Really awesome weekend, very laid back friendly atmosphere but still some good competitive riding. Course was fantastic and perfect for a singlespeed. Not a lot of rest for teh soloists though and a lot of inducement to push it as hard as possible on all the fun bits. Won't say my broken chain on lap 2 cost us the win but it would have made things a lot closer had it stayed in one piece – serves me right for not checking… Stevio – you're very kind – more drop bars than moustache though really :-)

Had an absolutely fantastic time. Great event concept and execution. Many thanks to all the ST crew and everyone else who help make it such a memorable weekend.

Should be seeing the flat Sunlines in this country soon – look forward to them. I have both Salsas (carbon 25.4) and Niners (alloy 31.8) and they are both nice bars though very much at opposite ends of the stiffness spectrum. If you are riding rigid I’d recommend Salsas, supension go with the stiffness of the Niner, or Sunline when they are available.

If you expect to make a loss initially and you have any other source of income then you are best off not being limited initially as you won’t have the benefit of combined tax liability – I lost around 5 grand that way… Of course you’re never to old to start if you have a good idea and a sound business plan.

I want Peroni, but I’m not going to be able to keep it cold. What a conundrum?!!
Esky (cooler or car fridge or whatever you call them…) + ice = job done

Colb – in that case I’ll take the one on the right – Anchor Steam one of my all time faves.

I think I’ll be taking something suitably exotic and refreshing, see what they’ve got at Majestic

The only man made course I wouldn’t have a go at on a fixie is Stainburn.
Laggan black?

If you’ve got the skills then go for it, I’ve ridden behind people fixed on quite technical stuff can’t say they slowed me down.

It’s a ‘cross race, for ‘cross bikes. The bike regs pretty much accord with the UCI ‘cross bike regs, with the exception of allowing flat bars and disc brakes. Those two stipulations were introduced by the UCI only quite recently.

Clear nail varnish. Can’t say I really bother myself though

The new cranks will be stiffer but this won’t alter the stiffness of the frame. Not a lot you could do other than trying to find someone who works in Ti to maybe weld some gussets/reinforcing plates on.

I agree in essence. It was the reason I only do 29″ wheeled bikes down to a medium. The 26″ Hummingbirds were originally only intended to come in small and medium. It was only people pestering me that made me end up with a large as well – mostly to cater to people with big investments in tyres and the like.

I think a well designed frame will have subtle changes to things like chainstay length, bottom bracket drop, seat and head angle to accomodate the likely body shape of different size people. However in this age of mass production there are really only three relatively mainstream wheel sizes (29, 26, 24 – I won’t count 650B just yet) plus there are further restrictions in commonly available tubing lengths. And of course manufacturers can get more production efficiency (and thus cheaper bikes to a demanding public) the more standardised frame production is. Then you’ve also got the matter that components are designed to work within fairly narrow parameters. Ever tried to get a modern derailleur system working well on a tiny 650c wheeled bike? At the other end of the spectrum, you don’t need to be *that* tall to not want to chop any length of your suspension fork’s steerer at all.

What I did on the new Ragley’s is to steepen the seat angle on the larger bikes, so that the rider is sat further forward on the front wheel.

I guess it depends what you are try to achieve – I suppose the Ragley is more a ‘chuck it around’ kind of thing? For those of us who spend a bit more time with their wheels on the ground and arse in the saddle bigger frames usually get a bit slacker as they have relatively longer femurs. So you need to be a bit further back to maintain pedalling efficiency in having the COG over the pedals.

I guess in a perfect world we’d all have custom designed bikes for our own particular morphology, riding style and preferences. However while price is a factor (for most people) and standardised parts is a factor for everyone we will have to make do to work the best we can within what we have available to us.

Sam
Singular Cycles

Cream is the new white.

sorry i was actually looking at Sam’s bike – not the lynsky.

DT Hubs, CXRay spokes, Stans 355 rims, tubeless, Karma rear, RRalph front. Lots of other light bits and pieces. Having no gears and no suspension really allows you to save quite a bit of weight :-) This was really as a show bike for people to pick up and go ‘oooh, isn’t it light’ Just because a lot of people have the preconception 29ers can’t be light fast bikes. As I normally ride it it’s probably around 19-20.

“I’m going on an unexpected alps trip on Friday”

Bastard – buy some decent gloves! Taking the new bike?

It’s nearly as good as the ones on Cervelo P3s with Zipp 606s for an evening spin… When I rode in Richmond park regularly the only way to make it moderately interesting was to ride a fixie cross bike.

Don’t worry Dave, it’s had quite a bit of use since the photo was taken – pretty much my every day bike for the past couple of months.

