eloy said:

 When I visited Chris Horner at his San Diego home

You guys both used the same lube.  Soulmates.

I am thinking that I may get a mountain bike to ride for fun during the winter months. However when I started looking into MTB I immediately became overwhelmed by all the options. For those of you who do ride MTB if you can share any advice I would be grateful.

29er is great. No suspension needed on long island. Tubes seem fine to me. Easy to take care of. Double chainring and a really wide cassette work just fine too.

BULLOCKS !!!!  A Slingshot is what you want...

Chatting with Thom Parsons (here's a dude who knows a lot of MTB-ers and goes to a ton of MTB races for his website) at the CX camp I was surprised to hear him call the Cannondale Scalpel "disposable." He went on to say, that they are really light and fast, and a lot of people win races on them, but they also break them with alarming frequency. Which is surprising to me. But I have no frame of reference. But like I said, Parsons is clicked into the MTB scene really solidly.

Mattie or anyone, have a counter point to this thought?

For what it's worth, I don't buy the 29er hype. In another life, I made the switch and was disappointed with the ride difference. If I had to do it again, I would spend the money on the 26 inch bike.

I am down to one set of wheels, zipp 202s ,which I love But I need a pair of winter wheels that could double up as park/ Floyd racing wheels for next year , looking for recommendations , I want aluminum breaking surfaces

My Neuvation wheel ( with powertap) has been quite sturdy so far. For the price, you can't go wrong.

Mark, I would encourage you to look into the Reynolds and Ritchey options we have available available through sponsorship at Ride Brooklyn. Ride is actually having a crazy sale this weekend and you might be able to get your hands on some inventory at a great price. If you wind up going with the Reynolds wheels, I strongly suggest that you look into the Reynolds Assurance Program.

The Reynolds situation constantly confuses me. This is the second time that I have personally had a conversation with a Ride Brooklyn employee about Reynolds wheels where I was made confused about our arrangement. Both guys were super nice by the way.

This time it was the guy with the awesome crazy hair/beard combo who was talking about how he was actively in talks with Reynolds about securing us a deal if we buy 5 sets or somesuch. And when I referenced how much Vlad loved his wheels, he said something about him getting the crazy good bro deal because he was so handsome or something (okay I made that last part up). It made me think, wait don't we all get that deal?

I don't know...

All I know, is that this winter I'm going to try to pull together more pennies and pull the trigger on some go fast road wheels. I guess at that point, is when it really matters.

The Reynolds deal is a bit elusive. It happened for Vlad while Al B was still at Ride. Turns out it was more of a one time thing and that we don't have a deal with Reynolds. Ride is following up with them but the margins on wheel sets are much lower today than they were a year ago. Hence, the likelihood of a deal as described in the "sponsorship" brochure is slim.

How come we've never sought out a sponsorship deal with Boyd http://www.boydcycling.com who I believe was a sponsor for each and every one of Charlie I's races this year……. more innovative than Neugent and with better customer service than Neugent if your idea of customer service is what mine is….I like buying stuff  and not having it break. Boyd wheels don't break and you're dealing with a small personable entity. I'm a new Yorker and I don't have time to wait  in line at the post office sending ersatz product back to the manufacturer. I'd rather hear people speak favorably about how the stuff they bought has never let them down(Something associated with the Boyd experience) than hear about how they had a quick less than two week turn around in getting something that broke warrantied(Neuvation/Neugent).

Do we know when the next group ritchey order will be

I would bet that if you put a Boyd wheel next to a Neuvation or Neugent wheel, the main difference will be the logos.

Ahh Craig, thanks for the clarification on the Reynolds situation. Instead of dreaming about new carbon hoops I can now go straight to, "damn I got PowerTapped again." #hewhowaitstoolong

I've had Boyds. I own 5 sets of Neuvations with the likely purchase of another soon. 0 problems.

Rick Perner said:

How come we've never sought out a sponsorship deal with Boyd http://www.boydcycling.com who I believe was a sponsor for each and every one of Charlie I's races this year……. more innovative than Neugent and with better customer service than Neugent if your idea of customer service is what mine is….I like buying stuff  and not having it break. Boyd wheels don't break and you're dealing with a small personable entity. I'm a new Yorker and I don't have time to wait  in line at the post office sending ersatz product back to the manufacturer. I'd rather hear people speak favorably about how the stuff they bought has never let them down(Something associated with the Boyd experience) than hear about how they had a quick less than two week turn around in getting something that broke warrantied(Neuvation/Neugent).

sorry for the rant…not directed at you Craig…..just sayin'

Rick,

Something is up with my neugent tubulars. They are flat prone. I had double flats with them at prospect...I had brand new 25 mm Vittoria Corsa's installed and the rear is leaking...I pumped them up and overnight the rear dropped about 20 lbs and the front only about 10 lbs. latex tubes bleed air so this didn't concern me much. I want to race these tomorrow but I figured I should ride them at least once before racing on them. The rear must have been leaking from the get go. About 20 miles miles in I was down to about 40 psi. I put a can of Cafee latex sealant in. By the time I got home I was at 40 psi. Don't know if it's a valve issue but I will fill the bathtub and put the wheel in to check. Quickly loosing patience with tubulars though

every so often there's a tubular tire that just sucks... got a bump, got a hole, can't hold air, whatevs... i've experience it twice... hardly ever happens but it absolutely sucks when it does. the solution, unfortunately, is usually a new tire.

Well that's a bucket of suck it. I'm gonna jam some Stan's sealant in there tomorrow and see if that plugs it.

I had more drama this morning. Feeling so proud of myself for successfully putting in delicate latex tubes with tight tires on my race wheels, I went to top them off this morning, and when pushing pump head onto my rear tube, I managed to push the valve in hard enough to rip the valve from the latex. Big hole where the two meets. Jeesh.

a) has this ever happened to anyone else?
b) is this repairable? the rubber around the valve appears to be you know regular stuff, and if I could somehow join/seal it back to the red latex big? The hole/tear is pretty significant though...sigh. Always a little drama in the morning.

(don't even ask about my worsening vertigo today)

Balls....My problem appears to be that either that the valve core was not full tightened or the valve extender wasn't...I put the wheel in the bathtub and the bubbles were coming from the valve area...so I tightened everything up, pumped it up to 120 psi and put it back in the tub = no bubbles.

this has happened before. both the symptoms, solution and eventual discovery of the problem. it's the last thing to think about for some reason.

twoyacks said:

Balls....My problem appears to be that either that the valve core was not full tightened or the valve extender wasn't..

Cool!  And no dangling pods or funky installation rituals.

Marc Bertucco said:

I had more drama this morning. Feeling so proud of myself for successfully putting in delicate latex tubes with tight tires on my race wheels, I went to top them off this morning, and when pushing pump head onto my rear tube, I managed to push the valve in hard enough to rip the valve from the latex. Big hole where the two meets. Jeesh.

a) has this ever happened to anyone else?
b) is this repairable? the rubber around the valve appears to be you know regular stuff, and if I could somehow join/seal it back to the red latex big? The hole/tear is pretty significant though...sigh. Always a little drama in the morning.

(don't even ask about my worsening vertigo today)

A. It's not unheard of.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/xpedo-launches-new-thrust-e-power-meter-pedals

the anodized blue...so nice

Xpedo ... would have liked to have been a fly on the wall during their naming brainstorm.

mugwump said:

The issue is not the rubber, as standard patches will work on latex, but the joint and size of hole.  Joints are not easy to glue together.

Oooh, a challenge. Well, considering I spent $15 on a tube, I'm going to give it a shot.