Sunday at Hanna Park

Travis and I ventured to Hanna early Sunday morning to get some trail time under our belts. The weather was a little brisk in the early hours, as we started at about 8am, but it warmed up nicely and the low-hanging cloud-cover burned off to reveal a beautiful winter day on the First Coast. The rainy weather from late the week before did alot to pack the sandy trails and keep the dust down, which was nice. I rode the white EWR with the new (recycled from the wife's bike) Marzochi ECR, or EPX, or DOA or POS or whatever the hell the acronym name is that the thing. Fork has a bit of a clunk to it, but I think that comes from not preloading the spring so that when the fork unloads the springs are just in there flopping around. I've never read the instructions for the fork, as it was on somebody elses bike, and she's at least as able to read a manual as me. Let her fugure it out! At least until I put it on my bike, now I've got to do it. Get to work punk! She's now 100% rigid, which I think will better suit her needs for a bike at the monemt. Make it nice and light, and it has a 2.3 tire on the front for a bit of give if she joins me on the trail. That Marzocchi was a horrible idea for her bike.

We spent about 3 hours on the trails, which were nicely underpopulated due to the day's early cold temperatures. I love it when the urban trail parks have few visitors, especially if it means I don't need to burn a leave day to get time alone on the trail without driving to BF Egypt.

I also put a set of Saint M800 cranks on the EWR, swapping the RF Atlas Gold bearings over to the white bike, and then running the Shimano Saint bearings on the blue. They are interchangeable, according to my quick interpretation of the fit lists for the new Chris King bearings. The gold stuff loked like ass on the blue EWR...had to get that off of there. The Saint cranks are super stiff and look pretty mean to boot. If I was all about intimidation, they'd be the shit, but I'm mostly all about fear and wimpiness, so pose on! Ha! Actually, hopping around on some logs after one of the trails, waiting for Travis to come out, they felt great.

I spent the afternoon cleaning a set of Syncros Revolution cranks I picked up on the fleabay for a decent BIN price. They are pretty clean, with only a minor bit of scratching and an (undisclosed) minor dent in the non-drive arm. I need to chop down some seat bolts to replace the proprietary Syncros inner chainring-spider bolts, as the original alloy hardware is nearly spent. Overall the cranks will work nicely for VRC purposes. Yummy!