Convienience is king!

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2008 GSX-R750 Tie Down Tabs for rear end. mounts under the passenger peg bracket. A nice feature for transporting or working on the bike.

fiftyfifty

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Math and numbers rule! You can learn a lot from them. This weekend I put my nose to the grindstone and measured the weights for my bike and weight distribution. Bike weight (full of fuel) – 444.5 lbs. Ride weight (no gear) – 203 lbs. Gear weight – 18 lbs. Weight distribution – 49F/51R (note … Read more

The PVD 60 Degree Throttle Prototype

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Here’s a fun little project. Motorcycles have engines. We all know that. What few truely understand is that we use our throttles and gearing to access and make use of those engines. Asside from gearing issues that I will cover later, throttles typically need modification so that we can get all that power we have … Read more

2008 GSX-R750

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Here’s the new bike. Soon you’ll be seeing a lot more tuning projects based on this. I’m super stoked.

Keeping hope alive and fear in the heart.

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It’s not easy making things and bringing them into this world. It takes a lot of time, energy, money, devotion, and lonely days in the shop. I’ve got so many projects started right now and many more that I’d love to start. Why not? Life. Lately I’ve been really putting a lot of energy into … Read more

PVD Tapered Head Tube

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It’s been a few months since I’ve build a bike frame. I needed to update my geared trail bike with a few new updates in my design but one issue was lagging. 1.125″ straight steerers are effectively dead. It’s all tapered now. The light carbon forked folks like it. The burly slopestylists like it. Everyone … Read more

“Adjustable suspension” by Fox

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As the proud new owner of a 2011 Fox Vanilla 36 160 fork, I finally got around to give it the TLC that it deserved. I had already swapped the stock ‘blue’ spring (039-05-102, 45 lb/in) for a stiffer ‘green’ spring (039-05-103, 50 lb/in). That’s a pretty simple task and takes about 5 minutes. It … Read more

Fancy New All-mountain Bike

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 This past April I moved to the Bernal Heights neighborhood in San Francisco. Quite a culture shock for me to be sure. Fairfax is a very differnt place. This part of SF is about 15 minutes away from one of the major casual DH/Jump locations in the bay area, Pacifica. An odd thing about Pacifica, … Read more

Stuff Breaks.

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Riding at Northstar this past weekend. My trusty steed the Intense M6 finally had an issue. 2.5 seasons of riding and the pivot link pertch broke off. I was able to get a good day of riding in on Friday, but at the bottom of the last run of the day the snap cracks and … Read more

Cyclocross bikes are not mountain bikes!

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Lately, I’ve been trying to recruit some folks from the city to go ride mountain bikes. Not fire road burns, but honest singletrack trail mountain biking. It’s an amazingly hard thing to do. I ask, “Would you like to go ride mountain bikes with me?” They say, “Maybe, I usually ride over the bridge to … Read more

Pancakes on the mountain.

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On Sunday I rode up to West Point Inn for the pancake breakfast. I saw plenty of friends there that had the same idea. Sadly they were on cross bikes while I was on the mountain bike intent on trail riding. The ride – Tenderfoot: Cypress: 777: Gravity Car: Railroad Grade: West Point Inn: Railroad … Read more

Trails don’t suffer fools gladly.

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I ride my mountain bike on single track trails. These trails, I keep assuming, are my friends. I spend time with them. I love them. I fix them when they are hurt. I work hard to keep a quality relationship with them. I forget to think about what the trail thinks about me. What does the … Read more

Riding the wrong bike.

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Anybody that knows me will already know that I am the first to question a person’s equipment choice on a bike ride. I question actively, vocally, and (in my mind) friendly way. One major tenant of mine is that cyclocross bikes are stupid bikes. They excel in only two situations; cyclocross races and mixed terrain … Read more

Countries that suck!

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#1 on my list is, of course, England. Top reason: BSC (60°) thread, special case, 13/32″ x 26 tpi. Let’s just call this the Sturmey-Archer thread from hell. It’s doesn’t conform to SAE, ISO, JIS, DIN or any other modern standard. It’s not even Whitworth (55°), which you might imagine. It’s a special case, used only by … Read more

Brooks Saddles?

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What is up with Brooks saddles? 1. Heavy as hell – The lightest saddle that they make is the B15 Swallow Ti. 370 grams. Mind you that is the lightest one. Most of their line weighs in at 500 grams or more. Much more if it’s got springs on it. 2. Lame looks – Honestly … Read more

Cream Puff

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The Pedal Panties party: The Pedal Panties girls threw an even on Union Street. It was fun. The best thing for me, not being their target audience, were the cream puffs. I love creampuffs.

The old school.

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Anybody that knows me can attest to my hatred of the ‘old school’. I’m not talking about doing a massive front-side boneless one or a huge g-turn, a miami hopper or a simple ally oop. I’m talking about old school technology and peoples concepts that this garbage was somehow better than what we have today … Read more

Mission Streets

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I love SF Sunday Streets. http://sundaystreetssf.com/ It’s a perfect way to get out and honestly see the people of the city around you. Go to the next one!

Soil Saloon SF, 2010#2

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Last night I went to the Soil Saloon race with Michelle at Golden Gate Park. http://soilsaloon.com/ What a great night and great event. The Soil Saloon folks really know how to host a really great time. Since I was again not racing (lamo!) and since Michelle decided not to ride a good bike to the … Read more

Two dogs.

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Having one dog around is awesome. Two is even better. Here Maggie is posing with another dog at Stray Bar where we go for Smarty Pants Trivia Night on Tuesdays. There are usually at least 3 dogs on the scene and sometimes a few more. Later in the night a brown pitbull named Rufus showed … Read more

Home.

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“Home is where the heart is.” It’s so true. Home is a place you know when you are there. I was feeling that this weekend on a mountain bike ride in Marin. I was on a section of singletrack waiting for the dog to catch up to me, just hanging out in the middle of … Read more

SF loves to close it’s streets!

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One thing I love about San Francisco is that this city will close down a street or entire part of town for almost any reason. On any given weekend throughout the summer you will find several miles of “Closed for Party” road. This July 4th was the 2010 Filmore Jazz Festival. 12 solid blocks of … Read more

PVD Plustwentyfive Headset

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I was helpping to prepare Max Houtzager’s Downieville All-Mountain race bike and we came upon a setup issue. A good fork for the race was 25mm shorter than the fork his 2010 Specialized Enduro Carbon was designed for. This created a major problem because as fast as Max is up and down the hill, he … Read more

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Hey Folks. I’m just setting this site up again as a handy hub for all the stuff I have going on. Take a look through the menu above. If you hit an empty page, don’t dispare. I’ll have everything somewhat sorted in a few weeks. Check back in a bit.