Sometimes, I ride them

Lately I've been feeling like I never get a chance to ride my bike. I feel like whenever I do I am "sneaking it in" between other activities. There is always something else going on, or, what seems to be a recurring theme this spring, whenever I do have something planned, the weather is shitty, and I would rather go grind away on a trainer than ride it rainy, wet weather unless I have to. I don't think there is anything to gain from it, and I'd end up spending a few hours cleaning my bike afterwards, which I would like to avoid. I've only ridden 180 miles so far in March and April. Pretty pathetic. I started looking at my "race" schedule and there are some big rides coming up very fast. 86 miles this Saturday, 100 at the Mammoth on the 20th, 120 on the 4th of May, 100 on the 19th. If I don't find some more time to ride these are going to be painful rides...

I did get a few bike related things accomplished this weekend. I bought the GF a new mountain bike frame and put it together for her. She was riding an old FS Iron Horse and the thing is a tank. It probably weighs 4-5 pounds and was too big for her. She only rides it on paths so I think this will be a little easier for her to ride. Her main concern was it had a water bottle holder, as the Iron Horse had a coil shock that ran through the middle of the frame, and she did not like the water bottle mounted on the bottom. Once she saw it all put together she was happy with it, so that's good.

Note the horn she thinks is so funny

A few posts back I asked for a guess on what this is:

Mystery revealed!!!

And I got 0 responses. It is homemade tire sealant. I dug around on the MTBR forum and found a thread that listed how to do it. There were a ton of variations. Most of them pretty complicated. I found one of the original recipe's and it stated that it was better than the Stan's sealant, but not the best home brew. Well, I've never had a problem with Stan's and I didn't want to buy 10 different ingedients to get a slightly better product so I went with 2 parts RV anti-freeze, 1 part liquid latex, and one part tire slime. It was very easy to make and mix. Now it was time to test it. I have been riding the Monocog with the Exiwolfs that it came with for the last 3 years and they were getting pretty well worn. My new bike came with some Small Block 8's, that I immediately changed out for Racing Ralph's, So I thought they would be a good new tire for the spring.

$24 in supplies

I used the "Ghetto" method as this has worked well for me in the past. I bought a roll of 1' gorilla tape and sealed up the inner part of the rim. I put the tire on and left and little open spot to pour the sealant in. Once sealed up I hooked up the air compressor (Side note: I don't have a presta specific chuck so I bought one of those adapters that makes it a schrader valve. I noticed that the end of the air gun was threaded on the inside and using another adapter I could hook the compressor directly up to the valve. This works better than using the standard tire chuck as all the air easily goes straight into the valve rather than seeping out the side if it's not on perfectly.)

Once it was ready to go I pulled the trigger and the tire inflated pretty easily. There was some air and sealant leaking out the side, but rolling the tire while giving it some air seated the bead quickly. There was some leaking fluid on the tire and rim, but it cleans up easily with a rag. Total time spent, maybe 45 minutes for 2 tires. While the tires are sealed and holding 50lbs of pressure, the true test will only come with regular use.

Finished Product