The RANS Stratus XP has been a popular bike in the shop for years. With its' supple long wheelbase, low pedal height and dual 26" wheels the XP makes a great every day ride as well as cross country touring bike. As a well designed bike out of the box, it's definitely a fine candidate for customizing. We've done a number of super upgrades over the years, but this recent project was particularly sweet!

Year after year, Steve gets many, many miles on his bikes. He does a lot of both commuting and touring. After a couple of great years on the Stratus XP he realized that this bike fit his needs very well and is worth investing in some sweet upgrades to make it even better.

For starters, he had us add an impressive Rohloff rear hub with it's 14 internal gears to simplify the drivetrain and eliminate gear overlap. A 48-tooth chainring with a 16-tooth rear cog give it a whopping 21 to 114 gear-inch range. The front chainguard is his original 52-tooth chainring with the teeth machined off. Cool. The chaintubes are made from PTFE tubing. He also upgraded his brakes to Avid BB-7. We were all impressed by the project and took some photos to share with you:

Ahh yes, it's a wet time of year in Minneapolis. The folks splashing me in their cars may not realize it, but I do. Because regardless of the weather, I'm on my bike. Over the years, I've used a variety of fenders on a variety of bicycles. In search for perfection, I've even made some of my own. (A set of pretty cool aluminum fenders and even some carbon fiber ones, yessir. I realize I may be more particular about fenders, than most.)

It hasn't always been easy to keep me covered, but my fender of choice these days, the Planet Bike SpeedEZ, is doing a spectacular job on a couple of my favorite bikes. If you haven't seen them, I highly recommend them. The SpeedEZ are a full coverage fender set that mount to a wide variety of bikes. I road in today with a set on my  Airnimal Joey. The SpeedEZs on my Joey are actually designed for 700c tires, but they mounted very nicely to cover the 24-inch wheels of my Joey.  I had to play with the radius of the fender to get a perfect match, but it turned out great.

I have several thousand trouble-free miles of the SpeedEZ on my Joey, and have since mounted a set to my Bacchetta Corsa as well. The SpeedEZ also fit nicely on the 26-inch wheels of my Corsa. I'm using the 35mm wide SpeedEZ Road on  the Joey (37mm wide tires) and 45mm fenders Corsa (35mm wide tires). Planet Bike recommends the 35mm wide SpeedEZ Road will take up to a 28mm tire. I think they're a bit conservative to cover the range of width in some knobby tires. I'm getting fine coverage on my bikes.

Here are some pictures of the SpeedEZ on some different bikes. The first ten pictures show the SpeedEZ Road (45mm) fenders on my Airnimal Joey and my Bacchetta Corsa. The last two pictures show the SpeedEZ Hybrid (45mm) fenders on a different Airnimal Joey with 1.5" wide tires. Note that the SpeedEZ Road has a little different mount compared to the Hybrid and ATB models.

The coverage of the SpeedEZ is very good (no complaints) and they've proven to me to be durable. They are incredibly versatile, and relatively easy to fit to a wide variety of bikes. Sure, we spend some time "optimizing" to get things just right. But quite frankly, all fenders a just putzy to install. If they advertise to be 'easy' or 'quick', it more accurately means that it can be done.  I haven't used the elastic bands to hold the fenders in place, so I cannot attest to that method. I have used zip ties to secure the fender mount to the frame (or fork) of the bike, which works great.

You can find fenders for your own ride: HERE

Yes, that's right. Sara isn't darkening the doorway at Perennial Cycle except for visits to make sure we're all OK. After several years of ever-faithful service Sara is going to work at Peace Coffee. The smell of roasting coffee calls us all at some point and Sara's going straight to the source.

It was a bit over a month ago. I meant to write this post a month ago, but I've chasing my tail to keep up with her tasks!

We had a fun night eating Thai Curry and telling stories about our day-to-day life at the shop. Smiles all around!

Sara had a special way of relating to customers needs and we'll miss her dearly. I don't have the same level of patience and while John is working hard to fill her boots, though we all know that her boots had more cycling miles than any other pair in town.

So, what do we all say (with tears running down our cheeks):

Thank You Sara!

The 12 by 100 has been completed! My friend Derek came up with the challenge to do a century ride every single month for a year... in Minnesota. August was our final month and while we had our challenges fitting it into the schedule, we did in fact pull it off with smiles all around. The post ride celebrating would have been massive if only we'd given friends and family a bit more heads up on when the final ride was going to happen. As it was, Derek had to race home to take care of his kids and I had to work a close at the shop.

We were joined by Perennial Cycle salesperson extraordinaire John McConaghay. John rode a Surly Pugsley that he had recently built road wheels for. The Pugsley is a bike designed to take over 4" tires (think snow, ice, sand, mud and other adventuresome conditions). John fell in love with his Pug and thus set it up as a versatile summer ride to complement the hard core winter Pug (with HUGE tires).

Derek rode his not-so trusty Concord and I smoked anyone in my path on the zippy Bacchetta Corsa.

It was a Great Day, though at about 56 miles Derek's bottom bracket seized and we had to call for mechanical assistance. It was looking a bit touch and go for a bit, but the Hunter showed up with the right tools for the job and a few hours later the 12 x 100 was history.