Rawland Sogn - Initial Impressions

I've had the Rawland built up for a couple days now. All up, I've probably ridden it about 30 miles. About 10 miles of dirt/trail and the rest on paved roads. I dig this bike. It's really the mountain bike I've been looking for. It takes stupid-fat tires (2.3"), has stoutish tubing, and disc brakes -- yet it handles quickly, and dare I say, nimbly. It handles, with 41mm tires, much like my RB-T. So it really is a perfect fat-tired-road bike.


As far as "road" bikes go, I'm not going to break any land-speed records on this bike, but it's perfectly suited for riding paved roads out to the dirt trails and roads and handling both terrains nicely.

Frame Finish
As I mentioned in my initial post on this bike, the frame is made by Maxway. It's tig-welded and powder coated red. The finish is what I would expect of a $500 bike: all the threads need to be chased and if I were really anal I would've faced the bb shell and head tube.

Nice detail on a nice fork crown. That makes up for the lack of a real head badge.You can just make out the cable stop for the rear shift cable. That's one detail that I find sort of annoying. On the canti-version, they spec downtube shifter mounts.
The paint on one side of the forks is a bit faint, and one of the small frame decals was put on up-side-down. This kind of stuff doesn't bother me in the least.

The finished details that I *do* care about are good. The frame is straight. A quick check with the frame alignment gauge shows at least a perfectly straight rear triangle relative to the front triangle. All the braze-ons are in the right spot and the bike set up as easy as any other.

The welds are very nice. This is similar to other Maxway frames I've looked at closely. The welds are tidy and with the thick powder coat, they almost look fillet brazed from a distance.



Fillet or TIG'd?

Components
I have some new stuff on here. New to me anyway. The obvious biggies are the disc brakes. They are a pain in the ass to set up, but not really any more of a pain than most cantilevers. I still need to fiddle with the front brake to get it perfect. I used mechanical calipers that were compatible with drop bar levers: medium-grade Shimano mechanicals.

For wheels, I'm running LX hubs laced to Velocity Blunt rims. These rims are disc-specific and seem pretty sturdy. Like all Velocity rims, they were easy to build up. Unlike any Velocity rims I've had, these had huge, ugly decals on them when I bought them. It took me about 3 hours of peeling and wiping with nail polish remover to get all the decal and sticky residue off. I'd do the same for the Ritchey post and stem if his logos weren't etched into the alloy.

Ritchey drop-outs

I found the Rivendell Silver bar-end shifters online from some guy who didn't like them. I don't know how anyone could not like these shifters. I had high expectations and they were exceeded. These are the smoothest friction bar-ends I've ever used.


Tires and Ride
The tires I have on there now are the Rivendell Fatty Rumpkins. So far, the volume makes a huge difference in how I ride on rougher sections of trail. I don't have to be so mindful of the bike/rims under me, which is nice.

The tread doesn't help much for cornering or climbing on the sandy, dusty stuff we have right now on the trails. I expect, like most inverted tires, these will do well on hard-pack. But the money part of these tires is just the volume. They let me bounce and roll over sections that I would normally pick and finesse through. Both riding styles are fun. But it's been fun to do a bit of bombing on this bike and still feel the control I like with my RB-T.



The up-side-down-bike-shot: look at that tire clearance! Crazy stupid clearance, Clarance.


I plan on donning the crazy fat 2.3" knobbies this Friday. I'll to Beacon or Riverside State Park and play around for a couple hours. I'm excited to see how the bike handles with those huge tires and how it handles in more traditional XC mountain biking and trail riding.

Remember to look up once in while

Mobile post

Friday Run-Around

I had planned to take a bunch of pictures today and I failed.

The one I really wish I had was a picture of Joe up at Spoke n Jo installing my headset and cutting my steerer tube (not in that order). Joe rules. What a great thing: a bike shop that opens at 6 AM. I was out of there by 7. Thanks Joe!

After Joe's. I got home just in time to ride to school with Maddie and Liza. After about a week of riding with no training wheels, Maddie is just a pro now.
Then off to the Friday ride. Jason and I hooked up for the Temple Road loop. It was hot. Aside from the fact that both of us went down on this ride... with no serious injuries, the ride was fun. Pat also joined us for the first part. He bailed after the climb up Lehman, which was quite sporting. You know, compared to bailing out before the Lehman climb.

Sucky rack at a convenience store on Starr road.

Dig those tires! So perfect!

I was able to squeeze in a couple more components on the new bike in a 1/2 hour that I had before running a bunch of bikes for P2P. That's another shot I wish I would've taken. We're getting quite the pile.

The final shot I wish I would've taken was a picture of Mike, Beth, and Liza as we enjoyed a snack and a beer downtown. Riding through the 75F night after a day in the 100's is a nice way to end the day.

FBC tomorrow night. Swamp at 8pm.

New Frame Is Here

There's a back story to this.

It started with wanting a good snow bike. After riding Joe's Karate Monkey a couple times last winter in the deep stuff, I decided that I wanted gears and disc brakes for the next winter.

I've had disc brakes before when I commuted in the Seattle area about 6 or 7 years ago. I think disc brakes are overkill for rain commuting. But in the snow and ice where your rims and tires get caked with ice, rim brakes don't always cut it. For that reason, I have stuck mostly to fixed gear riding for most of the winter.

