Bronze Gears

All For Now

2012-01-13T16:35:00.000-08:00

I started writing here for a number of reasons -- to give myself something to do, to explore social media and exercize a writing muscle, to share what I learned from my bike or tractor projects. But it's also served as a long and broken love letter at times, and I guess most importantly, as a way of exploring my own thoughts and feelings as I embarked on the process of tearing down and redefining my world. I've had a lot going on in the three plus years I've been writing.

But I feel better. I have for a long time, but even more so of late.

I'm not hiding in projects anymore. I know who I want to be right now, if not necessarily two years from now. I'm enjoying being a dad. I'm enjoying getting out into the world (literally, the world). I'm building and re-establishing friendships. I'm re-imagining where I might live and what I might do when I get there. I'm providing value in my work, and trying to imagine ways of delivering more. I can even hear better, thanks to Siemens.

But the main thing is I feel better.

If you've spent any time up here, I hope you've found something of value. But even if you haven't, I certainly have. Bronze Gears has been good for me for a long time. As meditation. As expression. As exploration. But it was inevitable that it would run its course.

Thank you for reading.

That's all.

J

Winter Training

2011-12-30T18:25:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm up to 60 trainer miles this winter. Not too bad, considering I sprained my ankle not too long ago. Today was 14 miles at 19.5 mph on the rollers. Paired with a workout of 60 push-ups, 100 abdominal reps (three types), and 18 pull-ups, I think I just about burned off last night's dessert.

To that end, I've been pretty bad this holiday, with the eating. Lots of chocolate. Need to get back on the wagon and set that stuff aside. And back on the trainer to burn what I ate off.

Three plus months left indoors. By mid-April I want to be back outside logging miles.

All for now,

J

Pending Ears

2011-12-11T18:38:00.000-08:00

If you were to spend time in my company, either conversing with me or observing me in conversation, you would soon notice that my hearing isn't great. I often ask someone to repeat him/herself, because I've missed a word or phrase. I've become reasonably adept at filling the gaps where a spoken word has eluded me, but that's a guessing game and I don't always guess correctly -- not by a long shot.

It's long since time to do something about that, so in January, I'm getting hearing aids. I've avoided this mostly because of a perceived stigma (perceived by me, which may say more about my own biases than anyone else's), but things have reached a point where I believe not hearing well is hurting me socially and professionally more than any perceived handicap might. So I'm biting the bullet and will let perceptions fall where they may.

I'll have more to say about them when they arrive, and even more once I've had some experience with them in the real world. But the truth is I'm kind of excited to get them at this point. Almost hungry for them, even. I've sampled what the world can be like with full hearing (briefly, in the office of an audiologist who I think was screwing with me perhaps more than just a little), and I was pretty close to overwhelmed by what I heard. Heard! In all seriousness, I was a little choked up.

I'm also not going to try to hide them. They'll be metallic titanium gray, not putty-colored, and they'll be no more hidden than any other piece of enabling technology in my life, whether my glasses or my Jawbone or my iPhone. And if they work as well for me as I experienced in that office, I'll talk them up to anyone who'll listen. Already, two of my friends (both women), have acknowledged that they should do the same thing, and there are doubtless countless others in my world who have some sort of hearing loss.

I don't have the specs handy, but the Siemens units I'm getting are technical powerhouses, and are very, very cool. The electronics package is housed in little lozenge shapes that will fit up behind the tops of my ears, with a little clear tube that runs down into my ears to a speaker and receiver placed into my ear canal.

They're programmable, and will be configured to offset my specific hearing loss (per ear), which looks like an inverted bell curve (I can hear just fine at the upper and lower ranges of human hearing, but not as well in the middle). They're networked with each other, and will compare inputs and make sure they're amplifying in such a way as to not confuse the source of sound for me. They'll also allow me to stream music from my iPhone via a Bluetooth adapter (!), as well as to use them as a handsfree setup. They're rechargeable via a little USB-powered case that will also dry them out electronically while they charge. No fumbling with batteries, once a week. I've no idea whether I'll be able to use them when I ride, but I use my eyes (with a mirror on my glasses lens) much more than my ears on the bike, anyway (wind noise blots out a lot of what I might want to listen to anyway).

We'll see how they work in practice in the real world, and I'll share more when I have more to share. I'm expecting them to be life-changing. And I'm hoping not to be disappointed.

All for now,

J

Picking Up

2011-12-11T06:22:00.000-08:00

It's only natural that as we are consumed with one set of things in the course of our lives, other things are set aside. We are finite beings, with insufficient ability or capacity to address everything we might wish to, and our priorities are often defined for us by the circumstances surrounding us at any given point in our lives.

We've all set aside hobbies or projects as our capacity to engage in them has changed. We've set aside dreams and ideas and relationships. And we've been set aside, as well. At least that's all true of my own path. Capacity is certainly not the only driver -- our interests and desires shift as we make our way. We don't always want tomorrow what we wanted yesterday.

Lately, though, I've come to realize that it isn't always hard to pick up again something that was once set aside. I've been able to re-establish connections, rethink ideas and priorities, and reconsider the level of commitment I can make to one thing or another. And it's been refreshing to realize that these need not be thought of as lost. To realize how much I can influence my own perspective about them, and their role in my life.

All for now,

J

Winter Projects

2011-12-04T18:48:00.000-08:00

Well, that's the second unseasonably nice weekend that's passed without being able to get out on a bike. It's not unusual to leave the bikes alone after Thanksgiving, of course, so there's no real regret mixed in with that statement, but it'd have been nice to log a few miles outside!

As it was, though, I managed to log a few trainer miles (rollers) today, for my first winter project -- staying somewhat trim and fit! I did a little more adjusting and dialing-in of the Colnago in the process, and it's just a wee bit more ready for me now than it was two days ago, so that's good. And I found the right place in the apartment, here, for the trainer -- in my bathroom. Easy to mop up the floor, narrow enough that I won't kill myself or break anything, and the dog can't sneak up on my from behind and stick his nose or tail in a spinning wheel. Plus the fan keeps it from getting stuffy.

I also managed to pick up a new winter project. The family homestead in Connecticut was cleaned out on Saturday, in preparation for the buyer who will be taking it out of Ellsworth hands for the first time since the house was built, 223 years ago. The house was about the same age as the constitution of the United States, and I understand it sat on a parcel of land not far from the original land grant to the family, dating back to the mid-1600's. The farm was largely just a place for holidays for me, so this wasn't a personal milestone for me. But it was certainly one for many of my relatives, and it was certainly a family milestone.

Anyway, while we were cleaning out the garage, I snagged my great aunt's old Puch 10-speed mixte. My older sister has been casually looking for a bike out in Chicago, and this one would fit her just fine. It's not a great bike, as far as components and materials go, but it's not half bad. The tubeset is Tange Champion, and the only real lapse in the frameset is the matching set of stamped steel rear dropouts, complete with derailleur claw and bolt-on rear wheel. But my sister is a causal cyclist, and this thing is only a few upgrades away from being a perfectly nice bike for her to use with her kids around the neighborhood. Plus there's some history there.

It needs tires, a chain, new brake pads, tubes, new cables, a full repack of all bearings, and it'd work as intended. It could stand an aluminum handlebar and seatpost, a better saddle, better grips, better derailleurs, better pedals, a cartridge bottom bracket and an alloy headset. The Taiwanese clone of a Pletscher CS needs the struts to be shortened, as well, just as I did with the two Pletschers gracing my daughter's bikes. Maybe a bit of polishing of the rack and kickstand, too. It would be hard to spend less than $100 to get it rolling, and easy to spend $500 to make it fancy. But I have lots of parts on-hand that would constitute upgrades, and I'm going to see what I can do with this puppy. Alison hasn't yet told me whether she wants it, but if she does, I'll tear into it sometime over the winter.

First, though, I need to get Ava's Fuji apart and then back together in a configuration matching her desires. I have a set of stem shifters to use for the time being, new cables and housings, as well as a drop bar to put on there. But I need to find an appropriate stem, with very short reach, or those drop bars will need a set of interruptor/cross levers thrown on as well. Maybe we'll kick things off during our down time between Christmas and the new year.

Both projects are great examples of the durability of older steel bikes. Neither is especially fancy or light, but both framesets are perfectly serviceable 20 or maybe even 30 years after they were made. And they are both poised to help promote cycling within different parts of my family. I love this kind of stuff!

All for now,

J

Retired

2011-11-25T19:32:00.000-08:00

After serving me for 18 years, my Kestrel's frameset now hangs in my living room. Retired, but seen and appreciated every day.

Definitely a guy's apartment. But it's not this monochromatic or dark most of the time.

All for now,

J

Last of the Season?

2011-11-25T19:20:00.000-08:00

Today I installed a computer on the Colnago, threw on the wool long sleeved jersey I bought at Rivendell when I was there in August, pulled a pair of Hot Chilis ski tights over my riding shorts, capped it off with my rain jacket and fingered gloves, and put 19 miles on my new bike. It really is a nice ride, and I'm enjoying it immensely. I was slooooooow today, though, which isn't really surprising, given that I haven't ridden much since the weather turned and since I sprained my right ankle. It felt good to get out, though, and the ankle didn't hold me back much, if at all.

And! I managed to do a good deed while I was out there: A woman en route from Boston to Worcester had a slow leak and was struggling with reinstalling her rear wheel after an apparently aborted attempt to change it out. I pulled the tube, failed to find a leak, swapped it, reinstalled it, the tire and the wheel, and gave her a couple of stick-on patches to use when she arrived in Worcester and had access to a sink to find the leak. I finished my ride with filthy hands (she's evidently been riding that Specialized in the rain), but my gloves kept the Colnago's white bar tape mercifully clean.

I might be able to get out again on Sunday, but I have the girls with me this weekend, and I'm guessing it'll be a short ride, if a ride at all. So today's loop may prove to be the last one of the season. If so, it was nothing to complain about. A nice ride on a beautiful day on a lovely new bike, capping off a decent season of riding mostly the Motobecane, including in my first Pan-Mass Challenge.

As for the Colnago, it could use a coat of wax, and I'm kicking myself for not having done that before I (impatiently) assembled it. And during the ride, the seatpost slipped down a bit, even though it was snugged all the way. Which told me that the seatpost is still a little undersized. Some fooling around with a screwdriver allowed me to spread the seatpost binder clamp a bit, and (finally) allow me to slip the 27.2 post from the Kestrel into place. This one should be the actual correct size, and is a much nicer post than the cheapy Kalloy I'd been using, anyway. The bars need to come up a bit as well, but the stem is at its limit already. I'm still thinking about pedals, too -- but not for today.

My rollers stand ready in my office, here, and I'm guessing my next intense ride will be on those, rather than out in the world. The cold weather gear kept me plenty warm, though, so I may be able to eke out one or two more before I give it up until April. Maybe by then I'll have resolved what to do with the Motobecane. Then again, maybe not...

All for now,

J

Done Lovely

2011-11-06T06:46:00.000-08:00

Not much to say about it today, but the Colnago build is done -- finished this morning in the gorgeous autumn sunshine, while a pair of hawks wheeled and cried out overhead.

It's a lovely bike with not such a lovely backdrop. White Cinelli cork wrap, braided stainless V-O cable kits, stainless cages, MKS track pedals with MKS toe clips and V-O leather straps (black to match the Selle San Marco Regal), Nitto Dynamic stem and Nitto B115 handlebars in the classic square-shouldered, round-drop bend, held in by a Nitto Dynamic stem that I wish had just a tad more quill length (but I wanted a Dynamic, not a Technomic, on this bike).

Easily the prettiest bike I've owned.

All for now,

J

Am I Serious?

2011-11-02T20:14:00.000-07:00

I like to think of myself as pretty seriously into bikes and riding. I love to ride, though I don't get out as much as I'd like to. And I work on my own bikes like few others I know do. I build bikes for my kids, and experiment with my own setups and gear. Then there's this blog... Pretty serious, all told.

Even so, I've had a bit of an internal struggle with the build of the Colnago -- particularly with the pedals.

As I walked Jake tonight, there was just a hint of ache in my left knee. An ache that started probably 15 years ago, now, on a benefit ride. In truth, it was my own fault -- I'd just been dumb. Rather than having cleats installed professionally, I swapped a new set onto my shoes a few days before that ride, and weakened the cartilege in my left knee, riding while twisting my foot against spring tension over the 200 mile weekend. I ended up with a tear in the meniscus that was snipped away by an orthopedic surgeon within a year, but my knee has never been really pain-free since.

I've figured out that I need a narrow Q-factor to avoid the pain. And I removed all of the Look pedals from my fleet to ensure that I can always move my feet to a position that feels right on the knees. I still have a pair of Looks, though -- the first set I ever bought. And I've been tempted to install them on the Colnago, buy a new set of shoes, and use those this winter and next season. Or get a set of Speedplays and a new set of shoes. This, in lieu of the toe clips and straps I've used happily on the Motobecane the past year or so.

Why though? On the PMC this year, I suffered no nerve damage in my toes from undue pressure on my feet, riding in running shoes and toe clips. The toe clips offered great support under the balls of my feet, and voila! No turned-off toes at the finish. Every other benefit ride I've done has left me with middle toes numb for literally months. And I doubt I was materially slower on the ride for my choice of pedals.

The thing is, though, there's a part of me -- maybe a part of every enthusiast, and maybe not so small -- that wants to be seen (by myself and by others) as serious about my sport. Serious enough to understand the pros and cons of different pieces of equipment, and spring for the things that will help me be a stronger rider. And that same part of me, or one really close by, doesn't want to be seen as a bumpkin, riding some quaint old thing. To some extent, that's the reason I have the Colnago in the first place -- the Motobecane is very much a quaint old thing, no matter how much I love it or how well it performed on the PMC. It's vanity, I know. The same thing that's kept me away from hearing aids for the past decade or so.

As I look at the Colnago, with its downtube shifters and track pedals, I really can't help but contemplate an upgrade to Shimano brifters and a pair of Speedplays. I'm holding off for now. I ordered a set of MKS clips and Velo-Orange straps tonight, in fact. But the vain/serious cyclist in me keeps surfing bike porn on the Web, looking for a deal. Looking for serious.

All for now,

J

First Spin on the Colnago

2011-10-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

I've been traveling for a few days, but when I got home today, a couple of packages awaited me -- packages containing the last of what I needed to finish up the Colnago build. I still have to wrap the bars (didn't want to until I confirmed the fit of the stem, which is good enough), and mess around with the fit a little, but I took it for a few loops around my parking lot outside tonight, and my first impressions are really good. It's light and nimble, but not twitchy -- it feels great. It doesn't have the stiffness of the Kestrel in the bottom bracket, or the sensational power delivery that bike had. But even with just a few loops, it feels significantly sportier than my mongrel Motobecane. Should be interesting to see how they feel during back-to-back comparisons.

The build was a bit of a pain. I needed to overhaul the rear brake caliper a bit and space it out from the brake bridge, as well. The bridge is slimmer than the Kestrel's, so the nut was too deep. And then I had to dig through a bag of spare ferrules (thank you Steven!) to find one that meshed properly with the cable stop on the Colnago's right chainstay -- I'd have been SOL if not for that bag of parts! And I cut the front brake cable housing about an inch too short and now need to fix that -- boo. Also, the headset got all chewed up when I serviced it, and now looks positively awful -- the aluminum was just too soft for the stress it was subjected to (it was really stuck). Then, I discovered the rear derailleur's cable clamp nut and washer are missing, and I have to order new ones (I found a nylock nut and washer that'll suffice for now). Add the seatpost and binder bolt challenges I talked about last time, and I have the distinct impression this bike just didn't want to go together -- or maybe the Japanese components and Italian frameset have some sort of aversion to one another.

In any case, it's ready for a first ride! That'll be this weekend if the weather cooperates. I need to put the pump on and a saddle bag, and tape the bars (in white), of course. But that's all of a half hour or so of work -- not much.

Can't wait!

All for now,

J

Getting There

2011-10-20T17:48:00.000-07:00

Everyone, meet my new "fast" bike. It's an early '90's Colnago, built up with the components that most recently graced the Kestrel, whose frameset now hangs over my television in my apartment. It has a chrome fork, as you can see, and a right side chainstay that's also chromed (along with the rear dropouts). The head tube lugs are polished stainless, which I think matches the polish of the chrome really nicely! Otherwise, it's a beautiful Italian red with white accenting clubs and other graphics, including a few fades. It's a work in progress, as you see it, aimed at getting in a trial run, and not much more.

Tonight I wheeled it over next to the Motobecane to compare its size to what I'm riding right now. And it's really interesting, comparing this bike's geometry to the Motobecane's. The Moto seems to have a steeper seat tube, a longer top tube and only slightly longer chainstays. The steeper seat tube is a particular surprise, because it's an all-around kind of bike (marketed and branded as Grand Touring). The bottom bracket looks to be farther forward on this bike, as a result, and the saddle farther to the rear. It's a good illustration of how two frames in a similar size can adopt a few different angles and end up providing very different riding positions.

You'll have to excuse the aesthetics of the current setup. The stem is 3xugly, the curvy bars don't really harmonize with the classic frame layout, and as Italian as the tires are... let's face it -- they're orange. They do clash less with this red than the brighter red of the Kestrel, I'll admit.

And from a componentry perspective, there are several missing pieces as it sits, right now. There's no seatpost binder bolt, I think the seatpost is slightly undersized, there are no cables or brake levers installed, there are no pedals, and... I think that's it. To fix the stuff that's missing or not ideal, I've got Nitto 115 bars on order (same bars as on the Moto and I appreciate their width and square shoulders), along with a 27.0 seatpost to try vs. the current 26.8, and a pretty Nitto Dynamic 100 stem is also on the way, to primp up the looks and pull the bars in a skosh closer to me. The cables are clear plastic over braided stainless, and the tape will be white to start with. At some point during the off season, the bottom brackets on this bike and the Moto may trade places as well (Shimano for Phil Wood, with the nicer Phil going onto this bike).

I'd like to take it for a spin on Saturday, without taped bars (they'll be swapped anyway, remember). Let's see if I can get my act together enough to pull that off!

All for now,

J

Eight is way too many

2011-10-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

On the way back from dinner last night, I did a mental roll-call of the bikes I have in my (good-sized) 2-bedroom apartment and I came up with a crazy number -- eight. I have four, Ava has two, and Juli has one. Plus the trailer bike, which was Ava's, last we saw it.

That's way too many.

I'm hopeful that I can get the trailer bike into my friend Dan's hands over the Thanksgiving holiday, so that'll be one less. And Ava's Fuji will go into storage until she's big enough to ride it, next summer. So that'll get us to six in the apartment. Still too many.

I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to sell the Schwinn, and think I'm going to have to hold off until spring to get what I want for it. Putting it in storage until them will drop us to five. Still too many.

I'm in the process of building the Colnago, and should have it ready for a ride this weekend (that's the goal, anyway). And once that's done, the Motobecane will be broken down for a thorough cleaning and refresh (every time I touch it, post-rainy PMC, I get covered with grime). Through the winter, one of those two needs to be on-call for outdoor and training roller duty, so one of those or both will need to hang around. Still at five.

Then there's the Paramount, which I may yet use this fall. But once the first snow lands, it'll go into storage, which will get me down to four.

Four I think I can manage, but I'm going to need to make a decision about the Motobecane in the spring, I think.

All for now,

J

Umpteenth Life for a Fuji

2011-09-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

Today I dropped Ava's Fuji frameset off at the powdercoater. A new finish is the next step, you see, in its journey from serving countless children before it came into our hands, to serving Juliana, to serving Ava. Tomorrow it will be blasted clean of paint, degreased and powdercoated with a raspberryish pink finish. But first, I had a few things done!

I took the bike over to Belmont WheelWorks about six weeks ago, and left it in the most capable hands of Peter Mooney. Peter added braze-ons for a water bottle cage on the down tube, and a set of downtube shifter bosses just upstream of the bottle cage fittings. And there was one more change -- he brazed the flat side of a Pletscher CS rack clamp to the seatstays, right at the point the rack I modified to fit the Fuji bolts up. So in essence, when Ava and I build the bike up this winter, we won't need to clamp anything around the freshly refinished frame tubes -- clever, eh? Yeah, I thought so too!

The brazing work was beautiful, though I neglected to snap a photo of it. Oh, well...

So what else? Well, he straightened out the rear dropouts, which had been spread at some point to accept a 126mm rear hub. Oh, and he clued me in as to why I've been unable to close the rear QR lever without adding another spacer -- the rear axle is too long and needs to be ground or filed down. Easy fix!

I have many of the parts ready for the build, too. I need 130mm BCD chainrings, in maybe a 38 and a 46. Plus a headset. And cables and a few other incidentals, but really very little. And as this bike comes together, the trailer bike is due to be decommissioned and sent to its next home up in Canada. I need to talk to my friend Dan to see if he's ready to put his oldest on it, and I hope they have as much fun with it as we have!

