The new SS finally made it here.

I finally got it in.
My first SS, steel, and rigid bike.
The redline monocog flight 29er.

I had a chance to take her out for a small shakedown on Saturday.
It wasn't very revealing or productive ride cause, 1-I'm getting over a cold and didnt have alot of energy, and 2-I didn't take any tools with me and had the seat too low.

Because of those reason I was only out for 30 minutes or so but I did come away with the following.

-It felt no different riding a real SS as opposed to riding around in 1 gear on my geary.

-The geometry on this fits pretty good. I felt at home on it, like I was riding my Fisher. It does have slight differences from the fisher, maybe I just wasn't out long enough to notice.

-It needs a thudbuster. I've always wondered if the thudbuster ( suspension seatpost) that I've used forever really does anything. I bought my first one after I'd only been riding a month and have been using it since. I thought maybe since I wasn't a noob anymore I could get rid of it. Uh-uh. After riding the stock post on the redline I realize the buster does work, and it does a pretty good job.

-Going to a rigid front fork isn't that bad. I've always been pretty good at relaxing and letting my arms absorb shock so I'll probly end up keeping the rigid fork. I won't be going to Gambrill on it, but at the Rose and Cedarville it should be fine.

-Its alot lighter than I thought a steel bike would be. As it is now its lighter than the Fisher. I was kinda having fun with it being so light. I was randomly just hopping her into the air, sometimes over stuff, sometimes not. Its here that I need to mention I had thrown on an old pair of spd pedals for this ride and the tensioin was set to minimum. On my last "jump" both feet came unclipped, I got air, the bike didn't. I did save my self from flying right off the bike but came back down on the seat hard. I'm pretty sure I crushed the seat down onto the rails. So much for the pretty new silver accented saddle.

I did luck out. The post size is the same as the Fisher, so swapping the thudbuster out won't be a big deal.

seeya