Off Road Drop Bars: Gary

The adventure continues.......in Miami.  Of all places, this is the last place I thought I would end up.  It is not a complaint by any means, there was some shock because I am not a big city guy.  I like to be able to get away from chaos and Miami is chaotic at times....all the time.  Though I quickly figured out that Southern Florida has a great resource for those looking to escape the busy roads and city....canals.  A byproduct of water/flood management is hundreds of miles of gravel(ish) roads that parallel canals.  

There is one near my home that I frequently ride, it is great on a Saturday morning because the paved roads to get there are not as busy.  While most of the surfaces are pretty forgiving many of these roads have some gnarly stretches.  Most of the roads are made from the fill created when cutting the canals.  There is a ton of coral a few feet under the top soil.  This means that there are some stretches that are unforgiving as chunks of coral rocks poke out of the ground as the surface erodes.   There are a couple of things that I have done to mitigate this.  The first is tires, this means that 40mm tires are the smallest that I can comfortably ride with out shattering teeth or getting pinch flats (which I did on a low pressure 40mm). 

I love the Clement MSO in 40mm.  They are smooth rolling and very nice feeling at lower pressure.  However, I had one die so I ordered a set of Bruce Gordon Rock n' Road tires in a 43mm.  These are a very nice tires with a tight center tread for a little lower rolling resistance but great traction in all conditions.

Life sucking and tire eating rock and gravel.

The next improvement I made was to the handle bars.  I am on the third iteration but I think I have finally found what I am looking for.  The Giant Revolt came with about a 44cm wide with a slight flare to the drops.  Not bad but I was hoping for more, particularly when descending rough roads or trails.  I picked up a used set of WTB Dirt Drops which were closer but not quite there.  I wanted something that that felt natural in the drops.  No weird curves where my palms rest.  Then I saw it....

The Origin8 Gary Ergo Sweep OS has an amazing feel addresses my main concerns, a nice flare, adequate surface for my hands in the drops, and an amazing feeling of control and stability in the drops.  

It took a little bit to get used to riding in the drops with the flare but the drops are amazing.

I don't mind the city too much, especially when only a couple of miles west is the Everglades.  It is hard to believe that there are millions of people in the area and I love the isolated feel that the Everglades provide.

Fakahatchee Grind: another sufferfest in the books.

This is too long for a single post so I will break it into two posts.  Our latest FFO (Forced Family Outing) was the Fakahatchee Grind in Southwest Florida.  The ride had three options, full century, half, and a backcountry that was roughly 79 miles.  Truth be told, the half and full were a little longer, the half coming in at 59 miles.  We chose the half, which took us through the Big Cypress National Preserve and along the borders of the Panther Preserve and Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve.  The other rides went through all of the above.  

As with most of the great FFOs, little planning and preparation went into this event.  Don’t get me wrong, it takes some effort to maintain bikes and load them in the truck, but training.......we did none.  While not the preferred method, it can be done.   So I loaded up the truck the night before to make sure everything would work.  Then I took the bikes back to the garage, we live in Miami after all.  I went to bed way later than I wanted too.  I still needed to fill the truck with fuel so I planned on getting up early to do that.  

After four hours of slightly refreshing sleep, I jumped out of bed, got dressed and ran out to load bikes and get gas.  As I loaded the first two bikes, “I thought, why am I doing it this way?”  I have a redneckedly engineered system using 2x6s with bolt on fork mounts.  One in the front of the bed and one in the rear that sit in slots for such a purpose.  Then I ratchet strap those down to make sure the bikes don’t fly out when I hit a massive pothole.  It works, it is far from pretty but it works.  So back to my thought.  I had the bikes alternating front-rear-front but I didn’t want to have to crawl into the bed of the truck so I pulled the board near the cab of the truck out, took the mount off and bolted it to the board near the tailgate.  Then I remembered why I had them alternating.  The flare on my off road drops is such there is not room for three bikes all pointing the same direction.  

So there I am at 4:15 am determined that I am going to.....wait, wrong story.  We took the suburban….never-mind.

So after four hours of slightly refreshing sleep, I went to get gas.  I filled up then decided that I wanted to get some donuts for the kids.  I drove down the street to Dunkin’ Donuts where I saw people inside making the donuts.  They didn’t open until 5 a.m. and it was 4:40 am so I listened to a radio show called Coast to Coast.  I you haven’t listened to this show you are missing out on people who wear tin-foil hats and call in about conspiracies, Alien Stuff.  In my case, it was a lady who called in to discuss this recent trend with ancestry and getting your DNA tested.  According to her, this is a government conspiracy to collect and consolidate everyone's DNA into a central database.   Hhhmmnnn, I just thought it was a ripoff……  So then at 5:00 am, I went to the door which remained locked with the lights off inside.  People were cooking and putting out donuts, I waited about 10 more minutes before I realized they didn’t open until 6 am on Saturdays.  

Undetered, I went into a gas station to get donuts, apparently even though we are in America, donuts are not stocked in not so convenient stores owned by Columbians or Venezuelans, not even the little hostess white powdered donuts.  So I went to the gas station across the street and there were three 15 passenger vans for a highway construction crew with about 20 people in the store in line to purchase one or two items each.  So I drove to another corner store where they also didn’t have donuts.  By this time it was 5:30ish am so I went home sans donut.  

By the time we got the kids and bikes loaded it was almost 6:00 am and I had been up nearly two hours and  still hadn’t got donuts.  So we hit the road.  About 1/8^th of a mile later I realized that I hadn’t tighthened the hitch rack cinch bolt and it was wiggling around and I left the special wrench needed to do so.   So we turned around and I ran into the house, grabbed the wrench, tightened it and we were on our way.  By that time Dunkin Donuts was open and we grabbed a dozen for the road.  So began the day.