So it’s official, I have been out of Flagstaff for 4 days and I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss it a little. Right before I left I had the chance to finally build up the new Unit frame I ordered from AZ Bikes and fork I bought off D2 using the insurance money I got from the theft of the green meanie. Man I miss that bike a little too, and it is still cruisin around Flagstaff somewhere. I ended up cannabilizing the Litespeed, which was in a temporary state of singlespeed-ness, in order to build up the new guy as cheap as possible.

Oh well. The Unit has now been out on 2 rides, neither too terribly long (~2 hours each). Even though I have had limited time on this machine I have to say I am impressed. I didn’t think that switching from aluminum to steel would make a noticible difference but as the poet once said, “steel is real”. Holy crap, steel is the way to go. It really smoothes the trail out. But I have to say that I have a love/hate relationship with the dropouts. I love them because they slide, letting me get the gearing back to the good ole’ 2:1 that I was running on the green beast. I hate them because they slide, during the ride sometimes. Not a whole lot mind you but it loosens the chain enough to make for some problems. Looks like I’m not the only one with this problem either. The only thing truly keeping the chain on during the sliding has been the DISCO’s I got off of the Off Camber site. Those things have been truly awesome and even managed to keep a loose chain on the cassete when they were on the Litespeed softtail.

Good news to Kona Unit owners though, they have fixed the problem on the ‘07 dropouts by adding an additional tensioning screw and the new dropouts should work on the old frames. Can’t wait until I can get my hands on a set of those. I guess I’ll just have to tighten until my eyes pop out until then.

While I’m waiting I might as well make a little extra cash to pay for the new dropouts (I heard $60 for the pair but don’t quote me on that) and so I will only be a semi-poor college student instead of a straight up broke college student. What to do? Looks like going back to shovelling horse manure, dragging felled trees and mowing lawns. Just the kind of heavy manual labor that will make me miss working as a “stock boy” at the Pay n’ Take with Matt. That bastard wouldn’t let me leave Flagstaff until I went with him and Devin to Maloney’s for some after work cocktails. And that is how my trip home was delayed one day. That and Kelly’s housewarming party, but I’ll let Nate tell that story.

Speaking of horses, let me beat another horse to near fatal wounding by adding my $.02 to the whole Landis thing (even though I’m sure alot of you either don’t want to hear it or care at all). I don’t really care at all. There I said it. The whole Tour de France thing kinda petered out for me around year 3 of the “Lance Era”. I still watch it but it is never the same level of excitement and expectation as it once was. I also realized after talking to my dad a while back that probably everyone in the peleton is racing doped to the gills.

Before you jump all over that let me just state that he knows alot of fellow doctors at his hospital that work on/in doping tests and it turns out that there is a whole plethera (always wanted to use that word) of things that can be done to fool these tests. And if you honestly didn’t have something, even if ever so small, in the back of your head that something might be up after that once in the history of the Tour ride that Landis pulled out of his ass, you are probably either living in the past or naive and new to bike racing.

If Landis’ B sample does come back positive, this will look very bad for the Postal Team and Lance. 3 of your former domestiques (Heras, Hamilton, and Landis) who were on the up and up test positive but NOTHING ever happened like that when they rode for you did it? The sudden pressure of being team leaders drove them to it didn’t it? Yeah, “I’ll beleive that one when me shit turns purple, and smells like rainbow sherbert.” Ok so I guess I do care a little.