CX Machine

FINALLY!!! It's finished!!! My new toy is done...this is my CX machine from this day forward.

Last year I raced CX on my MTB, and people were like why are you racing on your MTB??? I had a few reasons.

1. It's the only bike I had to race CX on.

2. I don't like being like everybody else!!

3. The fact that I was on an MTB lining up with a bunch of CX bikes added a little pressure to the CX riders to not get beat by the MTB'er and a little more motivation for me to beat those guys...it made it a ton more fun for me!!

Towards the end of my stint racing last year my competitive side had me borrow a CX bike and that's all it took for me to decide to build a CX machine. At that time I didn't know what I was going to build or buy...so after a little thought I came up with the idea that a 29er frame and fork would be the way to go.

There are few reasons for this decision. The first is if I decide to race MTB again next season, there are a couple of races that a hardtail would be better to race than my dually so all I would need is a suspension fork as opposed to a complete bike...hence the riser bar...I don't think a road bar affords an advantage in CX anyway...

The other reason is I wanted disc brakes, more specifically hydraulic disc brakes, and the frames I was looking at had disc tabs but also had canti bosses and looked like ass!!! I'm sure I could have purchased a frame that was disc only, but that would have cost twice as much, definitely more than I wanted to spend...the final reason was cost...I wanted to build this machine for the least amount possible. I could have spent less but I certainly could have spent a ton more.

As it stands, I was pretty close to my target number and I think I spec'd it well. To walk out of a shop with a comparably spec'd bike would mean you spent at least $2500.00 duckets and I managed to complete this build at under half of that!! The complete bike weighs in at a tick over 20 pounds. Not bad compared to the 25.5 pound MTB I raced on last year and a bit heavier than the high dollar CX rigs that are out there, but remember, it's a 29er MTB frame and fork.

There you go now you know.

By the way...DON'T GET BEAT BY THE MTB'ER!!!!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

E