Thanks man. I'm loving this bike! I still have some connection issues with the Anderson powerpoles, but I'm going to order some xt-90s with my next check. Oh @one4torque what are you doing at my liquor store?
Kaldeem my advice to upgrade your breaks wasn't written very well. I kind of wondered between mechanical and hydraulic, SRAM and Shimano. This article has a better summary of brake performance and points out the good news that SRAM guide brakes might now be the best of all brakes. http://www.bikemag.com/gear/components/brakes/blueprint-sram-guide-brakes/#8ogy8Pu4UhCyg7tp.97 The video at the top of the page says it all. Well done too.
Haven't been riding as much as I'd like. Mainly due to my own laziness and my chain which kept dropping off when switching gears. So I started doing some research and even though there are some guides out there that are like 50$-60$ which is reasonable and some that aren't, I decided to build DIY one myself.
Using a rear reflector I completely disassembled it. Next I wedged some heat shrink on the coupling part and using a lighter formed it to the ring.
After that its just a matter of reassembling the reflector in a way that using some zip ties it will hold tension on your chian. See pics below.
When all is said and done it should look like this on your bike.
And that's how I fixed my chain dropping issue with spending any money.
Here's a picture of my rear rack and Panniers. They are ROS brand. I have them linked in the first post of this thread if anyone is interested in them.