up at the wrong time, so I get a little more feel of the trail and a little more softness.   The Blur could handle a lot, but it could feel too firm and jittery doing it. After enjoying the single-pivot on the Heckler and how compliant it could be in the chunk, I’m really glad this suspension is “less” active. ProPedal and fork-lockout can both be enabled with the flick of a switch, so I’m not at all worried about adverse effects from the suspension on smooth terrain.   I do notice some fork bob hammering on the road, but nothing I can’t tune by upping the compression damping or just locking it out.   No pedal bob to speak of with pro-pedal engaged.

Getting comfortable on the 29er will take some practice. I was scared of toppling on some of the turns, and slid out while standing up and cranking round a turn on the golf cart path.   It was slick with water, but still, it highlighted that finding your center on a 29r is a new challenge. As is acceleration – the initial shift in momentum takes more oomph, and it can be a little frustrating. I am sure I will get stronger after a few rides and learn to start my accelerations sooner.   Over the last 2 days I did a quick Hawes ride then mostly the same loop on the Blur the next day – I got and missed just about all the same spots, but for some reason I felt less dominant on the Hei Hei.   This is probably just general discomfort with the new ride.   The flip side is that once you get going before you know it you need to upshift cause you feel like you have no chain. In the ~5 hrs I’ve have on it in the last 5 days, I find I’m hopping up to the middle and large chain rings quickly once I get moving, and staying in them through some climbs if I can use my momentum to pull me through the initial efforts against gravity.   I have yet to try anything super steep or steps that could send me OTB, but running down the staircase at the Walgreens I felt for a sec like I was dangerously weighted forward.   Bailing on the bike is definitely harder since you are higher up, so those are all things I need to approach progressively so I don’t get the flyswatter effect some people say can endo you harshly on the big wheels.   A dog ride sampling some gnar below Red Mountain Park is in order, though I was quite comfy launching a little gap jump on the pump track behind Rage without any real trepidation.

Sunday was the first real ride, 7 of us did Bulldog Canyon.   It would be a good first ride – aggressive XC, lumpy and chunky to see what the 29er thing is all about, not too gnarly but hard enough with enough climbing and burliness to stretch anyone out of a comfort zone.   I’ve never done Bulldog with more than 3 others, and it was super fun.   Durtgurl, Chongoman, U2metoo, NoelG, Juan and Gary from Ohio.   The pace was social – 4 hrs to finish, which was more than Bulldog has ever taken me by far, but it was really fun to get out and gab and check out the awesome spring wildflowers and fiddle with the bike with some help and advice from some friends.

The ride did not start auspiciously.   Gary was borrowing DG’s bike, and as we readied to launch he realized he’d left his front wheel back in Ahwatukee.   In the 30 minutes it took us to fetch the Heckler and return, I regaled him with the story of going to Rocky Point for 4 days with all of Beckie’s family and her realizing in Ajo that she’d left the wheels for 2 bikes sitting in the garage, leading me to sneak into the workout room at the Village every day and spin on the stationary bike in the dark.

As expected, the first part of the ride I was all over the place.   Some of it was the bike, some the 29er, some that my wheels were at 40psi as opposed to the 32-ish I run when tubeless.   I was spinning out in the rear, which could be my posture or the tread pattern or the non-tubeless wheels.   I let out some air and the climbing got much better, and I dodged fate by not pinch flatting.   Not so lucky with the deraileurs – I chainsucked once on the front, something a lot of people reported as a problem with the bike.   I didn’t overthink it as both rings were all the way inside and I was descending a chunky section when it happened.   But after I got it up in the stand, I was disappointed to see the deraileur was setup pretty off.   Even more disappointing was twice flopping off the cassette, causing some gashes in a couple spokes and a bend on the inner-most ring.   I bent it back pretty well using a rotor truing wrench, and after the shop looked it over there is no real damage, but a little tweak of the limit screw would have saved much angst about breakage on the maiden voyage.   No bike is perfect off the stand, and I’ve   almost always gotten outstanding advice and service from Rage.   I certainly could have given the bike a more thorough once-over myself.   So the shop gets a mulligan while suffering through their own hectic week, and they made it right by fixing up the Hei Hei and promising me the Heckler’s rotor will be in for the   Spring Fling rides this weekend.   rant over.   I will now return to happy thoughts about the bike and the shop

Once I let out some psi and the ride went on, I got a lot comfier on the bike and a lot more aggressive.   It did not handle the huge chunks as well as the Heckler, but it certainly was better than the Blur.     I felt comfortable going over drops that on the Blur would be way sketchier and on the Heckler I would have leaned way back and praised the big suspension.   The hardest descent on Bulldog I had to dab, but I didn’t feel worried, just recognized that I was sliding sideways and put out a foot.     Coming off the top, the difficult drop-in was just fine once I got up on top of the bike enough to get rolling down the precipice, the wheel-grabbing spaces in the rocks and drops not any concern with the bigger wheels.   The entire descent went fine with me never getting close to wiping out on the extended stretches of loose rocks.   Some of it is skill, some of it the bike, either way its what I had hoped – a light and fast XC machine that will throw its own punches back at the AZ terrain.

Our crew at the top

awww…what a cute couple

Bombing down the last miles at 20mph, I skidded out just before running this guy over

Some excellent pics from Kathleen on her blog.

And another fun video from Sam.