September rides, bringing in the fall.

[north woods gal]

I love the All City bikes for their frames. Very, very traditional, strong, but not overbuilt. Really bring out the best in the ride quality of steel. Love my Surly bikes, too, but Surly builds their steel bike frames heavy enough to withstand a nuclear blast. My factory complete Log Lady, for instance, compares, nicely, in ride quality and handling to my MUCH more expensive, fully custom Gunnar Ruffian. My next bike will be another All City and it will be used for pavement work. Probably go with a Macho Man flatbar or a Nature Boy single speed and then convert it to flat bar. After riding my light, fast, super easy rolling steel single speeds all summer, it's really, really hard for me to go back to riding big heavy bikes for road work. No point in it. I'm not packing heavy loads, after all. Just making daily rides on pavement for the sheer joy of riding.

But even in my trail riding, I'm now thinking lighter and faster. My Log lady, though geared a bit higher than my Krampus single speed conversion, nevertheless pedals easier than the Krampus. Those big heavy 29x3 tires/wheels on the Krampus are harder to pedal single speed, no doubt about it. You can do the calculations in gear inches to determine what gear ratio you need for a particular type of riding, but wheel/tire weight is also a big factor in how easy a bike pedals and how easily it rolls. That's one part of the equation that is not easy to calculate.