Nother day another dollar

Well, not exactly. Cash flow kind of going the other way. Gotta stop breaking stuff. Last week it was my seat post. Yesterday it was a pivot bolt. For whatever reason Santa Cruz decided to make the new generation Heckler all svelte and pretty at the pivot. In the process they added a highly stressed bolt into the scheme. I had issues with this bolt coming loose when I first purchased the bike. It is a known issue with their design. So I used some higher quality fasteners with more thread engagement and a bit of loctite. I torqued everything to spec and rode off into the sunset. Until yesterday that is...


Hmmm, this isn't supposed to look like this. Definitely gave me a Happy Gilmore moment...


and of course this is where that little bolt head belongs.


Now I need to extract the remains from my frame and get another bolt. Might need to get something off McMaster in a higher grade.

I got in a good ride yesterday despite the broken bolt. One nice feature of the new suspension pivot is that you can ride it out even after a bolt breaks since the axle is fully enclosed. It just makes a bit of noise. Not much of the B-team showed up yesterday. I rode with Steve, Sean, and RD. Jim headed out with Tim S., but I wasn't too interested in climbing up McKay which was the route they were headed. We ended up actually putting in more miles though. It was a decent loop of Family, Goat, War Path, Renegade, Arrow head plus the extension, and then humped it back up the road to get back to the lot right before dark. It was a good amount of ground to cover in the 2.5 hours. Probably about 12-14mi. I was happy with the ride and was able to keep right with Sean and Steve until about mid-way into the Renegade trail, then I fell off their pace a bit. But I was never too far back, always catching up to them within a minute or so at the breaks. Definitely glad I had my fast tires on, they did help with the pace.

I am going to dub the rock line at the bottom of war path the "Sniper Line". Used it to sneak in front of Sean as we were racing down the trail. If I was a bit faster at it I could have gotten Steve too. We had a chuckle about it as we waited for RD. Steve saw me out of the corner of his eye, but I wasn't coming hot enough to head him off. Also made it over that stupid log farther up the trail, despite the others stopping in front of me. I want to hit that with no stop, just j-hop it, but there is usually someone in the way.

All in all it was a satisfying ride. We got back to the lot just as I was about to turn into a giant cramp, so ride length was about perfect. I cleaned all of the sections of trail that I had in mind.
made the rock climb at the bottom of the Arrowhead ascent


climbed up through the crack

it's a bit harder to go up than down this one.

And once we hit the road I got dropped, but was able to keep Sean in sight all the way back into MSSP. Again, glad I had my faster rolling tires on.

Otherwise life goes on. Still getting used to the Erin working schedule. But the kids are getting used to it, which makes it much easier. That's about it. Been busy, but can't really remember what or why. Signing off...