Last week I had four house guests. BJ my customer from Kodiak AK,  my buddy Tim P  who came to town from the Phoenix area to pick up a 29er MTB, my cousin and brother-in-law. In Montana people are fond of saying ” there are two seasons, winter and house guest season”.

The Winter and the snow here are great if you like that sort of thing but the Summers here are outstanding and it seems that everyone finds a way to come and stay for a couple days here and there. Last year Loretta and I literally had a guests in our house everyday with the exception of one week from June 14th through Sept 9th.  This year we’re being a little less welcoming and trying to keep some of the Summer season for ourselves.

So I don’t know whey I bring it up expect maybe to explain I got nothing done at work last week because I was entertaining constantly. This week I’m back at it and glad to be building again. I’m finishing up Richard H’s touring MTB. It’s built around a Rohloff as well as fenders so I’m mounting the brake caliper on top of the chainstays and I’m also incorporating a torque lever stop in the arrangement.

Next on the board is Matt S a forest fire fighter currently in Bend OR. He’s getting a Ti road frame.

I’m having new tee shirts designed and printed and need to clean out old inventory. I have a couple styles left in limited sizes.  A few of the Extralite tee’s have the logo printed slightly off center but it’s not enough that most would notice.

If you want to order any, send me an email directly to my address at strong@strongframes.com and let me know what  size and how many you want. If I have them, I’ll pull them aside, put your name on them and send  you a PayPal request for payment. Once payment is made I will mail them to you.

Price $5.00 per shirt.

Shipping $10 per address.

Available sizes are:

Strong Frames 2/S

Womens green Blend 5/L

Extralite 3/L and 15/ XL

I love Road riding , cyclocross and MTB all equally. Usually super early season and late I ride cross . Then as the season progresses I ride road and finally when the mountains start to dry up I ride more  MTB. Well the mountains are finally starting to dry up. I got together with a bunch of friends the other day (including the infamous BJ) and we rode the Mystic single track.

The Mystic lake single track is one of the most popular MTB rides in town. It’s half closed logging road and half single track. The ride’s nick  name is ”The Wall of Death” because most of the single track is exposed but technically it’s not that difficult. Bill (our assembler) rides it on his cross bike. It’s an out  and back and is probably about 20 miles round trip from town. Elevation gets’ to about 7500 feet. Around here it’s one of the lower trails and that’s why we’re riding it now. Stuff that’s higher up is still a little snowed in, but  I think we’ll be riding up high in a couple more weeks.

Currently I’m building a 700c Rohloff frame. The owner, Richard H. also has an MTB I built for him a year or two ago. It’s design for large tires and can almost be called a 29er but it’s designed more for dirt road touring than actual MTB riding. Here it is in it’s beginning stages.

So BJ bought a bike and is moving from Kodiak, AK to LA, CA. So as it worked out on his way down to CA from AK the timing was right for him to swing through Bozeman and pick up his bike. He got here on Monday  and he’s taking his time making a vacation out of the trip. So Loretta and I put him up for a couple days so we could show him around and go for a couple rides.

Yesterday my buddy Pedro, Bill our mechanic and Dave and Karin Kirk (www.kirkframeworks.com) took him for a short road ride. Toady we’ll go for an MTB ride and we might try to sneak in another tomorrow. Below are some pictures along with a short video. I made the video because I could but I discovered the only way to make a road ride helmet cam video interesting is to keep making it shorter. It’s still too long but it has some nice views of the Bridger Mountain range which is one of Bozeman’s main play areas.