May 21-23 was the Dirt Rag Magazine/Dirt Fest at Lake Raystown. This event would offer the usual beer sampling, bike sampling, trail sampling, and bros not pros sampling as well. Friday and Saturday would be the bulk of the days for riding and mayhem. I contacted my local IMBA affiliated club-- the York Area Moutain Bike Association and booked a campsite with them.
YAMBA was ahead of the curve with this event, attending Dirt Fest for its second year, they realized that getting a group campsite for the club has its following advantages:
1- Non-primitive camping (i.e. showers, warm water).
2- Camping for the group would be contained to a cul de sac of the club member's tents, campers, etc. thus reducing the amount of 'I can't handle my alcohol, single speeders/mtbrs' potentially. At least we had only one guy that couldn't handle his alcohol and well, quite frankly, with one guy and ten 'sort of sober' riders, makes for better odds.
3- We were still within a mile of the festivities and could hop on the shuttle bus if we need to check things out on the event's peninsula.
4- The Fest's designated camping area was on the side of a hill. 'Nuff said about that.
Friday I rolled out in caravan fashion with one of the club members. Make a note here-- use the Yakima Rocket Box next time for transporting the Bianchi EZ-Up tent, more on that later in the post.
I was super pumped for this weekend on many levels. I'd heard great things about the Lake Raystown/Allegrippis Trail system for over a year now. The Army Corp of Engineers and Raystown collaborated with the IMBA Trail Care Crew, planned/designed the trails for nearly 5 years and spent 2 years on the construction (I think my stats are 95% accurate here). Professionally build trails! I'm familiar with the lay of the land near LR and know that it offers wonderful boating, road biking, hiking and outdoor access. Pennsylvania is a great place for vacationing. You'll need to do your homework in order to find the right spot, but it's worth it none the less. I've seen some articles in Decline Magazine covering the trail system and the flow of the trails sounded irresistible to a trail hack like myself.
YAMBA is a trail advocacy club based out of York, Pa. Or as I refer to them---S.O.Y! Straight Outta' York! I stole that abbreviation from the now de-funked band Live and their early attempts at an email newsletter entitled, S.O.Y. back in 1999. I've been out for their group rides as well as past trail maintenance days and let's just say that they put their shovel where their mouths are; not really but you get the picture. Working closely with Mike Fobes of the York Co. Parks Commission in the past decade, YAMBA has created new trails, maintained the usable ones, and created sustainable multi-use trails in place of ones that became erosion nightmares over the years. Keep up the great work guys! You can access their website--->here!
YAMBA's club president, Skip Durgin, has been my partner in crime for mountain biking since 1990. On again, off again riding, racing, the best man at my wedding, Christmas parties, and now the Dirt Fest weekend, had put me back in touch with this Old Trail Head. I was looking forward to ripping up some new trails with him and the club as I drove northwest towards State College, Pennsylvania.
We ate lunch, geared up, and rolled out for an early afternoon trail session.
While I don't remember the names of all the trails we rode, I came away from the weekend with a nice laminated map of the Allegrippis Trails from the Dirt Rag boys that should prove to be handy on my return trip. Skip and Dan was familiar with the trails so we just followed their wheels.
Professionally built trails mean what to me after this weekend? Have you seen Star Wars Episode IV? Remember when Luke was training with Ben and had the blaster shield on and deflecting the floating orb that shot mini-blasts at Luke which he tried to deflect with his lightsaber? Yeah, that. You can relax your brain and let your instincts take over. The trails have a lot of swales used to slow down the speed of the water, so it's a roller coaster everywhere you ride. The bench cutting of the trails is just wide enough that 25mph speeds can easily be reached. Little to no rocks or roots. Although it took me a couple of miles to get used to that great of a singletrack speed on my Bianchi 29r as I was turning into the bench cutting corners a bit too early and bouncing the front tire off the entry of the inside turn. Let's face it, there aren't too many trails in central PA where you'll see that kind of speed on singletrack for more than 5 seconds.
Tire pressure is critical and an 'over the handle bars' riding position to keep the front wheel firmly planted in the corners. My bike had loads of grip with the tubeless tire and air pressure I was running. My only thought was I really need a double ring crank on my 29r; something like this--->2x9 is in my future. The only time I'm in the granny gear is if I'm injured and most of the time I'm in the middle or big ring.Friday evening:
YAMBA firestarter Kevin. Actually, Kevin is a professional firefighter, and lover of freeride bikes and fully blown Subaru rally cars. When a guy shows up for a weekend of camping and riding and starts tending to the fire with Nomex fire gloves, you just step away and let the man do his work. Kevin also has a habit of strapping a GoPro HD camera to his chest in order to capture his trail antics. His VIMEO site can be enjoyed--->here! and with his speed on the trails, there's a good chance he'll keep you in the frame. In fact, I was blessed by Kevin that weekend as he captured some of my pedaling from that in the video window below. I'm the skinny cat in the blue long sleeve DAKINE jersey, then the occasional red/wh/blk Monster Health Care jersey on Day #2.
