I have turned my Inbred from rigid funny barred singlespeed…

Inbred on Great Pinseat, Swaledale by miketually, on Flickr

…into a suspension forked, short stemmed, wide barred, chain deviced, 1x9er…

Project Gnarr – side by miketually, on Flickr

Project Gnarr – back by miketually, on Flickr

It’s RAD to the power of sick, dude. Looking forward to upping my gnarr factor.

Needs more sick. Drop the saddle and put some high rollers on.

Does your mom know you’re up this late on a sunday night.

which one’s the wheel barrow ?

needs a bash

woop

looked better with the gaffer tape though

It’s still covered in tape; just took the cable guide covers off to get the new cable in. And it doesn’t really glow like it seems to in the photos.

I’m wondering if it would look better if you swapped the grips between the bike and the wheelbarrow.

absolutely, white grips are in apparently

thats a proper bike.

That’s vomit to the power of departing markedly from the usual or customary 🙂

The grips on the bike did almost end up on the wheelbarrow at one point, but wheelbarrow tubing is wider diameter than handlebar tubing.

No comments on the grass or the unraked leaves? I’ll have to take the next photo in the veg garden next to the fence made of floorboards which is half falling down 🙂

loose the mud guard for an additional +6 points on the rad-o-meter

just a thought… gut one side of the frame of that wheel barrow off… it would make a great “wide, oversized” bar.

He’ll Be Coming Down The Mountain by Menage a Moi, on Flickr

I had my first ride on Project Gnarr on Friday. About 30km in Swaledale: along the valley bottom from Dales Bike Centre, up the valley side from somewhere between Gunnerside and Low Row onto Great Pinseat, then down Surrender Moor and over Low Moor. Swaledale is still awesome.

<img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1157/5126937836_ace0b285ac.jpg&#8221; width=”500″ height=”337″ alt=”Day 302 – The Tangerine Dream!” />

This was my first ever ride with both gears and suspension (only my second ever ride with suspension and first with gears in a couple of years). What I learned: gears make it easier to ride up hills; suspension makes it easier to ride down hills. So, they really are strength compensators and skill compensators 🙂

32:32 is plenty low enough as a bottom gear. It’s the same ratio I rode round there as a beginning MTBer 18 years ago (28:28 in them days), and that was on on a heavier bike with weaker legs. 32:12 is plenty tall enough for a top gear. 1×9 is definitely the way forward.

The fork isn’t set up properly yet, but I quite liked it not doing too much until I hit something bigger/harder and it doesn’t bob about too much when climbing. It’d be interesting to have a go on a modern fork with clever lockout things as a comparison.

I think I like it. But, it’s heavier and complicated, so I think I’ll be sticking with rigid forks and non-variable gears for proper rides and save boing and variable gears for shorter/group rides.

I think I might even have done a little bit of a jump. Stoked, dude!

THe wheelbarrow sidecar is an interesting twist 😉

This was the photo I failed to add in time:

Day 302 – The Tangerine Dream! by Menage a Moi, on Flickr