• Eagle Park: Videos

    These videos were taken at Eagle Park on August 1, 2009 with the ATC3K camera. Being Australia, this is winter and temperature was a nice 13-15°c. I’m going to experiment with different on-bike and off-bike camera mounting and angles, but until then these bike-mounted angles will have to do.

    This video has a pretty good sampling of the terrain at Eagle Park. The trails in the video include “Top Deck”, “Jammin”, “Sunset Blvd”, “Tunnel Vision”, “The Mixer”, “Overlocker” and “Hawkeye”, but not necessarily in that order. Trail difficulty ranges from green/easy to blue/intermediate and black/difficult. The trails are mostly clay and rock singletrack with some sandy sections.

    This shorter video is uncut beginning from near the parking lot, down the green/easy “Top Deck” trail, then onto the black/difficult “Jammin” trail, and ends when I broke my chain.

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  • Crossgeared.com

    Koalas

    Welcome to Crossgeared.com, the new home for my blog.   My blog has existed under a few domains, on more than a few platforms, and as part of some of my other sites.  Here you will find my complete blog archive back to early 2006 as well as the various bits of information from my other sites.  As of this post, Crossgeeared.com is based on WordPress 2.8.3 and a theme developed by Eric and myself.

    While some of the pages loosely resemble content from my other sites, all of the content has been imported into WordPress.  This may seem lazy, and it is, but WordPress is a very good content management system and makes site management far simpler than my old mix of php scripts and static code.  Anyway, enjoy the new site.  Don’t bother looking at the old sites, I’ve deleted the content and they just point here.  For those looking for the old VW-related 251.org, I’m sad to say that after over thirteen years it is no longer available online.  251.org will be back up at some point, but don’t expect much VW content.

  • UK-14’er: One Year In

    The new UK-14'er

    The New UK-14’er

    I’ve had the UK-14’er for a little over a year now. The bike has been great, and I’ve ridden it in Maryland, Virginia, Utah, Colorado, and South Australia. It was in Missouri for a couple days as well, but only saw a parking lot. I really don’t have any complaints. Aside from the parts I broke or wore-out, the bike has been a lot of fun and very reliable.

    The UK-14′er at One Year

    The UK-14’er at One Year

    Anyway, here is a list of what I broke, wore out, or just decided to replace in the past year:

    Replaced due to wear

    • 3x chains: One Wippermann 908 and two Shimano HG93
    • Middle chainring: The original Shimano XT ring was replaced with an LX ring
    • Cassette: The well worn SRAM PG990 (taken off of the M2) was replaced with an XT cassette
    • Freehub: The Mavic freehub was serviced and replaced per Mavic’s recommendations
    • 6x tires: 4x Panaracer FireXC, 2x Hutchinson Toro XC, plus many tubes
    • Brake pads: 2x rear, 3x front with a mixture of Avid and Kool Stop ceramic pads (Kool Stops are better)

    Replaced due to damage

    • Handlebar: Kent Eriksen bar replaced the Titec titanium bar that got ripped in Moab
    • Rear derailleur: Shimano XT Shadow replaced the older (c. 2002) XT derailleur taken from the M2
    • Derailleur hanger: The derailleur snagged a shrub and tweaked the original. I now have a couple spares.
    • Computer: A Knog NERD replaced a Sigma BC1600 that was damaged in a crash

    Replaced due to the rebuild after arriving in Australia

    • Brake and shifter cables were all replaced as well as the brake housing

    Replaced for no good reason

    • The Chris King stem cap was replaced with one from the Poison Spider bike shop in Moab
    • The Minoura blue anodized bottle cages were taken off for a while and replaced with King stainless cages due to the bottle tearing up the Minoura cages. Later I found some blue anodized Specialized cages, but they turned out to be crap. The Specialized cages wouldn’t hold a bottle and were quickly mangled by use and crashes. The Minoura cages are back on for now.
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