I'll post a pic when the frame comes back. It should be done tomorrow, but I doubt I'll be able to get over there this week -- maybe next.

All for now,

J

A Small Milestone

2011-09-05T17:20:00.000-07:00

Ava rode 16 miles and change today. Solo, on her little mountain bike. A little Gary Fisher that's possibly older than she is.

We rode from the start of the Nashua River rail trail to downtown Pepperel, where we stopped for some ice cream and then turned around.

Go Ava!

All for now,

J

Cutting Back

2011-09-04T20:12:00.000-07:00

I've been going through the process of thinning my herd of bikes for a while, now. I retired the Kestrel, got rid of the Columbia cruiser and my Trek MTB, and most recently sent the Shogun (in triple form) off to live with my folks with the hope that Dad would make some use of it in the coming years. But moving from a house with a barn to an apartment with no onsite storage has given me the need and the opportunity to think more about simplifying my bicycle situation.

At the moment, I've got three bikes here at my new place, plus one bike each for my two daughters, plus the trailer bike. I also have Ava's naked Fuji frame, which is being reworked a bit, and the Kestrel frameset is hanging on a wall as a piece of industrial art. Slimmed back or not, that's still a lot of bikes to keep in an apartment. Makes me feel a bit like I'm hoarding to have them tucked away in every nook and cranny!

Time will take care of the girls' bike situation, of course. Ava will eventually grow into the Fuji, and when she does, the trailer bike and her little Gary Fisher MTB will be sent out into the world for others to enjoy. That'll leave the girls with two bikes between them (and no parts boxes!), which is pretty rational. But I'm not going to grow out of any of my three bikes -- at least not physically. I have with me my Paramount MTB, my Motobecane Grand Touring "fast" road bike, and my Schwinn Sports Tourer "touring" road bike. The only way this fleet is going to shrink is by making some hard choices.

The Motobecane's frame and some of its components were a gift to me from my friend Steven. This was nearly three years ago, during my separation, and in a sense, the bike is emblematic of that period of my life. So though it's a mongrel in every sense of the word, as an artifact it's really important to me. It's also a joy to ride, and it carried me faithfully through this year's PMC without incident, and has served as my "fast" bike the past two seasons. But for all practical purposes, the Motobecane is approaching the end of its usefulness to me. The frame is starting to creak a bit down by the bottom bracket, and no amount of tightening of bottom bracket rings and crank or chainring bolts seems to be curing that.

I've considered parting it out and scrapping the frameset, but I feel like the bike deserves better. It's not ideal for my needs anymore, but it can still serve someone very well. So I've begun offering it to people I know need a bike. The first offer has been made to my former next door neighbor's son, who needs a good bike for college. As long as Matt has a backpack, this should be an ideal bike for getting around campus, and it's a great bike to teach him about cycling and maintaining a bike as an adult, which is different than beating around on a bike as a kid.

So that's one. Next up is the Schwinn. This bike has been a great project. I've tinkered and experimented more on it than on any other I've owned (the Paramount being a close second), and it's been a pleasure to own, ride and work on. It is strong, comfortable, and is the best all-around ride in my stable -- able to tote loaded baskets and bags, tow the trailer bike and follow grassy and gravelly paths without faltering. As an only bike, it would be a practical and rational choice. But bikes are more than tools to me -- they're toys. And toys come with an emotional component, for me -- I want to love the few bikes I'm going to own in this new chapter I'm entering. The Schwinn would be liked and respected, not treasured, so it's time to let it go.

The Paramount will stay for now, and though I'd love a modern MTB, my guess is that I'll have it for a number of years to come.

Of course, giving up the Moto and Schwinn would leave me with only one bike, and notably without a road bike. To replace the retired Kestrel, en route to me now is a Colnago fameset that will be built up with the 8-speed Shimano groupset that once adorned the Kestrel (a mix of 105SC and Ultegra). It's not Campagnolo, so there's possibly some blasphemy, there, but it's what I've got, and I don't want to break the bank on this project! I've never ridden an Italian racing frame before, and I'm looking forward to the experience (which I'll be sure to share). At worst, I'll ride it as is for a couple of seasons, then find something to replace it. But if I enjoy it as I hope to, the plan is to upgrade the old Shimano components with a thoroughly modern groupset, and use it as a platform for years to come. I'm thinking SRAM Force, but I'll let that decision come when it needs to.

For now, I'm enjoying settling into my new space, looking forward to my Colnago and Fuji projects, and am looking forward to exploring what I hope will be a simpler next stage of my life.

All for now,

J

Unburdened

2011-09-03T20:01:00.000-07:00

Though you'd never know it from reading Bronze Gears, the two months or so between my last post and this one have been really full. Amazingly full. And yet I stand at the end of the summer with a life far emptier than it's been in a long time. It's a great kind of empty, though. An empty that implies potential, rather than depletion.

This summer I vacationed in Paris and London. I sold my house and much of what it contained. I left behind two hobbies, and am attacking the third with renewed vigor. I rode in the Pan-Mass Challenge. I found a new home and am slowly making it mine -- mine with my kids and with Jake. And as I watch people dear to me establishing new stages of their lives, I am aware of myself doing the same.

It's been a busy summer. A happy summer, by and large, too. Emptying my cup of so much of the old has taken far longer than I though it would. But now that there's some room in there, I'm looking forward to adding to it. Not overburdening it -- but making it fuller. And making the mix richer this time.

I have a few projects and stories to share, and a few stories, too. I'm really tired tonight, though, so I'll have to come back to them. They'll keep, though. My cup is emptier than it's been in a long time, so there's a lot less floating around in there to spoil them.

All for now,

J

In the Woods, Old-School

2011-07-04T08:52:00.000-07:00

I should be getting some work done right about now, but I'll get back to it -- promise. Right now, I'd rather talk about mountain biking.

This weekend, I got back out into the woods on a bike -- something I haven't done to any significant degree in many years. Actually, I got out two of the three days this long weekend -- one day as a sort of practice run for the other.

In both cases, I was riding my Paramount PDG Series 20 mountain bike, pictured at top. As are all of my bikes, this one is getting seriously old, though it's been well maintained and is in pretty nice shape. I think it's a '91, though I didn't buy it until '93 or so, if memory serves. I bought it in Connecticut when visiting a friend of mine one weekend. He ended up getting the same bike in black withing a year or so -- same size and everything. It's been a good bike, and I've used it in multiple configurations and roles, over the years, including a drop-bar'd commuter with racks and road tires. But it's really been at its best in the configuration you see here -- as an old-school mountain bike.

I had plans to meet with my friend Ellen (who you can sort of see crouched behind the stone marker -- she's holding her bike up for the photo) on Sunday, and Ellen has been mountain biking pretty regularly for years. Not wanting to look like a total newbie, I headed out to Hopkinton State Park on Saturday, to reacquaint myself with mountain biking. The road ride over there was easy enough (though the Q on that bike is wrong enough that I shouldn't be logging road miles on it -- makes my knees ache), but riding definitely took some getting used to, once the road ended and the trail started.

On a mountain bike, you spend as much time out of the saddle as you do in, using your arms and legs as suspension, and a lot of body language to thread the bike over and around roots, rocks and logs. In the woods, you need strength to yank the front wheel up onto or over a barrier, and then to grunt the rear tire up on or over a moment later. The saddle is artificially low, so that it's out of the way when you need to scoot way back for a descent, or way off to the side to place the bike where you need it, but that makes your spin much less efficient.

But that works out OK, because in the woods, cycling is less about maintaining a steady pedaling cadence, and much more about maintaining momentum that's appropriate for the terrain you happen to be on that moment. At any moment, you might be grunting up a steep gravelly hill, pouring on a burst to carry you over a rise, maintaining a slow, steady pace (including back-pedaling to put your feet in the right places to squeeze between rocks), or not pedaling at all during fast descents. It's a vastly different form of the sport, at least at the level I ride, and it definitely takes some getting used to, even though I've done it many times before.

I will admit to spending a fair amount of time walking and carrying the bike on Saturday. Some of this is because of the hills at the state park, but mostly it was me getting used to riding over stuff again. But even so, I had a good time. The bike was great, too, with the exception of the seatpost. I wore out the original seatpost several years ago, and replaced it with a Tioga Prestige. This is a light chromoly seatpost with a 2-bolt steel and aluminum clamp. The problem is that the aluminum bits always seem ready to spin inside the steel clamp, no matter how tightly the bolts are snugged down. I've tried shimming the clamp, but the saddle angle still ended up changing on me several times over bumps on my ride. I tried shimming it with thicker shims this morning -- see if that holds. If not, maybe I'll try emory cloth as a shim, to put some friction into the mix.

Anyway, Saturday was fun, and it was a good warm-up for Sunday. I met Ellen at 10:00 or so at Russell Mill in Chelmsford, which is part of that town's open space. They partnered with the New England Mountain Biking Association to develop a network of trails on the property, and though it's a relatively small area, the trails are a lot of fun.

I tried not to get in Ellen's way too much, and as we put on the miles (4.25 total), I got better at getting over stuff, keeping my feet in the pedals and worrying less about holding her up. I didn't have any significant falls, though during one really fun descent, my traction seemed really poor, with my tires skittering around much more than I was comfortable with. I'm riding an old set of Panaracer Smoke and Dart Comp's, and they probably need to be replaced. They don't really seat well on my rims anyway. Maybe they were just overinflated. Or maybe it's that the bike is unsuspended. Either way, that descent, coupled with several instances of my front tire stopping dead at some relatively small obstacle that I didn't quite pull up for, got me thinking about whether a twenty-niner with front or full suspension would be more fun and more capable out there. Ellen swears by her dual-suspension Specialized, and Dan (the guy with the black Paramount) does as well. And the added momentum and greater radius of 29-er wheels help carry them over stuff that can stymie a 26, all else equal. So I guess I know what the answer is, there -- of course it would. Maybe next year. Maybe an Ellsworth Evolve? That'd be fitting, wouldn't it?

The highlight of the ride was the pump track on the site. I had no idea what a pump track was until I saw it, but it's essentially dirt roller coaster of a track, with banked corners, steep dips and hills that are an absolute blast to ride on. If you're a skateboarder, think skate park. I felt like I was 12 again. Or rather like I would have felt when I was 12 if I was a BMX biker at the time. I wasn't -- I rode 10-speeds -- but man, was this thing fun! Can't wait to do that again.

Today I've got a road ride planned, on my (starting to creak) Motobecane, but I think the net is that I'm going to spend some more time in the woods this summer. The Paramount doesn't really need anything, other than maybe new tires and maybe a new seatpost. But next summer I may need to give some thought to all these old bikes that I have, and maybe retire a dinosaur or two to make room for some new blood.

All for now,

J

Triple Shogun

2011-07-03T05:16:00.000-07:00

This morning I spent an hour converting my old Shogun to a triple crank setup for my dad. He's due for knee surgery soon, and a 42/28 combination didn't seem low enough for his neighborhood (I grew up on top of a hill). A compact double or triple setup seemed like a perfect solution, and as a project, it was really pretty simple. I spoke a bit about what I planned to do a couple of posts back, but here's how it went:

The first thing I did was to disconnect the cables from the derailleurs. Next up, off came the chain. I gave it a good look and finally figured out it is the Shimano chain that served a short stint on the Kestrel, then moved over to the Shogun when I upgraded the Kestrel to an 8-speed drivetrain, and put the 7-speed stuff on the Shogun (originally 6). I didn't have any replacement pins to reconnect it, so I just tossed it.

With the chain off, I could remove the 105SC derailleurs. They're in nice shape, but are not able to support a triple crank setup -- neither has the right cage length for the job. So they came off, and they went into a box. These will make their way to Ava's Fuji this winter, as we build that bike up. next off the bike came the cranks, which are the original Exage Sport cranks (in 170) that came on the bike. These went into my parts box for someday -- the cranks are shorter than I prefer, but they are decent parts and may work for one of the girls when I build up another bike.

With the cranks off, next I pulled out the bottom bracket. I guessed (correctly) that the 111mm Phil Wood bottom bracket would be a skosh narrow for a triple crankset, so out it came. Into its place went the 113mm UN-72 I bought to use with Phil rings on the Motobecane, before I realized that was going to mess my knees up. With the Phil BB I took out, the Exage Sport cranks have a Q of 150mm, which is about as wide as I am comfortable with. Point being that I could use these cranks myself on a future build if need be.

It all went back together with the new parts pretty quickly. Rear derailleur after the bottom bracket swap, then cranks, then front derailleur, then chain. At the rear is a nice old (but unused) Shimano LX mountain bike derailleur, and up front is an Exage triple front derailleur that just barely passes muster with me. If the relative lack of quality of that part bugs me enough, I'll swap it out for something nicer, but it'll do the job dad needs it to do while he rebuilds his knee. But it works just fine -- and feels better than the 105SC part did, with the over-leveraged left-side shift lever on the bike, actually. Ended up taking off the cheap old Exage toe clip pedals that were on the bike, and throwing on an old (and still cheap) pair of MTB pedals I had once taken off my ex-wife's Gary Fisher MTB (which Juli now rides, at her place). As with the front derailleur, that's not a part I'm proud for my dad's bike to wear, and they may may be upgraded at some point -- maybe Christmas presents or something.

After a quick test ride and some adjustments to the rear derailleur adjustment barrel, the bike is ready for Dad to put it to use. He should be able to get up pretty much any hill with a 30/28 combination, and if not, I can easily throw on a new freewheel (the rear derailleur can handle a 30 or maybe 32). In that event, I'd just get him a seven-speed cluster, and install a set of 7-speed shifters I have kicking around. I know... nothing is ever done. I can't really help but tinker, though.

All for now,

J

PMC Fundraising Items for Sale

2011-06-26T04:39:00.000-07:00

I'm finally getting around to listing items that I am selling in support of my Pan Mass Challenge fundraising goals. If you see anything here that you're interested in purchasing, please contact me at jellsworthpm@gmail.com. I will keep adding and striking things off this list as they sell. Items will also be listed on Craig's List. All proceeds from these items will go to my fundraising commitment!

Columbia Cruiser bicycle: $100

This is my old Columbia project bike. I bought it at a swap meet (a good day), immediately bent the cheap fork that was on there, then put a new old stock Tange fork on it, along with a few other things. It's a hoot to ride, and I'd planned to do more with it, but it doesn't work for my knees. Hopefully someone else can get some fun out of this old thing! I'm including a salvaged columbia fork and a chromed stem that will work with its steerer tube. Obviously, this is a clunker, not a museum candidate or a highly tuned machine, but the fork, pedals, headset spacers, front brake cable hanger, stem (a cheapie) and tubes are new, and I've got way more than $100 into this bike. The headset is a hard-to-find Columbia part, and it fits properly in the head tube (it is different than a Schwinn/BMX part).

I currently have a bunch of stuff listed on eBay, too:
Two MTB racks (as a pair)

Three forks (sold separately)

Three handlebars (sold separately)

Three 118 BCD chainrings (as a set -- one damaged)

One cool old SR Custom seatpost

I think that's it -- the rest will have to wait for me to get through a few hectic weeks. All proceeds will go to my Jimmy Fund sponsorship commitment for the PMC. If you're interested, I'll send the item numbers -- don't want to clutter this post up. They will age out of eBay quickly...

PMC 2011 Fundraising

2011-06-16T19:12:00.000-07:00

It's been years since I've ridden in a benefit ride. Years ago, I participated in a half dozen or more MS-150 rides. One or two were on the Shogun, but most were on my Kestrel. But as I said it's been a long time -- maybe fifteen years! But that dry spell will soon be over, because this year, I'll be riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge -- a benefit ride for cancer research. And I'll be riding not my fancy old Kestrel, but my decidedly un-fancy hand-me-down late-'70's Motobecane Grand Touring.

If you're from New England and you're reading a bike blog, you've probably heard about the PMC. The traditional ride starts in Sturbridge and ends in Provincetown, and that's the one that gets all the attention. But the event boasts many routes these days, and for my first PMC, I chose one that starts a few towns east of me in Wellesley, and runs out to Provincetown. The route is just over 180 miles, and shouldn't be hard, though it will undoubtedly test my stamina, as well as the health of my knees. I'll be riding at least some of the route with colleagues, as I'm riding with Team Dassault Systemes, but my experience on these rides is that people tend to spread out based on ability and endurance. Since I'm not riding with a buddy, I expect to be solo much of the time, or to link up with groups here and there during the course of the event.

I feel strong enough to complete the distance today, but I'd like to get in as many 50-mile weekends between now and the ride as I can, to try to build my endurance a bit more. But training and the ride itself are only part of the story with this event -- the main thing is raising money for cancer research.

My fundraising plan has two major parts. The first is the traditional note to friends and family, asking for a donation. I'll bolster that with a Facebook post as well, and use my Paypal account to facilitate donations from folks distant. When I first started this sort of benefit ride, the fundraising was mostly pen & paper work!

The second part of my plan is more fun -- I'm going to try to sell off the contents of my various parts boxes and a bike in support of the event. I'll be donating the inventory, but I'll be seeking cash from my readers, as well as strangers on Craig's List and eBay. Look for a posting with items for sale, soon!

In the mean time, if you'd like to sponsor me, please drop me a note at jellsworthpm@gmail.com. Thank you!

All for now,

J

Swaps

2011-06-13T19:18:00.000-07:00

I was recently inspired (by a date, truth be told) to get back into the woods on a bike. I haven't really ridden a mountain bike on a trail since a few years before I moved to Southborough. All of my riding slowed way down when I moved out here, and I barely rode either of my mountain bikes at all, much less in the way they were intended.

The date was with a woman who rides both on- and off-road, and our dinner conversation got me thinking about getting back into the woods. Then maybe a week later, some of the guys I ride with around here invited me for a run (woah, Nelly) and a MTB ride in the local state park.  I couldn't make that one, but I'd like to catch the next -- except, maybe, for that running stuff.

I sold off one of my mountain bikes late last year, and my old Paramount has been convalescing for some time at my parents' home, largely ignored by my father. It's been set up with balloon all-surface (Specialized Hemisphere, I think) tires. These are good for road use, dirt roads, grass and even light trails. They have no knobs but heavy treads, so they hang in there OK on loose stuff.  I think the last time I rode it seriously was when I took it to the Outer Banks three years ago, and I put maybe 50 miles on it that week.

Of course, to get back into the woods, I'd need something suitable to ride once there, and the Paramount is now pretty much all I have on hand. Rather than go shopping, I made a swap -- my loaner Shogun went to my folk's house in the Paramount's stead, and it is now convalescing comfortably in their den. The Paramount, in the mean time, has been shod with knobby Panaracers, and is awaiting some trail riding. Perhaps I'll give it a go this weekend? Maybe the weather will cooperate.

Now, one of the reasons Dad doesn't ride the bikes I leave lying around for him to use is that he's got a bum knee. The damage should be repaired this summer, though, and he's going to need something to ride for physical therapy purposes. Unfortunately, the convalescing Shogun has old-fashioned road gears (42/52 up front and a 12-28 6-speed freewheel in back), which makes for pretty steep gearing for a guy waiting for a new knee who lives on top of a hill. So I've started gathering parts (when am I not?) for a new project -- making the Shogun a triple! For you novices, that means three chainrings up front, rather than just one or two.

There are only a handful of parts needed to make such a change. First, of course, you need a triple crank. I found one on eBay for $35 shipped -- a 105SC crankset in nice shape with 30/42/52-tooth rings and 175mm crank arms. That'll give my dad both a granny gear (is that ironic?) and a little extra leverage in getting up those hills, vs. the 170mm cranks on the bike today. I'm pretty sure the bottom bracket on the bike now will give this crankset a good chainline, but if not, I have a slightly wider cartridge BB that I can install in its place.

What else? Well, to move the chain between three chainrings rather than two, you typically want a front derailleur with a different profile of cage than a double-chainring setup. I found an inexpensive steel Shimano Exage 400LX derailleur on eBay. It's black and it's a triple chainring setup, with a bottom-pull cable routing. And it was designed for a road bike, so it has the right clamp diameter and offset to support a road frame. Not all MTB derailleurs would work, because many expect the cable to come from above, and often times they shift the cage farther outboard to support the wider bottom bracket shells found on contemporary MTBs.

Next up? A new rear derailleur. A rear derailleur does at least two things -- move the chain between the rear cogs, and take up the slack in the chain as different gear combinations are used. The rear derailleur with a triple generally has a longer cage (that's the frame that holds the pulleys) so that it can take up more slack in the chain -- slack that's created when the front derailleur is shifted down from the 42- to the 30-tooth chainring. I looked for a new old stock Shimano LX, just like the one on the Paramount, and found one without much difficulty, also on eBay. It's black, too, like the new front derailleur. It's a better part than the Exage front derailleur, but they'll more or less coordinate with each other can clash with the 105SC crank (which is a sort of champagne silver color). The existing derailleurs (both 105SC parts -- the rear being the original from my decommissioned Kestrel) will go into my parts box for Ava's new Fuji build next winter.

