composites

I occasionally get to interact with Composites at work but not often. Most of my time is spent dealing with high temperature nickel alloys and other crazy space age materials meant to withstand Satan's Kingdom.

Anyway, I am riding for High Gear Cyclery and Ghostship Clothing this year. The High Gear mountain bike team has an affiliation with Gary Fisher. I thought back to my experiences upon one of his bicycles last summer and figured I'd give it another whirl.

Enter my new 2010 Gary Fisher Superfly singlespeed. My first carbon fiber bicycle. Now I have had a taste of just about every major frame material out there (still need to try wood, bamboo, etc..).


I can't remember when I ordered it. End of February? Oh yeah, it was the end of February for I was enroute to Jackson Hole for a weekend of good snowboarding when I gave Jim the go-ahead to order me up a frameset.

One day Jim walked into the shop and my frame was sitting there. A few [many] weeks early. A week or two passed and I picked it up on Good Friday and quickly got to assembling it.



Ultimately I'll have an entirely new groupo so this bike can stand-alone next to my other bicycles. The thought here was to keep my Cannondale assembled (and 1x9 geared for now) so I can jump between bikes without having to wrench first. I used to love wrenching on bikes but the past few years I would rather just go ride and wrench every couple of weeks. The thought of having to swap brakes and cranksets and such around just to ride another bike was un-nerving.

We are still waiting on some parts (crankset, pedals, brake rotors, seatpost, wheelset) but managed to cannibalize some bikes and dig into the box-o-bike-parts to get 'her operational asap.



First ride ('Furlough Monday', what better way than spending your unpaid day off by riding your new bicycle?) had a set of Bontrager 29-0 tires mounted up. Super light things but I quickly realized I can't ride a 1.9" wide tire on my favorite, technical and rocky, trails. 30psi and super light sidewalls allowed rocks to find my rim. I do have to say the bike was insanely quick thanks to hardly any rotational weight.



I got four hours in that first day and felt great. Could not believe how well this bike handled. Two days later I got a hard and fast 2.5hr technical ride in and felt pretty good. This past Sunday I got a 2.5-3ish hour ride in at Stewart Forest in NY. Sean, Johan and I rode pretty hard (as if we were racing) on some of the singlespeed-a-palooza course and some random trails within Stewart.

All in all, this is a fun bike. Right now it weighs around 21.5lbs and is a 19" frame. Weight should come down with my new wheels and other tidbits. I would like to see sub20 but not sure if that will happen.

Current spec sheet:
Superfly Frame w/ Fox fork
Bontrager stem
Salsa moto pro 660x11deg carbon flat bar
Ergon GX1 grips
Shimano XTR disc brakes (160mm 6bolt rotors)
Shimano XTR crankset and BB (175mm arms)
Salsa 34T chainring
SRAM PC991 chain
Boone ti cogs
Shimano 959 pedals
Moots ti seatpost with a broken clamp
Fi:zik Tundra saddle
Mavic Cr29smax front wheel
Hope Pro II SS hub / Stan's Flow rear wheel
tires are whatever I'm riding at the time. I've been jumping around but my trusty steed are Maxxis Crossmarks


I'll write more later this week about the ride characteristics. I need to rest. I worked 22hrs in the past two days with 5hrs of sleep. I think its my bedtime so I can sustain any form of a pace on tomorrow night's MTB ride.

Damn, I just ate a 14inch pizza while typing this. Guess I was hungry.