Dumbo’s Feather

I think yesterday I mentioned my crashing, briefly. What I left for today, however, is Dumbo’s Feather.

I would not ever have made any connection to a bike and Dumbo, but Justin did, and thus I am using it, since it quite literally fits the figurative bill.

Even when he said it, on our New Year’s Eve ride, it took me about 15 minutes to “get it”. Dumbo’s Feather: Dumbo always had “wings” enough to fly, but he had to have the magic feather in his trunk to convince himself he could indeed soar. Until the day, of course, the feather fell and he was “forced” to fly on his own.

Justin and I on Friday before New Year’s, the day after my latest bad crash in a series of bad crashes, had plenty of time to chat while we drove around running errands. We chatted about my riding and crashing. I clearly needed some help.

“What are you crashing on?” “Everything.  I crash uphill going slow, I crash downhill going slow, I crash downhill going fast, downhill going slow, sometimes on flat ground.”  Basically – I was sucking at riding my mountain bike.

Keith suggested bigger tires (which would necessitate Justin training with water in place of Stans in his tires, which Justin would not do to himself – I asked).

We discussed different bike options – like training this winter with more suspension a Stumpy or an Evo. I asked him, if we were unknown customers walking into a bike shop, mentioned my crashing issue, what would CeeDubb recommend? He said, “29er.” Which is exactly what CeeDubb said.

While Rock N’ Road Mission Viejo did not have a 29er in medium for me to test out, we happily stopped at both Irvine and then Anaheim Hills that day as well, and Anaheim did in fact have a 29er Epic, but only in size small. I had, in early 2008ish had a small Canzo 29er.  It was too small.  I sold the frame, which had been used only a few times, and got a medium.  I’d actually spent most of 2007 and 2008 riding and racing 29ers on a Salsa Dos Niner, and later the Canzo.

So, when we saw they had a small we were hesitant to test it out, but no reason not to ride around the parking lot, right?

I hopped on it anyway. No toe overlap. Some minor saddle height adjustments and it’d work, at least for a test.

Hello, big wheels.

Saturday morning Justin set me up on the bike, changing the suspension pressures and raising the saddle to max height.  We didn’t make any other adjustments, aside from putting on Crankbrother’s Egg Beater pedals.

For the first test ride on the clown bike/wagon wheels/hybrid we had some discussion as to where to ride. We wanted a decent test of the bike, somewhere that we’d ridden recently, and could test out some chunky riding, and have some singletrack fun.

Trailhead.

I made it up the initial fire road climb not all that impressed or unimpressed. The tubes made it fairly bouncy. It was pretty warm out, and Justin left me behind a bit, despite wearing the heavy pack and me with relatively empty pockets.

We got to the Trabuco descent, and he led us out. About 1/4 way down he stopped and asked if the brakes were working okay. “Yeah, they’re great. Why?” “You haven’t gone this fast in months. Just making sure the brakes worked.” I was kind of shocked because I didn’t feel like I was overly pushing my speed or at the limit of myself or the bike. It did kind of just plow through everything, steam roll over rocks, etc., but it also held its line, went where I wanted and expected it to go, and cornered really well. I’ve felt like I was really struggling with cornering this year, but I felt comfortable with it on this bike.

While I didn’t set any land speed records, it was the most comfortable I’ve felt descending in longer than I can remember, without any extra effort, and with my utter lack of self-confidence in riding off road. I was pretty stoked.

Surprisingly enough, I could even keep up with Justin on most fire road descents on my demo clown bike that should be a size too small.

While I wasn’t able to do any riding or testing of the bike on New Year’s Day, we decided to give the dirt another go on January 2 at Aliso.  We don’t ride there a ton, but have ridden there a good bit and are somewhat familiar with the trails.  Pretty similar in some ways to Bonelli and Fontana with steep climbs, some rocks and ledges, and fun trails all around.

The clown bike didn’t let me down. I cleaned a steep climb I haven’t in years 2, climbed another one pretty slow (though I wasn’t maxed out, not in the mood for that!), and descended a brand new to me super steep trail far far better than I would have imagined doing on my 26 Epic on the day, plus did not get dropped by Justin too badly (riding his HT, I should mention) on Lynx. So, there was all of that. I was sad to return to my wagon wheels.

A few interesting points…

Justin had ridden behind me descending Trabuco at some point in the past month or so.  He off-handedly mentioned it semeed like I was too stretched out and maybe I needed a small frame.  I’m 5’8 with a long torso and arms for a female – how could I need a smaller cockpit?

The front fork and brakes on my ’09 Epic are not the best.  The shock is kind of a loaner since mine was inadvertently shipped to the wrong state after being overhauled this past summer.  The brakes if not replaced probably need to be bled.

So, with the test bike being a small, Justin took a ton of measurements between my race bike and the small test bike.  The differences aren’t *that* significant, but he wants to try out my bike with a 75mm stem (vs. 90mm) and flat bar (lower front end means more weight on the front tire) and see how that goes.  The bad part is that while my road bike has a 75mm stem, we have no flat bars, and my bike currently has no brakes on it.  This should get interesting!

At any rate, before we sell everything 26″ that we have in the garage and go after spending a LOT of money buying a fancy feather, we’re going to try out a fatter tire (we bought a 2.2 I think Ground Control chunk tire to put on the front) and make some cockpit changes to see how I feel and fit on my current bike first.

Meanwhile… before I hurt myself again, anyone have another feather I can borrow?