62"

and five meters of development

Yesterday we attempted to get our weekly Monday night sessions back in action. The in-laws came over to watch the baby, and I headed out to the closest ATB zone armed with my Stooge Rambler chubB+y scorcher. It was beautiful all day, though there was a storm threat in the middle of our ride, but we set sail anyway on a 25-30 mile route.

We had a couple drop bar 700c Ritchey and Crust, an alt bar 700c Kona, a lugged Trek Singletrack with Bullmoose bars, and my weird bike. Great for ramblin’ and some scramblin’.

Before heading further towards the ominous dark clouds ahead, we decided to turn around and take the easy way home. A little rain never hurt nobody, but it was a good decision we did because proper gale force winds and a torrential downpour arrived the second we got back to the meeting spot.

The ride was beautiful before the storm, though. I was extremely pleased with my newly built-up ENO eccentric hub on the Rambler. I kept it at 37/17, totaling 62” aka 5 meters of development. It’s funny, the most recent wave of off road fixed gear riding is both 63xc (named for 63 gear inches) and Matt Chester’s blog (called 5 metres of development). It turns out that those two names were chose appropriately— I found my gear ratio to be the perfect all around for this mixed terrain ride, including some singletrack, pavement, punchy dirt climbs, and gravel paths. Not too tall, and not too easy.

Next time we can hopefully get the whole route in. Complete with a little hike a bike up that old rebar lined horse trail.