All that I really need from here are new crank bolts (only because I don't have crank bolt covers that match the shade of the 105SC crankset), and possibly a new chain. Probably a new chain. I'll see what's on there, but I'm pretty sure it's an old Shimano chain that I put on maybe 15 years ago. They're a pain to break and re-pin, so I'd just as soon throw an SRAM on there.

When I'm done, the color combination of the bike's components will be somewhat incongruous, yes. But that's not so important. What's important is that Dad will have a 30 front/28 rear combination that should allow him to climb the hills around my folks' place with ease. And as he builds strength, the 42/52 rings will keep his RPMs down on the flats.

These are two bikes that are really too good to languish like they've been. I'm looking forward to getting the Paramount into the woods, again, where it belongs. And I'd love to go for a ride with my dad next summer. And Ava really does need some derailleurs for that Fuji project to be possible.  Just a few swaps, and all of these will be in reach.

All for now,

J

2011 GTI

2011-06-03T17:30:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Julie and I went to test drive cars. She's thinking about replacing hers, and I'm a car guy, so she wanted me to join her. And hey, I haven't test-driven anything since I bought my Mazda, so I was certainly game!

Julie first drove a Prius, which was an interesting experience from the passenger seat. By that I mean that I'm not sure a Prius is a car in the way I think of cars. You turn it on like an appliance, you don't start it with a key. The gearshift is an abstraction of what I use to shift gears. And the drivetrain takes more commands from a computer than it does from the driver. Now, I understand that most automatic shifters are connected with wiring to their gearboxes these days, and that there's a massive amount of computing power behind even my relatively low-tech Mazda out in the driveway, yes. Even so, while the Prius is four-wheeled transportation, I'm pretty sure it's not a car.

The Prius experience behind us, Julie piloted Allyson's Mini Cooper over to the VW dealer, to give the little British BMW a try. And she seemed to enjoy that experience, too. At one point I told her to give the steering wheel a little bobble, and the car virtually leapt off center, catching her a little off-guard. That gave me a giant grin -- it's a fun car. Not perfect, by any means, but fun, fun, fun!

At the VW dealer, we asked for a 5-door GTI for a test drive. The car the salesman produced was black, had big "phone-dial" wheels (18 inches, I believe), a gorgeous interior with black leather seats, and a raucous stereo with way more going on than I had time to figure out. This one was a 6-speed manual, rather than a dual-clutch DSG car (though I'd like to try one of those gearboxes some time). Oh! And it had red brake calipers peeking from the five massive holes of the front rims. Maybe the rears were red, too, but I don't remember. Actually, that's a good illustration of my problem with the car -- it wasn't memorable.

Julie took it out first. She's a VW driver, and seemed to appreciate the blue lighting, the quality of the interior materials, and the car's overall zip. It is a quick car, to be sure, and the controls all feel pretty good in the hands, which is the norm for VW. The seats are comfortable and supportive, it's got more stuff in it than anyone can reasonably ask for, and it sounds OK, too.

But when I took the wheel, I found it to be an absolute snoozer to drive. Compared to the Mini, the damping and springing are soft and gentle -- not floaty, but not terribly sporty, either. Compared to the Mini, the steering is slow and lazy -- hell, that's true when the GTI is compared to my Mazda3. And though it is plenty strong, the turbo engine's power delivery is annoyingly non-linear. In traffic, I found myself giving it a little throttle, then a little more because not enough happened the first time, and then having to back off that second bump when the turbo finally spooled up. I'm sure I'd get used to that, but I wouldn't want to get used to the lazy reflexes. Where the Mini feels like a racer despite its lack of power, the GTI feels like a mid-sized family sedan. Where the Mini feels like an athlete, the GTI feels ready for a nap. Back to the dealer it went, with absolutely no interest on my part of driving another.

Julie seemed to like all of the cars for different reasons, and it'll be interesting to see what she ends up doing. For my own part, I can't really make a Mini work in my life right now, but that's not at all true of the GTI. With five doors and a lot more cargo space than the Mini, the GTI would be a perfectly sensible choice for me, the girls and Jake. But there's absolutely nothing about the GTI that I particularly want. The Mini, on the other hand, sits out in my driveway right now practically begging me to take it out for a fling around some on ramps. I'm resisting buying it because it's not what I need right now. But unlike the GTI, I want it -- I want it bad.

Maybe someday.

All for now,

J

A Perfect Mini

2011-05-27T05:04:00.000-07:00

If anyone at BMW cares to hear my opinion (and I doubt they do), here's an addition I'd love to see in the Mini line-up.

Not:
Some stupid faux sport utility like the Countryman
Some silly and less useful coupe
Something even smaller like the Rocketman concept

Rather, something along the lines of the BMW 1600/2002. Or the Lotus/Ford Cortina. Or the Datsun 510. Or the Alfa Romeo Giulia. In short, a Mini Cooper with a trunk! In two or four doors, too.

Here's what I'd like:
A skosh more wheelbase/legroom like the Clubman, but no more than those two inches or so
Equipment levels consistent with the Cooper
Regular, supple tires, rather than wooden run-flats
A weight target 2500 lbs for the base model
The chassis rigidity and suspension tuning of the Cooper
The general shape of the Cooper greenhouse
Some interesting lines to the trunk and rear fenders
The four from the R56, in N/A and turbocharged guises (I hear they're going to a triple for the next mini, which kind of sucks, IMO)
Base and S forms offered

Nothing original about taking a hatch and adding a trunk/boot to it, of course -- Jetta, anyone? (Actually the Jetta GLI should be on the list above, too.) But the Mini doesn't have to be as practical as the VW, because the line-up is about character.

My main point, here, is that some of us need our car to be useful, but don't want or need it to be large or dull. I'm sure car companies tire of hearing this, but I'd so totally buy one. As I said, I'd love to pick Allyson's mini up, but I just can't make it work. And though there seems to be little appetite for a stripped and fun sedan in the BMW model range, there should be plenty of room for that kind of car in the Mini line-up.

Maybe I don't get the product strategy, but it seems like they want the line to have more reach by adding useless coupes and (does anyone really care?) micro-SUV things. Blech. How about adding a model that keeps the fun, makes it more useful, and doesn't bloat it up or dumb it down?

All for now,

J

Mini

2011-05-26T18:50:00.000-07:00

I've always been a car guy. I've been fascinated/obsessed with cars since I was a young boy, and that hasn't ever really eased up. My love for bikes and riding is actually possibly less than that for cars and driving, at least when we're talking about material things. I'll admit I don't seem to have as much to say about cars, though.

I've owned a bunch of cars. The first one I bought new was a 1989 VW Golf. It cost me $8680, if I recall correctly, and was a fun car within its limits, which were not all that high. It had good steering, a loud stereo and the best air conditioning a car ever had, but tiny little brakes, narrow tires and low limits. It wasn't what you might call a spirited beast, lacking all of the great suspension tuning its sibling the GTI benefitted from, and certainly these days, the power was nothing to write home about.

Though they've gotten nicer since, none of my other cars have been much more inspiring, really. Despite my penchant for having fun behiond the wheel, the Golf was followed by long stints in an Accord and my current ride, a Mazda3 sedan. Sprinkled in there were a pristine-but-dull 1986 Toyota MR2; a ratty, terrifying and yet thrilling Suzuki Swift GT; a Mazda Protege with the Miata engine, and my least favorite (despite being the most expensive), a 2000 VW Passat GLX with leather, wood and all kinds of (fragile) electronics.

The Accord benefitted greatly from aftermarket brake pads, a strut tower brace to stiffen up the unibody, fat aftermarket sway bars, Koni Sport adjustable shocks, as well as sticky summer tires. It actually wasn't a bad driver after all of that work, which I introduced over time as I replaced worn out parts. And the Mazda has similarly benefitted from better brake pads, shocks and tires.

The Mazda is actually a pretty fun car to drive, despite being prematurely rusty. It doesn't mind being driven hard, and is fun to throw around, with steering that's way more responsive than most cars out there. And it's rarely broken, though at the moment it needs a few thousand dollars worth of replacement parts, or will before the end of the year. Actually, let me be more honest -- for the price, the Mazda is a shockingly competent driver. I get into a sport utility and am forced to wonder what people are thinking when they choose something like that over something like the Mazda.

With this car, I had something of a revelation about cars. Unlike the custodial obligation I felt toward that pricey Passat, I immediately washed my hands of any concern for the Mazda's well-being. I bought this car to drive the hell out of it (both in intensity and miles), and not worry about it. That's what I've been doing, and it's been very liberating, really. I don't care where I park it, I don't worry about dents and dings, and it doesn't bother me when I do something stupid with it, like clip a boulder mid-corner, blowing a shock and bubbling a tire. Except for the cash out.

The car has also been a good reminder that while cars benefit from some stuff, they don't need a ton of stuff to be satisfying. Meaning, I don't need leather, power seats, traction control, heated seats, and heated power-retracting mirrors to have a good time. On the contrary -- I have more fun without all that fragile stuff on board! I'll take the decent stereo, the power windows, steering, brakes, ABS and keyless entry, though, for sure. I'm not one to suffer.

The thing is, though, the Mazda lacks a little something called cachet. It's a totally anonymous little car that nobody looks at or gets excited about -- it doesn't pull the ladies, as they say, and it doesn't say much about me! And though I've told myself those things don't really matter, the car guy in me has often let his eyes wander over nicer hardware with more than a touch of envy.

So when my friend Allyson told me she was going to sell her Mini, I asked if I could borrow it for a week or so, to see if I could make it make some sense for me. Minis have plenty of cachet, despite being priced in the reach of regular people, and they're really very cute, if small. I'll get to the punch line first, so I can concentrate on the good stuff -- the car makes no sense for me right now. But man, what a fun car!

It's a 2008 Mini Cooper. Not a lot of power, but it has the sports package and the premium package, plus a few other bits in the mix. So it has enough stuff in it to make it really liveable, and it has some goodies bolted to it that make it more of a driver's car than the base Cooper would otherwise be. It's been sitting in a storage garage for the last 14 months undriven, and was driven only a couple of times in the 6 months prior to that.

Dynamically, it's a fantastic ride. The steering has much more heft than my Mazda, and it guides the car with more precision than anything I've ever driven. The chassis lets me place the car wherever I want, without anything untoward happening -- even in mid-corner corrections. And the thing is just so nimble! A quick flick lets me blast around potholes and other obstacles without slowing up the pace. On/off-ramps are nothing short of thrilling, because the car exhibits little roll and lets me carry ridiculous speed through to the tollbooth. It's really a joy to drive, even with modest power levels, and it's built like a tank -- much more substantial than my Mazda.

It's too small, though. I need a car with four doors to accommodate the girls (watching poor Ava struggle with the heavy doors to extricate herself from the back seat is enough to make me rule the car out), and though I can pack a week's worth of our groceries in the trunk, a trip to BJs with the girls isn't going to work. Which is a pity, really, because I can't think of anything else wrong with it.

Well, that's not true. BMW let the Mini team go a little off the deep end with the dash design and switchgear. And really, who decided the turn signal stalk needed to be reinvented? Any of those kinds of annoyances disappear on a drive, though, replaced by a giant grin and praise to anyone who will listen. Or if I'm on my bluetooth, a play-by-play of the car's awesomeness.

Unfortunately, I can't adopt it, but I am going to help send it of into its next life. Anyone want to buy a Mini?

All for now,

J

Back on the Road

2011-05-22T18:37:00.000-07:00

I'm sorta back on the road.

The weather hasn't been cooperating, much, but three weekends ago, I got out with my daughters for our first ride of the season. Then two weeks ago, I managed a 48 mile weekend. Last weekend I did nothing (well, not on the bike - was busy doing other stuff), but then this weekend I got a quick ride in to retrieve my car from the office. It was cool and wet this morning, so I didn't get another ride in today, but 17 is better than none for this weekend. With any luck, the rain will thin out a bit, and the temps will climb a bit, so I can get busy training for the PMC! Even so, it feels good to be back out there, and I'm feeling pretty strong, despite the shortage of miles.

This week, I'm going to install my new toe clips onto the Motobecane. They should help keep my feet on the pedals, a bit, which will be a help. I've mentioned before that I'm getting tired of my feet flopping off the pedals at opportune moments. Actually, there's really no good time for that to happen.

The toe clips were a gift from a friend whose wife's bike I worked on a few weeks ago. It needed new bearings and grease in the headset, bottom bracket and hubs, and a good dose of oil for the freewhel internals. Took me all of 2 hours to tackle, one Friday night, while the girls slept -- no big deal at all.

A day or so after I finished it, I took it for a quick spin around the driveway while getting Juli's bike ready for its inaugral ride. Apart from not fitting me, I was really surprised and how good the bike felt. This is a mid-1980's basic steel Fuji 12-speed, fitted with a basic Suntour groupset. The derailleurs are mostly steel, the seatpost is steel, it has a derailleur adapter claw on it, the wheels are 27" -- you get the picture.

But despite what should be handicaps, the bike rode really nicely. It desperately needs a humane saddle, it could use new brake pads and cables, and a 7-speed freewheel with a narrower range would give its fly-weight athlete owner better gearing for her needs than she has today. Maybe a set of bar-end shifters and a better set of brake levers, too -- but really, not much more. It's a great example of how a well-done bike can feel really good, even if it's not overly complex or sophisticated.

Not a lot more to say today about bikes. I do have a couple of car posts that I'm churning over, though, and I have a project that I really need to get to with Juliana's Schwinn, that I'll have to come back to.

All for now,

J

"Eh, it's more purply."

2011-04-16T15:44:00.000-07:00

That was the reply I got when I asked Juli, "Not so bad for a pink bike, eh?"

Hopefully that'll be the end of the arguments about the frame color.

As you can see, Juli and I finished (sort of) her bike last night before she went off to bed. I spent a bit more time thinking about what to do about the rack that I'd butchered, rendering it useless for the time being, and scheming solutions for my own carelessness. But first, the bike.

I've talked about Juli's little Schwinn before, and in truth, the bike has been rideable for a couple of months, now. Missing until last night were a trio of accessories, and a day warm enough to coax Juli outside for a spin. It wasn't warm today, but it was warm enough for coaxing. The water bottle cage and holder went onto the handlebars in mere minutes, as did the bell. And so equipped, Juli swung a leg over it and made a single lap of the driveway before scampering back into the warmth of the house. She paused long enough before setting off to smile for the camera. Note the dandy cycling shoes, and the frame-matching piping on her fleece jacket.

Most of the work last night went into trying to fit a Pletscher CS rack to the rear of the Schwinn, in much the same way that I'd fit one to the Fuji -- by shortening the struts so that the rack would sit level on the small frame. Unfortunately, I didn't test the brakes while positioning the rack and marking the struts for cutting, because while the location of the rack with the short struts is low and level, the straddle cable doesn't clear the rack in that position, rendering the rear brake both stiff and weak. Not good.

The bike doesn't need a rack to be ridden, of course, so it's now out in the barn, ready for warmer days. But Juli wants a rack, and I found it handy for her to have one on rides to the state park for a kayak or swim last year, so I do, too.

I tried splicing ends back onto the struts, sweating the strut and the severed end inside of a quarter-inch copper pipe. Sadly, my pipe-sweating skills are nearly as feeble as my dancing skills, and it didn't work. So I ground off the pivot rivets, and removed the struts from the rack altogether. I'm going to pick up some long struts for a Nitto rack, plus their hardware, and use those instead. That retrofit will definitely work, and I won't have to throw the rack away. I'd have felt badly about wasting a classic (even if I recycled it), though the cost to replace the rack is roughy comparable to the cost of the struts. Oh, well...

I have only a few bike purchases planned for myself this year. The rear tire on my Motobecane is looking perfectly serviceable for the coming season, so I'm not going to swap it like I'd initially planned. That leaves me with a need for just some toe clips and straps for my Moto and Schwinn, and a new helmet. Easy!

Next up is my friend Carol's bike. It needs a repack of all of its bearings, and today I picked up the balls I need for that job. It feels good to be wrenching again, after a few months' hiatus, as did the 15 miles on the rollers this morning (21 average), after a weekend off at the canyon.

All for now.

J

Canyon

2011-04-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

I'm not really what you'd call an outdoorsman. It's not that I don't like the outdoors, mind you -- cycling, hiking, kayaking, canoeing, sailing, tree climbing, exploring... there are tons of things I like to do out there. But as I said in my last post, I don't have one of those hiking goals you sometimes find among people you know, and back when I was a scout (I was a Cub Scout of the various grades, and a Webelo, but punched out of the Boy Scouts after one meeting), I never really went for the whole camping thing. I enjoy an occasional night in a tent and with a camp stove, but you won't catch me out there every weekend or anything like that. I don't like having stuff stuck to my feet, maybe -- sand, evergreen needles, etc. Think what you will.

That aside, as I was discussing (virtually) with a friend of mine, today, I do appreciate the diversity of the landscapes of our planet -- or even just the continent I call home. Coming from New England, I've found the dry hills of northern California, the flatness of Florida, the glaciers of the Canadian Rockies and the deserts, buttes and canyons of the American southwest just fascinating. And I've had the chance to see some amazing stuff out west -- Bryce and Zion, Moab and Sedona, Yosemite and the Columbia River Gorge. And twice, now, the Grand Canyon.

It's an incredible place, if you haven't been. I've posted a few pictures, here, rather than try to describe it. Its vastness is impossible to comprehend through photographs. Most of the big features in any of these pictures are miles away. Even stuff up close is out of snowball's reach (I checked that). And a hike to the bottom on the Bright Angel trail you can see in these shots is something like 17 miles.

This week I spent a fair bit of time thinking through some letting go I need to do -- really painful stuff that I've tried hard to avoid for a year. And I've got more coming in the next few months, which I mostly haven't been trying to avoid. All of it necessary to getting on with life, none of it easy, and some of it impossibly hard. I'd like to be able to tell you that the trip to the canyon made everything easier -- that the vastness of the place and the geologic time scale made all of the hard stuff I've been wrestling with seem unimportant. But I can't lie like that. It's an incredible place that inspired awe over and over again, simply by shifting my location or casting my gaze in a different direction. But it's just a place. It doesn't make things go away, and it doesn't make them easier or hurt less. Even so, it's good to get a dose of awe, and a pair of 3-hour hikes equals six useful hours of thinking time.

The last time I was at the canyon, I hiked to the bottom with my ex, and it was a good and memorable experience. This time, the canyon received snow just before my arrival, which lent the south rim a different feel than it had the last time. I didn't have the right gear to hike down in, or enough time to get very far, so I just hiked the rim, in both directions from the Bright Angel lodge -- one per day. It would have been nice to get down in there, but my only real regret is that I didn't have someone to share the experience with. Rather than swapping impressions, I spent last night reading Hemingway. Good, but not as uplifting. Maybe next time.

Back to bikes next week -- I promise. I'll be finishing the fitting work on Juli's Schwinn, and doing the overhauling work on my friend Carol's Fuji (possibly with her husband and son), and hopefully(!) getting in some outdoor miles on the Motobecane. Maybe Juli will even get to test out her new bike? Time will tell.

All for now,

Living in Service

2011-04-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

The kitchen will be done today, and the roof wires will be back on the roof where they belong. The kitchen looks fantastic, by the way, in red and white. Then the house will go on the market, again, next week. I'll still have to do the pantry, and replace and prime/paint a few rotten boards on a fence gate. And if I were to get started on a list of "shoulds" for the house, the list starts getting pretty long. And that's just indoor stuff -- by May I'm going to have to start cutting the grass again.

I'd kind of lost sight of how home ownership essentially means living in service to a building. That's no way to live, and it's something I have to be more vigilant about. I grew up working and watching my parents work around their place rather than getting out and exploring, and that experience is definitely part of my core. Just look at my last post: It's about painting and finding the bright side of something that that I know full well is devoring time I should be spending doing other stuff. Bad habits.

While I was priming molding this morning, I realized that I've never really had a lifestyle "dream". There are things I like to do, yeah, but I don't have a "climb all 10 peaks higher than X feet in North America" sort of thing that's guided my path. Most of my goals have been centered around stuff, or work. Apart from my kids, cycling is probably the closest thing I have to a lifestyle locus. It's a good one, but it's not clear to me that there's a path to personal exploration and growth that stems from bicycles.

So what do I do about all of this? Getting out of this house will be a great start, and with any luck I'll be moving this summer. From there, I'll need to make time to explore new places and spaces, both with and without the girls, to see what feels right. The potential for fun is tremendous, of course, but the challenge feels strangely daunting, too. Habits are hard to change, after all. But it seems really important that I focus on this one.

I had 7 resolutions this year, and I'm doing pretty well against them. They weren't unimportant or minor things at all, but given the realization this little post is wrapped around, it feels like I missed a pretty important one. I guess it's never too late to add -- or maybe just reaffirm -- an eighth.

