As soon as I heard about the new Taco Bell Black Taco, I ran out and got one. Rather, I bought two of them and a chili cheese burrito. Excited to eat my new tacos in the perfect setting, I drove around and ate the burrito while looking for the right place. The chili cheese burrito is difficult to eat while driving and I wasted a lot of time trying to deal with this thing. I made it as far as my driveway before carefully opening the first one.

The first batch of Tacos where good. However, I didn’t have the right words to describe them at the time so I decided to make the critique more scientific by getting two more black tacos and a regular taco as a control. This was important work and it could not be rushed or thoroughly conducted during a parked feeding frenzy.

A couple things separate the new taco from the old taco. The black shell isn’t made of blue corn. Rather it is just black, and that is not such a bad thing because its flavor has been refined for years. Next, the cheese is no longer just cheddar. It now contains a delicate blend of Mozzarella, Cheddar, and Pepper Jack cheeses. The intricate flavors of which are further sophisticated by the addition of the hotly anticipated zesty pepper jack cheese sauce.

The resulting taco is cheesy, crunchy, meaty, and spicy. It is better than the original, and it costs less than $1. Viva La Bell.

Oh yea, ride bikes. GT Bikes, and umm, Ray’s is open for the season!!!

GT Force Carbon Expert Review

I recently completed an extensive test on GT’s carbon fiber Force. It’s GT’s All Mountain long travel cross country bike. I can tell you right from the start it feels perfectly suited for long rides on demanding trails. The first thing that I noticed is that it feels athletic like a XC bike should. It is also light for a bike with this much going on. This is a new bread of trail bike.

The Force has 6” of travel in the front and rear. Out of the box, it weighs 26 pounds and it comes with Fox shocks front and rear. The Fox Float RP23 rear shock has an anti-bob feature that is adjustable on the fly and rebound control. In the front, the bike gets a Fox TALAS 32 R with a 15mm through axle and travel that can be adjusted from 110 - 150mm while riding. The quality of the suspension components does not get any better than this.

The main feature of the Force is it’s I-drive suspension. From experience, the I-drive does a number of different things depending on the input it receives. Due to the pivot locations when peddling hard the rear suspension stiffens up, let off the power for an instant and it becomes fully active again.  For instance, when standing level and riding like a corpse, the suspension absorbs small, medium, and large sized hits very well. The damping, compression speed, and reactivity are all properly tuned. Come to life, start giving the bike some body English and watch out. It will take you just about any place you might want to go. The best thing about the I-drive is that it adjusts to suit the situation.

The bike comes with a straightforward group of light and very effective XT components. The brakes from which are the star of the show. The XT disk brake has so much power that I would love to run them on my bike. I don’t because I’m a weight weenie, but none the less. The XT group is perfectly suited for All Mountain riding.

Dislikes… The Kenda Nevegal tires are far too knobby. They are excessively heavy and have too much rolling resistance. They would be the first thing to go. In fact, I would take them off before riding it for the first time as to not taint the experience.

GT Force Carbon Expert

Pros- Lively carbon frame… I would ride this bike if I were not racing cross-country.

Cons- Tires, Tires, Tires

26 lbs.

MSRP $4299.99

DW

I am now using a pair of custom carbon cycling insoles from SoupCanInsoles.com. They have a retail price of $340 and claim to increase power output 26 watts on average during maximum effort. They were hand crafted from molds of my feet by Dr. Suppan and designed to align my foot for increased power transfer.

After racing my fist race with the insoles, I can say that they have done a bunch of things that I was not expecting. For instance, I no longer slide or move inside the shoe at all. They feel like they are part of my foot. In addition, my feet no longer hit the crank arms or the frame, which I thought was just part of riding. As for power, I feel very good, but I have no way of measuring the output with any accuracy.

of the Manitou Minute MRD Absolute

3.2 pounds, 100mm of travel, 32mm stanchions

The following is a review of this fork from my point of view. This is the final review for the first Manitou that I have ridden since swearing never to ride one again about five years ago. I have owned three Manitou forks prior to this one, and all have broken. First, the crown on my EFC cracked on either side of the steer tube. Then, I had two Manitou Mach 5 SX forks break. Number 1 snapped jumping down some stairs and the stanchion tubes on number 2 broke off just below the crown while trail riding.

