mikeferrentino profile

"it's okay if it's not always perfect."

It's almost NEVER perfect! Back when I was chasing finish lines, I would have one, maybe two, really good races a season. Those days were unpredictable and magic. I spent years trying to have more of them without really laying down any disciplined groundwork. That kept them elusive, but there was a tangible frustration the rest of the time that so many races could have been better.

It must have taken a full decade to undo that wiring, and begin to enjoy riding again at whatever pace that conditions or partners or fitness or lack of fitness dictated. Now, I very rarely have perfect rides, but I am realizing more and more that I am enjoying EVERY ride. That was not always the case. To quote a Ray Wylie Hubbard lyric that I have trotted out more than once elsewhere: "The days when I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, I have very good days"...

At some point in the initial draft before I got twitchy about word counts I had a whole riff in there about Drake binge watching Dead Poet's Society over and over while his slaves polished up his sneakers, and how us Rustic Gen-Xers used to carpe the shit out of every damn diem, but it kind of missed several points and got rightfully excised...

I am your student...

but... but... but... VELOSAMBA!

Mike, I weigh everything! Doesn't mean I always cleave to the lightest, but I have absolutely made some very bad choices in the name of gram saving over the years.

Most riders who didn't spend several years shaving their legs would probably agree with you. I remember being laughed at in a coffee shop once, by a complete and total stranger, who was literally pointing and laughing out loud at my Paola Pezzo edition Northwaves...

I've had a couple pairs of ME7 as well, but have each time ended up back on the XC shoe end of things. the ME7 buckle always seemed fussy to me, but it is pretty low-profile. I think my beef with the ME7 is that it always felt like it ran hot. My feet felt like they were cooking in them. But they fit the bill in so many other respects as far as performance and aesthetics that are not full-skate.

When I started to write this, the 2FO Cliplite was $200 on the Specialized website. By the time I was ready to hit send, the price had dropped to $149.95. Still spendy, but they do seem really nicely put together...

That's good to know about the BOA guarantee. I've had good luck with them in the past, and haven't needed a replacement yet, but being able to do so is solid peace of mind.

I don't think there's going to be any broad push toward a new wheel size anytime soon. The wheel sizes that define the entirety of mountain biking are all rim diameters that already existed. It's as if, when it comes to wheels, mountain biking doesn't really do new. The 26" standard that embodied the first three decades of mountain biking was lifted from pre-WW2 Schwinn cruisers, and I suspect the only reason Ignaz settled on those for his "paperboy" bikes was because he got a sweet deal on a raft of leftover German scooter parts sometime before the depression hit. Mountain bikers had the good fortune of being just barely preceded by BMX and the lucid foresight of that sport to include a 26" cruiser class for the geezer dads who wanted to race but didn't want to get killed by their own slow reflexes on 20" bikes, so we had an available market of alloy 26" rims to draw from.

29"? Exact same bead seat diameter as every bike in the TourDayFrance for the past, ummm, hundred or so years, maybe longer. Once upon a time there were also 700a, 700b and 700d rims that were all slightly different in diameter, but 700c became the defacto standard for road cycling, and therefore was a super easy adaptation into the 29er.

Same with 27.5, or 650b as it used to be known. Been around forever, got a new life thanks to Kirk Pacenti.

So, if we follow the pattern that has defined mountain biking since it began, the only new wheel sizes we can expect to see will involve either 630mm bead seats (a whopping 8mm jump in diameter over 700c) scavenged from old 27" road bikes or else a rousing new wave of gigantic wooden rims as we explore the Ordinary route. I better stock up on mustache wax, just in case...