Thursday, January 3, 2013

Snow commuter

This bike never disappoints. I'm hoping the Rawland will take care of me for back road commutes home during the upcoming Winter quarter.

10 comments:

Stine said...

Talk to me about the Thudbuster -- seriously considering one for the Bizango. Maybe the ST?

John Speare said...

They are pretty cool. I have an ST you can borrow (27.2) if you want to give it a shot before committing.

mechBgon said...

What do you use for a headlight on that build, considering your commute is a fair distance? A dynohub would be a nice add-on. Endless endurance, no low-temperature issues.

Stine said...

Cool.
Are you gonna run studs on that?

John Speare said...

Tom: Ideally, I'd have a dyno hub on there. My elephant is running a disc-comaptible 650b dyno, but 1) I'm too lazy to swap it over and 2) the rim is a synergy, which is pretty narrow compared to these 35mm whoppers.

So, I have an old Mi-Newt (which I really liked before the cable started shorting)and a newish Cygolite, which is ok, but the attachment assumes a 31.8 diameter bar, which is not hard to solve, but I find supremely annoying.


Also: expect to see me pop in at 2-wheel in the next week or two looking for a bleed. Get the leaches!

Stine: no. I can't swing the extra $ for 650b studs... I'm hoping this will get me through the snow. For ice, I have an old Bridgestone with 700x35 studs on it. I went out to EWU yesterday and noticed that my normal commute route on the FLT is under about a foot of snow. And the Cheney-Spokane road doesn't look like much fun. So, I'm pondering the backroads for winter commuting... we'll see how it goes.

Stine said...

I was thinking of riding the FLT tomorrow --- kinda hoped some fatbikes would have snowplowed it by now...

Andre said...

Lookin Tough!

Bryan B said...

Is the bike currently missing a shifter, or am I really missing something?

Obviously, the bike could be in transition...

John Speare said...

Bryan: it's a true hybrid -- friction shifter for the front derailluer and an old 8 spd sora brifter for the rear.

I was waiting to build this bike up until i could buy a contemporary deore mountain triple crank and front der, and I realized that this bike would never get built up, cause those bits are way down the list... This'll work and I'll use it like this for summer exploring too.

mechBgon said...

John, I'll be curious to hear what route you develop. We'll update the firmware on our leeches and be ready. If you need a spare light for backup, let me know and I can lend you one of my spare high-output rechargeable flashlights and a bar mount.