So I finally resurrected the xtracycle from its sad sad winter state with a new horn, chain, cassette and shifter. This was all planned, as I basically hadn't done any maintenance for over 2000 miles. What wasn't planned were two seriously cracked 105 cranks. Snap. Literally. So lots of money and a set of instock FSA gossamer compact double cranks later we're back in business.

Speaking of compact double, I put a set of these on a bike last week. The two hardest things were finding the english directions to figure out where the paperclip looking piece went and getting the crankbolt to 40 newton meters. 40 newton meters is like car tight, It's about half way up a 1/2" drive torque wrench. Ultra Torque is right. Yowza.

The Kona, Rollo, Straight 8 are still broken, the Marin still sucks, and I want to sell my road bike. It's xtracycle or nothing.

So I was riding to work last week and thinking about what seems to me to be the great American irony: we have such an energy crisis when it comes to heat, and transportation but we have an abundance of super fat people who essentially have an excess of energy. We need to stop working on hybrid cars and start working on cars that burn people fat. I wonder if any of that whale fat technology is still around.

Sideburnz