I could tell immediately upon seeing the new fork that this wasn’t going to be the issue. Manitou is hardly the same company that it used to be. Gone are the soft CNC’d crowns, the plastic preload adjusters, and the squirmy dropouts. First, this fork is built on 32mm stanchions, which sets it apart from the 28mm crowd. It’s an entire order of magnitude stiffer than a 28mm fork.

 Ideally, this thing should work all year without maintenance, have 100+mm of smooth travel, and be light. The reality wasn’t far off the mark.

I have put about four thousand miles on this fork in a mix of XC racing, 24 Hour endurance, trials, and jumping at Ray’s. The bike frame supporting this fork broke twice; all the while, this thing continued unfazed. In fact, it works so well that I never think of it. That’s not something that I can say about others that I’ve ridden. The construction of the fork is incredible.

The tag line of this fork should be “Set it and forget it”. Give the rebound knob at the bottom a couple clicks and you’re done. I’m not a fan of lock outs, platform, or compression dampening but this fork does have a very nice platform system.  It sounds very mechanical when it’s working and seems like it does the trick. I’ve found that I only fiddle with the lockout knob when I’m riding for fun. I doubt anyone switches this thing on in the middle of an endurance race.

It is smoother and stiffer than the 2006 Fox F100 RL, and after four thousand miles, it’s just starting to break-in. It is without question the best fork that Manitou has ever made.

The fastest handling ride you will never get to try, this is the Bone Head Horse.

Designed to be an east coast cruise missile, the Horse defined thinking outside the box. Goal 1 was to build a fast handling cross-country frame that could be guided by the rider leaning his head from side to side. Two, design the frame to dampen vibration through flexible sections in the rear triangle.  Three, Allow the frame to flex along the seat post axis for two wheel steering characteristics. Four, Make this all happen without pivots and entirely out of aluminum.

Riding the Bone Head Horse is invigorating. When viewed on level ground the bottom bracket is on an equal plain with the rear dropout. This aspect gives the rider the ability to change directions by using minimal body input. Its short chain stays and tall bottom bracket give the rider a feeling of being above the bike rather than being a part of it. It is a little unnerving to ride on the bike path. In fact, it is hard to keep the bike in one lane. The true character does not become clear until you hit the trail.

Off road, the quickness of the ride takes some getting used to. Everything about the bike is aggressive. The cockpit is long and low which is excellent for climbing. The long stem puts the rider’s weight well in front of the rear axle, which makes climbing out of the saddle easy. Still, it allows the rider to take the most ridiculous lines imaginable through rock gardens. When traveling slowly through difficult terrain the steep head tube angle permits the rider to react to any opportunity. The Bone Head is so willing to carve it frees the rider up to look further down the trail.

Accessing the hidden benefits of the frames reactive rear wheel steering takes daring. It requires a skilled rider to push the bike hard enough to gain benefits from the flexible rear triangle. A one-inch square section of tube connects the upper and lower stays to the front triangle. The small contact patch allows the frame to flex laterally on the two square tubes. The theory works, but the paint and aluminum crack around the areas. On later frames, titanium is used instead of aluminum as a frame material.

The aluminum frame has a limited lifespan of about three months. The cracks come so quickly and in such numbers that as a rider you become numb to them. Upon noticing the first cracks, you would order a new frame. By the time it would arrive, the bike could have tens of cracks. Some would connect to other cracks. Strings of little hairline dash marks would ring the welds around the bottom bracket and dropouts. Others would form on or near the head tube junctions. Nonetheless the bike held together and instilled confidence that it would be capable of another ride.

So, why is this relevant? The ideas that make this bike an amazingly fast east coast ride were not exclusive to Bone Head. Gary Fisher has been developing the Genesis geometry platform for nearly ten years. Genesis geometry shares some of the same basic ideas like a longer top tube and shorter stays. The latest generation G2 genesis geometry increases the head tube angle for better low speed handling and adds a custom fork to maintain wheelbase. Gary Fisher has taken the best parts of what the Bone Head had to offer and added safety, predictability, and consistency.

Bone Head Bicycles Inc.

Built in Fredonia Pennsylvania from 1996 - 1999