All for now,

J

Color

2011-03-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

The kitchen project is moving along. Slowly, but moving. The walls have come out smoother than I'd any right to expect them to, and the gray primer on the walls right now makes the kitchen look very different than it has in the 12 years I've (mostly) lived in the house. The stained and polyurethaned wainscotting, trim and doors will be painted white to match the rest of the house, and the walls will be red.

Every time I paint a room, I ask myself why I don't paint rooms more often. A room with a fresh change of color remains a little treat to the eyes long after the color should cease to surprise. That compounded treat is well worth the time spent painting, and the process of emptying and refilling offers a great opportunity to purge crap, as well.

12 years in this house, and I've painted 4 rooms, the front hall, and the three secondary stairwells. Also, both bathrooms have been re-papered and otherwise redecorated. Now the kitchen and pantry. And that leaves the dining room, parlor and master bedroom untouched. Anyway, that's not so bad, numerically, but it's still a third of the rooms unchanged since I moved in. Seems odd, when I look at it that way.

Note to self: Paint my next place more often. A little change of color can be a very good thing.

Still no progress on finishing Juli's bike -- or starting Carol's. The weather is changing fast (I've no snow at all in my yard, now), and I need to set some time aside for that work. But I think I'll be busy with paint for a few weekends, yet.

Happy spring everyone.

All for now,

J

All-in

2011-03-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

I worked out on the rollers yesterday morning (21.2 over 15 miles), but am not going to today. I've been working on my kitchen the past couple of days. Just a quick spruce-up before I re-list the house in April. The trim is down, the wallpaper is down, and now I'm patching the walls up, and replacing sections of the wall where the horse hair plaster has come away from the lath. Then the whole kitchen will be freshly painted, and that'll be that. Except that I have to do the same to the pantry. Either way, it's not a huge amount of work, and my hope is that it'll make a difference in selling the place.

I was completely exhausted last night and had a hard time getting up this morning -- thus the no riding today. Working in the kitchen is giving me plenty of exercise, and I don't want to fall asleep at dinner tonight (going out with a friend in Cambridge -- it's restaurant week in Boston). I may tackle a couple of bike projects if I have time though. Just quick ones -- trim down Juli's kickstand, mount the rack and bottle cage holder on her Schwinn, etc. The snow is melting very quickly, now, and we may have a weekend soon where an outdoor family ride will make sense!

While I've been working, I've had a lot of head time. And one thing I took away from yesterday is that I don't like working on my house anymore. Most of my house projects over the past dozen years have been solo, but I didn't mind so much when I was married -- first, because I was working towards making house better for us, and then later because it was an escape. But I'm only working on the house now to make it more appealing to someone else, which isn't nearly as much fun.

But apart from grumbling to myself about the house, I've been mulling over the notion of being all-in. I'm not all-in to the house, because I'm essentially waiting to leave it behind me. And I've realized that I haven't been all-in to other aspects of my life for a while, either. Instead, I think I've been waiting for something. For my next thing to come along, maybe. For Allyson to come back. For the house to sell, as I've said, or for the divorce to finalize. Waiting is a very passive activity. Not all-in at all.

And that's not really like me. I've always been a fairly intense person, and I've lived/worked/played with intensity. Not self-destructively, just intensely, and I generally throw myself into whatever it is that I'm doing, working to exhaustion and starting over the next day. But not lately.

I understand how I got where I've been, and I do think I've made great strides this year to upping the intensity back to where I'm used to it being. I feel much more in life, now, than out of it. And that's good, because being all-in is the only mode I've ever been happy in. This waiting bit has really sucked, by comparison. Even more than that, the others in my life need me to be all-in. My kids, my friends, my employer, my dog, all the women I've been meeting out for dates -- everyone. They don't need someone taking up space, they need an active participant -- someone ready to give it (whatever "it" is, in each case) their all. If I can't do that, why bother?

Last May, I realized I needed to start living again. And now 9 months later I think I've figured out that it's not just about living -- it's also about how I live. Let's see if I can do a little better than that in turning up the intensity...

All for now,

J

Five Weeks Gone

2011-03-04T19:22:00.000-08:00

Gosh, where did February go? One minute I was talking about fox words, and suddenly it's March. So what have I been doing with myself?

Riding: Well, indoors. And not as much as I'd like. Still, the activity has been good, and I've logged 20.8 mph average speed sessions both of the past two Saturdays. I hope to match that tomorrow and Sunday. My left knee complains, but not as badly as last year -- not at all.
Fretting: We had a ton of snow in January and early February, and ice dams and their consequences have been on my mind. One of my sets of anti-ice dam wires was ripped off the roof. By falling ice, I believe. I have some indoor and outdoor repairs to do, now, that I hadn't planned on. It happens...
Dating: I've met some really nice women, and had some nice evenings out.
Hosting: I've hosted friends for my first dinner party since I moved back into my house nearly two years ago. I was exhausted, but I enjoyed the cooking, the company and the sharing of food and wine. The exhausted part came from some travel (still pretty tired, but my sleep schedule is back to normal), but it was still great fun, and it feels good to continue making connections and expanding my social circle.
Traveling: I've been to France on a business trip, and taken a quick trip to Versailles while there. I've said it before and probably will again -- it's no wonder they cut Louis' head off. The place is obscene. I really enjoy working with folks at our French HQ, too. There's a different dynamic, but it's interesting learning the ropes. And though they operate differently than the organization I'm part of, it's not worse -- just different.
Tinkering: I've picked up another bike project! More on that another time, but it's really just a simple bearing overhaul for a friend's wife. This is her High School bike. Nothing fancy -- a Fuji and more or less equivalent to Juli's Fuji, but a perfectly serviceable all-rounder. She's an athlete, and should get a sportier bike for the triathlons she does, but this'd be a great bike for a rack and a basket for family duty.
Renovating: I've made some progress on some house projects, getting the place ready (again) to go on the market again (again). Fun stuff, in the sense that I haven't done anything of the sort in a good while, and possibly not too much work. Possibly.
Contributing: I've signed up for the PMC, and now have to a) get in shape, and b) raise a pile of cash. Yeah, I'm fast on my trainer, but that's not going to translate into stamina and speed on a 160 mile ride.
Thinking: I've given a lot of thought to where I am, how I got here, what I need and what the people in my life mean to me and why. And I feel pretty good, honestly. One important realization in all of that was that having different social goals for myself doesn't mean changing my standards or expectations (of myself or others) -- it just means living within those standards to different goals. And my heart is big enough to care for lots of different people in lots of different ways, I think. The exploration has been fun so far (see the dating comment above), and I'd like to think it'll remain so.
Parenting: They're always there. And they're wonderful. And I think they're going to be OK, honestly.
Working: Too much to do. Not enough time. No different than most anyone, I know.

11 months ago this Sunday, I drove home from NJ, hopped on my bike on a 70-degree day and later walked Jake in shorts and flip-flops. Time flies, as they say. I'll try to get more up here in March.

All for now,

J

Words

2011-01-30T09:38:00.000-08:00

Language is something that fascinates me. Not to the extent that machines do, mind, but still a lot.

I like words. I like finding out what they mean, and from whence they came. I like seeing the cross-pollination of other languages into English, and being able to recognize something in English that's obviously French (or otherwise Latin) or German in origin. I don't much have the patience for learning new languages, but wish my French and Italian were better. I like playing Scrabble, and thanks to one of the most important people in my life, I always seem to have a game of its clone (Words on the iPhone) moving slowly forward.

I have a friend on Facebook (old colleague) who posts a daily word, pronunciation and definition on his wall. It's possibly a Facebook app, but whatever the source, it's very cool. And thanks to EJ, today I have a new favorite word: Vulpine.

Vulpes means fox in Latin, and it's clear that we didn't get fox in our version of English from the Latin. Vixen, though (and that's a fox word you'll all recognize), is Middle English for a female fox. Vix, in the same tongue, is a male fox. Fuchs is fox in German. Pretend you're really drunk on mead or scotch and that you speak both Middle English and German and sometimes get confused about what language to use, from all the drinking and being oppressed, and you can see where our word fox came from. That's hardly a scientific analysis, but the linkages are obvious, whatever the actual evolutionary flow.

Just as a gratuitous cycling tie-in: Volpe means fox in Italian, and you have to say it with an Italian accent or you're missing out one of life's small pleasures. Not with a silent e, like volt with a p on the end. Rather with a stretched out and full-mouthed first syllable, and a definitely-not-silent Italian e at the end -- vohl-peh. Bianchi has or had a bike called the Volpe. Nothing fancy, really -- just a welded steel road bike with basic components.

So back to my new favorite word: From vulpes springs vulpine, meaning cunning or fox-like. Say it with me (this time in English): Vool-peen. Fills the mouth like a sip of red wine, I think. Something sharp and Tuscan. Vulpine... Not far from lupine, which might describe my friend snoozing on the rug over there -- though more in the genetic sense than in temperament.

Vulpine... Fabulous! Anyway, I like words.

All for now,

J

Winter Routine

2011-01-29T18:18:00.000-08:00

I broke through 200 winter training miles this morning. I'd hit 95 just before the holidays (spread over 7 rides), and then almost doubled that over the two holiday weekends by riding 15 miles five times. Between travel and messing up my back, January has been a low-mileage month, and I've only put 45 miles on since, for a grand total of 205.

Today, my average speed was 19.1, which is up from the 18.8 of two weeks ago, before I messed my back up. Tomorrow's 15 miles will be logged in the next-smaller cog, and will get me to 220 miles. With any luck, I'll start February strong with a two-ride weekend, which'll get me to 250 miles. No more math -- promise. Then I'm off to France for a week, I think, the second week in Feb. But without a bike.

I'd hoped to log some additional training miles mid-week on a consistent basis (every Weds AM), but between catching up on work, Skyping with friends, being a dad and trying to build a new social life (with some success, I'd add), it's hard to find time to ride. It makes me wonder how many miles I'll be able to log next summer. I'm going to be training for the PMC, so I'll have to find some time somewhere!

The truth, though, is that indoor miles are tedious. Even with my iPhone to listen to and maps and postcards on the wall opposite my riding stall to look at, it's hard not to get bored. Rather than looking forward to a particular straight, climb or descent, the head game becomes one of "OK, that's 3 miles, just 4 more sets of those and I'm done", which itself gets boring too. I also try to figure out on the fly the average song length in terms of miles. So far it seems like about 1.3 miles, but some are more like 1 and others more like 2. That's all math -- sorry.

I've made a sort of pact with myself not to spend much money on bikes this year, so I'm not even doing a lot of wrenching right now. Juli's bike project is on sort of a hiatus for now, but I do need to spend some time fitting the rack and other accessories to it, soon. I also need to buy myself some toe clips (both bikes) because having my feet flip forward off the pedals has long since gotten old. And today I noticed today that my rear tire is wearing very quickly on the rollers. The front seems OK, but I'm going to need a new rear tire for sure, come April.

April! April is what's great about this boring winter routine. Come April, when we get the first weekend warm enough to ride, I'll be in shape and so many of the other guys out there won't be. Last year it was fun running the guy on the Cervelo down on my old Kestrel. This year, it'll be on a late-'70's Motobecane. And it may be late April by the time all this snow is gone.

Can't wait. One month gone. Only two or three more to go. This winter routine is boring.

All for now,

J

Partners

2011-01-06T03:45:00.000-08:00

One of the interesting things about starting over is that you have the opportunity to use a lot of verbs in your internal monologue (or your blog) that start with "re". Reimagine, redefine, reassert, rediscover -- things like that. All good words, but the truth is that you can't wipe your personality or base of experiences clean and start over for real -- all of those "re" words happen in the context of you as a formed person. A person possibly willing to grow and live beyond old boundaries, sure -- but not someone truly new. I've said this before, but I like reminding myself of the obvious.

Anyway, so as I think about the kind of social life I want to build for myself as I "start over", I can't help but reflect on the lessons of my adult life -- to consider what's worked for me in the past, and what hasn't. I wrote about cooking as a vehicle for creating social engagement a couple of posts back, for example, and of a desire/intent to use it again that way. And though I've used cycling as an escape of sorts in the past, it's important enough to me not to stop, just because of that particular misuse -- I do need to remember to live around my hobbies, though, rather than escape into them.

But the most important lesson of my adult life relates to the experience of partnership. That's a word my sister finds too businesslike, and I understand why, but for me, it fits. I've had relationships where I've felt like a parent, times where I felt like prey, and still others like a punching bag. But I've also had relationships where I've relished each engagement -- where each exchange gave me the opportunity to truly give and truly receive. One, in particular, fundamentally reset my aspirations for relationships. In that relationship, the collaboration -- the ability to share and challenge -- extended pretty much across the full spectrum of who I am as a person, and though I can't speak for her, I hope she'd say the same. Whether talking professionally, cooking together, reading shared books or listening to shared music, exploring places together, cycling together, or sharing my most private thoughts or physical being, I got as much as I gave, was pulled as much as I pushed, and learned as much as I taught. As an experience, it was nothing less than breathtaking. Life-changing.

Things are different, there, now. But that kind of connection is like a drug, and it's something I hope I'll recapture (another "re" verb, there) or recreate someday. It can't be forced -- I think it can only come from the chemistry that exists between two people who happen upon one anothers' paths at the right place and the right time. So as I venture out into the world as a single guy, again, it's not something I'm necessarily expecting to find, or even seeking out. Really, I'm more interested in exploring and experiencing right now. But I'd be open to finding it, or recreating it.

I don't know how many times in one's life that kind of lightning can strike. But even if it doesn't come again, the experience has changed my understanding of how things can be, and I'm forever grateful for that.

All for now,

J

One Rideable 650B Schwinn World Sport

2011-01-02T17:53:00.000-08:00

Apart from some remaining accessory work (installing the rack, bell, front water bottle cage holder, and trimming the kickstand back an inch or so), Juliana's old chromoly Schwinn World Sport is now finished and ready to ride. It's wet out there today, but she could take it out for a spin if she were so inclined.

The bike is set up as an all-around sort of ride, with slightly poofy (32 mm) Rivendell tires, centerpull brakes, drop bars, a Brooks B-17S saddle, a kick stand, and interruptor levers to give the rider braking capabilities from not just the hoods and drops, but also the bar tops. As the bike is accessorized, it'll gain a rack, another bottle cage, a bell, and a saddle bag fitted with a blinky. I can even hook Juli up with a basket if she wants a little more carrying capacity. Basket or no, it should be a sturdy and user-friendly bike for Juli to use pretty much anywhere she'll want to go, whether the route there involves grassy or packed trails, or smooth or rough roads.

The build itself was pretty straightforward, with really only two areas that posed a challenge. I've already written about the unorthodox headset configuration I chose, so I won't belabor that. I'll see how that setup holds up. In the worst case, I'll need to find another chrome fork for the bike, but I'm not anticipating having to do that.

The brakes were the second area where a little thought was required. It's a ladies'-style frame, as you can tell from the pictures, not a mixte. The big difference is that the brakes are located at the usual position -- mounted to a brake bridge on the seat-stays, rather than where they might be mounted on a mixte -- on a brake bridge down on the mid-stays. Mixtes normally have their brakes located there, because the brake cable follows the path of the twin top tubes, and run straight onto the rear brake. This bike's brake cable followed the top tube, but that put the brake cable a long way away from and below the rear brake.

This bike was designed to use with a sidepull brake caliper whose cable routing is opposite the norm, in that the housing stop and adjuster are located where the cable nut normally is, and the cable nut is located where the cable housing stop and adjuster normally reside. Brompton has a caliper like this for use with their folding bikes, but I didn't really want to have to buy a pair of sidepulls for the bike, I wanted to use a set of centerpulls I already had on-hand, and for those calipers, the cable needs to come from above, not below. Some improvisation was called for!

My first thought was to route a length of housing from the cable stop near the top tube/seat tube lug, up to a seatpost clamp-mounted cable stop -- maybe using cable ties to hold it in place as it ran along the seat tube. Unfortunately, I predicted this would provide for sloppy and probably stiff rear braking and really messy, in-the-way routing -- there had to be a better option. Maybe some sort of pulley to redirect a naked brake wire to the caliper from below?

The good news is that back in the days when Mafac, Weinmann and Dia-Compe center-pulls ruled the road, there were plenty of ladies' and mixte-style frames, and not all of them used mid-stay mounted brakes. Some of them used brakes mounted on a seat stay, just like Juli's Schwinn. And for those types of frames, a neat solution had already been devised by at least Mafac-- a pulley, as it turns out, just as I wondered about. Actually, I'd probably seen one before and half remembered.

I bought the pulley for maybe $15 on eBay, and it bolted right up to Juli's seatpost clamp, using a binder bolt I had on hand. Then I picked up a clamp-on cable stop from Rivendell, which let me use housing to redirect the cable from the top tube up along the seat tube. I inserted an inline adjuster, as well, having had great luck with them on the Schwinn, and needing some way to adjust the brakes. The result is as shown, and it works just great -- not too much friction in the cable, despite the fairly tight bend. I've got a long-reach Dia-Compe 750 on the back, and a standard-reach 650 on the front, and installed some Yokozuna pads with the Scott-Mathauser red compound. They seem to bite just fine, either from the drops or the tops, and I expect they'll be more than adequate for Juli's weight.

The drivetrain is the same set of components from her Fuji -- Shimano 8-speed bar-end shifters (set to friction), RX-100 derailleurs, and a 165 Tru-Vativ crankset. A standard-range 7-speed freewheel (13-28) and wide-set front chainrings should give her more than enough ratios, albeit a little more widely-spaced than with a contemporary 20-speed bike. She'll be pushing through the Rivendell/MKS Grip King pedals I bought for the Schwinn several years ago, then opted out of.

It's not the best frame ever devised, with slightly hokey rear dropouts without alignment screws. But it's a nice build by any reasonable measure. Barring theft, major damage or something else unforseen, this bike should carry Juliana through her middle school years and into high school. When she stops growing, and assuming she's still actively riding, I've promised her one more bike from Dad. That'll likely be a new one, not a build-up of old parts like the Fuji was, or this Schwinn, and it'll come already built, not as a project. It's my hope that at least some of the excitement of getting a new bike is tempered by the fact that it won't come in the form of a father/daughter project.

All for now,

Finding the Center

2011-01-02T06:18:00.000-08:00

I used to entertain a lot. Back in college, I was one of the few guys who lived off-campus, in my own apartment. So a few times a year, I'd have a dinner party, and generally speaking, I'd wow my friends with a good meal. That pattern continued after I graduated, hosting a small-ish group of friends, and sharing food I'd prepared for or with them. And again, the reviews tended to be pretty favorable (except for that time I made a squid risotto which might be best described as intense). I used to cook for dates, too, and that was a good look for me. And when I got married, the pattern continued, with dinner and cocktail parties hosted on a pretty regular basis.

Eventually, though, all of that ended. My ex-wife and I had our first child, which meant that dinner parties weren't really practical anymore. Adding our second child made that even more the case. And somewhere in there, our relationship started to degrade, and I/we didn't really want to collaborate, or share my/our disintegrating home with friends, anymore. Then came the collapse, and while the rubble was falling, opportunities to even consider entertaining were few and far between.

But eventually the collapse stopped, and I started getting out of the bunker again. Mostly, I'd meet people out, or go to their place. But without really thinking about it, over the summer, I had my sister and her husband over for a nice Tuscan dinner, and I had friends here and there over for breakfast. Then at Thanksgiving, my oldest friend was in town, and asked if I wouldn't mind hosting a bunch of his friends (mostly acquaintences to me) and their kids for a brunch. I hesitated at first, and was even a little put off, in truth. But he's my oldest friend (since we were 9), and I said yes. It turned out to be a great party, with over 20 people in attendance. And I think maybe Dan knew more about what I needed than I did. I spent most of the time working in the kitchen, but people filtered in to chat and help out, and I ended up having some great conversations with people I don't know well or haven't seen in a long time.

I gave that experience a lot of reflection, in the weeks after. Then this holiday season, I found myself facing a holiday without a partner, without my kids on Christmas eve or morning, and a much shorter list of family members who would be around than usual. Honestly, I was a little worried about how this Christmas was going to feel, given all of that, so I decided to try using the role of host to expand my holiday a bit. I held an open house Christmas day, inviting friends and acquaintences to come by any time to share food, drinks and holiday cheer. Then a few days later, I hosted a friend and his family for brunch. Both were really satisfying, and after the brunch in particular, I felt I'd reclaimed a part of myself I'd lost. Now I'm thinking about hosting friends for dinner, cooking for dates, and even about what kind of kitchen/DR layout to seek in my next home, once I finally sell this place.

I'm sure rebuilding my social life isn't going to happen overnight -- my life is pretty complicated and busy, with the dog and the kids and a new job and trying to move and finalizing the divorce. But it feels like I may have found my social center again -- maybe rediscovered the tools I need to make 2011 a better year than I've had in a long time.

