Cruise

Another lovely sunset



Cooper 1 pulling Cooper 3

Cruised home with Matt and Cooper accompanying me along the way, 70 degree weather feels awesome. Good group ride tonight, around 15-20 riders, strong winds, broken spoke...more on that tomorrow.

- J

Pin

Wheel Fast Bicycle Co. is officially a Pinarello dealer....order yours today, call now....CALL NOW!

Entourage

Set the shed up for a more efficient way to store my bicycles. Here is the entourage in all their glory. By the way I don't like Brooks saddles at all.

55 and Sunny

Gorgeous sunset on my way home from work. Took the long way home around the lake.

Salsa Teaser

Civia Bamboo



WF-Customs



Don't forget your Sheldon nuts

Teaser for Matt's Salsa Casheroll, more to come when its fully assembled. Drool for now.

- J

Bike Pole

Deers right outside of our apartment



Enjoying the calm cool lake air in the a.m.



Roller

Got in 110 miles this week, taking off last weekend and part of this week to finish up my thesis. Thanks to all my friends that supported me and came out for it! You guys are the best. Riding the new road steamroller setup is just great....bike is awesome. Thinking about putting a 15t cog on instead of the 44-14 setup i have now, as well as a road chain and a chain tensioner. Commuting has been great for stretching the legs and warming up for some rides we have been doing. Lots of deer out in our area...Megan and I left them some carrots and lettuce last night for a snack, but consistently around 20 deer right out of our front door, pretty neat. Temps in the 70's this week, hopefully get some good rides in.

- J

Armsteader

Justin's Waterford....enough said. I rebuilt the rear wheel and it was a fairly lengthy process because you can't really see how far you are threading the spoke into the nipple or how much threads are showing. This led to a lot of hops in the rim which I eventually got out. These rims can hold some serious spoke tension! Hot bike....weighs in at 16.8 with the Edge wheelset...king headset, full Dura-Ace.....nice job Justin.

Steam

Stealth-roller



Noodle bars with my fav liz skinz tape



Thanks Cane Creek!



Bling

The Surly Steamroller is one of my favorite frames. I love riding this bike and there is something about a fixed gear that is indescribable. I turned the fixed rig into more of a road bike with the new salsa casseroll fork, bottle cage and drop nitto noodle bars. Tomorrow will be the maiden voyage riding to work....cant wait!

- J

Ridin'

Mirror

Been commuting a bunch, think it will rain tomorrow and will probably end the week with 12o miles. Close to 700 for the year so far, want to have over 1000 before I leave for Vegas in April. Also, this Monday am defending my Master's thesis in DeKalb....excited to be done with that chapter in my life. Wish everyone a safe and happy weekend.

- J

Fiddy

america's next top model?



Office Space

Got the 50 bike giant order today and the shop went from small to claustrophobic. Matt's "office" is overtaken by giants and it has turned into the "cave" and his "loft" is no longer available for spending nights alone at the bike shop. Needless to say some of the new giant paint schemes look pretty rad and hopefully can sell some bikes to some people who want bikes.....that simple.

Fixed

Brought out the fixed gear for the first time this year. Commuted on it Monday and Tuesday. The Surly Steamroller...what an excellent ride. My wrists have been getting sore a bit on it so I am planning a full on roadie front end with new casseroll fork and my Cane Creek 110 headset and nitto noodle bars from frostbike. Should have pics soon. Also, sunset around 7:30....what?!?! pretty awesome to ride home and still have some light. Tomorrow group ride at Wheel Fast 6 pm.

Fast

Yoooo, everyone check out the new Wheel Fast website. Some handsome dudes on there. Also, be sure and add us as a friend on facebook and twitter! Daylight savings has arrived....get on your bikes!!!!!

- J

Conti

Like Conti much?



My summer tires....

