Rims, Gran Fondos, etc

A brief public service announcement - we're sponsoring the Vermont Gran Fondo (registration page here) which takes place in Middlebury, VT on July 1. The date is a little unfortunate because it's also the date of the Gnar Weasels Kenda Cup round in Brownsville, VT which a friend of mine co-promotes, but whatcha gonna do? Summer is short and there are too few dates for too much good riding. Anyhow, if you go to the Vermont Gran Fondo, a few things will happen. 1 is that you'll ride in a great and superbly supported event that does most of the iconic central Vermont Gap climbs (some of them twice). 2 is that you will get to prepare for it the night before in the worst of all possible ways, by having beers with us at a local watering hole at November Happy Hour (details TBA) 3. is that you'll have a lovely post-event meal and social time at Woodchuck Cider's HQ and get to harrass us about which wheels you should buy as we'll have a table set up there 4. is that you'll have a chance to win a set of FSW3s. None of these are bad things, so get right on that, would ya?

It's always sunny on App GapThere's no motivation quite like food and adult beveragesSo come do the event, m'kay?

The other part of today's post is to announce that we have a new winner. Our previous most-asked-question was "what lacing should I get?" Perhaps we've beaten that horse into dust, perhaps something else, but it's not the most asked question anymore. The most asked question now is "which rims should I get?" I think that our series on hubs was effective both because those pages get a ton of traffic and because we don't get those questions all that much. Also when people do ask about that, we can link them to the pages with full explanations and then their heads explode with what nerds we are and we never hear from them again. 

ANYHOW... the simple answer to the rim question is that there isn't so much of a spread among the various rims we use in any category that one will be so pinpoint ideal and any other will be just plain wrong. One may be pinpoint ideal, but when that's the case there will be a whole bunch of others that are good, too. The only trait where I think that would possibly not be the case is for cross tubeless, which takes a fairly specific rim in order to work as well as it can. And, you know, #crossiscoming so we'll be aware of that. 

But you know we've never left any topic with just that kind of a brush off, so we will go into our usual stultifying (there's an SAT word for ya) detail on at least the top choices so that you can also have your head explode with what nerds we are and never be heard from again.

There will be two things that we ask of you during this process. First, from the Beavis and Butthead department, yes we will be talking about rims. Enough said. Second, Mike and I for whatever reason just really really really don't like when rims are called "hoops." We don't like it when brakes are called "stoppers" or really when any of the myriad bike parts whose names are specific and yet boring receive the "let's try super hard to figure out different words to call these things" treatment. I think we're also both totally on the spectrum. So you're welcome to call them whatever you'd like, but we'll stick to rims.

And since I got about 250 yards into last night's ride before slight chance of rain turned into certainty of downpour, it is now time to ride the bicycle.