Mountain-bike chainstays give you room for 43cm knobbies, and a triple-chainring setup is not only an option, it's recommended. This bike has worn a lot of different suits over the years; in its last incarnation, before I sold it to a teammate, it wore a Ritchey Logic triple (24/36/46, 175mm arms) sprouting from a 105 bottom bracket; a 7-speed 105 drivetrain (12/28) with bar-end shifters and Ultegra aero' brake levers; Dia-Compe 986 canti's; a pair of Ritchey AlfaBite 40s clinching Mavic MA-2 rims mated to LX hubs (the rear spacing is 135mm, though 130mm is now standard; the wheelset was liberated from a VooDoo Loa with identical spacing); Salsa stem in a 105 headset, Modolo anatomic bars wrapped with Off the Front's Mad Dog tape, an Avenir saddle atop a Control Tech post, and Time pedals. My frameset was built of Excell tubing, and the whole deal weighs about 22 pounds. These days, Brent uses Reynolds 853 for the CC, and estimates average frame weight at 3.8 pounds.

I always liked the slightly sloping top tube, where the cables are routed; that's part of what attracted me to the VooDoo. Lots of clearance for Big Jim and the Twins in case of emergency. And though I'm 6 feet tall and 170 pounds, I never had any trouble throwing my shoulder through the main triangle. With the 40s on this dude, I went riding damn' near everywhere. I particularly enjoyed riding it on single-track and up the steep, rocky two-track paralleling Willow Creek, a spot popular with campers, horsemen and hunters ... they usually thought I was some looney on a road bike.

-- Patrick O'Grady/Mad Dog Media