At Wheel Fast Bicycle Co. there are a few things that we like to sell a lot of....Specialized transitions, Mavic Wheels, and take a guess....Continental tires. We are sponsoring Team Mack and got the Continental order in last week. Those guys ordered an insane amount of tires! 40 Continental 4000 s', tubulars, tubes, mountain tires....all sorts of stuff. It was pretty impressive and Hwy 2 hooked us up which was awesome. I ordered some GP 4000's for myself after putting over 5K miles on them last year these tires are awesome, so smooth, so grippy, and very puncture resistant, these are great tires! I will probably ride continental tires on one of my bikes for the rest of my life. I love their products! Raining down here so I'm going to try and squeeze in some riding the remainder of the week. Daylight savings this weekend!

- J

Sat/Sun Riding

Commuted to work on Saturday. It was a brisk morning but turned into an absolutely gorgeous spring afternoon. After a busy day of work at the shop, Matt, Bob, and I rode the bike path home. Matt turned around and Bob rode me to my house on his way home. This was very cool that every employee at the shop rode in to work no matter how long or short the commute. This is why we sell bikes.....to ride them, so it was great that we could all embrace that on a beautiful Saturday in March. Sunday was overcast and rainy. I met up with Justin and Gina and we rode to Washington Park to meet up with some other Team Mack racers. We headed out of town on the bike path then the pace was kicked up into a strong head wind. These guys rode 100 miles yesterday and were still pushing hard today! Definitely strong riders to say the least. We made it about 25 miles out of town and turned around to make somewhere close to a 50 mile ride. The tailwind home was awesome and we did get soaked in the rain on the way home but still a good ride and great to ride with a group and on my BMC for the first time this season. With the Sat and Sunday miles in the total for the week was 180 miles. Feel good about that. Get on your bikes!

- J

Day Off

Huh?



The steep descents of IL



New bridge on the bike path



Nice roads



Hill climbin'

Today was the day off from the bike shop and I thought I would put some miles in before the weekend. I planned a route last night and was determined to finish the ride. Rode to the west side of Springfield off of the bike path and then headed north to Petersburg where the New Salem site for one of Lincoln's home is at. There was a strong headwind all the way out to Petersburg and the going was slow on some dirt/gravel/rocky roads. The casseroll felt great with these kinds of roads. On the entire ride while looking into the shoulder and gutters of the road I saw probably close to 400 beer bottles and cans. This was a reminder of how dangerous even the lesser traveled roads can be especially at night. Through looking at most of the beer cans I figured out that these drivers preferred Bud Light and Keystone Light. While riding I kept seeing bud case boxes, cans, bottles and kept thinking of the old add campaign from budweiser with the three frogs. Except in my version the frogs were saying drunk-DRIVE-er. A lot of these gravel roads had some extremely long and steep climbs. This felt really good to get some hill climbing in even if it was only a few. I finished the ride in 5 hours and the total for the day was 70 miles. I had to stop and check the map every 5 or so miles to make sure I was staying on course, but it felt really good to go for a long ride and finish strong. So far 3 days of riding, total of 110 miles. Thinking of commuting on saturday and possible ride on sunday if the weather permits. Looking forward to my first friday night fish fry with the girlfriend tomorrow night after work.

- J

Sunset

If you didn't know this about me....I am a sunset person. Here is a gorgeous sunset from the commute home tonight. Looking forward to mid 40's tomorrow and hopefully doing a longer ride and some exploring.

- J

Edge

Edge stuff at Frostbike



Edge stuff at our store....

After seeing all of the Edge Composites stuff at Frostbike, Justin Armstead ordered some Edge parts for his bike. We are going to build some composite rims up on some american classic hubs for Justin and he has already put his composite fork on his bike. The Edge stuff is awesome!...flat out it is the best stuff that you can possibly buy for your bike. It is extremely expensive but well worth the money. Their process for making the rims was fascinating after talking to one of the guys from Edge at Frostbike. Check out Mack Racing's Justin Armstead's blog and his awesome new Waterford.

Cool

Couple of cool and not cool things going on:

Cool: The NAHBS was this past weekend...see pictures here.
(There are four different "parts" to the show so be sure and look at all of them)

Not Cool: Almost hit by a car that wasn't looking on the ride home tonight (idiot driver)

Cool: The weather is getting warmer (50 degrees this weekend!)

Not Cool: Might have lost a great deal on some old bike parts (bummed)

Cool: Daylights savings is coming (let there be light!)