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Day: May 20, 2011

I Like This Bike

Today was the Salsa El Mariachi‘s first trail ride, and it went well. Riding all the single track at Stony Creek and the two hardest climbs was great, and the rigid fork played a huge part of it. Being fully rigid and a single speed this bike feels completely different from the Titus, but in a good way. It fits me better than the VooDoo Dambala did and is the most comfortable rigid bike I’ve ridden. While not something that I’d set out for 40 – 60 mile rides on (at least not as it’s currently set up), it’s really fun on trails and I can see myself riding this quite a bit.

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Salsa El Mariachi: Built

After work today I tore down the VooDoo Dambala and cleaning the parts for assembly on the Salsa El Mariachi frame. After the parts were disassembled and cleaned, after another five hours passed (including a break for dinner) this pile of parts turned into the bike you see above. It’s currently fitted with the rigid fork, but at some point in the future I’ll probably switch to the squishy Reba. For now I figure it’d be nice to get back to having a rigid single speed to ride, especially now that I’ve got some nice, reliable, wide-profile wheels.

I’m still waiting for another Carnegie’s Bar to arrive from the UK for this bike, but in the mean time it should do just fine with the FSA CarbonPro that had graced the VooDoo. There’s also going to be a bit more fiddling to do to get the saddle position right, but I think everything in a good starting place for now. With any luck I’ll be able to get out to Stony Creek tomorrow and try it out.

I’m really happy with how the look of the bike came out as well. Without really trying I ended up hitting a blue/shades-of-grey color scheme. While I’m not interested in spending an inordinate amount of time color coordinating a bike, I do like it when everything falls into place to have something nice looking. And here I was questioning the blue color of the frame at first…

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