Here’s a nice ‘barely been used’ one for you…

More here

Saw something in the paper yesterday saying there were only slightly less people from the BBC sent to Glastonbury than there were to the Beijing Olympics. Another good reason not to pay the TV licence…

Oatmeal milk works pretty well for a very cheap solution. Otherwise any manner of anti-sting stuff from a chemist (stingose etc) I’m sure work fine as well.

300g is not really heavy for a riser bar of that width. Unless you are at the limits of trying to reduce bike weight I wouldn’t consider that a good buy.

As to position, personally I ride with my bars (normal riding position) well below the saddle height. However everyone’s different and if you feel you’d like the bars higher it can’t hurt to try. Be aware though it will set your weight further back which could have an adverse effect on handling, especially while climbing.

Singular Pegasus, ~18lbs as shown

about to lose >1lb with a new fork and these wheels…

Yes, Hope, Tune, DT some Shimano around. There a few. I just built up some Tunes in 28h for some race wheels.

Agree with Kramer – while I understand your reasoning I think a FS will tend to encourage you to go at stuff harder. That said I rode a very lightly built up Ventana El Cap (around 22lbs) and it was amazing. Even made me consider doing an FS frame at some point in the future…

I’m on a massive Stravinsky and Zappa binge

think you might be in the wrong forum…

I’m going and I know a few other southerners who are as well – really looking forward to it!

In short, no, keep saving!

Using rims and tyres designed for tubeless use I’ve never had any problems with burping. The only reason I can think not to is if you need/tend to change tyres regularly – it’s certainly more of a hassle than with tubes. But then you’ve got a good reason for another pair of wheels ;-)

No, but if you have a Bongo then you’re halfway there…

Curse those Singular boys – beat us (Singuloids) into 2nd SS –

apparently there was a prize for 1st and last, so have to try harder or not as hard next year

Victory is sweet! We were second last year, so was nice to actually win it this year – looking at our lap times you had a bit more consistent spread of talent – we were very lucky to have Steve, that boy is fast…

Oh, and I don’t understand the difference between ‘Open’ and ‘Sport’ as we would have done better overall in sport I think?

I think the difference is that Sport teams can’t have anyone who’s actually registered as an elite racer with the BCF. Quite why they bother making the distinction though I’m not sure… I was suprised how high we finished in Sport, it’d be nice just to see consolidated results of everyone together.

Website back up and running, though I’m doing a lot of work on it at the moment.

Nuke, yes, lots of Hummingbirds as well.

Ship is due to arrive Saturday, so as long as everything moves smoothly through customs I’ll have them next week. One of the emails I can see in my inbox but can’t open is from the shipping agent…

To answer your question, Jesus would ride a Singular ;-)

Come on the Blues! Pehaps you can at least get Roy & HG on streaming tripleJ? I’ll look into it.

No, we weren’t in the main arena and I guess weren’t exactly in an obvious location despite the branded red ez up being fairly visible. Will be at ST Weekender, 10 at Kirroughtree, and 24/12 in coming weeks if that’s any help. Still pretty confident a large will be fine.

The Gryphon rides alomst identically to a Swift with drops. I originally designed the Swift so I could use it comfortably with drops or flat bars just with different length stems. The Gryphon is drop specific but has basically the same geometry across the range except an inch shorter top tube. If you put me blindfolded on them set up the same I’d have a hard time telling the difference.

Jase if you can hold fire on more studio pics I’d appreciate it, they’re meant for the catalogue, plus Tom hasn’t touched out the bodged stand yet… They are some FSA bars, XC180 IIRC.

Loads of pictures on the flickr[/url]

I’m a classic jack of all trades, master of none – NSW decathlon champion in my youth…

sorry – double post…

You should have just come by the tent on the weekend and you could have tried both! Anyhow, at 6’2.5″ (although with a relatively long torso) I ride either a large or XL Swift, I’ve mostly been riding an XL for XC purposes lately… I couldn’t possibly imagine being comfortable for XC riding on a medium. The other thing to keep in mind is that the Swift has a relatively slack seat angle. So if your seat is in the same position relative to the BB this makes for an effectively shorter top tube length than something with a steeper seat angle.

Yep, sorry, some issues with the hosting company’s server. I hope it will be up and running again tomorrow – not a great time to have it happen…

The singular site pretty much always kills firefox on my computer

Hmmm, that’s no good, I never have any problems, well except ehen there are problems with the server… Sometimes it looks slightly different in explorer than firefox for reasons which are beyond my feeble web design skills. If others have issues I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.