WaltWorks 29er

Got a new bike, a custom Walt Works 29er. See Walt's website for more info.

Rode it on Rabbit Mountain yesterday. First ride was pretty uneventful. Still working out the climbing technique since it is a lot different from my other bikes. Probably will take a couple weeks to be truly comfortable climbing of course. You were correct that Rabbit Mountain felt about like a bike-path.

Descending felt pretty comfortable. The Marz fork has a much different feel from the RockShox. I've heard it described as having a lot of sticktion, but really it feels to me more like there is a preload type of threshold and then it moves pretty easily. No platform to speak of though so I need to put "too much" air into it for climbing then get no travel on the descent. Settled on ~40% of body weight for air pressure in the fork. Makes standing climbing kinda suck, but hey, that isn't this bike's style anyway. I have the rebound set 1 click in from full-fast which seemed about right on the rocks at Rabbit.

RP23 is at ~260lbs (110% of body weight.) and it felt pretty good climbing. I can't really remember how it compares to the El Rey, but I think it is a bit more active under pedaling and does sink into the travel a bit more. Bob isn't bad with the RP3 in ProPedal, but it does hunker more than I'd like in granny (to be expected given the axle-path). I may bump the pressure up 10psi or so today. My initial sag settings were done without a loaded camelbak. I sent an email to the "dirtlabs" guy, Mike Luebesmier to ask about tuning advice. Hoping I can increase the low-speed compression damping a bit. Rebound is set to 3 clicks from full-fast. I tried 4 clicks in and it seemed a tad slow to react.

Still working out how I feel about the custom geometry. It is a lot shorter top-tube than any bike I've ridden, and it seems to fit well based on my lack of flexibility and such. However, I still feel like I'm a little too forward in the saddle. Moved it back about 3/4 of the rails (1/3 inch?) and that helped a lot. Might push it back even further today depending on how I feel after the climb up Belcher Hill.

Sizing info for Walt

Tweaks to the Trek

Well, after 100 miles or so on the new/old Trek, I like it pretty well. I needed to install a lower gear, a 39 front, to make it up the hills around Boulder. I finally decided that the 20 year old Shimano 600 derailleur had lived a long life but it needed to go. So I grabbed my NOS Shimano XTR 952 mid-cage and installed it along with a new 9 speed chain. The new chain worked pretty well with the 8 speed front rings and 7 of the cogs on the 8 speed rear cassette. Annoyingly the inner links were hanging up on the 11 cog, causing skips and pops. No good, so I spent 10 minutes shaving the teeth on the 11 cog to be narrower. Now it is perfect. I think it shifts quicker, more precisely and is quieter now.

Now I'm a happy "fred" with my 20 year old bike loaded up with mismatched parts, unravelling bar tape and a set-back seat post.

New Bike -- Sort of ...

Took Bryan's old Trek 5200 out for its inaugural ride under my tuchus today. Pretty good ride with a few friends. Rode from Gunbarrel out to Hwy36 and North to Lyons where we hit the fruit loops, then back to Lefthand and over Lee Hill. The Trek is an old soldier of a bike, but with some new-old wheels and new-old tires from Glen along with my old 8 speed Shimano XT cassette, it worked pretty nicely.

52 miles and 3100 feet of climbing.

maven profiles.xml

Just solved a problem with maven and profiles.xml. The documentation says that the profiles.xml file uses the exact format as the <profiles> element in pom.xml, but this isn't quite true. The <profiles> element is needed, but the documentation neglects to point out that you need to wrap the <profiles> element with a <profilesXml> root element.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<profilesXml>
  <profiles>
    <profile>
      <!-- This profile is used by default -->
      <id>default-profile</id>
      <activation>
        <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
      </activation>
      <properties>
        <webapp.port>9090</webapp.port>
        <webapp.admin.port>9999</webapp.admin.port>
      </properties>
    </profile>
  </profiles>
</profilesXml>

VMware Guest Performance with x64 host

Been running into a confusing problem with slow performance under VMware Workstation 6.5.0 with a Vista x64 host on my new laptop.

I keep thinking it has something to do with PAE and 32 bit guests, but I haven't been able to pin it down. Messing with the boot.ini to disable PAE seems to help sometimes, but I think it is the placebo effect. No information found despite extensive searching in Google and on the vmware forums.

Social Network

I am now occasionally twittering and I set up a facebook account too. I guess that means I'll try to blog more substantial article like items and leave the painfully trivial to those venues.

Trainer

Bought a Kurt Kinetics "Road Machine" trainer. So far am pretty happy with it. Karen set up her bike on it and has been spinning a few times. With the Continental "home trainer" tire on it it is quiet enough that we only have to turn the TV up a bit.

It is very stable and not too hard to move around. I don't know if we really needed a mat, but just to be safe we picked up a 4 x 6 throw rug from Ross for $20. I do not understand why the bike shops sell crappy 3.5 x 6 rubber mats for $50... well, maybe I should say that I don't understand why people buy $50 rubber mats when they can get more durable and less ugly mats from Ross for $30 less.

I am a bit annoyed by the trainer tire though. It was the most difficult tire to mount that I think I've ever encountered. Full on steel-bead UST Downhill tires are easier. Guess I need to track down a cheap/free rear wheel so we can swap back and forth.