Goodbadugly

Build. Nice project. A composite 29er. I was looking for one a few weeks ago. I wanted: Reba, xt crank, x9 shifts. Brake does not matter. They only slow you down anyway. I DO NOT like the cabling to go under the bottom bracket. That is where the run offs from your bottle collects forming a stickey mess if combined with dust or mud. I want a standard size seat post. The GT had most of these specs @R22000. But it was king of ugly with cabling routed under the BB. Good wheels. Upgrades needed on post and bar. The Spesh I could get for a GOOD price around R30000. But I need a bike with a low stand over. Short legs. It also had a SID fork. The Scott Expert is nice, but it had that infernal below the BB cabling, a huge seat post and xt shifts. And heavy weight wheels. The Giant XTC has an odd downtube. Huge. Fox fork. X7 shifts and heavy duty wheels. Also around R22000 and very upgradable. Siverback storm. WELL specced with full XT and a good fork and Crest wheels. But I am not fond of white wheels yet. Also around R23000. So that left me in the R27000 price range. So I went to do a few calculations. Hub market stuff. Prices including postage. Fork: got a reba off a new bike from Raysingh for R2800 Crank: Got a XT from Naas for R1800 10 spd Cassette 1050 from Wheelerdealer for R360 X9 shifters from tigerlduplessis R800 X9 ders form CWC for around R1100 2 chains and a load of odds and ends, stem, Conti X Kings from Kiwi for R1500 A Ritchie Superlogic bar a few months ago for R800. Gobi saddle for R500 I have a EC70 post in the garage just gathering dust. A good second hand set of Elixers for R1000. So around R11000 for everything except the frame and wheels. Leaving R16000 for the frame and wheels. You can take your pick on the hubmarket for anything from R4500 to R8000 or you can buy a branded frame. I got a Highball, leaving me with R2500 for wheels. Luckily I have a Dirty Flea hubset(used, but good) just waiting for rims. Crests/Arch for R800 from Buycycle/Rush/CWC. Leaving the Revolution spoke price for my own pocket. These are on the way from CRC. (R600 for both wheels+VAT) Ending up with a basket price of +-R27000. I can't wait. All these articles are still in transit from who knows where. I will build it up myself. For the same price as a store bike. With my specs. Most guys paying R25000 for a bike and end up upgrading the tires, bar, seatpost. And later even the wheels. Mine will be EXACTLY what I want. If you opt for a R8000 unbranded frame, you can buy wheels for R5000 and have R2500 left. Have fun.

Not ammused

There is a debate?

As I sit here sipping a glass of red wine I think about this. Always a few clever couch potatoes with rather daft remarks like "if Kempson can do it, it is easy. So everybody that could not finish must be really bad/dumb/not real mountain bikers(my favourite)/unfit." Only a rookie in mountainbiking and stage racing will wonder why people are not able to finish big stage races like the Epic.

CZ75?

Depends on how much money you want to throw at a R28k bike. For a mere R8k more you can get Crests (of AC's), carbon bars, Momsen post and Superlogic stem.

Always interesting how guys who are so fast end up behind slow riders causing bottle necks.

Ahhh. a troll.

It can be converted. Depends on how desperate you are. And if you have a friend with a metal lathe. Roll your own. Buy 2x 6902 bearings. (id15mm and od28mm) The bearings in my Dirty flea front hub have a outside diameter of 28mm. Get the guy with the lathe to make you a tube with an id of 15mm and a od of 19mm. 66.6mm long. (aluminum) This goes inside the hub between the two bearings. This tube should be long enough to push "outward" against the inner races when tightening the qr. Otherwise the pressure from the qr will run on the balls of the bearings. Now to get the spacing right. 2x tubes with a id of 15mm and od of 20.5mm on the contact side of the fork and about 19mm on the bearing contact side. They should be 9.8mm long. Get your friend to engineer flanges on these to keep rubbish from comming into contact with the bearing seal. Thus: 7mm+7mm for the 2 bearings, +9.8+9.8+66.6=100mm. The outer tubes of 9.8mm each will be loose fitting. They won't clip into a groove like the Stans ones. Be carefull not to loose these. And you will have to line them up every time you insert the skewer. Only for 15mm through axle. Mine is a SID. Use the above info at your own risk. Mine works 100%. An I have my own lathe.

Maybe it is a supply and demand thing. Maybe the demand for the Lite was so good and demand for the Experience low. So they decided to go with the flow. An Experience with 40 or 50km stages? Nooooooo. An experience.

Stupid comment

Why don't the manufacturers come up with something original? Like a lightweight internally geared BB. The Rohloff's drawbacks will be eliminated.

Anything can happen. Do one and then you will know. And then there are te odd guys underestimating the thing. "If old so-and -so could do it. it can't be that difficult"...

For a better view on the 27.5 put on your $$$ glasses.