All for now,

J

Holiday Break

2010-12-23T18:21:00.000-08:00

This weekend and most of next week, I'll have my kids with me here at the house. And as a special project with each of them, we're going to finish a major stage of each of their bike projects.

For Juli, that'll mean taking the derailleurs and control levers off the Fuji, mounting them on her Schwinn, cabling the bike up, installing a chain, and wrapping the bars. If we have time, we'll move over the bell, trim the kickstand an inch or so to get the right lean, modify a Pletscher rack to fit this frame properly, and install the handlebar water bottle cage mount. And with that, her 650B Schwinn conversion will be ready for a ride. There's snow on the ground right now in Boston, but it may vanish before next week is up. If so, she may get a test ride in before the new year begins! I'll write up a summary of the conversion when it's done, including the couple of interesting-to-me challenges in building up this frame.

For Ava, the task is a little simpler -- to tear everything that's left on the Fuji off, and assemble a build kit in a box for next winter. And also to get a spec sheet together for a frame builder to make a few modifications, as well as officially choose a color. This last is sure to send Juli up in smoke, so I'm going to do that with Ava on a night she'll be at a sleepover party. At the moment, I'm thinking like this:

Braze on a derailleur hanger on the right rear dropout, so I can ditch the adapter claws (which I needed on both sides to make the rear QR clamp properly)
Braze on a pair of water bottle cages on the down tube, so I can ditch the paint scratching clamps
Braze on a pair of cable stops on down tube, again so I can ditch a clamp-on stop
Braze on a piece of half-inch bar stock over the brake bridge to serve as a mounting point for the Pletscher rack, so I can ditch the clamps

You will notice a pattern on these last three. If I'm going to get the bike repainted, I'd rather not clamp a bunch of stuff onto the fresh, expensive paint job and mess it all up. I'd rather spend a bit more for proper bosses for all of these things.

Then the rest will be simple -- strip it to bare metal, pull off the head badge, degrease, paint the desired powder blue and reinstall the head badge. This is all sure to cost way more than is sensible to spend, but that's OK -- she's my baby. Ava, not the Fuji.

The build kit for that bike is pretty much all set, too. I need to reclaim the Shogun from my friend who borrowed it, take the 105SC front and rear derailleurs off of it, pick up a pair of chainrings for a 160mm crankset I have, and voila! C'est tout. Oh, plus cables and eventually whatever color housing and bar tape Ava wants. But that'll be it, for sure. I've even picked up a kickstand for that bike, and will cut it short, to fit.

I'd like to put 40 miles on the rollers this weekend, too -- we'll see how I do with that goal.

Happy holidays everyone. And here's hoping for a healthy, happy and prosperous 2011!

All for now,

J

Defeat

2010-12-22T17:08:00.000-08:00

Defeat is temporary -- or it isn't. Apart from mortal combat situations, which way this swings really depends on how you respond to defeat.

Defeat -- loss by another word -- can be awful. It can tear at your soul, your self-esteem, and your heart. And if you've been hit by loss after loss, it can be hard to keep perspective, or know when the free-fall will stop. But the bottom will come if you let it -- if you let each defeat weigh upon you only temporarily. If you study each to figure out what went wrong. If you learn a new rule each time, or what to do next time. Or not do.

Or you can cling to each defeat as an emblem of your failure, and make it part of yourself. You can take that path. But if you do, the free-fall will be longer, and the losses will keep coming -- possibly until you have nothing left to lose.

Better to take from each loss what you can, then let it go. And ultimately easier.

All for now,

J

Forward

2010-12-21T18:24:00.000-08:00

I'm adding no new wisdom to the world by delcaring it here, but there's really no going back, in life -- only forward.

Back is a tempting place. Back was known. It may have been safe. But trust me, it's gone, and can't be recaptured. The important questions don't relate to how to get back to something that was, but rather how to go forward. What to forge -- what new reality to create? With whom? And when?

Scary stuff, going forward -- lots of unknowns. But standing still isn't living, and there's no going back.

You knew all that. But sometimes I forget.

All for now,

J

How much is this hobby costing me?

2010-12-05T05:39:00.000-08:00

I was just reading the comments on one of Velouria's recent posts over at Lovely Bicycle. The topic was budget bicycles and whether it's better to buy something cheap or something used. That got me thinking about my bike projects and how much they've cost me, and honestly, those are numbers that are best not thought about. I probably have $1500 into my Schwinn's build, for example, and it's worth maybe $500 on eBay, if I'm lucky. The Motobecane was a gift from my friend Steven, but I've probably got $500 into that in components and accessories. Probably more.

Then there are the girls' bikes. Juli had three bar/stem/lever setups on her Fuji in the two seasons she rode it. Two of these required new parts, each to the tune of $150 or so. Then the bike itself cost $300 or so, shipped, and there are cages and the rack and the saddle bag and her Brooks saddle to consider, not to mention the upgraded front derailleur, brakes, tires and tubes, cables and housing, and the cranks and pedals. $1000 all-in wouldn't surprise me. Two seasons! Now, it's true that Ava will be on that bike for a couple of seasons, herself (maybe even 3), but it's going to cost me $5-600 to get it ready for her, once I'm done cannibalizing it for Juli's Schwinn, and getting it repainted.

Then there's Juli's Schwinn. The frame was cheap, and the fork was, too -- $200 total, I think, with shipping. The cranks, derailleurs, shifters and brakes were all on-hand or cannibalized from the Fuji. The headset, stem and bars were new for this build -- that's $100 or so. The wheelset cost me $200 for the parts and $250 for the class! And I've got another $300 in miscellaneous components in there, too -- 650B tires and tubes, kickstand, cable stops, hangers, the brake pulley thingy, etc... I'm guesstimating here, but that one is quickly inching towards a thou as well, even without the wheelbuilding class costs factored in.

On the other hand, I'm not exactly cutting corners on any of these bikes. My taste in components and accessories tends towards the expensive, and I always seem to end up paying way more on eBay than I can sell the same parts for when I move onto something new. And the only money I spent on my Schwinn this year was for a new wheelset (crash) and the fenders and saddle bag I bought for my trip to Italy. So apart from the crash and two purchases for a specific purpose, I pretty much just rode it. All it needs right now is a replacement big ring, to replace the one ovaled by baggage handlers. Likewise, the Motobecane got a little spend early this season, as I sorted it out for its intended role, but very little over the summer (bar tape). It shouldn't need anything to get me through next season -- maybe tires, depending on how much the rollers chew those up this winter.

Anyway, I guess the answer is that as hobbies go, this one hasn't been particularly inexpensive for me, and that most of that spend is impulsive on my part -- discretionary, not mandatory. I think one of my New Year's resolutions will be to spend no more than $100 each on the Schwinn and Motobecane in 2011. I'm sure it's possible -- the question is whether I have the discipline to stick to it.

Juli's Schwinn is looking more and more like a bicycle, by the way. I'll write more another time, but it has wheels and tires installed, and is awaiting transplant of the drivetrain and control levers. This is good fodder for the coming Christmas school vacation. Then we can cable and tape it, and it'll be roadworthy, and ready for a test ride and its final accessories!

All for now,

J

650B Schwinn Build, Day 1

2010-11-20T14:40:00.000-08:00

This is a weekend I normally wouldn't have had the girls. But Ava had a play date today, so their mother asked me to take Juli for a few hours. Yay! In addition to doing a few chores, we spent about an hour on Juli's Schwinn, taking off the parts I'd test-fit, washing and waxing the frame and fork, and starting the bike's build, for real. We have a long way to go, as you can see, and the process will likely be broken into several sessions, but the build should go quickly.

In anticipation of this, I'd moved my bike stand back up into the attic, along with my bike tools, the Schwinn itself, and Juli's old Fuji, which will serve as a donor bike. What doesn't get donated to the Schwinn from that bike will come off and go into a box, so that I can ultimately send that frameset out for a strip and repaint on Ava's behalf before its next build-up. If I'm completely off my rocker when the time comes, I may also get shift cable stops and a pair of bottle cage braze-ons installed in the process.

The big thing worth mentioning about the build so far is the headset, whose final state you can see here. As I mentioned last time, we're using a threadless headset with a top nut from a threaded headset, a NOS Suntour locknut to keep the top nut in place, a stack of 1" headset spacers, a 1" threadless cable hanger, and a Nitto 50mm quill stem. The steerer tube is long, and it has only a couple of inches of threading. On this frame that's not enough to allow the use of a threaded headset, and too much to allow for a threadless headset, cable hanger and stem, if the threaded part were hacked off. So this mash-up was cobbled together, and it seems to be working just fine, in that the fork turns and nothing seems to be doing anything untoward. I'll let you know how it holds up in service. We did rearrange the stacked parts, relative to the test-fit, to get the stop a little lower than it was. The handlebars are old French bars -- nice and compact for their intended user. One thing I noticed is that the handlebar collides with the top tube at full lock. The bike will have bar-end shifters, but I might twine and shellack that spot on the top tube, both to protect it and to cover the blighted paint that's in that spot today (apparently this isn't new to the current bar and stem combo).

The brake calipers are in place, sans pads or cables, and when we finish the rest of the brake installation, I'll share more about the two unorthodox features of the brake setup. We're using Dia-Compe centerpulls (610 and 750 reach, front and rear) with the hope that they work better for Juli (who'll probably weigh no more than 110 lbs during this bike's service to her) than they did for me on my Schwinn. If they still suck, we'll find another solution.

The Greenfield kickstand is bolted into place, and I'm hoping the frame's kickstand plate will keep it from moving around down there (I remember these things drifting around when I was a kid). I might also twine and shellack the kickstand arm to protect the crankset. Might. We'll almost certainly have to trim and file that arm once we have tubes and tires installed on the wheels, to get the right lean.

Speaking of tires, once the bike is on its rolling stock, we can level the saddle and handlebar, and also figure out how much to trim the Pletscher struts so the rack sits level to the ground when installed on this little frame. I suppose we could do that without tires, too, but I don't like setting a bike on the ground on bare rims.

We installed the crankset, which is the same one that served Juli well on the Fuji, as well as the saddle and one bottle cage from that bike. The crankset is a 165mm Bontrager part with compact rings (36/50 iirc), and it mates to a Truvativ ISIS bottom bracket. The saddle is a Brooks B17, in honey. And the bottle cage is just a Specialized cheapie. Other components and accessories will make their way over from the Fuji in later sessions, including the rest of the drivetrain, the control levers, another cage on an auxiliary mount, a bell, a saddle bag and a blinky.

I also ordered most of the last of what we'll need, today. During the work we did today, I noticed a few more things we'll have to install, but even so, the list is short: tires & tubes, a cable stop for the seat tube, brake pads, a pair of barrel adjusters, a chain, and a plastic cable guide for under the bottom bracket. I couldn't get that last part from Rivendell, so I'm going to hit my LBS for that sometime in the next week or so. The rest should be here after Thanskgiving.

Anyway, Juli seemed to have fun, and she seems fully over the pinkness of it all, now that the bike is coming together. She greased the headset races, installed the rear brake and water bottle cage, washed the frame, and seemed enjoy stroking the freshly waxed paint and chrome. Don't we all, though?

All for now,

Juli's Pink Schwinn Taking Shape

2010-11-14T11:30:00.000-08:00

I received some parts this week intended for Juli's next bike, so I spent a few minutes today trying out my bastardized headset idea, and then test fitting some parts. As you can see, the pink Schwinn frame is starting to look like a bike!

Currently on the bike are a Dia-Compe 610/750 brake combination, a pulley for the rear brake cable (which on this frame will approach the seatpost clamp area from below, not above -- I'll detail this when I write up the build another time), a Greenfield (made in USA!) kickstand, a Shimano 12-28 7-speed freewheel, the 650B wheelset I built up in class, a seatpost, stem, handlebar, and the aforementioned headset.

The day after Thanksgiving, Juli and I will start the build process in earnest, beginning by taking everything you see off the frame, and giving it a good scrubbing and polishing. After that, it should go together pretty quickly. We have most of the parts we need (beyond what's listed above), save for tires & tubes, fresh brake pads and control cables. Blue handlebar tape and cable housing are sitting in a box out in the barn, along with a Pletscher rack that I'll modify to sit level on this little frame (as I did for the Fuji, by shortening the support struts). The drivetrain, control levers and saddle will be scavenged from Juliana's Fuji, along with key accessories, like the bottle cages, blinky and saddle bag.

As for the hybrid headset, it seems pretty sound to me. The headset is threadless, but the steerer tube is threaded. There is a locknut near the top of the spacer stack, and the threaded top-nut, as you can see. For the test fit, I put a spacer between the lock nut and top nut, but in the final build I may move that under the locknut, and play with the order of spacers and hanger in the stack, to get the cable hanger as low as possible.

The girls' mother stopped by with the girls today to pick something up, just as I got to the stage you see, here. Juli was all smiles, seeing her new bike, and offered the verdict that the dreaded raspberry-pink frame is overshadowed by all the shiny metal, making it acceptable. As long as the cables and bar tape are blue, that is. We'll see how long that position lasts!

It should come together quickly, from here, and be ready for Juli to use as soon as the weather warms up enough for riding, next Spring.

All for now,

J

Huret Dropout Adapter

2010-11-12T18:00:00.000-08:00

Here's my first pass at an engineering drawing for the adapter I made for my 1972 Schwinn Sports Tourer. This simple little part installs on the derailleur mounting/pivot bolt, and sits squeezed in between the derailleur and the dropout. Its purpose is to fix an incompatibility between modern derailleurs and an old Huret dropout. The Huret dropout has the derailleur adjustment screw flat maybe 30 degrees farther forward than does a modern dropout, and the adjustment screw on a modern derailleur won't connect with the flat at all. This adapter provides a new flat in the right place for a modern derailleur.

All dimensions are in mm. Start by taking a little scrap of 1-1.5 mm sheet metal (I used chrome plated brass that started life as some sort of washer), and cutting it like so:

If you could get it to scale right, it would be great to be able to print this image on a laminating sheet and just stick it onto your sheet metal as a template. I'll see if I can figure out a way to post a file that's 1:1 scale.

Anyway, once you have the thing cut out, file the edges smooth so you don't cut yourself. I'd even round off those pointy tab corners a bit. If you use brass like I did, filing takes no time at all. Then drill a 10 mm hole up at the top, there, and file its edges too. The hole is oversized to accommodate adjustment.

Then the next step will be to fold the part on the three lines toward the bottom (sorry, I couldn't figure out how to dash the lines) using a pair of needle-nose pliers. The two tabs at either side fold towards you about 110 degrees or so -- past vertical anyway (you'll need to fiddle the correct angle during installation, so don't sweat that too much). Then the rectangular flap with the (now folded) tabs folds up 90 degrees so that the tabs now sit along the body. The tabs' angle should be about radial to the hole. The little box section formed by the three folds is installed facing away from you, fitting up against the dropout's adjustment flat.

The drawing is nothing fancy, yet. But I'm used to freehand graphics packages, not tools that expect accurate measurements. Next up, I want to make the drawing 3D, and figure out how to fold it in the software to give a preview of the finished part. And I'll take a picture of the installed prototype adapter so you can see how it fits.

Should be fun!

All for now,

J

New Projects, New Work

2010-11-07T18:18:00.000-08:00

I started working again a couple of weeks ago at a company that makes CAD software. I'm doing Product Management work, as I have for a long time, and so far it feels like it'll be a great place to be.

I'm not managing a CAD product, but rather a cool new social app that they're building. Even so, knowing the core products is always important, and I've got a few things in mind that I want to do to get up to speed -- starting by creating a schematic for the adapter shim I made for the Huret dropout on my 1972 Schwinn Sports Tourer, to allow it to support modern derailleurs.

The goal is simple -- take the adapter off the bike (now that it's likely down for the winter anyway), measure its key dimensions and get them into a blueprint. Mostly I want to learn the products, but I'll also have something of value at the end. Probably only enough value to share freely rather than do something commercial with, but even so, something of value to fellow tinkerers.

It should be a fun project, and I'm hoping to get it done this week. I'll let you know how I fare. After that, I have a front rack I'd like to design -- a sort of variant on the one I bought over the summer that didn't work with the fork or brakes on the Motobecane.

In the mean time, I've ordered the headset spacers and cable hanger needed to try out the unusual headset build I wrote about last time. And the next step for the build is to take the frame into the basement with a bucket of water, some rags and some simple green for a thorough cleaning. It's a little chilly to do it outside, now, but I want it clean and waxed before Juli and I get the build rolling this winter.

All for now,

J

Unconventional Headset Build

2010-10-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

I recently picked up a chrome Klein 700C fork for Juliana's to-be 650B Schwinn, both to reduce the pink factor and to make the front brake reach situation a little more manageable than with the bike's original fork, which had very long legs (designed, as it was, for 27" wheels). Something I didn't really anticipate is that this fork would create some complications from a headset perspective.

I was surprised to find that the steerer tube of the fork is fully chromed. And on this fork, the threads stop about an inch and a half short of where they need to be for Juli's frame. I think if I took the fork to a bike shop that has the tools needed to thread the fork down, they'd refuse to do it because the chrome plating would be hard on the threading die. Also, the unthreaded length of the steerer is a little too short to support both a brake cable hanger (which I need because I'm going to install centerpull brakes on the bike) and a threadless stem, without having to clamp the stem onto a partly threaded area, which seems like a really bad idea. And I've found it difficult to find 1" threadless stems with a short reach appropriate to a 10 year-old. I have a nice Nitto quill stem with a short reach, though.

So, I probably can't thread the fork to work with this frame with a threaded headset, and I probably can't safely use it with a threadless stem. What to do? Well, here's what I'm going to try:

Get a threadless headset (done)
Get a threaded headset (also done)
Find a brake cable stop/hanger that will clamp to the steerer tube (found, but not purchased yet)
Buy a bunch of 1" headset spacers (not done yet)
Buy a locknut for a 1" threaded headset (done -- NOS Suntour part)
Install the threadless headset, spacers and cable stop, getting the spacer stack up into the threaded zone of the steerer
And finally, the theoretical part: Instead of using a star-fangled nut, top cap & bolt, spacer stack and stem to tighten the headset, I'll use the spacer stack, hanger, and the locknut and top nut on the existing threads.

With the open steerer top, I will be able to use the Nitto quill stem I have, as normal.

Has anyone else tried this? It's unconventional, and I haven't seen any postings on the web where someone has bastardized a headset this way, but I don't see any reason it wouldn't work, and work safely. Just as with a threaded headset, there will be two threaded nuts tensioning the bearings and locked against each other -- the only difference is where the spacers will fall. And just as with a threadless headset, I'll have spacers playing a role in tensioning the bearings. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it'll work just fine.

Guess I'll find out! If it doesn't, I'll have to go get a new fork, I guess, and flip this one back on eBay. I don't think I'll end up wrecking any parts in the process, and if I can't use that configuration, I'll be able to reuse one of the headsets with a new fork. I'll snap some pics and follow-up when I find out if it works.

All for now,

J

Juli's Wheels -- Finished!

2010-10-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

Just a short, final post about my wheelbuilding experience today.

Monday night was the final wheelbuilding class at Broadway Bicycle School. The process was largely the same for the front wheel as I described for the rear wheel a couple of weeks ago -- a gradual and repetitive process of tightening spokes for tension, dish and true. Once again, it was neither hard nor frustrating, but rather an engaging and deliberate process. It would probably have been harder solo, though -- it was great to have Dave there as an expert resource to provide guidance.

The wheels look great -- nice and shiny -- and they should serve Juli well on her Schwinn frame. I picked up rim tape and a 7-speed Shimano freewheel last night, as well, and need to buy some tubes and relatively narrow (32mm or so) 650B tires before the wheelset is complete. The only mechanical work left on the wheels is to carefully lift the seals on the hubs' cartridge bearings and make sure they have enough fresh grease. And I think the only other parts I need to start the Schwinn's build at this point are cables and housing (blue) and a stubby 1" threadless stem.

Tallying up the bill for the parts and the class, it's clear this wasn't a way to save money -- I could order a set of wheels from Velo-Orange for less than I spent on this experience. But this really was never a scheme for saving money, as I doubt that my personal lifetime need for new bicycle wheels would offset the cost of tools alone needed to repeat this process on my own. This has really been about the experience, about doing something that most people, even avid cyclists, will never do. And what a great experience! I understand a great deal more about the hoops that hold us up, and should be well-armed for keeping the wheels for which I am caretaker spinning true.

Having recently spent some time working on his bike (which I apparently made look easy), a friend of mine suggested last night that I find a part-time job working at a bike shop. Just a few hours here and there working in the service area for fun, he said. I do love working on bikes, and I think I largely know what I'm doing. And earning a little cash to feed my bike part habit would be useful. But it wouldn't be about money, and I'm not sure that's really the right forum for exercising this hobby. Maybe volunteering for a local earn-a-bike program or Bikes Not Bombs or something.

