Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Hot Single Mama

This post is to give, those that want to know, a little insight on what drives my desire to lust after the ellusive Salsa Selma. Again, for those of you that want to know, please, read on. For those that don't care, well, then just read it anyway. I have installed a virus that will be downloaded onto your hard drive if you exit this blog without reading it. Skimming through the blog is good enough. Just retain some of what you skimmed.

Ok. Back in 2007 Salsa introduced the Mamasita. It is a 29er race frame. Flattened carbon seatstays and flattened scandium chainstays. The rest of the frame is made from scandium. Scandium is an aluminum variety. My first Mamasita felt like a springy super lightweight, steel frame. Very lively ride. In fact, more lively than most steel frames I had ridden. I have owned a few very nice steel frames too. A nice Bontrager Race Lite was one of them. This Mama out performed them all I think and it came in much light than those steel frames. I do still ove steel so don't get me wrong. For many years now I have been a single speeder so this desire to get back on a single speed was aways on my mind. As soon as I threw a leg over that Mama I knew I needed to get a SS Mama. So, after years of bugging the crap out of the Salsa crew they decided to make one. Ok, make more than one and I am sure it wasn't just me that wanted one. But, this time I take pride on being the most annoying caller Salsa has ever hear from. Sorry Bobby! I know you took a lot of flak from me but I know you have thick skin. Really white, but thick none the less. Reminds me of the guy in the movie Powder. No, I'm kidding. Powder was more of a shade of blue.

Ok. Back the the subject at hand. So, I started hearing rumors a while back about a conversation that took place at Interbike or Sea Otter about this dude from MTBR, G-Ted, a Salsa big wig and some other fella. Not sure who that was. The "SS Mama" was brought up. I hear there was one sentence that referred to the bike and I guess that was enough. So, this brings me to the bike of my dreams. I should mention this too but I have a problem with bikes. I love them all and everything new is pretty cool to me. But, this Selma is one frame I have loved before I even laid my eyes on one.

Selma. Selma is the name chosen by Salsa to be laid underneath the clear coat on my SS Mama. Love the name. I wanted the color to be the silver to pearl white fade like the Campeon but I received a real treat when I found out that the chosen color was a metallic gray with a blue hue. Then, the bright bold blue decals that lay ontop of that gray. Yes! Salsa did it. Suprised me and made me even more excited about this bike.

So, what sets the Selma apart from the Mamasita? Not much really. An eccentric bottom bracket for chain tensioning. Lack of cable stops for running gears. That's about it. They left ever rider the nice subtle option of adding a rear derailier hanger for running gears. You could very easily run a 1xsomething. You would just need to run full cable housing. Pretty cool. I heard that the Selma will have a bit stiffer tubing to handle the extra stress that many will be inflicting on the frame when mashing up the climbs. So, not much else to say except see you on the trail when I get mine.

Thanks for reading. Here is a direct link to the Salsa Selma. I just realized that there is a referrence to someone named Bob in Salsa's description of the Selma. I am betting that they are referring to Bob Barker though. Ha!

Here is another link.

Ok, if there are mistakes I will correct them later. I am late for work.

Captain

3 comments:

Guitar Ted said...

I just want to go on record here to say that I had nothing to do with this Selma infatuation. ;-)

Hope it comes soon buddy! Nobody has waited longer than you have!

Captain Bob said...

It's all your fault!

bluecolnago said...

geez, cap'n .... you're a celebrity too! :)