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Hours:
Monday-Friday: 11am–7pm
Saturday: 10am–5pm
Sunday: Closed

Ph: 773.654-3419

3259 W Lawrence Avenue
Chicago, IL 60625
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Custom Santa Cruz Jackal

November 2, 2018

   

“Who mountain bikes in Chicago?” “There are no mountains here.” “This isn’t Colorado, California, Arizona, or North Carolina. Why would I get a pricey mountain bike if I live in this big city with no mountains?”

We hear things like that all the time in the shop. It gets a little frustrating because while all of those places offer amazing trails and riding, you shouldn’t just dismiss our city all together and give up on mountain biking here. Sure, you have to get a little creative within the city limits, and need to drive a bit to get to sanctioned, maintained trails with singletrack. Which is why a 26″ dirt jump bike makes a lot of sense if you live here and want to scratch your mountain bike itch more than once or twice per week. Just 1.5 miles from the front door of our shop, and soon to have an off-street bike path covering almost that entire distance along the river is The Garden- Chicago Dirt Jumps. The Garden is in the heart of the city and has something for everyone with a pump track featuring table top jumps for beginners and small, medium, and large jump lines for everyone to hone their skills. Also within the city limits, but further away from the shop on the South Side of the city is Big Marsh Bike Park. Big Marsh is much newer than the Garden, but the first phase of the park has been completed and features some great jump lines, a street section, pump track, and short singletrack loops with progressive features to help you build up your skills.

There are also skateparks in the City of Chicago where you can get creative with your riding. Wilson Skatepark and the Logan Square Skatepark in particular are fun places to get your transition on. You can also just ride around the city and find plenty of spots to session and mess around with like Brandon Semenuk did when he visited Chicago a few years ago.

You would be hard pressed to find a better 26″ dirt jump bike than the Santa Cruz Jackal. The Jackal is available as a frame-only from Santa Cruz for $745, and then you custom build the bike with your choice of parts from there.  Here is one we just built up for a customer:

 

The highlight of the build is the Rockshox Pike DJ fork. In our opinion, this is the nicest 26″ dirt jump specific fork on the market. It’s got 35mm chassis for plenty of strength and support, a custom tuned Charger Damper to smooth out rough landings, and a solo airspring with built in bottom-out resistance to give the fork good, smooth progression while also keeping it from bottoming out after a big drop. The fork came with an extra set of stickers for the lowers, so we removed the traditional white, black, and red ones and replaced them with black-on-black to match the subdued color sceme of the rest of the bike.

The Jackal comes with sliding rear dropouts with an integrated derailleur hanger, so you can easily run the bike with or without gears. We opted to go single-speed on this build. The frame has a 73mm English-threaded bottom bracket shell with ISCG tabs. We decided to use Truvativ Descendant cranks with a Dub spindle and bottom bracket to give the cranks some stiffness. The 32 tooth chainring pulls a 17 tooth Surly cog on the back wheel.

We installed Truvativ Hussefelt bars, stem, and seatpost on the bike. This gave us the strength and support we were looking for without breaking the bank. The bars are finished with ODI x Vans grips in natural rubber color. The 90’s skateboarder in us appreciates these grips. There was a bit of debate about what to do with the brakes on this bike. At first, we were just going to build the bike with only one basic brake on the rear, which would be totally suitable for park riding. But then we talked it over with the customer and decided to run both brakes, since the bike would be ridden in busy urban streets as well as being used at the park. The customer already had a NOS pair of Shimano XT levers, so we just got a simple set of Shimano calipers to mate with them. We left plenty of extra hose on the rear brake, and ran the front brake hose through the topcap and steerer tube to allow the bars to spin around freely, either for tricks or in case of bike-bails so the bars can spin around without kinking or breaking the hoses.

We used Standard Issue wheels from Atomlab on the build. Again, we wanted to prioritize durability without breaking the bank. These are great wheels, but we found the stickers on the rims to be a bit much, so we removed those also to preserve the clean look of the bike. We topped off the wheels with Maxxis DTS tires in 26″x2.1″ in skinwall. We think these tires look great on this bike, and we have had nothing but good luck with Maxxis mountain bike tires. The last fun detail on the bike is the Chromag Overture saddle in Rawhide finish.

We hope the owner has as much fun riding this bike as we did building it!

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/TAILWINDCYCLES

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Thanks to everyone who came out for Lisa's (@yo_uterus ) Shookie ride today! Keep an eye out for another one in June. 
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#bikergram #bikeride #groupride #bikes #wemakeyourrideeasy
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We've been down in Calumet Park supporting the Half Acre Cycling Skyway beginner Criterium series this week. We are extremely happy to be given the opportunity to help out with this series. The importance of Half Acre Cycling's commitment to inclusivity and effort to bring new bike racers into the Chicago racing scene is huge! 

This year is a special one for @boxwrenchben , as 2023 marks the ten-year anniversary of his journey into being a race mechanic. Ben went to the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to obtain a professional mechanic's license in the fall of 2012, and worked Neutral Support professionally for the first time for NRS and Events in the Spring of 2013. He has worked as a neutral support race mechanic or pro team mechanic at races every year since 2013.

The Skyway Crit Series is great for new racers because the course is beginner friendly and the focus is on the lower categories, rather than some of the bigger race series in the area. One part of crit racing that is often overlooked by new racers is how the race pit, technical assistance, and free laps during the race all work. The foundation of providing neutral support at a race is being able to provide technical assistance to the racers while at the same time adhering to the rules of the race, and also helping racers re-enter the race safely after taking a free lap. One of the requirements of obtaining a USA Cycling mechanics license is to take and pass the USA Cycling Officials license test. This ensures that the mechanic can work with the race officials to make sure everyone can race safely and fairly.   

A lot of bike racers (new and experienced) don't actually have a great understanding of how neutral support, the race pit, and free laps work at a race. We'll go over some of the fundamentals here, and don't be afraid to ask the mechanic(s) in the pit (whenever they aren't busy) or any race official (same) if you have any questions. You can also go to the USA Cycling website and download a pdf of the official 2023 rulebook. Criterium racing rules are covered in chapter 3. 

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Here it is! We finished up the facade improvement project on the shop. We had the talented @cantarella.ink come by and hand paint our signs and lower window murals.
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#newsign #newsignday #facade #improvement #mural #streetart #handpainted #wemakeyourrideeasy
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We had another great employee bike maintenance day at @halfacrebeer yesterday! @alscorch and @boxwrenchben were able to service almost 30 employees bikes. Setting up our portable workshop amongst all the Bourbon barrels they use to barrel-age some of their beers was a perfect setting. We even got to sample some delicious beers after we finished up in the evening. 
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#beer #mobilebikeshop #bikemechanic #bikemaintenance #halfacre #wemakeyourrideeasy
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