I've got Juli's bike to build up this winter, of course, and what will become Ava's Fuji to tear down. But my own bikes are far fewer in number this year than they've been, and neither of them really needs more than a few minutes of work during the coming off-season. I'm going to run out of bike projects early, and it would be good to find another outlet. Anyone have any other ideas?

All for now,

J

Pedal Rebuild

2010-10-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

The Motobecane came to me with a nice old set of MKS pedals. I got that bike about 18 months ago, and rebuilt the pedals shortly after it arrived. They were installed on the Motobecane last year, and on the Schwinn this year. I know I put just over 300 miles on them this year, maybe 30 of that in rain. And I am guessing they had 200 miles or so logged last season. So they haven't seen a lot of use, in other words.

On Thursday, I took the Schwinn to the grocery store for a quick bit of shopping. While parking the bike, for some reason I reached down and turned the left pedal by hand, and was surprised to find that it was in need of another rebuild -- gritty and coarse in its movement.

So Friday morning, I pulled the pedal off the bike and brought it inside to take it apart. It's a simple job, rebuilding pedals designed for it, and it took all of 3 minutes to unscrew the dust cap, loosen the locknut and then back off the outer cone with a screwdriver (the cones are slotted, not shaped for a wrench).

What I found inside was interesting. First, the teflon grease smelled strongly of chemicals, where it barely smelled at all when I put it in. I don't have any idea if this matters or not, but it seemed a little runnier (still grease, though, not oil) and was definitely stinkier. Second, the outer bearings (the ones under the dust cap) were still turning in grease that looked clean, but grease in the inner bearings was black.

The bodies of these old pedals have a black plastic insert that appears to serve as a seal against the pedal axle. I'm guessing that the blackness in the grease is a combination of contaminants, including some measure of plastic abraded away from this insert. There are a couple of things that could cause such abrasion. First, physical contact with the axle, which might have happened if I adjusted the outer cone too loosely, and the pedal body was able to move around under the load of pedaling, and actually contact the axle. And second, grime making its way into the small crack between the axle and plastic seal could have become an effective abrasive. Pulling the second pedal off and opening it up revealed much the same thing, but not quite as far along.

There's really not much to be done about grit -- it's out there, it's on the road, and all you can really do is clean it out when it gets to be too much. But as for the bearing tension, I recalled what my instructor at Broadway Bicycle School had said -- to snug down the locknuts to make the bearings on a freshly packed hub feel a bit too tight, with the confidence that they'd loosen up a bit with use. My last repack was done prior to this advice, so it's entirely possible I went a bit too easy on the adjustment. So this time, after replacing the grease and 11 bearings per side, per pedal, I tighened the outer cone a bit more than I normally would have, and snugged the locknut down on a bearing which doesn't feel as loose as it ought to.

I've got a few more rides coming this fall, and I'll try to use the Schwinn as much as I can, to exercise the pedals and get them settled in. I took it out today with the girls, where I followed Ava around on her little Gary Fisher mountain bike, iPhone in hand, snapping photos. That's probably not smart, but it was still fun. The pedals felt fine underfoot, not calling attention to themselves, and so Ava's increasing confidence got all of my attention.

With any luck this rebuild will last more than 500 miles or a couple of seasons. If not, I suppose I won't feel too badly about retiring a pair of 35 year-old pedals.

All for now,

J

Great Season

2010-10-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

Fall is truly in the air this week, and my rides today and yesterday called for long sleeves. Actually, that's true of my past 4-5 rides, now that I think about it -- temps are back around where they were in April and May, when I started riding outdoors again.

I took the picture above on Saturday morning, wearing a long-sleeved tee over another tee. It was taken in Somerset, NJ or thereabouts, on a canal path. It was a beautiful early-fall morning, with mist on the canal and the cool water doing its best to keep the sun's warmth in check. The ride was easy; flat and only 11 miles -- time spent with a college buddy, as much as anything. And once again I appreciated the versatility of the Schwinn, which carried me over packed rock dust, drying mud, dirt and sand without complaint and with nary a wobble. There was only one portage required -- fifty yards across a mossy flagstone spillway, where the canal wall is lower, apparently designed to allow high water out. The Paramount could have made it across, but the Schwinn isn't laid out for that kind of work.

The cycling season that's now winding down has been terrific. I've logged over 1500 miles, split about 600 each on the Kestrel and Motobecane (the Motobecane now slightly ahead of the now-retired Kestrel), with over 300 going to the Schwinn, which I mostly used for errands or riding with my kids. I'm working with odometer readings, not logs, so I can't say for sure how many of the Schwinn's miles were logged with the girls, but I'm going to guess it's somewhere around 125.

I might fit another 100 miles in, here and there, before I bring my season inside to the relative monotony of my training rollers, but I don't expect to hit 2000 outdoor miles. Still, 1600-odd miles is a pretty big number, facilitated in this case by a dry summer and not working. It looks like that may be drawing to a close as well, which is good -- I'm ready to be back, fully recharged and ready to go.

Cycling no doubt contributed to that recharge. I'm in better shape, physically, than I've been since high school, if ever. My weight is good and I'm really strong -- at least for me. With every pedal stroke and every mile logged, I've had time to process -- to think through where I've been the past few years, what I've learned, and the direction I want to head. I have lots of perspective, some reasonable conclusions that should serve me well, and I feel great about the possibilities ahead of me, both personally and professionally.

1500 miles and a stronger body, mind and heart. What a great season.

All for now,

Juliana's Wheels -- Rear Complete

2010-10-07T18:05:00.000-07:00

You know, building wheels isn't really all that hard. Time consuming, yes. Made a lot easier with the right tools and an expert on hand to help, yes. But it's not hard work or tedious work, and I'm really enjoying the process.

I finished Juliana's rear wheel in class, Monday night. It took about two hours to get it from laced to fully tensioned and true, in a very iterative process with lots of repetition both of steps and groups of steps. Essentially, what all of those steps achieved was to shorten the effective length of each spoke wire, tensioning it between the rim and the hub, and centering the rim between the outer locknuts of the hub's axle. That all sounds complicated, but the mechanics are really pretty simple, as are the steps involved.

The first step of the night was to tighten the nipples down so that the last thread on each spoke end was just barely covered up by the nipple. This basically just tee'd each spoke up with a more or less uniform starting point. From there, we added two full turns to each nipple, to snug them down just a bit more and again, keep them more or less uniform.

Next up, Dave asked us to use the closed end of a wrench to pry the spoke ends just a bit so that they sat nice and flush up against the hub body, rather than curving out a bit. Then came another round or two of tightening, working the spokes on each side separately (since this is a rear wheel, with an asymmetric hub and different spoke lengths per side) and then squeezing pairs of spokes together to relieve the torsional wind-up that is introduced by tightening them. What I mean by that is that as the spoke nipples are turned to tighten the spoke, friction forces some of that twist go go into rotating the relatively flexible wire of the spoke, rather than into pulling it tighter, the result being that the spoke is then carrying an undesired torsional load in the form of that twist. Giving pairs of adjacent spokes a good squeeze together releases the stuck parts, letting the spokes un-twist.

After a couple of rounds, the wheel was tight enough to start thinking about making it true. Actually, it was surprising just how out of true the wheel was, given that I was trying to keep everything pretty uniform as I went. But it was pretty far off, and that first truing took a long time to get right. And I didn't just have to make sure the wheel wasn't wobbly at the sidewalls, I also had to make sure the wheel was circular, with the axle centered in that circle. That's the truing stand that the wheel is in, at top, and the little pinchy thing towards the front (partially cut off at the bottom) is an adjustable guide that provides a steady reference point to true against. As the wheel rim is spun, it's easy to see it wobble, and then the guide is adjusted so that it just barely grazes the rim at a "high" spot on one side or the other. Tightening one or two spokes will usually take care of that high spot by pulling the rim slightly towards the left or the right (depending on whether the spokes came from the left or right side of the hub), and then the process is repeated until there are no more high spots on the rim.

I think there were a couple of rounds of tightening and truing before the next step, but honestly it all sort of became a blur in there at some point. Either way, we eventually got to the point where we needed to make sure that the rim was centered between the outer locknuts on the axle. In normal circumstances, an uncentered rim isn't going to ride right. The rim won't be centered in the notch of the fork or chainstays/seatstays, for one, which means the tires might not clear and the brakes won't grab properly. It's easy to measure this with a dishing tool, which doesn't actually take measurements or anything -- it simply adjusts to mark the distance from the rim to the outer locknut, and then you flip the wheel over and fit the tool against that side to make sure that distance is the same. If it is, the wheel is properly dished, and if not, the spokes on one side or the other will need to be tightened uniformly, to pull the rim this way or that. Then true again, check the dish again, adjust again, true again, check the dish again, etc...

Once the dish is right and the wheel is true, it's time to check for uniform (give or take) spoke tension across each side of the wheel. Park makes a gauge that makes this easy. Essentially you clamp it in turn to each spoke and the clamping action tests how much it can bend the spoke. If the spoke bends more, it's more slack, and if it bends less, it's more tight. The objective is to have all of the spokes sit in a range of tension so that the wheel is neither too loose and flexible, nor so tight that it becomes overstressed and prone to breakage. It turned out I had everything a little loose, so I had to tighten everything up a bit more, then check the true, check for uniformity again, adjust, true, check and repeat.

The last step was to plop the wheel on its side on a stool with a divot worn into its seat, and apply lateral pressure to the rim, then flip it over and do it again from the other side. As with squeezing pairs of spokes, this is intended to relieve any lateral stress on the spokes that was introduced during the build. Then check the dish, make sure it's true, adjust, recheck and repeat.

At the end of all of that tightening, checking and truing, I ended up with a rear wheel that seems like it'll do the job. Juli certainly seems pleased, and I'm just thrilled that I was able to do it. In two weeks, I'll have the last class, and I'll take a crack at the front.

I have one concern, looking very closely at the rear rim: I didn't notice it before building the wheel, but it looks like these rims have the slightest amount of stagger to the rims' spoke holes, where the holes are slightly offset alternately to the left and right. If that's true, I got lucky with respect to lacing up the correct side of the rear wheel with the correct holes in the rim. But since I wasn't deliberate about that mapping (I didn't notice the staggered holes before, if they are truly staggered), I may not have been so lucky with the front wheel -- have to see. I'm not sure I'll be able to re-lace the front wheel and tension it in one class window, but if need be, I'll give it a shot.

Anyway, so far, so good. I'm still having fun, and part of me (the part that loves toys) is thinking about wheel truing stands, spoke tension gauges and a dishing tool so that I can build my own wheels whenever I please. Probably best to ignore that impulse right now, though.

All for now,

J

Gran Prix of Gloucester Cyclocross, 2010

2010-10-04T11:40:00.000-07:00

For all of my enthusiasm about bikes and cycling, I've never really been into bicycle racing. I enjoy riding too much to take the fun out of it by competing seriously, and I know I'm not talented, young or strong enough to be particularly good at racing at this point, anyway. And apart from a stint over a decade ago where I watched open-wheel racing pretty regularly, I've never been sucked into regular TV spectatorship of any sports. TV is great for amplifying the action and talent, but for me the fun of a sporting event is tied tightly to the experience of being there. So as for bike racing, I don't do it, I don't necessarily understand the tactics of it, and I don't really watch it on TV (the TdF or otherwise).

But I don't dislike it or anything, and going to see the TdF is on my bucket list somewhere after going to see the 24 hours of LeMans. So when I heard about the Gran Prix of Gloucester, one of the bigger cyclocross events in the US, hear tell, I had to check it out.

I don't know a lot about cyclocross, and won't pretend to, but the jist of it is road-ish types of bikes being raced on a broad variety of terrain, from pavement to grass, dirt and mud. The races (at least these races) are timed events, not distance events. They ran for an hour, or about the length of one of my typical workout rides. But riding competitively, over grass and dirt and what-have-you for an hour is an entirely different animal than going out for a workout ride on the road, of course -- far more intense. I have a hard time imagining that, honestly.

The bikes sit somewhere between road and old-school mountain bikes. Their frames look like road racing bikes in terms of their geometry and overall shape, and they run 700c wheels and drop bars like racing bikes. But they're also generally equipped with cantilever brakes (to keep the tire clearance nice and open, vs. caliper brakes), lower gearing for hill climbing, additional brake levers on the bar tops, and knobby (if narrow) tires. The riders' posture in the saddle is very much like a road riding posture, and it looked to me as if they use the saddle most of the time, rather than spending the race standing up and using body english like on a mountian bike.

Just to dwell on the hardware a bit more, it was cyclocross bikes that got me thinking differently about cycling a few years ago. Way back in the day, my early ten-speed bikes were generalists, and I rode them anywhere I could on lightly treaded road tires. Not sand, so much, but dirt, grass and even snow sometimes. Then over time, my road bike purchases became more and more specialized in favor of road use, to the point where my recently retired Kestrel could be really twitchy, and seemed to want only to crash on gravel, grass or other unpaved surfaces. Some of this was undoubtedly the narrow and high-pressure tires I was running on the Kestrel and Shogun before it, but I'm sure it had to do with the bikes and their geometry, as well.

But a cross bike? Gosh, they look a lot like road bikes, and just look at the terrain they're piloted over. Seeing them years back started me thinking about more rational road bikes, and that ultimately led me to a couple of projects rebuilding vintage road frames into all-around bikes. My Schwinn Sports Tourer wears lightly treaded Panaracer Pasela tires, and can be ridden on dirt paths, grassy trails and other uneven surfaces without fear of crashing. It's not as fast as my Kestrel was, but I can ride it most anywhere I want. And while my Motobecane Grand Touring (also shod with Paselas) is a little sketchier than the Schwinn, it too is a far better ally off-pavement than the Kestrel was, without being meaningfully slower than that bike. I think it's fair to say that I have a restored appreciation for cycling versatility, thanks indirectly to cyclocross.

This was my first time at a cyclocross event, and really, I just dipped my toe in. I had the girls, and they were more interested in the beach and the playground than the racing. And I had my dog, who can be a handful around other dogs while on-leash, which makes it hard to bring him places. We watched most of one race, and then walked around the vendor tents that had been set up for a bit, seeing what was there. We saw and waved to my wheel-building instructor, Dave, at the Pedro's tent (he races with Pedro's sponsorship), but he looked busy and we didn't bug him (he told me in class later that he'd placed in the 30's of some 90 riders -- pretty good!) Then, after a bit, we watched the first few laps of the elite womens' race, before starting to make our way along the course and back to the car. Next time I won't bring the dog, I'll bring a picnic, and maybe invite some friends who'll appreciate the event more than my kids did (no slam on the kids or the dog, there). It was fun, though, and interesting -- and most importantly, I know what to do differently next time.

All for now,

Cat pee, Nike? Seriously?

2010-10-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

A non-bike post today.

So, for the record, most of the sneakers I've owned have been Nikes, and one of my current pairs is from Nike. And I like them! I like their innovation, with the Apple tie-ins, etc.

In the past, I've bought a mix of Nikes and Adidas and who knows what for my girls for Soccer, and Juli's current cleats are Nike. Or were, I should say. I bought these in I think March or so. They're series 90 or something like that -- have a couple of big 90's on them, in any case. And oh my God do they stink like cat pee!

Now, I don't have a cat, and the shoes weren't left somewhere someone else's cat could pay them a visit. And they didn't start out smelling like that. No, according to what I found online, these shoes start to smell that way when they get wet. And of course in New England, kids practice and play soccer on wet fields. And of course if one day you notice that your kid's cleats smell like cat pee, the first thing you do is what? That's right, you wash them, and then let them dry in the sun. Only in this case, washing them just makes it worse because then the shoes are well and truly soaked, and whatever it is about the materials in the shoes that makes them smell like cat pee is activated just that much more. Nice.

It's easy to find reports on Google about this, and it would seem that Nike isn't (or wasn't) taking responsibility for the problem. When I spoke with Nike this morning, my customer service rep was friendly, but either didn't know anything about the problem or wouldn't acknowledge any known issue. I'm going to send them in to Nike to return them and we'll see if they do anything for me, but the 'net has set my expectations low on that score. OMG these things stink -- I have that one there sitting next to me after my customer service call, and it's unbearable!

In the mean time, I will have to hit Sports Authority this weekend to buy Juli a new set of cleats. Adidas, I think.

All for now,

J

Juli's Wheels -- Lace 'em up!

2010-09-28T18:37:00.000-07:00

Last night was what I suppose I'd consider the "big day" in my wheelbuilding class at Broadway Bicycle school -- I laced both of the hubs into the rims!

Now, on the scale of human achievement, this isn't really all that big a deal. Millions of spoked wheels are produced worldwide each year, after all. But these two are my first, and may well be my last, so I'm going to savor the experience.

So what'd I do? Well, I started with several sets of components -- two Velo-Orange Diagonale 650B rims (so shiny and pretty), a pair of sturdy old Specialized sealed bearing hubs (not shiny or pretty, but stout and bulletproof), fifty-two 276mm stainless spokes for the front and non-drive-side rear, eighteen 274mm spokes for the drive side rear, a GladWare tub full of chromed brass nipples and two different colors of Spoke Prep, which is a type of thread locking compound. Then Dave led the class through the process of lacing up the wheels.

The first step was to smear Spoke Prep on the threaded ends of the spokes. The two different colors were to distinguish the spoke lengths -- the long ones got the taupe-colored spoke prep, and the short ones got the baby blue. Using two different colors would ensure that we wouldn't use the wrong spokes in the wrong places. Except when we (I, really) did.

Spokes prepped, the lacing began. Dave gave us some tips on how to show some deliberation about the details of the wheel. Stuff like making the logo on the hub body line up radially with the valve stem hole on the rim. And making sure the valve stem hole fell in the right place within the spoke pattern, to make sure it would be easy to get a pump head onto the valve stem. Or making the labels on both rims readable from the drive side of the bike. Stuff like that, both functional and aesthetic.

Those things in mind, we started lacing. Which really means threading spokes through the holes in the hub, and running them outward to the holes in the rim, then securing them with a nipple. It wasn't as hard as I expected it to be. Really, it was pretty simple -- just a matter of knowing where to start, which spokes to thread next, and which holes to run them to, given the desired spoke pattern (three-cross, in this case, which means that each spoke crosses three other spokes on the way to the rim).

I did make some mistakes, though. I was feeling pretty chatty, and at one point I realized I was using short spokes on the non-drive side, and I had to take like 6 spokes out of the wheel, and replace them with the longer ones. Then another time, I realized I was working sort of backwards, and had to take another 8 spokes out, twist the hub a bit, and then re-lace those 8 spokes again in a different direction. It could have been worse -- I caught both mistakes myself, and Dave was right at hand to offer course correction.

In the two hours of class, I managed to get both of my wheels laced, so I'll be in good shape to start the next steps. They are still pretty floppy, and there's still quite a bit of work left to go. I have to make sure they're dished right, which will result in the rim being centered between the outer lock nuts on the hub -- necessary if you want your rims to sit smack-dab between your brake shoes, which most of us do. Then they have to be round, with the axle sitting dead-center of the rim's circle, which I think most of us would intuit the importance of. And they have to be true, so they don't wobble like a potato chip while they turn. And perhaps least obviously, they should have even spoke tension across each side of each wheel, so that the wheel isn't overly stressed at any given point, which would lead to their prematurely getting out of whack.

So the dramatic part is done -- the part that makes it look like I actually did something. But the hard work -- the meticulous and frustrating work of making the wheels right and usable -- is still to come. One of the wheels is pictured above, sitting at a bench at Broadway Bicycle School -- can't tell which it is. You can see it pretty much looks like a wheel. But the spokes are slack, and the wheels unusable as a result -- you can tell because the spokes are curved, not straight (they're not under much tension).

I hope Juli will be impressed by the final results, and treasure these, her father's first (and possibly only) wheels. If she doesn't, that's OK -- I will. And I won't remind her of all my hard work before every ride, I promise. I'm having too much fun to play that card.

All for now,

J

Juli's Wheels -- Pieces Parts

2010-09-16T18:25:00.001-07:00

The wheel building class at Broadway Bicycle School started this week! I drove into Cambridge in one of my folks' cars, because Allyson was in town earlier this week, and she'd borrowed my Mazda for a few days. Borrowing seldom-used "spare" cars isn't always a good idea, and this week it turned into sort of a carnival of gremlins. I managed to avoid crashing into anything or being bitten. Long story.

Class was good. I'm one of three students, so it's a smaller and so far more social group than my last group. Each of us is building a different type of wheelset, with different hubs and different rim sizes, so it should be interesting to see how each project progress.

As I've mentioned before, my project will be to lace a set of 650B rims (either V-O or Velocity, depending on what's available) onto a vintage Specialized sealed bearing hubset. I think I properly spaced the rear hub for 126mm spacing (it was 120, originally), but we may need to adjust that in class. The 126 spacing will allow the rear to host a 7-speed freewheel, and then the final assemblies will see duty on Juli's new-to-her Schwinn frame (which is only a handful of parts away from being buildable).

