Bitten by the Cx Bug!
 

This Easter weekend I went and visited my family at my folk's place and did some riding with one of my cousins. My father has 320 acres of deer hunting woods with a ton of 8 foot wide trails all over the place. My cousin showed up with a Cx he built with a Nashbar Al. frame and carbon fork. Nice rig! I took a few laps with it and really liked it.
When I got home today, I did some looking. Nashbar has the frame for $110 and the carbon fork for $120, both Disc ready with Totally Free shipping until 4-22. Guess what, click,click,click. Now I'm on a new adventure. Decided to do a 1X10 with a 11-36 cassette and 42T crank. Sweet and simple with a decent range for tearing around town and hitting the many trails we have along the Miss. River. Going to try to keep it under $800 but we'll see. Let the adventure begin.

Now you've done it....

Next step, thinking about CX racing.

the other part of the CX racing is the getting off the bike and back on again without losing momentum,
as the course designers lay out barriers to cross requiring you to get off the bike.

gravel-grinders , are the use of those kinds of bikes , and riding gravel roads thru the countryside with others ,

without the podium at the end, to rank who was fastest to 3rd place.

Too many of those "snap, crackle and pop" issues for that racing thing. Just out to have some fun.