Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Wednesday News And Views

Catching up on a few things. Here's the latest mish-mash of stuff on my mind.....

Heated Grips: Wow! The weather right now is about as far away from needing heated grips as you can get. But can you remember that just last week it got down into the upper 20's for night time lows? Yup!

Well, I was testing these A'ME Heated Mountain Bike Grips for the Cyclistsite.com back in that cooler weather. They actually work really well too.

I know some will say "Yeah, but pogies work and are cheaper." Yup. They sure are and they do work, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that they work "better".

While run time is not much better than a couple of hours, the time it does run makes pogies unnecessary, and I don't like pogies cumbersome look and performance when you have to be pulling your hands in and out of the things. (I do, because of photo ops, and other reasons) If you have yourself set, and the hands are staying put, plus your ride is very long, well then, pogies are it. I have some, and I'll use them in extreme situations, but these grips will get some play for sure. They lowered the price on them just recently too, which makes them even more attractive. You can read more about them here in my review.

Velocity A-23 Wheels: I just got a set of Velocity A-23 wheels for my Black Mountain Cycles Monster Cross bike. These are the final wheels I will be slapping on that bike and I will be living with those for the foreseeable future.

I ended up with a bit of a custom build, since I got 28/28 hole wheels instead of the 24F/28R build they usually do at the Comp level. Mine still are radial laced up front and on the non-drive side rear. The drive side is two-cross. We'll see how they hold up.

It also will be interesting to check into something I accidentally overheard about these wheels at Frostbike. That they ran well sans tubes. Hmmmm.... Interesting. 

One thing Velocity does is that they hand build and sign their wheels before they are sent out. So, "Jacobi", I am counting on you and your handiwork! I did check them out when I received them and they were tensioned very well, and they were very true. More to come on these wheels here and on Gravel Grinder News.





The Gravel Metric -- More Gravel from Seth Deming on Vimeo.


Speaking of Gravel Grinder News: You gotta click on the video and check out what the NCC-HAC guys did for their upcoming gravel event on May 29th. (Warning!: Loud, angry music! You might want to turn your volume down a tad, or not!) This production is awesome, I think. I am very impressed at the creativity and passion shown here for gravel road riding/racing. Very cool.

Snow Dog Down: 81 Days and counting..............

4 comments:

Steve Fuller said...

Will be interested how the Velocity's work out for you. As a rider that fits squarely into the "clyde" category, I've made a conscious effort to not run anything other than a 3x lacing on my wheels, even on my road/gravel bikes. Radial lacing always seemed best suited for the weight weenie roadie crowd. It never seemed like it would be something I'd consider.

Guitar Ted said...

@Steve Fuller: I know what you mean. I did ride some feathery Sun Mistral rims laced 2X with butted Wheelsmith spokes on a Colnago for awhile, and never had any issues with those. Of course, that was on the roads.

Supposedly the radial lacing gives you the best lateral stiffness. The non crossing thing, well, I guess there are downsides in terms of torsional stiffness and longevity, but we'll see.....

3X lacing is just something that just plain ol' works. Can't disagree with ya there!

Ari said...

I just built up a Ti Vaya for a customer and he has King hubs on A23's. I laced them 3x and they turned out really nice. Velocity also has a Tubeless kit available for the Blunt rim.
Ari

Head Honcho said...

The A23's are quickly becoming my favorite rim. They build up so very nicely, and hold shape really, really well. You're going to love them Mark!