This week, we mostly talked about what we wanted in the way of wheels, and why, and then chose parts. I already had my hubs, and knew what my rim choices would likely be, so most of the class I listened to and supported the dialog around the other students' wheels, which were being built from new and as-yet-unacquired parts. Did you know a Rohloff hub can run $1700, retail? That's a big nut, but then again, there's a little 14-speed transmission inside the thing, so it's a pretty sophisticated piece of equipment.

Apart from already knowing my rim and hub selections, I did have to make a couple of choices. I hadn't given any thought at all to spoke or nipple type. I think (can't remember for sure) I went with straight gauge DT Swiss spokes (vs. butted spokes), and I know I went with chrome plated brass nipples. The straight-gauge spokes are heavier, cheaper and not as strong as butted spokes, but these are wheels for a kid's bike, not a bike I'm going to put a thousand miles on per year.

To me, the way wheels lace up is really pretty cool. In a sense, spokes are long and skinny bolts, and nipples are nuts. The spoke winds through a hole in the hub, and then runs outward to the rim to accept the nipple. The nipple, in turn, fits through a hole in the rim and then threads onto the spoke end to hold it in place. Arrange a bunch of these around the circumference of a hub, running in a pattern to the rim, tighten them to uniform tension (either across all spokes or per-side, depending on the situation) and you have a wheel.

But there's a lot of detail in getting the wheel built right -- spoke length, choosing a lacing pattern, getting the path for each spoke right for the pattern, centering the rim properly (relative to the outer locknut surfaces on the axle), and getting everything tensioned properly and consistently. You should see the formula used to calculate the spoke length!

It should be a fun experience, and I'm looking forward to going back in two weeks to see what the Velo-Orange rims look like, and start learning how to lace the wheels up.

Then, once the wheels are built, I'll still need a few things to get the build rolling:

650B tires, and something on the narrower end to work with the chrome fork I bought for the frame
650B tubes to match the tires
Rim strips, and I'm going to try the new Made-in-America ones from Rivendell
The aforementioned freewheel
Brake and shifter cables, and housing in Juli's chosen shade of blue
A threadless handlebar stem, starnut and cap
Blue "cork" handlebar wrap
A kickstand

And probably a handful of other small parts, as well. Not a lot, though. The build should make for a good Christmas break project, I think, with a Thanksgiving tear-down of the Fuji.

I'll keep you posted.

All for now,

J

Wisdom

2010-09-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

Have you ever known anyone really wise? Someone who says important stuff that seems to make some sense at first, but then maybe a year later you really understand what they meant and why it was important? I do. A handful, actually, but one in particular inspired this post, after several weeks' hiatus.

I'm not sure if this dynamic makes me slow on the up-take, or if it makes those people especially wise. I'd like to think it's the latter. But I will also admit to blind spots.

My advice to myself is to listen harder to wise people, and spend more time thinking about what they've said. I think I'm getting better at that, but listening is a lifelong skill that can always use more work.

All for now,

J

Unless you look...

2010-08-25T03:53:00.000-07:00

I've been using my Schwinn Sports Tourer about once a week all summer. I take it out with Ava on the trailer bike, to the grocery store for light shopping runs, over to the lake for kayaking trips, and it even went to Staples for a school supply run last week. That's not a lot of use -- less than 300 miles -- but it's regular use. The bike has felt and sounded just fine, from the saddle. Other than keeping the chain lubed and wiping the wheels down to clean off the aluminum dust after a wet ride, I haven't seen cause to do anything to it.

On Monday, though, I had my last class at Broadway Bicycle School, and brought the Schwinn into town for its turn in the work stand. The topic for Monday's class was to look at the front derailleur. Though none of my front derailleurs was giving me any problems, I do struggle with setting them up right the first time during a build. I usually get the angle a bit wrong, and have to tweak that, but sometimes I also end up with a chain that overshifts and drops off the big ring, to the outside, at the least opportune time. Easy fixes, but things I should be able to avoid by setting it up right in the first place. So I was looking forward to learning tricks from Dave, our instructor.

I wasn't disappointed. I learned that I typically set my front derailleurs too high above the outer chainring (just 2-3mm). I learned the proper angle for a front derailleur (outer plate parallel to the chain while in the outer position), and that setting this always a guessing game because you can't adjust it while it's in that position. And as an unexpected bonus, I saw a real cable housing cutter in action, making quick work of derailleur housing (which has linear wire strands under the casing, rather than a helical coil of flat wire). I tend not to use this stuff because it's so hard to cut with the tools I have, but it's not ideal to use the other stuff with indexed shifters, and I should get one of those cutters at some point.

On the work stand, I saw that my front derailleur was on the verge of overshifting the chain off the large ring, that there was a little slop in the derailleur cable, and that my derailleur was a little high, relative to the recommended position. The first was probably caused by having my cranks snugged down a bit in Siena -- I don't think I ever re-adjusted the derailleur's limit screws to match the cranks' slight shift inboard. The second was either because I didn't take all the slack out the first time, or because the housing settled a bit or cable streched. And the third was just me not knowing any better. All good to catch.

But as I poked around, a couple of other things popped up, completely unexpected. For starters, I was able to hear a lot more noise coming from the rear derailleur on the work stand than out on the road. In top gear, the derailleur was on the verge of noisily overshifting the chain off the cluster altogether, and in low gear, the jockey wheel was riding right on the sprocket, which was particularly rumbly when pedaling backwards. Both were easy to adjust away, but had been missed because I hadn't checked for problems in a while -- even though I'd made major changes to the bike (like a new wheelset after my May crash).

More seriously, though, I discovered that the rear wheel was a little out of true, and that the cause was a broken spoke. These wheels have maybe 500 miles on them, and have never been abused, so this was pretty surprising - I haven't broken a spoke in over 15 years! These are factory-made wheels, but they're not assembled from junk, by any means. The rims are Sun CR18's which are a strong touring/commuting rim. The hubs are Quanta parts with cartridge bearings -- perfectly decent hubs. And the spokes are straight-gauge DT Swiss, which are good spokes used by wheel builders everywhere. The spoke broke at the bend down at the flange, so maybe it had been weakened during forming, or maybe it had been overtensioned by the lacing machine -- who knows. I just hope I don't end up breaking spokes all over the place with these wheels.

Dave suggested we replace the spoke in class, since I was there and otherwise done with my tasks for the evening. So I took the wheel off the bike, removed the tire and tube and unscrewed the spoke from its nipple. Then I tried to remove the freewheel from the hub, but it wouldn't budge. Dave tried, too. Then we double-teamed the wheel and still couldn't unscrew it. I had the same problem with this freewheel on the previous wheelset as well, but the bike shop guys had been able to get it off for me. I'll hit it with some penetrating oil and give it another shot, but in the mean time left it in place, and just curled the spoke past the big sprocket. That proved painless enough, since the spoke was on the left side, not the drive side. Once the spoke was screwed into the nipple, I put the rim on the truing stand and straightened it out.

None of these issues were hard to address (though I'm glad I found the broken spoke in the setting I did). And none of them would really be surprising tweaks to have to make sometime after a build has been completed and things have settled in. What they really reinforced for me, though, is how important it is to give your bike a deliberate inspection every once in a while -- even just once per season -- to make sure everything is adjusted properly. I've never really believed in a regular tune up, thinking that the bike would tell me during normal use if something was wrong. Finding these problems really showed me that unless you get the bike into a stand and look, you may not notice problems that could leave you sitting by the side of the road, waiting for a lift home.

All for now,

J

Wheel Building Dilemma

2010-08-20T02:58:00.000-07:00

On Monday night, class at Broadway Bicycle School focused on wheel truing.

I brought the Shogun into Cambridge for class, because it has the oldest set of wheels in my fleet -- an old but otherwise nice set of mid-'80's Shimano 600 hubs (a 6-speed freewheel hub in back) and charcoal anodized Mavic MA-40 rims. I had meetings on Monday afternoon, so my once-delayed plan to go into town on the T didn't pan out, again. I did drive in early enough to ride around a bit, but then a thunderstorm hit, so I retreated to my car.

The truing exercise was surprisingly easy, particularly since we were able to use nice Park wheel truing stands. The wheels were both out of true -- a couple of millimeters warped across a half or third of their circumference, rather than having a particular trouble spot. Once they were straight, I could feel that the spokes were pretty unevenly tensioned, so the rims themselves may no longer be straight. And their sidewalls are pretty worn, so they could stand replacement at some point.

To that end, the wheel truing class was really the reason I took this course -- so that I could sign up for the wheelbuilding course, which I did yesterday! In just a few weeks, I'll start the process of building a set of wheels. The question, now, is what to build?

When I last posted about this, my plan was to build up a new set of wheels for my Columbia straight-bar cruiser, put a front brake on it, maybe get some cantilever brake posts brazed to the rear triangle, and make that into an errand/around town sort of bike. I even picked up a set of SR hubs, a single speed freewheel and a set of 26" rims. From a cash outlay perspective, I'd need only go buy spokes to lace up a set of single speed, fat-rimmed MTB wheels in class.

A lot has changed since then, though, and that project doesn't make sense to me anymore. The Columbia is going on eBay shortly (no calls from Craig's List), so I'm not really interested in building up wheels for it. I also think I'm going to offload those wheel components I'd picked up, because I don't see a project that'll require a set of 26" single speed nutted-axle wheels in my future anymore. So no -- not those wheels.

Other candidates? Well, I recently bought a set of inexpensive but decent 650B wheels to use on Juliana's Schwinn, and confirmed that 650B rims will work well with that frame, both in terms of bottom bracket height and brake reach. There is one significant problem with that wheelset, though -- rear hub spacing. The rear hub is a mountain bike hub, spaced at 135mm, and this is an older road frame spaced for 120 or 126mm hubs. I've tugged at and spread the rear triangle enough to get the wheel into place, but the dropouts are noticeably no longer parallel in that position. That may compromise how well the quick release bites the rear dropouts, which may be a safety issue. I also suspect the rear derailleur alignment will be problematic with that setup.

So a second wheel-building option is to build up a set of 6/7 speed 126mm wheels for her, using a set of freewheel hubs I have. These are nice 36-hole Specialized cartridge bearing hubs that came with the Motobecane -- the core of the wheelset I destroyed in my Schwinn's crash in May. That would be a nice wheelset for Juli, and it would work much better with her frame. If I take this path, I'd have to shell out for a new set of rims, and then I'd have that other 650B wheelset kicking around. Waiting for a build for Ava, I suppose.

Still another path might be to build up an alternate 27" wheelset for the Schwinn, or another 700c wheelset for the Motobecane. I could build lighter wheels for the Schwinn, or sturdier wheels for the Motobecane, for example -- the opposite of what's on each bike today. But the wheelsets on both of those bikes is well-matched to the way I ride them, and both have low miles on them, so an alternate wheelset really isn't necessary. I'd be answering a question I'm not asking myself, there.

I guess I could also rebuild the Shogun's wheels, since the rims probably ought to be replaced. But I'm probably going to sell that bike as a single-speed in the spring, after taking the derailleurs off for Ava's Fuji build, swapping the chainrings and chain, and screwing on a single-speed freewheel and some shifter boss caps. I may try my hand at re-dishing the rear wheel to make it stronger, but putting new rims on that bike would be little different than throwing money away on the Columbia. Worse, it'd cost more than that option, because I have no 700c rims lying around.

Given the choices, I think building up a set of 650B wheels for Juli's bike makes the most sense. It's not the cheapest path, and it will leave me with an idle 650B wheelset for a while. But it's the safest path for Juli, and of all the choices, it's the one that will provide the most utility. So I will need to find a set of 650B rims. Maybe a set of high-polish V-O Diagonale rims? Velocity Synergy symmetrics? Whatever I settle on, it seems I'll be doing my part to help the 650B movement along.

I'll try again for the bike exploration in Cambridge next Monday, with the Schwinn, this time. It has lights and a lock, and I'd be comfortable locking it up outside on a rack while I check stuff out. The last class is a front derailleur class, and it's as good a bike as any for that. None of my front derailleurs really needs adjusting, but I always have to fuss with them after a build, so I'm hoping I'll learn some alignment tricks. Picking up little tricks from experienced hands has really made the class worth my while, and I'd recommend it even to folks who've spent time wrenching their own bikes. Particularly, if like me, that's been a process of learning through doing, rather than learning through instruction.

All for now,

J

Three-Up

2010-08-15T03:46:00.000-07:00

I like this photo. I took several from different angles, and this view of the business-end of our bikes seemed to best capture them. This was taken early yesterday morning, before we headed out to Lexington for the MassBike summer family ride. That's Juli's Fuji, Ava's Trek trailer bike and my Schwinn Sports Tourer, left to right. There's room for one more up there, I think, with the right combination of mounts, spacing and orientation of the bikes.

The ride was good, but I don't have much to share from it. The 22-mile loop took us from Lexington High School into the Concord Battlefield/Hanscom area, over to the Old North Bridge, then into Bedford before cutting back down to the starting point. I have a couple of photos of the girls at the Old North Bridge, and a couple more of them eating ice cream at Bedford Farms.

It was the longest ride Ava's ever taken. Juli's been on one ride longer than this with me in the past, but I think that was on the trailer bike, and this was her longest solo ride to date. And it was their first organized group ride, too. Several milestones in there, and high-fives all around at the finish.

All for now,

J

650B Schwinn World Sport

2010-08-12T18:04:00.000-07:00

It's not done yet -- not even close. But today I received the 650B wheelset I bought to try out with Juli's Schwinn, and it's official -- the bike will be built up as a 650B.

The wheels are basic, but perfectly serviceable. They've got inexpensive Deore hubs laced to inexpensive Weinmann ZAC19 rims. Hubs, skewers and rims are black, and spokes and braking surfaces are shiny, and it's a combination I think works pretty well. They won't knock anyone's socks off, but they should perform well for as long as Juli needs them.

The bike was built for 27" wheels, but it will support this smaller wheel size just fine. At the rear, the brake bridge is well-placed (if shabbily welded) for this conversion, allowing a Dia-Compe 750 centerpull to reach comfortably to the rims while using only about half of their adjustment range. The long and dorky fork, on the other hand, requires all of the available reach, which you can kind of see in the photo. Honestly, I was surprised by that, because it's not uncommon for the rear triangle to use up more brake reach than the fork -- my own Schwinn Sports Tourer is that way, for instance. Some older 10-speeds even used different brake sizes at either end -- a Weinmann or Dia-Compe 610 up front and a 750 in back. But that's OK -- the fork is coming off anyway, in favor of a 700C lugged fork (in chrome), and that will no doubt take an inch or so out of the fork legs -- a 650B wheel might even work with a shorter-reach 610 brake after that swap.

Swapping the fork is going to drop the bottom bracket a bit more than the wheel swap alone, and also steepen the head and seat tube angles. The angles they look pretty relaxed as it is, so I don't think the bike will be flighty or anything, but I'm a little concerned about bottom bracket height. Juli is running a 165 crank, so there probably won't be a problem, but I'll have to pay some attention to that, and will hold off on buying tires until I've had a chance to measure things out with the new fork. A little extra loft through a poofier tire might be called for, there. She's already had a pedal-grounding crash on her Fuji, so she understands the perils of pedaling through corners, but I don't want to handicap her with too little clearance, either.

It will be quite a while before the bike is ready to ride, though. I can still do a little work here and there, but most of the drivetrain is committed to the Fuji for the rest of this season, so it will likely be the end of this year before we get to the build stage. In the mean time, I'll keep gathering parts, and looking forward to what should prove to be a neat little bike.

All for now,

J

Fuji Feedback

2010-08-11T13:47:00.000-07:00

On Monday, I took Juli's Fuji to my bicycle maintenance class at Broadway Bicycle School. It was headset night, and of all the bikes in my charge, it's the most needy in that department.

I'd intended to get into town way ahead of schedule on the Red Line from Alewife, and sort of beat around Cambridge, reacquainting myself with the place. But I got sleepy from my ride (24 miles out to Tufts Veterinary School and back), and then I was called for a phone screen for a job I'm really interested in, which was more important than beating around Cambridge for a couple of hours, reacquainting myself with the place. So instead, I got there just before the shop closed up at 6:00, and bought a T-Shirt for myself, another as a gift, and a couple of Crane hammer-strike bells, before then waiting on a bench outside for class to start.

Funny thing about Cambridge. I mentioned last week I got a couple of laughs and hoots and the like while riding Ava's teeny mountain bike to class. This week, people made comments like "Hey, uh... I think you need a bigger bike" as I walked Juli's Fuji from my car to class. All said kindly and all in good fun, of course. But in truth I kind of marveled that people said anything at all. I've written in the past about how bikes can often be an ice-breaker, but even so, random interaction with passers-by is a new experience for me.

And it kept coming! As I sat on the bench, I think three separate people walking or riding by said something like "Nice bike! But it's not yours, right?" And as the Broadway crew started putting away the bikes hung outside for the night, they complimented the bike as well, and asked me about it. I told them what it was, and how Juli and I had built it up a few years ago, and to no surprise (these are bike people, after all), there were nods and smiles and approvals and reminiscences of first bikes. All good stuff, and great reinforcement of the notion of bikes as bridges.

Class was good, too. I got a good look inside the Fuji's 105SC headset. It's a nice part, with seals that pop into place to keep dirt out of the bearings, and a recessed slot for the lock washer to ride in, which lowers the stack height a bit. The races have just the slightest little indentations hammered in by the stresses on the ball bearings, but it wasn't bad. With the headset overtightened, these give the fork the feel of having several distinct "positions", rather than pivoting smoothly, but it isn't really noticeable when the headsed is adjusted properly.

The big take-way from class was again that a professional workstand is a beautiful thing. My home made workstand is a big step up from working with a bike upside down on the floor, but a professional work stand is another big step up from there. Apart from the lack of wobble, I was able to rotate the bike entirely upside down and lock it there, in order to load up the lower headset cup with uncaged balls without them falling out onto the floor. How cool is that? It makes everything sooooo much easier. Maybe someday I'll have a real shop to work on my bikes...

Next week is wheel truing night, and this time (for real!) I'll plan to bring the Shogun in early on the T (which is OK, according to the MBTA website, but not at rush hours), and use it to explore Cambridge a bit before class. I can even ride it around, which I mostly couldn't do with the Fuji. After class, I'm going to stop at a falafel place I saw just outside of Central Square for dinner, I think, before heading back to the red line. It's been a long time since I had falafel, and I hope it's good!

I really like that city.

All for now,

J

Progress

2010-08-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

With every new bike project, there's a stage of planning what I'll need, which overlaps with the process of gathering enough stuff to build the critical mass of parts that comprise the fundamentals of a bicycle. For Juli's Schwinn, that process has been surprisingly quick, and I have most everything I need, already, along with some stuff I don't strictly need, but wanted to include in the build.

On Sunday, I took the girls to the Museum of Transportation for Bicycle Day. There's a concours plus a swap meet (which we also went to last year), and the museum itself is open, with a neat collection of old, very old, and extremely old cars. It's a fun way to spend a couple of hours on a hot August morning.

Last year, I was looking for a clunker, and walked away with the Columbia straight-bar cruiser I've written about up here. I just put that bike on Craig's List, btw, along with the rusty parts bike, as part of the process of paring back on my bicycle hoarding. This year, I was looking for a couple of missing pieces to Juli's Schwinn build. We ended up walking away with a narrow drop bar, along with a complete Dia-Compe 750 centerpull brake caliper to add to the pile of parts.

Actually the Dia-Compe isn't going to go on her Schwinn, but I did install it on the trailer bike, in place of the newer 750 centerpull that was on there. So now I have a matched set of 750's and a matched set of 610's for Juli's Schwinn -- that should give me all of the combinations of brake reach I will need to get the bike rolling. More on that in a bit.

Along with the brakes and handlebar, I've got a Nitto stem with a 50mm reach, a 26.4 seatpost, a new JIS-spec headset, and a front brake cable hanger all waiting. The brake levers, derailleurs, saddle, saddle bag, cranks, pedals, bottom bracket and shifters on the Fuji today will all be moved over to the Schwinn for her to keep using. It's all good stuff, and it will swap over neatly. Juli loves her Pletscher, but that one was modified expressly to fit the Fuji, and will stay with the bike, along with the headset. I've picked up another Pletscher to install on this bike, and will modify the rear struts as needed, to make the rack sit level -- it's a small frame, and I'm pretty sure it won't sit level out-of-the-box.

What's left? Well, I need a seatpost binder bolt, a chain, a pulley-style brake cable hanger for the rear brake, some cables, a kick stand, some handlebar tape, a gear cluster, and of course a pair of wheels. The wheels will be fun to sort out. 27" or 700C wheels will fit fine with the 610 Dia-Compe brakes I have, so the default path is to pirate the 700C wheels from the Shogun. These were Allyson's wheels originally, and they're getting up there in years. The rear is a little out of round, so I'm going to see if I can touch them up next week in my maintenance class, and if not I'll build a new set of wheels around those hubs in my wheelbuilding class, whenever I take it.

