Gary Fisher Superfly SS are all gone

Sorry - But there are no more Superfly SS frames available... They are all gone

Limited Edition Gary Fisher Superfly SS Available NOW!

You heard correctly! The famed carbon 29er is available in very limited quantities as a single speed. Will S our very own 29ER Guy has secured a very limited quantities of sub 18LB 29ER SS Framesets. Check it out here.

29ER guy has a nice write up on the bike here.

Gary Fisher Superfly SS - First Ride/Review

I unveiled the new ride this morning on the Friday morning executive ride. Mike M, Dave C and I met at 6:30 sharp in La Costa. I gave Mike the privilege of lifting the bike out of the back of my truck. He was in awe. He could not believe the weight (or should I say lack of weight) of the new ride. He commented on how it felt like a road bike.

Thanks to Mike W for dropping off a rear cog for me to complete the project. It was not the 20 I wanted, but a 21 proved to work just fine. I went with a White Brothers Carbon rigid fork for the front. I also added some nifty Bontrager Race-X-Lite carbon bar ends that I discovered the last time I was in Wisconsin at TREK. Shimano XTR brakes, Truvative crank and Bontrager wheels round out the package. I was very pleased with the maden voyage. No mechanical problems and no adjustments were needed. I was pleased to see how well the rear wheel held even with the horizontal dropouts. I had been concerned that it might pull sideways under a heavy load, but it was not a problem.

I think I am going to have a lot of fun on this thing. It acceclerates out of the swith back turns effortlessly. The rigid front fork is great for out of the saddle climbing and bar-ends are great for yanking on the bars.

And the best part we found out we can get a few more.... Check it out.

Superfly SS Still Not Ready For Prime Time

Us 29er guys have it hard. I am having a tough time finding a rear cog that will give me the correct gearing for my new ride. There are plenty of cogs out there for the 26" wheel guys, but I need something a little bigger to go with my BIG WHEELS. Some people have been asking me about the Superfly SS frame and how it works so I thought I would share a few more photos.

The frame has horizontal rear drop-outs that allow you to slide the rear wheel back and forth to get the correct chain tension without using a heavy eccentric BB or a hokey chain tensioner.
The frame also has a slick "sliding" mount for the rear brake caliper so that you can re-position the brake after moving the wheel. I have seen this on some custom made steel frames from small builders, but never on a carbon frame.
I wanted to ride this bike tomorrow night on the Wednesday Night Mt. Ride, but I am not sure it is going to happen. Stay tuned.

Superfly SS - FINALLY HERE

After 7 months of waiting the GaryFisher Superfly Single Speed frame has arrived. I ordered this frame at the TREK dealer show in Wisconsin last August. It is a limited edition "not for the public" frame based on the very popular carbon 29er Superfly from Gary Fisher.

I will be building it up over the next few days using various parts that I have picked for the occasion. What I can tell you now is that it is going to be extremely light. My Carver aluminum 96er frame was light, but this thing is silly light. I think the built bike will be around 18lbs. Oh yeah.

Observations of a 53 yr.old virgin 12 hr Mtn Biker

OK - I am back at my house, had a nice night's sleep in a comfortable bed. If you had ask me if you should start your your career in long distant Mtn Biking when you are over 50 I would have told you, only if you want to hear your back pop ever time you bend over at the end of the race and ask your younger racers to pack your car with the heavier stuff. But now that I have had almost 12 hours to recuperate I say HELL YES...

So with my first 12 hour race under my belt what are my observations...

Use Rock, Paper, Sissors to select who go, 2nd, 3rd, 4th

Make sure you have your proper belly dancing belt on so all those riders you come up upon know you are about to pass....

There were a lot of Gary Fisher Hard Tail 29ERs (Mostly Superflys, but some Paragons) in the race. This maybe because I was riding one, but I hope it is because I picked the right bike at least for 12 hours of Temecula.

For the first couple of laps I loved the Paragon (Hard Tail). As my legs got tired and the sun went down, I may have been better off with a Full Suspension Bike. My suspension legs that I used to good effect at first, sometimes did not work very well on my last lap. Maybe a Trek Top Fuel 9.9 SSL that Lance Armstrong and Jose Q rode to great results should be my pitch hitter bike.

Take the time to demo products from the vendors at the race. Troy from Cannondale gave John Abate a cool Cannondale Scalpel for the day, and he was shaving 2 minutes a lap after changing from his Specialized bike...


I need all the light I can get at night. I demo'd a Niterider Tri Newt for my bike and a cool dual beam CREE Q5 helmet light from AYUP for my two night laps. I was glad I had both. Light is so touchy for me that the first lap my Tri Newt was off center and did not work as well as my 2nd lap where it was pointed straight ahead.

