Otherwise we had an excellent time on the bike and camping out with Andy, Kerry, and Mike "ride my bike all day" Ramponi. Also, good to meet Gwadzilla, who's blog is linked over there on the left.

Shanty town

Kickme made the trip down from Bastin

Andy abuses Kickme

Mike "ride my bike all day" Ramponi goofing around on his 29er

Sometimes things don't work out so well

Personalized plate

Sun rise on Monday morning

Cohutta 100
This was a blah race for me. At some point I got bored and stopped paying attention to what I was doing and just cruised for miles and miles on the never ending forest roads. Time: 9:38

Mohican 100
The race was a friggin disaster due to some serious rear end issues attributed to a massive amount of mud up my shorts. Sounds fun? The understatement of the year may be to say it was really terrible not being able to sit down for 50 miles. I was going to D.N.F. it at the mile 75 rest area but didn't want to sit around for 2 hours in my shorts waiting for a ride back so I soldiered on thinking about how I was just going to turn off and head straight back to the hotel instead of the finish line but then Reenie caught up to me and I had to finish it... I do like this race however, but if it's at all muddy on the single track it can be brutal. Reminder for next year - if it rains install a splash guard on the back of the bike. Time: 12:21.

Lumberjack 100
This is my favorite race of all the 100s. People put it down because it's a lap race and there's no sustained climbing but I love it - how can you go wrong with 100 miles of single track? Last year the weather was perfect (sunny, cool and windy) and I had a good race. Time: 9:39

Wilderness 101
For some reason I started off really slow and lethargic but then turned on the jets at around the 40 mile mark. If I had thrown it down a little more at the start I would have done much better...but enough with the woulda coulda shouldas. Time: 9:52

So there it is, it's also worth noting that there's more to these experiences than a bike race - we love to travel to new places and get to see our endro freak friends from all over the country. The Cohutta trip was an especially great time. Check out the archives if you're interested in the Asheville pictures or Reenie's Blog for the writeup.

All this combined can make for a fun spirited ride or put you on your ass depending on how you approach the situation. There is still the advantage of the bigger wheels with stability through rocky and technical sections but you need to try a little harder to keep the bike headed in the direction you want to go.

The chainstays can be run short (just a hair over 17" in the current setup) but can be easily lengthened with the paragon sliding dropouts. Obviously, these make it possible to turn this bike into a single speed. Short chainstays make lofting the front wheel easy, but tend to make it harder to keep the front wheel planted on steep climbs. I'll try lengthening the wheelbase at some point to see how that affects climbing.

Overall this is a fun bike to ride and I'm happy with the way it came out. The pictures speak for themselves in terms of the overall build quality and uniqueness of the frame. You can check out Christopher's website at http://www.iglebike.com.

By coincidence we ran into our friend Barry and his family eating dinner Saturday night and the plan was made to ride the next day.

$4.00 will get you all the way out there

Blurry Reenie

This little guy was sweet - just adopted from the MSPCA

Tons of trails everywhere

8 plus hours later we rolled home. No idea how many miles we did, Sally cyclo-computer was broken and so were we.