I was catching some grief this weekend from someone who will remain nameless (MilkMan) about my secretive winter building activities, so I figured I'd come clean.

As much as I love riding the sir9 SS, there've been quite a few times when I wished I had a geared hardtail, and converting the sir9 back and forth between SS and geared is kind of a hassle. My original thought was to maybe convert the sir9 back to a geared bike and try a belt drive SS. Then I found out that Bruce had a new Salsa titanium El Mariachi frame hanging in the shop. Hmmm... I've never had a titanium frame before...

Tasty Salsa


Sweet frame, built by Lynskey in Tennessee. Took a while to wrangle all the components, build the wheels, etc, but I'm happy with how it turned out. It hasn't even left the house yet, only been ridden around the basement. So I'm dying over here! Needing some singletrack STAT!! More 50 degree days will put the hurt on this snow, we'll be out on the trails before you know it. I hope.

Anyone else been "busy" this winter?
Rg.