Medical aids. Are financial institutions. They would like to have the lions share in monthly payments. But would not like to give it back. Like for instance car insurance. Once you start dealing with them, you will see what I mean. Lots of it is marketing. Like Vitality. Money talks. Let me give you an example. If you get a stent in one of your coronaries you are supposed to take clopidogrel to prevent the foreign material from promoting clot formation. A bare metal stent for a shorter duration and drug eluting ones for up to a year. Ask any friend with a stent what a mission it can be to get a script for clopidogrel approved for a year. Another example. Both your mother and father had heart attacks at the age of 40ish. Your cholesterol is 4.5. You are 35. With such a stong family history you should be on cholesterol lowering agents form an early age. Try to get a medical aid to pay for these drugs on chronic? Good luck. They will only be interested in paying if it is over 5. (examples chosen due to the nature of the "high fat diet" conversation.) In the end it boils down to what my mother told me. Vermy alles met 'n te- aan. Te veel, te min. Te vet, te maer ens. Die enigste te's wat goed is is tevrede en te voet(fiets)

Something like the 29er and 26er thing. Some disagree and others agree. My wife is a dietitian. She says that dietary info has a half life of 6 months... Paradigm shifts. Butter vs margarine. Eggs and cholesterol. Fruit juices and high fructose corn syrup Calcium in milk vs calcium in pill form. MSG's Breast milk in HIV To name but a very few. It is only when you realise how little you know that you start to learn something (speaking for myself that is).

Let me just tell you this. If you are k@kking up the umpteenth mountain of the day at 14:30 with an abient temp of 37 degrees you might not feel so tough any more. The Epic is not all 1:15 climbs and decents. There will be flatter sections. Then you will have the benefit of the 42x11. Many guys (who haven't done it) will tell you it is not so tough. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE the Epic. Unless you are a podium guy/gal. Read what SwissVan wrote. Another thing. I have bent my derailleur hanger a few times. Sometimes you can get a gear to peddle by trying the other rings. Let's say you are in granny (24) and you need the 2nd or 3rd at the back. But the chain keeps jumping/skipping. Then you can try 32 (front) with the 1st at the back. Anything to keep moving.

Small wheel big wheel medium wheel. More proteins less carbs more carbs less protein more protein less carbs. 3X9 2X10 3X10 Water bottle Camelbak Camelbak water bottle The more things change the more they stay the same. Anyone for "new generation" v brakes?

Halaal. Live and let live. I like it if they have seperate food tables for the Halaal guys at functions. I often walk over to their food bowls to help myself to some of their foods. I sometimes get the idea their foods are more tastefull than the mass produced stuff the organizers dish up for the infidels.

Not really. That topic is more on the chit chat side.

How do you feel about points of engagement (in the rear hub of course)? Does it bother you? What is the minimum you would accept?

And the Bushmen running all day long after their prey on a diet of lean meat?

Ja. Always a difficult call what to believe and what not. Where does marketing end and where does truth begin. The Americans marketing their wars, the truth being somewhere between capitalism, getting their budget to balance and oil. Juju marketing landgrabbing. Etc. Next door on the chit chat forum the atheists are having their ball marketing. And then you get the academics. The only way to get a piece of the pie for them is to publish. The more the publications, the more credable you are. The problem with studying ANYTHING connected to humans is the wide variations of peoples on earth. Big small fat skinny fit unfit old young male female etc. Then you get the Cro magnon types and the Justin Biebers. And what buggers up your whole study is that sometimes the subjects feel just plain off. And in women you get the hormones! As you can imagine LOTS of variables in subjects. The next little hurdle in exercise studies are the amount of exercise you are going to study. When do you start to class the exercise as "endurance" like Iron Man, Comrades and Epic. How on earth are you going to study 50 prime subjects doing the Epic on MCT's and the same 50 subjects doing it on proteins end then on carbs? By the time you have finished the study, half of them will have died off from old age. So these studies are shortened. Take the Andrew Jones studies on beetroot juice for instance. He studied improved ENDURANCE on athletes drinking beetroot juice. 15% improvement on endurance. In small print: They cycled up to 10 miles. Ja sure. Define endurance. Because of these shortcomings in human studies, we end up with data dots all over the place. The ONLY way to make any sence of these studies is with meta analasys. (Pooling all the studies from multiple centres) And a meta analasys on the Noakes findings are still a long way off. Then there is the perverse incentive thing as well... At what point are authors publishing real worthwhile stuff and at what point are they just marketing themselves. In the mean time? Take note of these studies. Try it and see what works for you Don't throw out the baby with the bath water. What is your personal idea of endurance? Bottom line: Train harder to improve endurance.

I recently read Joe Friel's book. Very much the same idea as Noakes. Only complex carbs. No sugars. And he also gave cross refs. So I am inclined to think they just might have a point. I will take some time to get the paradigm shift away from the carbs though. It is also interesting how internet experts (read thehubsa PhD's) pick holes in honored profs with LOADS of studies (real ones, not the rubbish quoted by marketeers peddling wonder vitamines).

Got any insurance on the fillings in your teeth?