Great weather and an unexpectedly long afternoon with my wife and daughter otherwise occupied conspired to grant me not one but two fun ride opportunities today! When I thought I had a only a 3 hour window I decided I'd get the Bombadil with it's new tubeless SBH EL's out on some gravel and dirt to really try it out and then end with a bit of singletrack depending on how the tires/bike felt. Out to the trailhead at Wakefield I went and set off with extra water and a small seat bag. The ride was going great, I was easily maintaining a snappy pace as the trail alternated between hardpack, gravel of all sizes and pavement as it follows Accotink Creek north out of Wakefield and up towards Vienna. I felt a couple slips in some loose stuff but was starting to feel pretty confident with the bike as I turned and headed back to Wakefield. Literally the first bit of slightly technical terrain turned out to be my undoing as I eased the bike off the main trail to descend towards a creek crossing. I never made it as my front tire burped off the rim spraying orange sealant and rapidly deflated. No harm done, it was such an innocent maneuver I really don't know what happened... I'd been running just under 10 miles of mixed terrain at ~13-14mph up till then and I lost the tire when I turned sharply but at low speed and the next thing I knew it was deflated. The section of trail I was on was just smooth creekside dirt packed down and it got all mixed with the sealant and made a huge mess. My frame pump didn't have a prayer of re-inflating. I did have a tube and levers but I decided that I could walk the ~1 mile back to the car in about the same period of time and avoid taking it all apart when i re-attempted tubeless the next time.
I was running ~20psi front, ~30psi rear with a 215lbs rider and less than 10lbs of gear on the bike. I wouldn't have expected to loose the bead at that psi but I am very new at the tubeless thing. The rims are the original Pacenti PL23's. I had a spare wheelset already mounted w/ Nobby Nic's back at the car but I decided I'd used up my luck for the day and I was approaching my return time anyway so I packed it in. I figured I'd use any extra time I had to try and re-seat the tire and finish swapping cockpit's out on my Saluki. Once I got home I found out my wife would be significantly late returning and I had several more hours to kill... :) Step 1, fix the tire which I did with the help of my compressor, a new valve stem and some additional sealant though not before I blew the tire fully off the rim on one side over-inflating it... that was loud, and everything is coated in a fine sprinkling of sealant. Good grief what a mess. I paused for reflection (and got a beer) then re-engaged with much better success, as of a couple hours ago the tire was holding on the rim just fine. We'll see how it lasts this time. Step 2 the Saluki cockpit change out. Some of you may remember that I got my Saluki fork replaced and the whole bike re-painted last May and put together what I intended to be a very solid, not-to-be-tinkered-with upright build around an albatross cockpit. That build has worked splendidly for 15 months and I'm really only changing out the hbars now because I've seen a lot of great looking Homer's, Hilbornes and other fat tired road bikes with drop bars and I've been enjoying my Bob Jackson similarly equipped. Long story short I slapped on some 46cm heat treated noodle bars. I was just wrapping up the bar change and doing a quick ride around the block when I found out I had a minimum of 1.5 hours additional time to kill - what luck! I threw a bunch of bench tools into my saddlebag in case the just-installed parts needed attention and set out for a quick Arlington Loop (~18 miles from my house) in the late afternoon sun. It was a great ride and other than a slight seatpost raising the new cockpit worked out well and without adjustment. In summary, 10 miles mixed surface on the Bombadil w/ a tubeless tire failure and 18 miles bike path on the noodled-saluki makes me a happy Riv-rider. I made an exhaustive photo-study of the Saluki before I changed out the bars, it had a solid growth of road grime as I have done virtually no maintenance or cleaning in the 15 months it's been back together, I'll need to do a re-shoot once I wrap the bars. Link to the photo's here! <http://dr2dc.blogspot.com/2016/08/albatross-cockpit-tribute.html> Here are a couple photo highlights from the day's adventure; <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-vxkyBg2qG6I/V8OtC2ftECI/AAAAAAAARFE/N3l1L91MGOM-rMxLulMV_2DOcTZ_mbiCACLcB/s1600/IMG_20160828_142711033.jpg> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-kEwv8re-AJI/V8OtHHM2-4I/AAAAAAAARFI/WJP8_ynRlHolcuIu0zTb_r0Ho9YXHWQQgCLcB/s1600/IMG_20160828_143925272.jpg> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-jPRDqTI5L7E/V8OtLivANHI/AAAAAAAARFM/c7JZ-k7Vc2oytcrfhIZK47IcosNuOHN7gCLcB/s1600/IMG_20160828_144727719.jpg> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-U5LFntM3m_M/V8OtPG-_VHI/AAAAAAAARFQ/AWC2MU_i6ds57g_DmBJlmamOFQ_IGzrNgCLcB/s1600/IMG_20160828_180655734.jpg> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-IUqt8N68fbo/V8OtTGidkTI/AAAAAAAARFU/OJdBLJ25DSAXgSqz4qxVZ7Js61HJBg9xwCLcB/s1600/IMG_20160828_181302998.jpg> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
