Howdy, I recently (finally) got my hands on a Rivendell Clem Smith and had a chance to throw on my camping gear and head off into the woods this past weekend. The executive summary is: 2 days of riding, 80ish miles and 9000 feet of climbing in the Marin Headlands North of San Francisco. Photos can be found below:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/JU2uuwp957K5S5H79 *The Ride:* The route started from the SF Embarcadero and took some not-too-busy streets into the Marin headlands for a mostly off-road climb up to the last junction before the Mt Tam summit. I took a quick break to catch my breath, eat some PB&Js, and contemplate on the weight of the bike and all of my crap (70 lbs!). When I was biking up the paved road on an upright bike with 2.4 inch knobbies, I got some looks ranging from utter confusion, no acknowledgment of my presence, some smiles and even a few thumbs up and "yeah, dude". After that, I rolled down to the fairfax-bolinas ridge trail through some picturesque wooded ridges and then down a way-too-steep hill that almost overheated my rims! There was a little grocery store about 2 miles from the end of the trailhead where I got some camp bear and an ice cream cause I just finished day 1! The campground was at Samuel P Taylor with about 15 hiker-bikers there by the end of the day, lots of beers and smores were had, stories were shared, and gear was discussed. The next morning greeted the campsite with an eerie red sun due to the smoke from some nearby fires. Day 2 brought me back to the same trailhead I exited and climbed a slightly less steep hill to get back onto the ridgeline via San Geronimo fire road; this trail had a few long sections with nothing but 6 inch boulders and, well, lots of walking and butt busting happened. Once I got out of the ridgeline, I followed some deer trails and immediately got lost for a solid hour until I emerged from the brush (Just a bunch of random circles on the GPS route), with no witnesses, thankfully. After my bikewacking, I took a more calm route back to Mt Tam via lakeview road, with a few "you're crazy!" coming from some mountain bikers. At this point, my legs were pretty much jello and I elected to just head back on the pavement. When I crossed the Golden Gate bridge around 1230 it was packed with the bike rental folks trying to take selfies in the fog with 30-40 mph cross winds, smart. *The Bike *(Nicknamed "Ulalume"): Good ol' Clem smith with all stock components from Riv's build kit. The items I added/modified were some front and rear racks, a well worn in brooks, a dynamo front wheel and some 2.4 inch Conti MTB tires. Everything worked pretty well, but I did notice that the relatively narrow bottom bracket spacing (I think its 110 on the prebuilt kit) caused 2 issues with the bike in it's current iteration: 1. there was some minor tire/chain rub when I was in my lowest gear, 2. the outer chainring was too close to the downtube thus preventing me from mouting a waterbottle & cage on the bottom downtube bosses. *Final Thoughts:* Overall, the bike worked as well as I could've hoped, but with a few modifications, it could wok much better. Namely, a wider rear cassette cause the bike is HEAVY, probably billie/albatross bars to help the front end feel a little less wobbly on the climbs, and some 2.2+ semi-slicks as The 2.4 Conti X-kings were total overkill for this ride. Cheers, Collin A -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
