Saturday, October 23, 2010

New Machine

Check it out, I am the lucky recipient of a 2011 Kona Major Jake, the full carbon Kona cross bike.





Internal cable routing to keep it clean.



Full carbon fork with a tapered steerer for stiff and accurate steering. No more fork chatter when braking!



BB30 bottom bracket for bigger stiffer tubes



The bike built up with my old components weighs about 16.5 lbs! Not bad for a large sized bike.

It sure looks fancy, but it's how it rides that matters. I haven't had too much of a chance to put it through it it's paces but so far I can say that it is responsive. You can definitely feel the added stiffness. It also handles really well. The bottom bracket has been lowered, the chainstays shortened and I believe the head angle is steeper as well. Now I am not one of those people that can feel small differences between bike geometry, but when I was riding it around the park, it carved around the trees, just effortless steering. I am pretty excited to race it.

What makes it even cooler is that this bike is the result of Mark Matson, former mechanic at Sellwood Cycle and now working for Kona. So far I gotta say he did one heck of a job with it.

I'm pretty sure Sellwood is the only shop in the NW with any of these bikes, so stop in and check it out.

It'll get the first test tomorrow at PIR. Supposed to rain all night and most of tomorrow, once again a mudfest at PIR. With the new bike, I guess I won't have any excuses other than me sucking.