Tacos, Flat Bars, and Death-Mobiles...

Dear Reader,

Tuesday afternoon I got a call from Diane.

"What do you have planned for tonight?" she asked.

"I'm gonna ride the death-mobile and do a shake down ride and some efforts why?" I responded.

"I just saw the menu for Tuesday Night Tacos at Two Stones, and wanted to know if you wanted to grab something-"

I interrupted, "Stop. You had me a Tuesday Night Tacos. You didn't need to say anything else."

L-R Duck Taco, Sesame Chicken Taco, Key Lime Pie Taco, and Brunch Taco.

 We didn't sample the Key Lime... 

For most of this year I have been somewhat fixated on a flat-bar cross bike set up. Earlier this summer I set up my Blue Norcross with a flat bar. It required some other adjustments... Longer stem, changed the seat position, and still couldn't get it to work.  It never felt right. I tried some efforts. It was a disaster. The handling was off. The bike felt nimble, but bordered on twitchy. I couldn't get the cockpit comfortable. What I hoped to gain in handling when out the window. It was clear this bike was designed with a traditional set up in mind.

Still, I feel  my strongest suit is bike driving, and that somehow a mountain bike bar would allow me to play to my strengths in cross. Being as I have a limited cross season planned, I figured this might be the year to play with my set up. The initial plan was essentially a failure, I still held up hope.

flat bar cross bike looks fucking cool- functions like a knife at a damn gun fight...

Plan B: the Death-Mobile. I took my old mountain bike set it up with tubeless Michelin Muds, a rigid fork and ditched the bar ends. The bike is really ugly with skinny tires. A monstrosity actually. But riding around it was fun. But riding a bike on the bike path, and putting it through it's paces is a totally different thing...

I love this bike, it's so fun to ride. Not going to work as a cross bike for me... 

 It was time to take it to the test. Frankly, it failed miserably. All the benefits I hoped to gained were wasted. The bike couldn't handle as well as I wanted, and in sections that I compared to my times on the traditionally set up cross bike, I was way off.  I found myself actually more tentative on the flat bar, not playing the drift or cornering as well. Everything that I liked about how the mountain-bike handled went out the window with the skinny tires. Perhaps mercifully, I flatted about half way through my last effort. In theory, the flat bar cross bike or skinny tired mountain bike was a great idea. In actually application, for me it didn't pan out for me.

The upside of all of this is that I have two smoking sweet cross bikes, that I love to ride, and feel really good under me... As I stood winded, and exhausted with my now flatted mountain-bike with cross tires, I knew that this little experiment was now over...

I called Diane from the trail with my now flatted Death-mobile and said, "honey, I need an extraction. I gotta flat. Mission Death-Mobile is a failure. Let's get some tacos..."

thanks for reading...

respect
vanderbacon