Having been bit by the cyclocross bug, the next question was what to do for a bike? I did my first race on my Fisher front suspension mountain bike with the 2-inch mountain tires. It was comfortable and familiar and worked well for the course of the first race. She was rather hefty at 27 pounds and so I looked to lighten her up a bit.
The second race I swapped out the tires to some Schwalbe CX Pro 1.35 26-inch tires and found that they worked fine and made the bike a bit lighter.
I felt too upright, though, and really wanted to try a true 'cross bike. There are very few options for those of us with 28-inch inseams (right Eden?) and I didn't feel I could really put out another $1000+ right now on another bike (just bought a Ruby Expert a couple of months ago). So with the help of my DBF we created Frank from my old road bike, the Fisher mtb, and a few additional parts.
We swapped over the Ritchey Biomax bars and 105 shifters, kept the XT mountain derailleur and cassette, ditched the front derailleur and used the single Stronglight 34T compact ring and cranks. I got a rigid suspension-corrected fork from Spicer Cycles, some Tektro bar levers, a Third Eye chain guard and a bash guard for the outside of the ring from BBG.
This got Frank down to a trim 22.6 pounds. He was really fun to ride at Gloucester and seems quite trail-worthy on not-too-technical single track. He's much more nimble on the road and will probably get ridden a lot this winter. It was great fun to help build a bike and to get a little better understanding of how they go together. So...meet my friend Frank :)
