New Suprize

On Saturday, we went into the Bicycle Shop to get my dad's wheel trued. I didn't know that he had been planning on getting me a Cannondale F29 for Christmas, and I didn't know why a size medium had been rolled out of the warehouse. And then I realized it wasn't one of my dad's new toys. He told me that it was left over from 08 (which is great because they stopped making them in the raw aluminum) and that he didn't want to wait until Christmas because I wouldn't get to ride it much. We took it down to the basement where we swapped the wheels for a pair of my dad's extra Stan's Arches with a King hub, swapped the bar for a FSA carbon (I think another of my dad's extras), and got everything set up. It has X9 with the SL fork, and weighs about 24.3 lbs with those wheels. We got it at a really good price, because you see the SL forks on ebay for just a few hundred less. I rode it around the driveway and it felt a lot different than hopping on my dad's. Snappy and fast. Today I went for a ride with the owner of our shop and some others. That bike climbs like a rocket on the fireroads. If you try to power up short climbs, the wheels just won't turn though. Staying in a smart gear is important. It felt really smooth in the rocks when I had momentum, but if I hit a pedal or something, it was hard to get going again. Turns better than I thought. I think I'll race it next year. Possibly Granogue and the summer Fair Hill. Probably more. The ride went really well, considering I'm just getting over the flu and how bad I felt last Sunday. At one point I got a little dizzy, but that was only after racing Erik Scott up a climb. It's not a good idea to do that because he needs to be the first to the top of every climb. At the end of the ride, we saw a porcupine climbing a tree. My dad commented on how good of a climber it was. Erik immediatly claimed he was a better climber and tried to race the porcupine up the tree. He just really likes to climb.Erik the Porcupine