I recently received a brand-new ’07 Rock Shox SID Race. (Thanks again to all who were involved) This is the first new fork I’ve owned since I bought the Manitou 4 in ’95. The other forks, such as the Mach 5, SX and SID XC were all second hand. The new fork is installed and the warning labels have been removed, but I haven’t had a chance to ride it yet. The old fork it going to Eric for his cracked Trek 8700 frame, along with many other broken parts.

The new sub 3 lb. SID Race is currently set for 80 mm of travel. This raised the front of the bike a little, but I think it should still be okay. The old SID sagged about half of the travel (~1-1.5″), so any new fork would have changed the geometry. Until the last fork died (after five years of hard use), it worked very well and was very stiff considering the weight. The new SID should perform well, and hopefully take a lot of abuse.

The requisite photos:

Some Bridge. Notice that it is painted to match the links on my site.

Lombard Street.

After waking up at 1:00 AM PST on Tuesday, and arriving in Oakland around 11:30 AM, we drove up to San Francisco to see the sights, and get lunch. We went to a really nice vegetarian restaurant, Greens Restaurant in the San Francisco Marina area. After that, we stopped by Lombard Street, and then on to Fisherman’s Wharf.

An Arcade at Fisherman’s Wharf.

A crazy person.

Four bikes in the back of a RAV4. (I think five or six may fit)

Yesterday, we rented some bikes from the Stanford Campus bike shop and rode about 15 miles on the Baylands trail. It was a nice day, much warmer than the rides I’m used to in November, and the trail was not crowded.

And, no matter how much you dislike the holidays, please don’t forget…

Eric and I took a short ride at Pine Ridge. For some reason there were a bunch of guys wearing orange carrying guns. Must be some sort of gang. Anyway, we stopped for a while under there power lines to warm up in the allegedly cancer-causing electromagnetic radiation.

Eric’s Litespeed and my M2 hiding in the weeds, trying to avoid the guys with guns.

My ’00 SID XC has ceased to function as a shock. It is now a ridged fork that is either suspension corrected or standard. Unfortunately, it switches modes violently and whenever any force is applied.

Both of these photos are from the RAZR. Some observations: Although the resolution is low, and the compression is high enough to cause very noticeable image distortions, I am pretty happy with it. Where the camera really fails is in mixed or low lighting. Both of these photos were taken within one minute of each other, one metering off of the sky, the other on the bikes/ground.