Bay Area Biker

Since I didn’t get a chance to ride this weekend (due to a variety of reasons and not excluding laziness on Sunday), and since today is a rest day in the Tour de France, I was really hoping to live vicariously through one of my buddies who did ride.

I found Kellsey on chat and asked him about his weekend mountain biking trip to Northstar at Tahoe. I was particularly interested to hear his impressions of riding with suspension, as it was to be his first ride with a suspension fork on his Karate Monkey. Up until last week, Kellsey had been a die hard rigid rider, but then this article dropped and I simultaneously sent him a craigslist posting for a good-deal used 29er fork. Those two occurrences mixed with the cold front of incredulity Kellsey had continually faced when talking to people about riding rigid at Northstar and a perfect storm formed that left Kellsey with a springy front end. He got the fork mounted on Thursday, rode it to work on Friday, and then left for the mountains on Saturday; and I was excited to hear the results.

Apparently the fork Kellsey bought was at the shelter for abandoned or unwanted bike parts because it was afraid of heights and not actually because the previous owner was moving to a smaller apartment that didn’t allow suspension forks. Despite having performed exquisitely over curbs and potholes all day Friday, somehow the fork failed during the first ride up the ski lift at Northstar, before he even got one chance to ride it down the mountain. Broken fork, blistered hands… I’m assuming it was at least pretty up there in the mountains this weekend and I’m curious to know how he spent his time on Sunday since he opted not to ride the second day, but the story will be fleshed out tonight: I offered to douse his frustrations in booze, since I feel largely responsible for having pointed him in the direction of that used fork. Kellsey heartily agreed with this plan, saying “we can drink and make the monkey rigid again.” A few minutes later he apologized for his untintentional double-entendre, but I assured him that my brain had been in bike-speak mode and that my sensibilities remained unassaulted.

This is one example of the perils of purchasing used equipment. Yet again, in some circles this will be seen as but another example of the perils of running anything more complicated than a brakeless fixie. To the latter I say, “run brakes and freewheels because it’s better, and make your bike as complicated as your pocketbook will allow,” to the former, “purchase as much new equipment as your pocketbook will allow.” When building my Niner I opted to purchase a used fork off of mtbr.com classifieds. When it showed up, there were blemishes not accounted for in the original product description/pictures. Before I mounted and rode the fork I addressed my concerns to the seller in an email, perhaps more fervently than I ought to have. The seller reassured me that my used fork functioned perfectly, and ultimately I found that to be true. In contrast, Kellsey’s used fork had no blemishes to cause him concern but turned out to be borked anyway. Tonight’s application of beer mechanics will show the two experiences to be one and the same.