OK…TRUE success story here! I wrote a post a few months ago to help expose my good friend Brady Kappius’ company, Broken Carbon (follow him on Twitter here as well). As it comes to pass, I was cleaning off my Ridley X-Fire from its caked on mud from training and that’s when I saw it…and the cold rush ran down my back…

Yes, I wept. I have ZERO idea how this crack and hole got into the chainstay or how long it was there. It was a literally a hole in the carbon. But without even leaving the garage after I discovered the hole, I simply whipped the phone out of my pocket, called Brady, sent him this picture and he said in the most calm manner: “No probs. I’ll pick it up, fix it and it’ll be as good as new.”

And holy shit did he! Just got the bike back and look at this. It is meticulously fixed, polished and nearly blends in perfectly. Check it…

Outside view of the chainstay:

Inside view of the chainstay:

THANK YOU BRADY! By steed’s back to life and waitin’ to be ridden. HUP!!!!!!!!!!!!

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

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