It goes without saying that I need another bike the way America needs a fresh horde of Republican dipshits in the Senate. So, naturally I got one anyway. The bike, not the horde of dipshits. The bike is mine. The dipshits we share.
The bike is a Voodoo Nakisi and like me, it is a real weirdo. Steel frameset, tabs for discs plus bosses for cantis, horizonal dropouts suitable for single-speeding or a geared drivetrain, and room for some rather serious rubber, as in 29×2.3. Yes, it’s a 29er — but it’s intended to be used with drop bars. Plus it has eyelets aplenty for racks and fenders front and rear.
Like I said, a real weirdo.
Mine is built cyclo-cross style — Ultegra rear derailleur and XT front, nine-speed bar-cons, 11-26 SRAM cassette and chain, XT cranks (including the little ring for a change, a 22-toother), Cane Creek cantis and top-mounted brake levers, Salsa bars, some no-name stem, Shimano 600 aero brake levers, Crank Brothers Candy pedals, Thomson seat post and a Selle San Marco Ponza Island saddle that I hate (but it was unattached to a bike and thus could be had free of charge).
In fact, most of the parts came from the official Mad Dog Media Service Course Garage, Tool Shed & Covered Vespa Parking Facility, with the biggest (and priciest) exception being a handbuilt set of wheels — Mavic Open Pros laced with Revolution spokes to an old set of Hügi MTB hubs by my friend Brian Gravestock of Old Town Bike Shop. The wheels wear a pair of 700×45 Panaracer Fire Crosses. Yes, I said 700×45. They look like something you might see at a motocross race.
I didn’t put it on the scale because frankly, I didn’t want to know. This thing is a tank, like a two-wheeled tractor. I took it over to Palmer Park for its maiden voyage and the Nakisi rolled over its rocks like the Panzers did Poland.
I have a soft spot for Voodoo. One of my favorite bikes was a ti’ Loa ’cross bike that had a one-off, drilled-for-weight Marzocchi suspension fork, a Ritchey 110BCD crank and an XT rear derailleur that let me run a low gear of 34×32. It could take 700×40 tires. Another tank, but man, was it ever fun to ride on the Crusty County BLM roads.
Mad Blog Media 
Nice monstercrosser, Patrick!
That’s a good looking bike. The frame design does makes you wonder why they did not make the head tube a little (or a lot) longer, but that’s just aesthetics, which real men like us eschew (“Have I shown you my massive spacer stack and masculine upturned stem, Little Missie?”)
It is good to avoid weighing manly steeds. I got one of those hanging digital fishing scales to weigh luggage, which took me down the primrose path to the hell of knowing just how portly my bikes really are. Most of mine are closer to two times the UCI weight limit than they are to the weight limit itself. Of course, I’m no greyhound.
Enjoy your new bike, Patrick!
Dale
Zappadan’s not over yet; why is there no Frank Zappa link with today’s post?!
Long time, no check in. I set up a different email, so WordPress may not recognize me.
Just been ridin’ the pigmy pony. Your new steed is not Mighty Little.
I’ve never ever seen a 700×45 tire live and in person. That’s gotta be a blast ridin’ over stuff. Kinda reminds me of John Tomac’s mountain bike with the drop bars that he used to ride around ’90. A Yeti? (Yes. I just Googled it, as my memory is less a tool and more a spit wad every day I get older.)
Congrats on the new ride.
Dale, it is a pretty bike, but I agree with you on the extended head tube. Soma and a couple other outfits do that routinely and it sure cuts down on the spacer bill.
Peter, sorry to miss the daily Zappadan affirmation. The workload at VeloNews.com got a tad intense this weekend with major cyclo-crosses in Europe and ’cross nats in Oregon. I was clocking in at 7 a.m. and clocking out around 11 p.m. I even had to skip St. Alfonzo’s Pancake Breakfast, which irked Father O’Blivion.
Jeff, nice to see you back in the house. I’m told the thing a guy has to watch out for with big rubber like this is low tire pressures — not enough PSI and you’ll roll that sucker right off the rim in a hot corner. I’m gonna try real hard not to do that.
Reminds me of my first MTB, a B-stone MB-1 purchased the year before they came out with the drop-bar model. I swapped out all the bits to make a nice SoCal fireroad bike — then moved to New England where it didn’t work at all! Yours is one of those bikes I think I need but in reality would never ride….just as my ‘cross bike never sees anything but winter use on paved roads….it’s been on dirt ONCE!
Nice lookin bike. I have a pair of 700-40’s sitting in the garage that occasionally go on the old Trek tandem for fire road use. Right now I am thinking of putting them on the Salsa Delgado Cross wheelset for winter use on the commuter, so I can duck down on the singletrack on the way to work. But I would have to take off the fenders. Of course, its been dry as a popcorn fart down here for months. Who needs fenders?
When you remove your fenders, you make it rain. It’s not correlational. It’s causal. Also, if you wear your most expensive, favorite jersey, you will find the only wet tar on the road in the county, like a diving rod.
Well, its snowing like hell right now. I still have my summer rubber on the bike. I guess if I had put on the Richey Cross tires, it would be snowing even harder.
K, is it too late to add skis to the front end?
Gettin’s some up there, too, Patrick? Snow, that is….
Hey, K … just a hint of a whisper of a rumor of a skiff. Which is to say, nearly bupkis. Windy and cold, though. I should’ve ridden yesterday instead if running (in shorts and T-shirt).
But it was even a tad brisk for running today, so maybe I made the right call. That would be something different. …
Larry, those MB-1s were the shiznit. I’m surprised I never got one. That may have been my aluminum period, before I rediscovered the Joy of Steel.
There are some nice long gravel road rides in these parts that would suit this Voodoo to a T. It’s better suited to Weirdcliffe, but alas, I am not.
K, I hear you on the drought. One itty bitty snow here all fall. It’s 63 and sunny as we speak, at 11:40 a.m. on Dec. 13, and I’m fresh back from a trail run in T-shirt and shorts. Fenders are supernumeraries in these parts … for now, anyway.
Nice Ride–time to krissen the Nakisi whilst imbibin’ witta Ninkasi!
oops forgot, Patrick toss that P.o.S saddle in the pit before you damage the yawwbles!
Needs a Brooks instead of that butt floss saddle.