Jan Ullrich to Missoula

pretty cool news. Looks like Jan is heading to Zoo-Town for a little training.



HAMBURG, Germany (AP)-- Former Tour de France champion Jan Ullrich retired from cycling Monday amid continuing investigations of his alleged role in a Spanish doping scandal.
The 33-year-old German, who won the Tour in 1997 and was runner-up five times to Lance Armstrong, said he will stay in the sport as a consultant for the Austrian-based Volksbank team.
"I am ending my active career," Ullrich said. “But I look forward to continuing my association with cycling. For starters, I’ve accepted my friend Alex Gallego’s invitation to lead the trainer workout at his shop in Missoula, Mont., Tuesday night.”
Ullrich, who will be in Missoula for a three-week period as part of Dr. Brent Ruby’s latest study at the University of Montana Human Performance Lab, criticized the way he had been treated by cycling officials in Germany and Switzerland and by the German media.
"I feel like a serious criminal although I have nothing to reproach myself," he said.
Ullrich said he was still fit and had received offers from seven teams to race this season, but had decided to move on.
Ullrich has been under investigation for several months in Spain's "Operation Puerto" scandal, but has not been charged. He has been without a team since being fired by the T-Mobile team last summer.
"I could have had a team immediately," Ullrich told a news conference, accompanied by his wife and mother. "I had offers, also from Pro Tour teams."
The Spanish probe followed a raid by Spanish authorities last April on a Madrid clinic which allegedly provided performance enhancing drugs to 57 top riders.
The investigation led to Ullrich, a pre-race favorite, being expelled from last year's Tour de France -- a day he called the "hardest" in his career.
On July 20, he was dismissed by T-Mobile and hasn't raced since.
Ullrich said he would work as a media consultant with Volksbank and will also be active in the team's young riders' program. He said Volksbank offered a large budget for other riders that he would bring with him.
"That really impressed me," he said.
Ullrich trained in the former East Germany and emerged as a top rider in 1996 by finishing second at the Tour de France. The following year he became the first German winner of the Tour, setting off a cycling boom in his homeland.
Ullrich also won a gold and silver at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
Some predicted Ullrich would dominate cycling for years, but Armstrong eclipsed him by winning seven times in a row. Ullrich battled weight problems in the offseason, while his teams publicly accused him of lacking discipline in training compared to Armstrong.
Team Telekom dropped Ullrich in 2002, and he served a six-month ban after a positive test for amphetamines. Ullrich said the drug was laced into an ecstasy pill he took during a visit to a nightclub.
Ullrich is also under investigation in Germany and Switzerland. He planned to appear on a German talk show later Monday to talk about the allegations.

Turner Sultan

We got a couple of Turner's new twenty nine inch wheeled Sultan , they look great and i'm looking forward to throwing a set of wheels on this one an actually checking it out on the local dirt. Stay tuned for ride reports.

Roger's Titus Modena

Here's a couple pics of Roger's Titus Modena.....

stay in focus

New Hoops !

Here's some more industry nine goodness, it sure seems that these wheels are a popular commodity these days. Well thats good i suppose..... it's a great product and backed by outstanding design perspectives PLUS, i feel good about supporting the folks behind the company. They're a stand up bunch of guys that know their stuff, plus they've been in the bike industry for years. They've certainly taken a chunk out of my wheel building duties but it's all good as it allows me more time to take pictures.



Here is a set of their All Mountain wheels, laced up to DT-Swiss 4.2d rims. Weight forthe pair: 1575g, and just wait till you see what these beauties are going on.

25.7 pounds of pink sweetness

just finished up the custom pink Turner Flux.... someone is going to be a very happy new bike owner.

wow, nine days since my last post. Sorry about that.....with the warmer temperatures it's becoming obvious that folks are getting itchy to get out and start riding. The beginning of the spring rush and the locals begin to uncover their trusty steeds from the thaw. And some folks literally leave their bikes out in the elements ALL winter long. So for the past nine days i've been busily tuning and laboring over bikes that aren't the most deservant of a picture or a blog update. It's getting these bikes back up and running is the true joy of being a mechanic....so for the past nine days i've been watching the old Motobecane's , the new Calfee's, the in between Schwinn's and of course the delipadated old huffy's that typically take the worse of the punishment by actually sitting outside all winter. Ahhhhh, the joys of the Huffy. It would be pretty easy to sneer at a huffy that rolls into the shop, but to me i see a poorly made bike typically owned by someone that really doesn't know there is a difference and if they do know that there is a difference in quality they also know of the monetary difference and quite honestly $89 means different thinkgs to different folks. Being raised from the other side of the tracks, i understand that. It'd be easy to talk a person into trashing the bike and starting over with something new or something used. You know.... the American way. But if the customer only wants to ride to the mailbox and back does said owner really need a new bike ?? So we try to reshape the rusted, the dusty and refine the new. Welcome back spring, i missed ya.

