Dumb and Dumber

Eric and I recently had a little, friendly competition: who is dumb and who is dumber? We started at 7:20 am, just before it was getting light and headed up Spiro. I was on my steel, rigid, singlespeed 29er. . . . I just went and weighed it. It weighs in at 27 lbs, including pedals and a thin coat of mud. . . . And Eric was on his 19 lb cross bike. Eric told me it was dumb to ride a heavy singlespeed, and I told him it was dumb to ride a wimpy cx bike. And thus, the Dumber Competition began. Suffice it to say, at the end of day, from my perspective, I did not have the most Dumber Points. The scoreboard looked something like this.

Climbing up the steep, switchbacking, 3 mile Spiro trail: Jared +3. I was rolling a pretty "easy" gear -- a 32x20, but there were some parts of the trail where I thought something was going to blow. I decided then and there that I'm putting my vintage anodized red bar ends on my riser bars. Eric nimbly climbed the trail, and I think he might have had to wait for me. I got a Dumber point for the number of times he had to wait. (And yes, I like to ride in my PJs sometimes.)



Cruising the buff trails: 0 points awarded. The fun factor was equal for both me and Eric. It was fun, really fun.

Riding through snow: Eric +1. Needless to say, a 2.3 inch tire rolls through the snow much better than a 32mm cross tire. There wasn't much snow though.



Amount of luggage: Jared +1. My bike is heavy. I have to carry a heavy tube and an end wrench because I have bolt on wheels. But, as was proved, sometimes heavy duty is better.



Riding through the rocks: Eric +5. Funny thing is, an hour into the ride, Eric was calling me "Dumber." So, I decided to put the hammer down. Given my ride, I have to admit that the hammer didn't really go down that far. Even so, I was laying it down through the windy sections on the trail and really liking the gyroscopic effect of the big wheels. Eric tried to keep up for like 2 minutes before he got a big fat snakebite. We fixed it. Then about 2 minutes later, he got another one. Of course, he only brought one tube, so we broke out the patch kit and went to work. It took us a couple tries, but we finally made one of his tubes hold air.



Riding back to PC on the Olympic Trail: Jared +2. I was spinning the 32x20 really fast, and got going up to 17 mph.

Eric trying to ride a 15 inch Frame: Eric +1.



In case, you're keeping score, according to my arbitrary scoring process, Eric won the Dumber Contest.

And for the record, I decided that riding a heavy rigid single speed is not that dumb at all. That's also not to say Eric didn't have fun either. I haven't had that much fun on a bike for a long long time. But, then again, I have a short memory. I wonder if a lighter 29er single speed would be funner? Hmmm. . . . .