A Little Spice In Life Never Hurts

I was able to pick up Salsa this weekend and I love it already.  The paint is cool and the lettering isn't the run of the mill decals like other bikes I've owned, plus the carbon rear seatstays are nicely detailed as well.

My first impressions were that this is a damn cool looking rig.  After further examination you can see a pivot point at the bottom of the seatstays by the dropouts.  This bike is designed to be a little forgiving and all of that energy needs to be dampened somewhere right??? I could see this being a big advantage in the kind of racing we do in this area as we don't necessarily have to "huck" anything (right Nate?).  Another thing I liked right off the bat was the inclusion of reuseable cable routers (see seat stay) these little black wonders are so small in the broad scheme of things but just the attention to detail and the non-use of zip ties made me pretty happy.

This bike came with a full Shimano XT group minus the crank in which that was a Raceface DeusXC (heavy is a nice way to put it).  A Salsa stem, bars, grips, and seatpost also came with.  I quickly got rid of that stuff and replaced with Titec Ti 118 bar, Titec Pluto Prolite Stem, Titec Duke Carbon seatpost and prolite gel saddle.  I also swapped out the xt brakes for my Hayes Stroker Trail brakes.  I added a little weight with the addition of some Ergon GX2 grips but they are a must have on all of my bikes.

What's next for the Mamasita diet?  Well Starting with the wheels I am going to lace up my American classic hubs to some of Stans NEW ZTR Crest 29er hoops with DT Revolution Spokes and Prolock nipples should come out to around 1400g for the set which is damn good for a set of 29er wheels.  The crank comes next.  Rotor Bike has a killer crankset called Agilis and I am going to go the route of 2x9 40t/27t.  Really once those two things are done I would imagine the final weight would be somewhere between 21-23lbs depending on what tires I use.   I do like the wtb prowlers it came with cause of treat pattern, but they are pretty heavy.  I could drop about a half pound just by switching to some Maxxis tires.

Other than that I have just been skiing whenever I get a chance.  This week will be a tough one as I have no weekend plans so skiing will reign supreme and I am back in the weight room again this week after missing last week due to meetings and not feeling good for a little bit.  There is a long time before the first race of the year and I can't wait to ditch the skis and heat up the trails with a little Salsa action, until then I ski till my legs fall off then I ski some more.