Salvation

Yay! I got the end cap for my Easton Haven rear wheel from Chain Reaction Cycles. Great service from these guys! So now rolling on matching wheels :) Will take some decent pics after I next clean the bike.

Yesterday I went for a ride from Fitzgerald Ave up Salvation and to the top of Wrights Hill with a friend and his dog. Back down the same way. First time I've ridden this track which is another one off the list of Wellington tracks to ride in 12 months (Feb 2013 to Feb 2014). It's a nice gentle ride up or down  Will be living near the top of Wrights Hill soon so will probably use this track a lot to get to and from Makara Peak park. Then today it was a quick ride up Koru, along the 4WD track, down Big Toms Wheelie and then down Lazy Fern. Technically, Big Toms Wheelie is part of SWIGG that starts across Snake Charmer from the Ridgeline Extension track. I haven't ridden down the Ridgeline Extension track so I wanted to ride this short (200M) piece of track so I can say I've covered the whole of SWIGG. I would have kept going along SWIGG but a group of about 6 riders went down just before me so I thought I'd take Lazy Fern to avoid the potential traffic (though chances are they would have left me in the dust\mud) The Makara Peak supporters guys were working on Koru as I went past and it's looking great. There's lots of track maintenance events coming up so I'll probably attend a session or 2.

Makara Peak Work Party

I attended my first Makara Peak work party yesterday. It was working on the Upper Leaping Lizard track I mentioned back in this post. I thought I can't complain about a track and then not help out when they're working on it! If you're a member of the Makara Peak supporters they send out Newsletters with the dates and times of the various work parties. You can join here. They also post details on their Facebook page here. The track is alot more rideable now so if you're heading up that way, give it a blast :)

After the work party, I headed on up to the Peak and then out via Zacs Track and Varleys. Both tracks have recently been worked on and are in good condition. Varleys has some quite tight switchback that slow things down but it's a track lots of walkers use so you probably don't want to be bombing down it anyway. I went across the road and then down Wahine to Karori Park and home.

Pics from my phone

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Signs at Makara Peak

Cool lookout at Makara Peak you can ride up onto with views of the windfarm

Bike with the Makara Peak antennae tower in the background

Doh!

Finally went to put my new wheels on yesterday and found that I didn't have the correct Torx bit to pull the rotors off the old wheels. I'm sure I had a set of bits somewhere but they must have gone walkabout. Luckily Mud Cycles in Karori are just down the road and swapped them right over for me :) I then put the cassette on the rear wheel and one of the new Maxxis Minion DHF's. Went to put the wheel on the bike and found the end cap is missing on one side..WTF?

Something missing here

The hub is a 10x135 QR so should look more like the other side

Drive side of M1-121 Hub 10x135QR

So this was slightly annoying seeing as I hadn't noticed before putting the tyre and cassette on. At this stage I searched the whole house for this little part to no avail (how many times did I look in the empty box!). My guess is that it was never there...I'm sure it didn't just fall out (maybe). I went back to Mud Cycles this morning and they kindly swapped the rotor back to the old wheel for me. I then emailed Chain Reaction Cycle and asked if they could send the missing end cap (I think that's what it's called anyway). Hopefully this doesn't turn into a fight!

So I put the cassette and new tyre on the old wheel and put it back on along with the new front wheel and tyre. Running odd wheels shows you mean business!

New wheels

The Easton Haven UST Wheelset I ordered from chainreactioncycles.com turned up on Friday (refer Sold! post). Such fast shipping from these guys! I've got a bit of a cold at the moment and don't much feel like riding so at least now I can tinker around and put these on the bike. I need to pull the cassette and brake discs off the old ones and bung them on. I ended up buying some Maxxis Minion DHF's a few weeks back because no where had any Ardents. They're not the "Tubeless Ready" ones that are coming out now but should go on fine with some sealant and soapy water around the bead. If there's any issues, I'll just use tubes for now so all good. The wheels are a bit...louder... then I'd like but it seems to be the way these days for every bike component to be over the top blinged out.

Easton Haven Rear 10x135QR 26"

Blingy hub!

Oooo errrr fancy