Blather on Bicycling

I last introduced my road racing bike, and now I’m ready to pimp my cyclocross. This is truly the workhorse in my collection. Her and myself have seen plenty of hard weather training miles. She’s developed quite a few scars from thousands of miles on gravel roads but I’ve never crashed her (other than laying her down on a soft bed of grass at 1 mph during a cyclocross race last fall).  Here she is, Bianchi Axis:

Click for full-resolution image.

While this isn’t a top of the line bike, it has been a reliable ride for me especially to and from work (1 hr each way of pavement and gravel). The fork does a good job gobbling up bumps. Overall, the bike handles very well on gravel and most of the ride quality is determined by the tires used. Over the past few years I’ve had some migrating creaking issues but all of these seem to now be resolved in the bike as pictured.

I’ve recently made some changes that have her ready for another winter of riding. The saddle, seatpost, and tires are new. I’ve used quite a few different tires on this bike, so these aren’t my “perfect” tires, just the latest. In fact, I plan to ride more often with Conti Gatorskin road tires on this bike in the future because they do so well on gravel and road, which is what this bike sees most of the time (about 50/50).

The crankset is a 180 compact, which gets me up just about every climb around La Grande including Morgan Lake and Fox Hill’s 25%. The steepest roads are certainly a grind and sometimes I wish I had a triple when I’m not in peak condition. The longer-than-normal crank length was an adventure finding in compact.

You may note the extra tension on the rear dérailleur in the picture. This is because I run a short cage on a setup that includes an 11-28 cassette. The short cage barely handles the range, but shifting works fine. I try to avoid the cross chaining this is pictured.

I mainly use this bike for training on the gorgeous dirt and gravel roads of Union County, Oregon. The earliest climbs that melt open in the winter are gravel roads so this is a great bike for early season climb training. This fall I may do a few more cyclocross races than I normally have done (i.e. 1 per year). 
 
I’ve put up a thread at the RoadBikeReview.com forum for anyone to vote on the bike. Comments and critique are welcome here too.

The weight as pictured is 20.9 lbs.

Here are the specifics:

 
Click for full-resolution image.

Click for full-resolution image.