When it gets deep you need fat knobbies. The only bike I had with fat knobbies the last couple years was the Fuji Turd. Riding that super-low geared fixed turd around was pretty slow. And not so fun after a while.

I've also done a lot of exploring on off-roady, dirt road, rocky stuff this summer and I've really enjoyed it. But my bikes have taken a beating for it, so having a bit more wheel under me I think would be nice. In addition, I'd like one bike with a triple chain ring for the Mica-type rides.

So that's half the story. The "why" part.

About 3 months ago I decided I'd kill the mountain bike and snow bike bird with one stone. I liked the Novara Muir Woods: cheap, steel, 29'er, disc brakes. The one nagger was the front end. I knew I'd have to fuss with it to get it right. My plan was to get a custom fork made for it, which kind of killed the value. In addition, the top tube on the bike was long. It was a hack. My buddy Alex talked me down and a day later sent me a link to the Rawland.

The Rawland is truly a fat-tired road bike. Steep-ish angles, mid-trail (with huge 58 mm knobbies, this bike has the same trail as my RB-T!), and disc brakes. Steel. Made at the Maxway factory in Taiwan (Surly, Kogswell, Rivendell Bleroit, Voo Doo, etc). It ships with the insanely cool and out of this world Pacenti bi-plane fork crown; a copy of the classic MB-1/2 Ritchey crown. And at $500, a pretty good deal.

The plan is to build it up with a triple crank set, On-One Midge (dirt drop replicas) bars, and fat tires. My thinking right now is to run the Rivendell Fatty Rumpkins until snow flies. The Fatty Rumpkins are about 40mm with inverted tread and made by Panaracer. Once the snow comes, I have a set of 58 mm knobbies (Pacenti NEO-MOTO) that I'll try out.

Fenders? Racks? I don't have solid plans yet. We'll see what evolves there.

More pics to come.

Another Bike Swap - Sept 7th

Got boxes of crud to get rid of? Get thee to the next swap!

So, we had the warm up v1 swap last Sunday.

So if you slept through that one, as part of SpokeFest, the Bicycle Alliance of Washington is hosting another bike swap.

P2P will be there with a bunch of fixie/single-speed-ready frames and other stuff.

Here's the scoop from the BAW'ers:

Bike Swap at Spokefest on Sept 7

The Bicycle Alliance is organizing a bike swap at Spokefest (

www.spokefest.org) on Sept 7 next to Riverfront Park. The bike swap will run from 9:30am to 1pm. We would like to invite bike clubs and bike groups to host a swap table at this event.

This could be a fundraiser for the club or the club could offer the table for its members to use. The swap is an opportunity for your members to get rid of unused bikes, cycling gear and accessories. We ask that the club provide at least one person to staff the table during the event.

Tables are available for $25 (or $15 for half table) and there are a limited number available. To reserve a table for your club, contact Louise McGrody at the Bicycle Alliance, 206.224.9252 or via email at

louisemc@bicyclealliance.org. Individuals may also rent space at the swap.

Speaking of SpokeFest...

The Plum Tree Preschool Bicycle Pirates and Princesses (pictured) will be riding the 1-mile SpokeFest course. So look out for them.

Another Nudge Forward

Yep. That's the city council. That's what 2 seconds after a yes vote looks like. The council voted to fund a bike/ped coordinator position. This is not a permanent, benefited position. I think it's about $30k/year for the next 3 years towards the position. It's the first step towards a permanent position.

This is a pretty historic occasion to me. It's weird how this kind of stuff comes to pass. The BAB has continually been pestering the city about this position for the last couple years I've been there, and I'm pretty sure former BABs have done the same.

Some credit is due to gas prices and a slight shift in thinking by some of the old timers on the council. Verner's administration also helped. But the bulk of the pushing and the paper shuffling and the negotiating and work here is Richard Rush. Thank you sir.

The weird part to me is that in the end it's just a quick vote on a quiet Monday night in the summer in a nearly empty city council chambers. Without getting too sappy: in that moment, Spokane has joined a host of other progressive cities in recognizing that good bicylce and pedestrian infrastructure requires dedicated and knowledgeable planning and resources.


Here's Maddie and Liza. About 45 minutes after the vote. I wonder how the city will look when Maddie's kid learns how to ride a bike?

Bike Swap V1

Today was the first bike swap. I'm sure there's been other bike swaps in Spokane's history, but this is the first I know of in at least 5 years.

It was slow. But standing around hanging out with familiar bikey-faces/friends is a nice way pass the time on a Sunday morning.

Ken and Mike loaded up the P2P trailer with all sorts of goodies. P2P made some money, but the trailer had more bikes going back to the garage than it did when it left.

Ken is kind of the bike sales guy for P2P. He's good at it and moves em out. He's talking about doing a fixie/single-speed frame and bits garage sale some time soon. Watch Craigslist for that.

There's talk of doing a few more Sunday swaps next spring and summer. Finding a free space where we're not in the way on a Sunday would be cool. Then we could do it a bit later and get more of the sleeper-inners out.

However it works, I'm game.