Kevin wears the GoPro with a chest harness and has it angled just right to capture the horizon. I like how his bars are in the foreground. It kind of reminds me of a mountain bike game for a gaming console... hmm Diggingtrail for the PS3?! Are any game developers reading this...?Saturday:
More riding, 9am-12pm.After two days of massive amounts of trail flow and high fives, the inevitable rainstorms moved on Saturday late afternoon. We finished up the last ride on Saturday and returned to the pavilion to share stories, beers, and food. The rain had put somewhat of a damper on the evening's Dirt Rag Fest area so we retired to our tents (or my car since I slept in the Element that weekend) instead of hanging around for the bands to play.
Sunday I waited out the rain until late morning, then packed things up. At least I didn't have a wet tent to break down but I had a wet, spider inhabited EZ-Up tent that would have been better in the cargo box on my roof rack instead of in the back of the Element. I think I've killed all the small bugs by now or at least my son and daughter haven't seen any lately.
The Allegrippis Trails get two thumbs up from this guy and Lake Raystown is a terrific place to vacation with the family too. Less than 3 hours from Harrisburg, Pa, it's practically in our backyards. Thanks to YAMBA for all their local trail work and for putting together a site for us to crash at for the weekend. More props to Abington Wheel Wright Bike Shop for getting my bike's brakes and suspension tuned for the core stuff! Thanks to Dirt Rag, IMBA for making trail riding solid in Pennsylvania.
While in the Philly area I swung north to Abington to pick up my Bianchi SRAM SOK from Abington Wheel Wright Bike Shop or AWWBS for short.
Aside from the outside of their building being a cool shade of Bianchi Green (celeste), they have a ton to offer their mountain biking customer base. One service that stood out during my first visit with Miko, the shop's service and retail manager, is their suspension tuning services. RMT Suspensions.
I explained to Miko the issues I was having with the fork, the brakes and what I ultimately wanted to achieve with the mods I was requesting. AWWBS works on forks and I mean works on forks. I'd say 95% of the shops I visit throughout my vast territory would send the fork to either QBP or BTI for a rebuild, not these guys. In my shop days, I would have done the work myself but being a father of two and a rep, I didn't hesitate to give the business to the LBS.
Here is a mod I did on my own time. After converting the 29r to tubeless last June, by recommendation of Marshall at Youngblood Bicycles, I down sized the rear tire from a 2.3 to a 2.1 Prowler from WTB. Lighter, faster, better rubber.
With the heavier 29r wheels (verses a traditional 26in wheel) and the fact that I'm 6'5" at 180lbs, you can never have enough braking underneath you. I upgraded the front rotor from a 160mm to a 185mm by Avid. The rear rotor is still the stock size- 160mm. New sintered pads were installed on the front and rear of the bike in addition to bleeding the lines and lubing the plungers at the cylinders. (Contaminants had entered the cylinders when I had the bike on top of the Element; during a rainy-several hour drive to Williamsburg, VA last summer.)
Here is where the magic begins. It's not fair to criticize/compare the performance of this fork when I'd been on long travel, light duty freeride bikes prior to getting this steed. None the less, with the top and bottom air chambers set to where I felt they should be according to my riding style and trial conditions, the 100mm fork dove too much under braking and couldn't keep up with high speed, baby head rocks that litter the local trails. Miko listened and delivered.
The blue wipers are a wiper/seal kit from Enduro. The stock wipers are good with preventing stiction at low speeds but potentially won't seal out the contaminants as well as the ones from Enduro. Enduro's lip sealing technology is top shelf for keeping oil in and dirt out. However, these seals are TIGHT on the stanchions. To combat this, the stanchion tubes where treated with a coating of a liquid Teflon® fluoropolymer. This polymer bonds to the aluminum tubes and make Teflon even slipperier. One application lasts about 6 months on the trails under normal_non muck riding.
The stock 5wt fork oil was removed and a combination blend of 5wt and 7wt where installed. This will reduce diving during hard braking when the PopLoc is wide open. A full dose of 7wt would be a bit too thick for my body weight and could compromise low speed dampening.
I'm still running the stock PopLoc set up for now. This lever is an open compression or closed compression selector. The fork will not have an in between compression adjustment with this type of PopLoc. Once I get some months of riding on the bike, I'll probably upgrade to the PopLoc Adjust. This system will allow me to adjust the compression of the fork for either rocky terrain or flowing/no rocks-just roots, type of trails.
The bike in the photo above is mostly stock with the exception of cockpit upgrades to the saddle, headset, stem and handlebar. Since then I've converted it to tubeless, upgraded the rubber both front and rear all awhile managing to shave two pound off the bike. XC 29rs are all about putting the bike on a diet the moment it's out of the box and on the bike stand.
This afternoon, I dropped the bike off at a shop in Abington, Pa for more mods to suit my desires. A fork overhaul/rebuild, bigger brake rotor on the front and service to the braking system were all scheduled. I should get the bike back mid-next week. I'll have a write up on the modifications in great details and why I chose them. --------------------------------------------------
Justin is an employee of Bikes Unlimited of Williamsburg, VA. After years on the race circuit with a Bianchi Oetzi, this year he added a 29er to his quiver of race bikes. A tool for every trade, a bike for every type of course.
