Rocking out on the trails around Elena Gallegos with the Salsa Journeyman Claris 650.
Spring may not officially begin until tomorrow, but I got the drop on the sonofabitch yesterday.
The only reason I was wearing long sleeves and knickers was for visual continuity (yep, shooting video for Adventure Cyclist again).
After the ride I mowed the lawn for the first time this year, and then watered.
Today, more video, this time with the Salsa Journeyman Claris 650 rigged for light bikepacking. Extremely light. You know, the kind where you plan to make it to the Hilton but also recall the Yiddish proverb, “Man plans, God laughs.”
If you are a member of the Twitterati, we urge you to follow @DevinCow at your earliest opportunity, if only because @DevinNunesMom is no longer with us.
Temps remain a bit below normal in the Duke City, but you don’t have to shovel cool.
Stop? Not me.
It was a gorgeous St. Patrick’s Day in the Duke City, and everybody and his/her granny was out and about, trying to sweat out the remnants of Gaelic brain eraser.
I awarded myself a day off from riding other people’s bikes and used one of my own, the Steelman Eurocross pictured in yesterday’s post.
The great thing about a ’cross bike — the original gravel bike, don’t you know — is that you can ride it pretty much anywhere. And that’s exactly what I did. Pavement, good and bad; singletrack; two-track, whatever.
For instance, it’s great fun to zip down Tramway Road from Juniper Hill, pull a U at the bottom, and ride back up the gullied trail that parallels it instead of grinding along next to the hordes of goggling tram-bound tourists.
It would be easier on a modern gravel bike, like Salsa’s Journeyman Claris 650, with its 2.1-inch 650b’s and low end of 30×34. The Steelman maxes out at 700×33 and a bottom of 36×28.
But if God wanted our lives to be easier He wouldn’t have given us Il Douche.
As you know, God rides steel, or titanium (if He can get a bro’ deal from Moots, which is by no means a sure thing). And what God rides is good enough for me.
But the latest review bike here in Dog Country is aluminum, both frame and fork. And thus in the pursuit of Fairness and Objectivity I must keep my metallurgical biases chained up in the attic.
That is, I would, if we had an attic. Christ, there’s not even a basement in this fauxdobe rancheroo.
The Salsa Journeyman Claris 650, up against The Wall of Science.
Just as well, too. I’d probably tumble down the stairs and break a hip, and Herself would have me put down, find some nice young fella with wavy hair and a future instead of stubbly scalp and a past. Or maybe she’d just keep me down there. Lob a sack of Taco Bell down the stairs now and then, and a plastic bucket with a roll of single-ply. It’s not like I don’t have it coming.
Anyway, the bike. It’s the latest update to the low end of Salsa’s all-road, gravel and light-touring Journeyman series, the Claris 650. And it’s not only aluminum, it’s got them funny-size tires, whatchacallem, your 650b, or 27.5, neither fish nor fowl. And more holes than Albert Hall! You can plug pert’ near anything into the sumbitch except for maybe a Fender Stratocaster. And I’d try it, if someone at Fender would just loan me a Strat’ to review.
The Journeyman Claris 650 rolls with a manly eight-speed drivetrain, so it has that going for it, which is nice. None of your one-by-whatever setups with a cassette that has more teeth than a tour bus full of Osmonds.
Charlie Ervin down at Two Wheel Drive asked me if I try to put myself in the mindset of a customer shopping for a sub-$1,000 bike when I’m reviewing one and I said hell yes. I am a Man of the People, though I notice that most of ’em don’t pick up when I call.
Especially the ones with the $8,000 titanium bikes that desperately need reviewing, and by me, right now, goddamnit. Dern Caller ID anyhow.
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