It never ceases to amaze me, the inventive tricks the service staff at Boulder Cycle Sport have up their sleeves. I was in a pickle with a perfectly good pair of Mavic Furys...with the exception of a stripped cleat. I polled my internet friends with a tweet and I got many great responses...

Tips for getting a stripped/stuck bolt out of a cleat? Go internet! cc: @angryasian

— Greg Keller (@mudandcowbells) March 15, 2013

But my man Zach Edwards at BCS had the cure. And it took exactly 30 seconds. Let me show you how he solved it.

Step 1: Here is the problematic bolt. Even with grease, over the past year the bolts seized to the mounting plates. I was able to get one out...

Step 2: Zach finds the right size drill bit that is just slightly smaller than the diameter of the whole head of the bolt.

Step 3: Braaaap! He drills straight through the head until it releases the cleat, leaving the bolt still in the plate.

You can see how the head sheared off here....

The remaining steps were simple: We pulled the plate out of the bottom of the shoe through the trap door access inside the shoe, under the sole (most good shoes have this access point.) Zach then used vice pliers to grab hold of the remaining bolt in the plate and twisted it right out! Bam! Total time was 30 seconds.

I reinserted the plate, greased up the threads and got my new cleats on. Like new.

Great tip from Zach and one anyone can do with a simple drill and bit.

Time to un-make the donoughts...the ones that are helping gravity at the moment. 

Honestly, I don’t know what my problem is but I like shoes. OK, love shoes…and bike shoes to be completely accurate. I like my feet to feel right, comfortable and of course style is always up there as well. Maybe I have an Imelda Marcos-esque addiction to fine footwear. Or maybe I’ve been on this constant search for the perfect ‘cross shoe and have been trying tons of different options to eek out whatever performance I can in various conditions.

Whatever the case, this season I landed on what I think is a pretty significant breakthrough in my ‘quest’ to find the perfect cross shoe. The Mavic Fury. The very yellow Mavic Fury that is. While there need to be improvements as I’ll talk about below, I think it is extremely close to perfection

Click to read more ...

So I took my lunch break today by going into the garage and working on these Reflex rims of mine with the new tubulars all glued on. I had mad issues with the green compound SwissStop brake pads (meant for ceramic and aluminum) due to unbearable squeaking and chatter in the front and rear. Further, I got some glue on the sidewalls of the braking surface of the Reflex rims. I initially swapped out the SwissStops for standard Shimano wet/dry pads for aluminum rims but I am STILL getting unbearable chatter. I got myself a Mavic Brake Surface Stone (per Nick's instructions!) as seen in the picture in this post and worked the rims to death. The stone is more like a big gritty eraser. $29 bucks!! D'oh! I also used some acetone to work out the bit of glue on the rim surface. While a wee bit better, it's still WAY too grabby. Modulation is nonexistent and the choppiness and stutter returns under hard braking. I wonder if it just needs some grit and surface grinding. The Shimano pads work SWEET with my Ceramic Mavic clincher rims.

Any experts out there with advice??

I love Mavic. In fact, with the exception of my FSA's, Mavic is all I use across every one of my my bikes, MTB, road and 'cross. I made a call to our good friend at Mavic and explained the 29'er project being worked on and he graciously said a pair of the allusive CrossMax 29'ers could be sourced to help out. Stoked! I run the 26" version of these for rim brakes on my 1 x 1 and love their performance. Stoke dto have a bigger version.

I believe these are Tubeless which is a concern of mine as I've never run native tubeless or Stans. Moving aside the tubeless versus tubed debate, can anyone recommend a set of Tubeless 29'er tires worth their salt? I run the Hutchinson Python tread (tubed version) on my MTB and think it's about a C+ or maybe B in terms of quality but woudl love something better. Suggestions? I need to check and see if these wheels can run tubed tires as an option. Not clear on this....

Photo by Guitar Ted.

Single barriers are cake. Doubles are obviously 2 x as hard. JPow makes it look nijs.

The gluing will start in a week to get everything finalized on the wheels. I'm going Yellow SwissStops on the FSA's and Green on the new Reflexes. I'm actually thinking of getting that old Scott CX Team frame re built up as well to have a thrasher. I have enough parts as I was cycling through my parts bin. I may even 1 x 1 it. Dunno. Vee shall see.

What did you do today to get ready for cross?

I guess I am pretty much done with my equipment for this upcoming season (knock on wood). Mike at BCS dialed me in on my hand built Mavic Reflex/DT Hugi 240 wheel set. Threw the Dugasts on there to stretch a bit before they have to get glued on.

Interesting tidbit that many of you will yawn at because you already know but I never realized: The latex tubes in sew-ups like Dugasts leak air so much more quickly than butyl tubes. Don't worry when they seem like they may be slow leaking (after a day or two). They're fine. It's just that the latex rubber is way more permeable than butyl. The latex advantage is its suppleness. You do not quite get the same level of suppleness with butyl apparently but we'll see. Thanks Evan for telling me that!