The bike is roughly 50% stock, here is Justin's take on his race-ready 29er and a bit regarding his carbon hardtail Oetzi:
Here are a few pics of the bike and my setup. Hope you like the looks of the bike, what I like most is my gearing on my crank, I got TA specialty rings, and Blackspire. The 22-34-44 is too much to push on most MTB trail. Running those combos makes it feel a lot more like my carbon Oetzi. I got it weighing around 22.5 lbs depending on my tires and wheels. My Oetzi weighs 21 lbs, so I’ve got the 29er pretty light.
FRAME: 17.5 2009 Sok
FORK: Rock shox reba race, remote lockout
WHEELS: Mavic crossmax 29er(mainly for training and little races), SET #2-- American classic hubs, DT revolution spokes, aluminum nipples, No-tubes 355 rims(hand built by myself, only for racing)
CRANKS: Shimano XTR crank(picture shows a triple, I run a 2x9 setup with either, 28-40t or 26-38t depending on the climbing; this saves weight and the gearing works a lot better with the bigger wheels).
CASSETTE: SRAM 991 12-34
CHAIN: SRAM 991 hollow pin
FRT DER: sram X9
RR DER: sram xo
SHIFTERS: SRAM XO twist shifters
BRAKES: Magura Marta SL red
ROTORS: Magura SL
STEM: Truvativ team
HANDLEBAR: Truvativ Noir World Cup carbon
SEATPOST: Thompson setback
SADDLE: Selle Italia SLR Gel flow
GRIPS: ESI chunky
TIRES: Hutchinson Python, No-tubes Raven, Kenda Karmas & Smallblock eight (all run tubeless with Stan’s Sealant)
PEDALS: Time carbon/ti
OTHER ADDITIONS: Ti rotor bolts, red aluminum bottle and brake bolts, Elite cages(usually run one cage)
The Nokon cables are a classy touch for the twist shifters. That makes 2 of us that would choose twist shifters for a race machine.
There's no denying that Shimano's XTR crank is among the stiffest on the trail. There's no denying that Justin's wife's tat on her foot had to hurt like hell, ouch!
Thanks for the support Justin and best of legs in 2010!
As most people know, Bianchi Bicycles is a manufacturer of bicycles for cyclist without compromise. Our commuter and road line of products are very strong, well spec'd and beyond the quality of a lot of the top brands out there.
One secret weapon is our 2009 Bianchi SOK SRAM bike. This 29er is definitely winning the hearts of mountain bikers that give it a chance. Give it a chance as in, more than just a test ride in the parking lot of your LBS. Trail time; half dozen or so rides to learn a new dance with a new partner. In fact most 29ers require just that, some trail time to get used to.
I can say that I've ridden every demographic of knobby tire pedaling transportation out there and the 29er takes a bit more time to adjust to than most typical 26in bikes, hardtail or dually. You need to be committed to the end result of this learning curve, a fast ride. Too many people get hung up on studying the geometry of a prospected 29er frame before even riding it.
Naturally I'm partial to my brand and the big wheeled version that we produce but here is why I enjoy my take of the Italian brands wagon wheeler over others. And again, these opinions may not be digested by others the same way, they are just my personal bullet points that make this bike a blast. I'm lightly comparing it to the Niner A.I.R.9- 21in frame size.
The chainstay is 10mm longer than a Niner A.I.R.9- 450mm vs 440mm. Not saying that the 9 has too short of a chainstay but combined with the 71 degree headtube angle of the SOK, climbing traction is enhanced. You ever see motorcycle hill climbs and the swingarm length those guys are rolling with?
SOK seat tube angle of 74 degree vs. 73 degree on the A.I.R.9. One of the major complaints of a 29er is that they steer too slow. Yes, there will be a different steering rate on a 29er than a 26 inch hardtail mountain bike but if you look at the other 29er frame geometries, they have a slacker seat tube angle matched with a longer Front to Center dimension which will provide a rear biased weight/sitting position matched with more front end to muscle around the corners. The 'one degree steeper' seat tube will do one of two things for the cyclist on the SOK.
1- Provide more of a 50-50 weight bias over the wheelbase of the bike. Like a downhill skier carving a turn, this is essential for maximum traction through the arc of the turn. The steering issue on a 29er is sometimes paired with too much understeer in the turns at speed. Again, a bit more weight on the front wheel 50f-50r vs 40f-60r will keep the front tracking through those G'd-out corners. (converting to tubeless helps a ton as well)
2- On climbs, especially on the East Coast/Mid-Atlantic region, you're either going up or down. So when the terrain goes up, you'll have a seat post angle that potentially won't put you too much over the back of the bike causing you to fight to keep the front wheel glued to terrafirma, just the right amount forward.
The SOK bottom bracket height drop is 50mm vs. 60mm on the A.I.R.9. With a larger quantity of logs and rocks on the Mid-Atlantic trails, the 10mm higher bottom bracket will provide better clearance thought the technical sections.
So there's the quick and somewhat dirty how and why on the 2009 SOK 29er. Now go outside and ride!
