I had my first ride on the Yess Type X after building it up and I really enjoyed it until I hurt my shoulder again and had to come home 🙁
The bike looks amazing in the sun and rides even better than it looks. Unfortunately it is going to be hung back on the wall for a while longer as my shoulder is obviously not up to riding a race bike just yet.
As I am going to be on the Jump bike for a while longer now I have bitten the bullet and bought a Standard Bykes 26″ Jump bike frame like the one below:
Once this arrives I will replace my Airdrop Fade frame with this one and ride this one 100% of the time for the rest of the year to see if I can race on it properly or not. I went with a 22″ top tube in the end and went for black as I didn’t want a super bling frame as the Airdrop Fade frame is really shinny and really draws attention which I don’t really like too much (Not that you could tell with the colour that I painted the Yess 🙂 ).
Looking at the specs of the frame all the parts off of the Airdrop will fit apart from the seat post but its the same size as a race BMX so I can use my box Carbon seat on it anyway! A full list of the specs are:
Head angle 69
Seat tube angle 71
Chain stay length 15.5 slammed.
BB height 12.25
Stand over 11″
Top tube lengths 21.5, 22, 23
3/16 thick water jet cut drop outs with integrated disk brake mount.
27.2 seat tube
44mm headtube (for tapered fork)
Integrated head tube is a no cost option
73mm Euro BB
135MM rear spacing
There are a few people in the States that have won national Championships on these frames so I should have no excuse to not be able to race on it when it is built up.
I have some thinner tyres (26×2.1) arriving soon so I will save them for the Standard build as I will also get some Tubolitos to make the wheels lighter as well to feel better on the track. I bought some new pedals for the jump bike yesterday anyway so I will build the bike up with clipless pedals for the track as I don’t feel comfortable riding flats on the track! They are fine on pump tracks but I just can’t get used to them on the track so I will start riding clipped in again this week.
Until the Standard arrives I will only ride the NS to try and protect my shoulder as much as I can then when the Standard Arrives I will build that up and only ride that at weekends and leave the NS in the container as my container bike to ride during the week. At weekends I will drive to the track so will bring the Standard to ride. And when I can wake my Son up to go ride his bike will already be in the container ready to ride.
I am going just about to clean and dry my Son’s Airdrop Fade frame to put it on the internet to sell to get some cash back from buying the Standard as I think that it should re-coup at least half of the price of the Standard so that will help a lot.
As my shoulder is still pretty bad I have decided that I will not work on my speed for now and instead concentrate on building skills on the track instead. For now I will work on manuals and jumping and concentrate on riding the 3rd straight which is the flow straight at the track and also work on my jumping on the tabletop on the 2nd straight as well. My plan for now is Jumping Mon, Wed and Friday and Manuals on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I will ride at lunch time for an hour a day.
I have just bought a new body armour as my current one is really annoying to wash as it needs the pads taking out and putting in again after washing so I end up not using it much at all. I will keep this body armour as my race body armour as it can then be cleaned easily between races.