Keep hydrated, but it may not be smart to drink a Coke just before your lap. My last lap had me wishing I would stop, pee and burp. But I just could not take the time....

Have a bunch of Swamis around in a great camp site and lots of Teams riding in the race. I think we had over 30 riders from Swamis or FOS. We were everywhere on the course and at the Start/Finish Line

If you want to see all the pictures I took with my crappy camera phone click here.

Dave from the field

• I am back at the Vail office. Here is what I know.
  The conditions of the dirt is perfect. Everyone is talking about how great it is.
• 
  The long sandy road area has a series of boards so you can make the sandy sections as long as you stay on the 8-10 inch wide board.
  There are atleast 5 swamis teams.
• 
  The moms are wearing their belly dancing belts and they jingle as they go down the dirt.
• 
  Skyler had a faster second lap than his first
• 
  Jose is not talking much between laps, just texting some secret sweet heart.
  Great turnout for the race, I hear there are 600 people. I believe there are around 20 4 person team.
• 
  Swami A is in 2nd place - Swami BEES are second to last place. Swamis are the bookends of the 4 person teams.
• 
  Talked to Tory from Cannondale. He and Tori are going to be at the Park Tool training in Ontario and Troy wants to do another "W5" ride.
• 
  About 10 minutes ago, Mike Wiley came to our camp to finally be social. I didnot want to be social, so I left to blog....
  
  I will tweet the results next... Off to the start/finsh area

..29ERs Suck?

I think we found our Arch Enemy for the 29ER
Posted by FoxyMtnBiker

.....First, 29ers degrade your ride. Not the individual "ride and feel" associated with a bike, but rather your riding experience. 29ers make it more difficult for a large cycling group to benefit from common components......
..... Additionally, 29ers are horrible for the environment. Sound a bit extreme? It's not. When Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze, and pals decided to use what was available, not only was this the best decision for the need to share common parts on the "Repack Downhill" .....
....Bike shops are going to financially hurt from the added complexity of another wheel diameter and product type......

For the complete rave from our new Arch Enemy - Protest the 29er!

Epic Mountain Bike Rides

Epic mountain bike rides. That's the subject of today's post. I define an epic ride as one lasting at least 3 hours and having lots of climbing and beautiful scenery. A truly epic ride is one where you get in trouble with your significant other for not being home on time and you also have no energy left to do the things you promised them the night before. I had just such a ride this past Sunday on the San Juan Trail in Orange County. San Juan trail is off the Ortega highway about 45 minutes north of my home in San Marcos. It is currently my favorite ride. The loop I do is about 18 miles and has about 3K feet of climbing. My partners for the day were fellow ECBS guys Jose Quintero and Ernie Escobar.

Jose is trying to become a mountain biker, or at least trying to compliment his road miles with some off road training. For both Jose and Ernie it would be their first "epic" mountain bike ride. It was fun for me to be the veteran ATB rider taking the guys out for their first big ride. I warned them to bring enough food and water and come well rested with a good breakfast. It was a perfect day, sunny skies with cool air and the conditions were perfect. The recent rain storms and the sunny cool air combined to make what mountain bikers refer to as "hero dirt". For those of you who haven't heard the expression, hero dirt makes everything you do on the bike perfect. You can carve turns better, you can brake harder, and you can climb pitches that were impossible before, in short your a "hero". It was the perfect "epic" mountain bike ride.

29ER lore @ ECBS - Where did it all start?

Wow how lucky were we to have a garage full of 29er demo bikes for the month of January. If you have not had a chance to do a real off road ride on a "big wheel" mountain bike than now is your chance. This whole demo thing has got me thinking about 29ers and my own experience with them. Those who know me know I go through a lot of bikes. I do that for two reasons first because I can, and second because I enjoy experimenting. Every now and then I sell a bike only to realize months later that I really miss it.

The Gary Fisher X-Caliber was just such a bike. It was about 3 years ago that I owned it and it was my first 29er bike. The X-Cal was an aluminum hardtail with SRAM x-9 level components and an 80mm Rock Shox Reba fork. At the time I also owned a Titus Racer-X 4 inch travel full suspension bike. I still remember when I discovered the wonder of the big wheels. It was on a ride at Flight Line in Carlsbad (which is now closed those bastards). There was one particular rocky down hill section that I had ridden once before on my Titus, but it was quite difficult and scarey enough that I was hesitant to ride it again. I decided to try it on the X-Cal and to my suprise I found it easier. At first it didn't make sense, the Titus was a 4 inch travel bike front and rear and had a better fork, brakes, wheels and everything else. But what the Titus didn't have was 29" wheels. Thats right the 29" wheels made all the difference through the technical rock garden. I have since sold the Titus and the X-Cal, but I am sold on the 29" wheels. I will talk more about my current rides in another post.