Every year I dedicate a certain amount of time on the build list to prototype my own bikes to update geometry tweaks, improve handling, try new set ups and overall refine the ride. This past year of 2015 was no exception where I built new prototypes of my Huntsman, my Kid Dangerous 1×11 mountain bike …
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Stable in Review
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Time to Tell it Like it is…
I recently read a short statement via John Watson’s Instagram account for The Radavist regarding racing and riding and I whole-heartedly agree with the sentiment. Not to mention, it’s a notion I’ve held for a long, long time. The notion of riding more and racing less or maybe it’s more about riding and less about …
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What Season is it? Hunting Season!
We’ve got a lot of season’s it seems here in New England. Especially NH: We’ve got the text book Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter thing going on. But in there, between those lines there’s a bunch of others… Mud Season, Bug season (Which has it’s own subset of seasons, namely Black Fly Season, Horsefly Season, Mosquito …
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Shimano XTR or Sram XX1?
I was asked online what I thought were the biggest differences between XTR and XX1 recently. I answered the question but thought I could expand on that short answer here in greater detail. Honestly, XTR and XX1 are just THAT good. It’s really, really tough to pick one over the other. It boils down to …
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Mean Machine in Review
So to follow up with the previous post, I wanted to break down the initial ride thoughts with lots of close ups. Always interesting to see how the dust settles on initial rides! This build was literally trial by fire with no time to do any pre-ride checks or take a few short rides to …
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MTN XXX : Builders’ Ride
Last August, I posted up an update to why I ride what I ride. You can read about this build’s previous incarnation here. Earlier this season, I made some big changes component wise from a mix of Sram XO/X9 which was a 1×10 setup (and ran a Wolftooth 40t cog for a bit too) to …
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44 X WTB Vigilante 2.3″ TCS Light · Initial Thoughts
With the summer comes varied weather. It’s been relatively dry so far this summer however we have been getting good amounts of rain when it does decide to precipitate. New Hampshire has a nice mix of hard pack. It also sports quite a bit of trail on the loamy side due to all the Hemlocks …
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Fresh Meat : WTB Trail Boss 2.4 and 2.25
A while back I was contacted by Will at WTB with a simple question: “IF I send you set of 40mm Nano’s, will you try them out and report back?” My simple answer was “HECK YEAH I WILL.” This led to other things headed to 44HQ which include WTB’s Trail Boss Tires. See, when I …
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Builders’ Ride : Marauder SS w/ 1×11 Option
So a while back I built up a dedicated single speed for myself (view the full Flickr album here) I swap out bikes every now and again as my weekly riding takes shape. Most days I’m hitting the trails on my 1×11 setup. Some days though the hankering hits me for a pedal on the …
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44HQ : XX1 Longish Term Review
Technically this isn’t a full XX1 drivetrain review. At the time of the build, XX1 rear derailleur’s were out of stock at a bunch of my distributor accounts but winter was upon us and I needed a rear derailleur. So technically this is a review of a XX1 Cassette, Shifter and X1 Rear Derailleur. Basically …
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