veloduffer
Member
Cure for the winter blues - All City SS cross & Trek Fuel
This fall and early winter as I rode my Specialized Langster, it dawned on me that the ideal single speed would be a cross frame -- easy to fit wide tires and studded tires, can clean in a jiffy spit, and not that easy to find in a road geometry. I happened upon All City Bikes in my search and lo & behold, the Nature Boy.
It has lots of nice touches for a sub $500 steel frame - All City logo dropouts with screws, internal cable housing, lovely fork crown, rear fender eyelets on the inside of the seat stays, and even star bottle cage bosses. I like the color and with the above finishes, it's a bit modern and old school at the same time.
The Trek Fuel EX 8 is a real blast and I just got it a month ago. I decided to get a mountain bike after many years of being off the trail. What got my mtb juices flowing was riding the trails with my cross bike. The trails in northern NJ are full of rocks and I really got bounced around despite picking my lines. My buddies were riding mtbs and just blowing me away, as I had to dismount and run at times. So, I figured on getting a mtb from my very good LBS, from which I have never bought a bike (their only a Trek & Moots dealer). My last mountain bike was the classic Bridgestone MB-3 rigid with Softride suspension stem (I added that). That was when I first started riding and was a real BOB ('93 RB-1 and XO-1 too).
So I've set both bikes with studded Nokian tires. These tires work very well on ice, like the ice isn't even there. For the mtb, I heard that you need to set the studs in the tires by putting on some road miles, which is all I can do with the heavy snow. The recent ice might harden the snow enough to hit the trails - we'll see.
Thanks for checking them out.
This fall and early winter as I rode my Specialized Langster, it dawned on me that the ideal single speed would be a cross frame -- easy to fit wide tires and studded tires, can clean in a jiffy spit, and not that easy to find in a road geometry. I happened upon All City Bikes in my search and lo & behold, the Nature Boy.
It has lots of nice touches for a sub $500 steel frame - All City logo dropouts with screws, internal cable housing, lovely fork crown, rear fender eyelets on the inside of the seat stays, and even star bottle cage bosses. I like the color and with the above finishes, it's a bit modern and old school at the same time.
The Trek Fuel EX 8 is a real blast and I just got it a month ago. I decided to get a mountain bike after many years of being off the trail. What got my mtb juices flowing was riding the trails with my cross bike. The trails in northern NJ are full of rocks and I really got bounced around despite picking my lines. My buddies were riding mtbs and just blowing me away, as I had to dismount and run at times. So, I figured on getting a mtb from my very good LBS, from which I have never bought a bike (their only a Trek & Moots dealer). My last mountain bike was the classic Bridgestone MB-3 rigid with Softride suspension stem (I added that). That was when I first started riding and was a real BOB ('93 RB-1 and XO-1 too).
So I've set both bikes with studded Nokian tires. These tires work very well on ice, like the ice isn't even there. For the mtb, I heard that you need to set the studs in the tires by putting on some road miles, which is all I can do with the heavy snow. The recent ice might harden the snow enough to hit the trails - we'll see.
Thanks for checking them out.
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