Monday, April 17, 2006

First Ride on the Turner Nitrous

My best buddy and bad ass mechanic
Matthew Noell (picture from '05 NORBA Nationals with his son Wilder) has been putting my two new Turner bikes together for me. I’d love to say I have been helping, well I guess I have, but Matthew does most of the real work. The last touch for the Nitrous was putting the front derailleur on. I took care of that on Monday before I hit the trail with my new Nitrous for the first time!

Tiger Mountain’s Preston Railroad trail just reopened on April 15th for mtn bikes. I ride this trail more than any other.
It’s close, it has some climbing, some wicked single track and some challenging technical riding – it’s perfect and fun. Last year I would do some race pace training by trying to ride the 13 mile loop in under an hour. I got as close as 1:06, but I still think it’s possible. I am not the fastest out there so someone must have done it - If you have let me hear about it in the comments. This year I’m going to do it. I wasn’t feeling particularly good today and I climbed the road in 24 minutes.

The Nitrous is amazing, super nimble and a blast to ride… precision.

Worst fork ever
The frame is only 4.5 lbs. With all my carbon FSA components on it the bike is amazingly light. I am itching to take it to DHZ and weigh it. First impression: fastest XC race bike I’ve ever been on, the RP3 had absolutely no bob on the climbs and the bike is meant to go FAST. I can’t say the same for my RockShox Air Titanium. Bought it a few years ago and got a lemon. I’ve spend about $340 getting this fork rebuild on three occasions. By the time I finished the climb up the road to the trail head it was bottoming out and had no air in it.. POS. Clank clank clank all the way down. I now only buy Fox suspensions, they might be a bit heavier but they are simply better products, just ask your local bike shop guy.

5 Comments:

Anonymous said...

sweet. i haven't ridden that trail in a very long time. how crowded is it?
thanks for the tip on the fork... oh yeah, what would you say was your total cost?

12:43 PM  
Anonymous said...

I live right by Tiger yesterday and had a blast.

The trail has changed several ways since last year, slowing me down as I stopped to look around.

My best time was 1:17, so you got me by over 10 min.

9:46 AM  
Hart said...

It wasn't crowded at all but I hit the trail on a Monday at noon.. one of the luxuries of being casually employed (as my buddy Copson calls me).

Yeah the trail is in good shape and there have been some changes, but nothing crazy. Since it’s early season there are sections of the trail that are still basically a river bed with flowing water.

As for my bike cost my team DART-nuun is sponsored by Turner bikes and FSA Components. However I still had to put shifter pods, a chain, and the like on the bike… all of which I bought at Second Ascent in Seattle, another great sponsor of ours.

10:12 AM  
Anonymous said...

btw- I'm never scared of hand-me-down bikes :) I got my first after work ride here in the Bay Area. Not bad actually, 1,500 vertical, 10 miles of smooth (wet) singletrack through some AMAZING redwood forests. The riding close to SF seems to be a bit tame but it will suffice for weekdays. Looking to get out for something bigger asap. --reno

10:32 AM  
Anonymous said...

i took a huge shit today. it felt great.

long like a log

and no bleeding

the shadow

4:58 PM  

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