NAHMBS

so guess who just found out that they're goingto the North American Hand Made Bicycle Show ?? Yippie - hot damn, holy shit ! So the agenda is as follows. Brian and Sam Hall from Ramblumtick cycles out of missoula will drive down and hook up with myself...we'll load up the VW van and head down to Idaho Falls to meet up with Rob M. from Felt Racing. Rob's got a kickin' conversion van that we'll pile into and then we're taking off for Californ-i-a. San Jose...never been there, but am excited as heck (ll). I really feel that the small builders within the states are putting out the most progressive products in the world and we feel damn fortunate to witness it all. To think that the best frame builders in the world past and present will be there and so will we, rubbing elbows...documenting it all on behalf of the red barn blog.

Steve potts !! Waterford !! Titus !! Erikson !! Bruce Gordon !! Vanilla !! Sycip !! Damn, the list goes on and on. make sure you go to the link and check it out for yourself.....i haven't been this excited since i recieved a Titus Exogrid just a week ago. But that's a different story and a soon to be blog update : )


But guess what ...it gets even better.


Sanjose is only 1 and a half hour away from Ventana's HQ's in Rancho Cordova and Sherwood Gibson, designer, builder, welder, painter extraordinare has already confirmed that he'll be giving us the full-on monte tour. Damn, i just wet myself.



Last but not least...the crew. If you have time please spend a minute or two at Sam Hall's site. He's crafting beautiful frames for folks who like to ride. Maybe he can put his torch to use for you ? ? Check'um Ramblumtick



over and out ! Chad

the stove

at the heart of the barn is our ol' wood stove. She keeps us warm and able to work when it's chilly outside. Originally this stove was put to use in my wife's grandfathers house until he got tired of all the work required to heat it. So it sat unused for years in our garage until i decided to put it back into service. I'm a bit romantic with it and while i know there are newer stoves that are more conductive at producing heat or are more efficient but i just can't justify replacing the character.

winter bliss

so I'm asked by quite a few of you guys about how i can stand the long winters and cold weather. It's actually pretty darn easy to cope, you just need to improvise with your recreation a little bit. So i try, this past weekend i decided to try the Pugsley out at on a frozen Como Lake. I've been meaning to try it but i really wanted to let the lake REALLY freeze over before i attempted it.....so i patiently waited, the ice fisherman reports had ice depths at an average of 18" thick. Hmmmmm, sounds thick. However, the first thing i noticed was how most of the fishing spots were consistently located near the shoreline. And personally i had an urge to cross the lake at the middle, an approx 3/4 mile crossing. It's not really that far until you look down and you see a bunch of surface cracks !! Yikes.... knowing that the ice was holding firm and it could easily hold your weight plus some just isn't comforting enough. Those damn cracks made a 3/4 mile journey seem more like 10 and i pedaled like mad on my maiden voyage across it. Exciting, but butt puckering scary. It seems the pugs just keeps finding more and more ways to entertain. As for the traction....it's actually pretty damn impressive at just how much traction those massive tires have. No need for studs, just deflate the psi down to about 15psi and let'r rip.

May 5-6 2007

looks like fun to me !

Hope Hubs

i just recieved word that Hope will be joining the straight pull crowd as well. Hello 1990.

Does the industry know something that we don't ?? I mean really.....Industry Nine should be flattered. Jeff, Industry Nine's sales manager commented:

Crazy huh?
Who knows where the inspiration for that came from? Essentially, that is a true Pulstar design, although Mavic did the same thing for years with the Classics Pro and Elite road wheels.
Maybe we helped open the worlds eyes back to straight-pull spokes.

People are going to love it when Hope coats those threads with spoke prep and then the spokes just twist in the hub flange during truing like all the Mavic wheels did.
In this case, square spoke heads would make a lot of sense.

personally, i do see an advantage to using the stiffer aluminum spokes like those of the mavic wheels and Industry Nine wheels, but stainless straightpull.......hhhmmmm. I don't really see any advantage what so ever. Could this be a bad move by the folks at Hope ??

on the stereo

thanks bdiddy for bringing us some new music. The Soulive album is the perfect was to start a saturday morning. Well, at least right after the cup of joe.


happy saturday folks !