But the current question is whether or not I can use a set of 650B rims on that frame. I'm guessing that the brake mounts are too far away from the dropouts to do so (the bike was designed for 27" wheels), but I want to be sure. So I bought a set of 650B wheels (Deore Hubs, Weinmann rims) on the cheap on eBay the other day. Ridiculously cheap for new wheels, actually. Less than half what I paid for that new set of 27" wheels post-crash for my own Schwinn. More like a third -- including shipping. We'll see if the 750 Dia-Compes reach to the 650B's. If they don't, they'll still be good to have for a future project -- maybe Ava's bike post-Fuji. It'll be fun to figure this all out!

Back to the swap meet, I had a couple of firsts, and a few temptations. The firsts, first: There was an Alex Singer bicycle there, and a fully chromed Paramount with red decals and lug lining and red cables. I have a soft spot for fully chromed Schwinns -- both the Voyageurs and the Paramounts. But in truth, I've never seen a chrome Paramount in person. It was just gorgeous, and I'd personally love to see more chromed frames out there. I know chrome plating is a toxic process, and I understand the frames are actually subject to more/worse corrosion problems than painted frames. But even so -- they're beautiful. The girls agreed, so it's not just me!

The Singer was a feast for the eyes, too, with all kinds of interesting details -- like the custom decaleur up on the handlebars, the little reinforcing braces on the front of the Mafac brakes, and much more. I should have brought a camera, but totally forgot. I've never seen a Singer, and it was a real treat. It was even a good size for me, but the seller was asking more than I've ever paid for a bike, and more than I'd consider paying for one. I'm not sure whether I'd enjoy the riding experience as much as the ogling experience.

As to the temptations, one of the constant shell games I play in my head with my bikes is the notion of getting rid of my Schwinn Sports Tourer and replacing it with a bike I can set up as both a utility bike and a touring bike, swapping back and forth with relative ease. I've come very close to doing that with the Schwinn and calling it a day, actually. But the Schwinn is one size too small, and has enough oddities in its specs that it's sometimes difficult to find the right parts for it. The handlebar or stem is making a creak right now, for example, and it's making me nervous. Tightening the quill bolt and bar clamp don't help, and I can't go buy a new Nitto stem for it, because it accepts a 21.15 quill, not a 22.2. I have other 21.15 stems, but their bar clamps won't allow a drop bar to thread through -- they're too wide and not cut out, because they were made for upright bars with wider-radius curves. So it's just a bit of a pain sorting stuff like that out, though the plan itself is still valid.

Anyway, a slightly larger and purpose-built touring frame would be a nice swap at some point, and there were candidates at the swap meet for me -- a nice Lotus touring bike set up with a mountain bike bar, and two Motobecanes similar to my own, but slightly larger and with eyelets on the dropouts. Ultimately, the Lotus was the most interesting, with the nicest components and the greatest utility. But it was also the most expensive, by a factor of two, and I didn't think it was that nice. I figured the bargain Motobecanes would be too much trouble to refit, given their French specs -- and the point is that I want something less fiddly, not more so. I passed on all three, but am going to keep my eyes open for a good bike to bring to France next spring. The Schwinn would do the trick just fine, so I always have it as a fall-back.

So, some progress over the past few days. Not necessarily for my own fleet, yet, but progress just the same.

All for now,

J

Hawks

2010-08-09T03:53:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid, there were very few hawks around, thanks to DDT. I recall my dad pointing them out to me, excitedly, when we were out driving on the Pike or whatever, but I don't have any specific memories of seeing them until I was maybe 19. I was home from college in my last summer at my parents' house. I remember washing one of my dad's cars out in the back yard, and was crouched down, scrubbing a rocker panel or lower door or something. When I stood up for whatever reason, I was just in time to see a hawk swooping down low, just on the other side of the car, and no higher than my head, checking out the remaining members of the flock of chickens I'd kept as a kid. It immediately climbed up and away over the back field, either because it realized they were too big to carry off, or because of my presence there. It's a great memory.

These days, it seems like I have to elbow hawks out of the way to get out my front door. I see them sitting in trees alongside the highway, while commuting. I see them wheeling overhead, hunting, when I'm out in the yard. I've seen a pair of them, chasing through the trees in my yard, squabbling over a kill (a headless chipmunk, which was dropped in the fracas and recovered by neither party). I've even watched with Juliana as a hawk invaded a bird's nest in a tree alongside the driveway, and made off with a couple of chicks, as the parents protested noisily nearby. Sharp-shinned hawks are common to the area, and apparently do that sort of thing. It was sad to watch (particularly for Juliana), but at the same time, it's probably something neither of us will witness again, and we should count ourselves fortunate to have been there at that moment.

Anyway, hawks appear to have recovered from the decimation (or worse), though I've never researched the subject to see if that's true from a population statistics perspective. Wild turkeys, too, which are also everywhere these days. I saw a peacock out in Lexington next to the on-ramp to Rt 2 a couple of years ago, tail and all, but that was probably more an escapee than anything.

Anyway, even with their comeback, one thing I'd never heard in person before last week is the piercing cry that hawks are credited with in the movies. All of the hawks sounds I've heard around the yard have been sort of pathetic squawky seagull/chicken noises, rather than that noble cry that spikes early and tapers off. I'd sort of assumed that the hawks we have around here were species with lesser voices.

But the other day, I was walking Jake at the local conservation land, and as we were heading up the first hill, I heard that signature hunting cry from overhead. It was a little hoarse, and a little less majestic than the movie version, but close enough. I looked up and saw a hawk wheeling in close, looking for a meal in the pasture. A very cool first, and it made me smile.

All for now,

J

Small Mixte

2010-08-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

I said a few posts back that I'd picked up a smallish ladies' Schwinn frame for Juliana, with the intention of building it up with her this winter. Actually, looking back at the post, I even shared a picture of the frame. For a couple of weeks, it seemed like that wasn't going to work out so well, because of Juli's vehement opposition to the color pink, and indignation that her sister will get a repaint of the Fuji before it passes into her hands.

(Quick sidebar on the Fuji: The plan is to take it to a frame builder, have him braze on a real derailleur hanger, add a couple of rack barrels at the back in an unusual location to accept the Pletscher, and put a set of bottle cage braze-ons and cable stops for the bar end shifters on the down tube, before sending it out to be powder coated. For colors, Ava and I agreed on a Bugatti-esque bright blue with light silver fork blades, head tube and seat tube. The brazing work probably won't cost $100 and it'll save the paint job from bottle cage straps, cable clamps and the like. Time will tell if it actually all unfolds this way...)

While Juli smoldered away not-so-quietly, I started looking into alternatives, though I had no real intention of doing anything other than building that pink bike with her. By the way, that Schwinn frame was brazed in China, not Taiwan (as I'd hypothesized), according to the serial number.

I looked at a bunch of bikes on eBay, and found a few mountain bike frames that could be bastardized into road use for a young person. The problem, there, is that I've lived with such a bike in the past (my Paramount MTB set up with drop bars and bar-end shifters for commuter use), and the fit really wasn't right, because I was sitting so far back. That's with a stem with a very short reach, and remember I'm an adult male, and I've got a proportionally longer torso and arms than your average girl does. I kept digging.

I knew that Velo-Orange had come out with a mixte frame, and poking around a bit, I found it was available as small as a 51 (the pink Schwinn is a 48, but I'd need to measure more than that to compare the two frames, really). A mixte frame is sort of like what's traditionally called a ladies' frame, in that the bike does not have a high top tube. But it's better than a traditional ladies' frame like Juli's Schwinn, because in place of the downward-sloping top tube that stops at the seat tube, a Mixte usually has a pair of narrower-diameter tubes that run all the way from the head tube down to the general vicinity of the rear dropouts (there are plenty of variations on this theme, but this is generally the style). These longer twin tubes add more strength to the frame, and generally class things up a bit. They also create a more elegant solution for a rear brake location, because the third pair of rear stays (the mid-stays) is typically fitted with a brake bridge, and the brake is installed there, not on the seat stays. The brake cable can thus run down between the twin top tubes, straight to a brake, rather than having to be routed upwards to a brake on a seatstay bridge.

In any case, the V-O mixte is a nice-looking lugged frame, in a nice blue, and it is reasonably priced. But the fork and rear triangle are roomy -- it is set up for 700c rims with lots of tire clearance and long reach brakes, and could probably accept 27" wheels like Juli's Schwinn. That's fine, but I'm guessing that as a result, even the smallest size would build up into a bike too big for Juli to graduate to. And anyway, by now I wasn't thinking so much about her anymore, but her little sister -- again, Juli's next frame has been bought.

I just recently stumbled upon a potentially great solution for Ava, when her time comes: SOMA Fabrications also has a mixte, called the Buena Vista. It's a welded frame, for the most part (though the twin top tube/seat tube junction has a lug, and there are rings brazed at the top of the seat tube and both ends of the head tube), with a decent Tange Chromoly tubeset, lots of braze-ons for whatever you might want to bolt to it, a lugged Tange fork and sporty geometry. But what's really interesting is that they have it in a 42cm frame size, which was designed for 26" wheels and long-reach brakes (57-73 mm). A classic junior (not kids) mixte frame, in other words, which is really interesting to a guy with a little girl who is likely to be on the petite side, as it seems Ava will be.

Without knowing much more than the intended wheel and brake specs, I'm guessing that the bike could be built up with either 26" wheels with the spec'ed long-reach brakes, or 650B wheels with a medium-reach brake, though to be sure would require some digging (or expensive trial and error). Their difference in radius is only a half inch, so it's not like we're talking about a tremendously different size. But 650B wheels, if they fit, would probably offer a better ride than 26" wheels, and more interesting road tire choices would be at hand (skinny 26" tires tend to be cheaper and beefier utility tires, rather than more refined road tires). It may even be that a build with 26" wheels might make sense early on, with a swap to 650B later. Hard to say.

I think Juliana is going to be tall, given her build and the way she's growing. I'm not really worried about finding a bike that fits her well, and I think the Schwinn will work out just fine in a year or so -- that she'll shoot right past the need for an intermediate size. She's already riding her mother's mountain bike, after all, and I wouldn't be surprised if she ends up fitting a frame in the low 50's as an adult, rather than the high 40's.

But I'm guessing Ava will end up more her mother's size, though, and my ex rides a 46cm Bianchi made more approachable by fitting 650B wheels with skinny-ish Grand Bois Cypres tires. Assuming Ava keeps at cycling, I think she'll be on the Fuji until a later age than Juli, that she'll need a smaller adult bike, and that she would benefit from something slotting between the Fuji and a full-sized frame. All speculation, here, but if it works out that way, I'd rather that bridge not be a small mountain bike bastardized for road use.

This is nothing I need to worry about now, for sure -- she's only six, after all, and just got onto a pair of 20" mountain bikes (she looks tiny on them, and is still a little wobbly, but she's great at starting and stopping without falling over). But I like this little Soma, and I think it's great that there's even a higher-end option to consider. Something to keep an eye on!

All for now,

J

Nice bike?

2010-08-04T18:32:00.001-07:00

I have, for some time, taken a little perverse pride in the fact that both of my active-duty bikes are on the clunker end of the spectrum. Both my Schwinn Sports Tourer and my Motobecane Grand Touring date back to the 1970's, and though they're both made of chromoly tubing, and they both have integral derailleur hangers, neither is what you'd call special.

Oh sure -- the Schwinn has a bit of a cult following, probably stoked by Sheldon Brown's positive comments about Schwinn's fillet-brazed efforts. And yeah, the Motobecane has a name-brand tubeset. Of course, both are wearing an eclectic collection of antique, modern and middle-aged parts -- none crap. A fancy Brooks saddle props me up on both bikes, too. And I enjoy riding both of them, though for different reasons.

But here's the thing -- neither one of them is particularly nice, in the hardware geek sense. The lugs on the Motobecane get the job done, insofar as none of the tubes have yet broken or come adrift of a lug. But they have apparently random numbers stamped on them, and visible file marks under the paint where a rough bit of brass or lug was filed down after brazing was complete. And that crumpled seat tube lug crumpled because it's a stamped bit, not an investment-cast part. Similarly, the Schwinn's fillet brazing is mass-production grade, rather than the work of a craftsman. And it doesn't even have a seat tube lug to collapse under an overtightened binder bolt -- even better than that, it came with the roughest scrap of steel you've possibly ever seen, formed into the approximate shape of a seatpost clamp. The bike wears a modern aluminum binder in its place, which is a step in the right direction.

Last Sunday, I went for a ride with my friend Steven, who'd ridden his/my Motobecane in his youth. He left that bike behind years ago, in favor of a series of Team Miyata bikes. He still rides the second of these, a mid-1980's bike equipped with the New Dura Ace (7400) groupset that emerged after the Dura Ace AX experiments failed disastrously (even though they were beautiful parts). It's in nearly perfect condition -- you'd swear the bike was 5 years old, if you saw it.

I think before we took off, though possibly after the ride, I was standing astride the Motobecane, and gave his bike a once-over from maybe 10 feet away. It has internally-splined and custom-drawn Miyata tubing that makes no difference to the appearance of the bike, but probably shaves a few ounces from the frame. It's assembled with simple, but obviously expensive, investment-cast, pointed lugs, including a lovely fork crown that's different enough from a Tange crown that you know it's not a mass-produced part. It has chromework on the right chainstay and dropouts that looks as fresh as the day it was applied. Those dropouts are visibly thicker than those on my bikes, too. The finishing work is fabulous -- there's not a trace of a file mark on a lug anywhere to be seen, and the paintwork was obviously applied by someone good at what they do, and who cared about the results of their work. I'll try to get some pictures of it at some point and add them to this post, but here's one that looks like the same year, just for reference. It's a really nice bike -- a pro-level steel racing frame at the end of the line for pro-level steel racing frames (carbon swept in shortly thereafter, and reigns today).

Steven's Miyata is the product of craftsmen, not workers, whereas my two bikes are definitely not. My Kestrel is a beautiful bike, to be sure, and nicely made. But it has some odd details, too -- the riveted-on cable guides just above the bottom bracket. The shifter bosses that were oddly aligned so that the left and right shifters didn't sit in quite the same place at the top of their travel. The Paramount isn't something I ride anymore either, and though it has nice tubes and decent welds, the paintwork (notably the clearcoat) is a little sloppy. In truth, I suspect the Shogun is quite possibly the best-made of all of my frames, and it's not often in my hands anymore!

So for the past few days, I've been thinking about how my little fleet isn't so nice. They don't hold me back, no. And there's a certain satisfaction in blasting along on an old bike, wearing sneakers and pushing on platform pedals with no toe clips, and being as fast as anyone else out there. But they're not pushing every button, either, and I appreciate a piece of mechanical art as much as the next guy.

I honestly thought I'd left hardware envy behind me, and had even contemplated not replacing the Kestrel -- just keeping the Motobecane in service indefinitely. But right now, Steven's Team Miyata is dancing in my head, and I'm thinking that in the spring, I'm going get myself the nice steel frame I want -- that Roadeo or something like it -- and build it up with the Kestrel's components. Build it into a truly nice bike for myself.

Next spring. It's a deal.

All for now,

J

A Cambridge Education

2010-08-02T18:06:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the first night of my advanced bicycle maintenance class at Broadway Bicycle School. This is a 4-week class that covers stuff I'm mostly reasonably accomplished at -- repacking hubs and headsets, adjusting a front derailleur, and truing a wheel. It's that last one that I'm there for -- I can't true a wheel to save my life (possibly an exaggeration), and I want to learn how to build wheels, and the two sort of go hand-in-hand. I was able to talk my way out of taking the beginner class, because I've built bikes up, and stuff. But I couldn't answer the wheel truing question in the affirmative, so I have to take this one as a pre-req' for the wheel building class.

Though I know how to do most of the things on the syllabus, the class also offers an opportunity to do a few non-routine sorts of things: First, to get into Cambridge every once in a while. Second, to learn some tricks from an actual bike mechanic. And third, to work on problem spots on a few of the bikes under my oversight. That last one might actually be pretty routine, for me. Still...

You're supposed to bring your bike to class every week so you can give it an overhaul in class. Which is great, but no one of my bikes really needs an overhaul -- I spend too much time poking around at them, and they all work pretty well. So my plan was to bring my sister Amanda's old but nearly unused Trek 930 mountain bike to class. I even picked it up on Saturday afternoon for that purpose. The thing is, though, it's really never been used, and it's a decent bike (largely Shimano STX-RC components, though with a few cheapo exceptions) and to be honest, I'm not sure it really needs much more than having the squirrel poo hosed off (which I did before it went onto my roof rack). Some fresh chain lube maybe, and some actual air in the tires. Oh, and the little locknut that screws down onto the Presta stem to keep it from pushing in when putting air into the front tire. Otherwise? Pretty much ready to ride.

So what to do? Spread the class across my fleet selectively. For example, tonight was "repack a rear hub" night. Remembering how awful the rear hub on the trailer bike was when I first overhauled that bike, I decided to bring Ava's new-to-her Gary Fisher into class. And whoa Nelly, did that cheap steel rear hub need a repack! The grease was clean and the races and cones were without any evidence of wear. But it had been adjusted so tightly at the factory that the bearings were snatching badly at the axle as I spun the wheel. So I pulled it apart, tossed the seven old ball bearings and their retainer cages, and popped in nine quarter-inch balls per side, sans retainers, in their stead (mechanic's tip, there -- lose the retaining cages and add more balls). Plus a lot of grease. Adjusted, it still wasn't the smoothest hub I've felt (by a long shot), but it should loosen up as Ava rides it a bit more, and it's much better than it was. I finished up pretty quickly and spent few minutes adjusting the rear derailleur cable while the bike was in the stand. I think it must have slipped, because even with the adjuster barrels all the way out, it couldn't hold first gear. An easy fix.

As I was hoping I would, I learned a couple of tricks. First, there was the lose-the-cages thing I already mentioned. Second, a ballpoint pen is a good way to check the cones and races on a bearing to see how smooth they are. If they're pitted, you'll feel that right away with a pen tip rolling across their surface, and they'll need to be tossed and replaced (which probably means the whole hub or even the wheel, in the case of the races). And third, just when I had the axle just about perfectly adjusted, for smoothness, I was told to wrench the outer locknuts together a bit, to snug the cones down just an iota more. The hub feels grittier that way, but I was promised that the balls will settle in pretty quickly, and the hub will smooth out without getting slop in the adjustment. This makes sense -- I often find I have to snug the cones down a bit a few rides after a repack. I just never thought about overtightening them just a bit to start, imagining bad compression forces at work on bearing surfaces.

I also learned how much better a real bicycle mechanic's stand is than my home-made one. I really should work out a more stable base platform. Mine rocks all over the place as I work, due to flex in the plywood, even with the reinforcing plank I added. Maybe a diamond steel plate, rather than plywood! It wouldn't be very mobile, but it would certainly be stable. The clamp is a bit handier on a real stand, as well, relative to the Pony clamp on mine. And I really enjoyed snooping around the shop and having all those tools at hand, hanging neatly from a board. I need a better layout than what I have -- I end up misplacing tools all the time, because everything is scattered around my barn floor and a few nearby work surfaces.

Anyway, having repacked Ava's rear hub, I'll tackle the front hub on my own, and also see to the bottom bracket and headset. I won't bring it back to class again, because it doesn't have any problems in any of the areas remaining to be covered in class. Plus, I earned several laughs and jeers as I rode it (standing up) a block from the car over to Broadway Bicycles. I'm sure I was quite the sight, actually.

Next week will be headset overhaul night, and I'm going to bring Juli's Fuji in for that. I lubed the headset in April or so, but didn't replace the balls. And when I had the bars and stem off a few weeks ago, I noticed the headset was a little stiff and uneven in its rotation -- definitely not up to snuff. I loosened it a bit, but then when I watched Juli coast down our hill last Friday (in a one-on-one day for us) I saw that the bike was obviously shimmying badly. So I'm going to snug it back down again for now, but bring it to class next week. It may need more than an overhaul -- the old 105SC part may need to be replaced. But there's really no better way to figure that out than to bring it to class, get it apart and have the instructor give me his thoughts.

The week after that will be wheel truing. The Shogun wears the oldest wheelset in my fleet -- Shimano 600/Mavic wheels originally from Allyson's Bertoni. They're nice wheels, and very comfortable. But both of them could use a little truing up, and the rear is slightly out of round. I'm not sure if I'll be able to address both of those problems, but it's worth a shot. So I'll grab the bike back from Erik that Sunday night, take it to class on Monday, and drop it back that night after with straight wheels -- he shouldn't even miss it.

The final week will be front derailleur adjustment, and I've no idea which bike to bring. Maybe the Fuji again, or maybe the Motobecane. I don't really have any front derailleur issues right now, so I'll have to wing that one.

In addition to the bike stuff, I've already learned a couple of things about Cambridge, too. First, the Mass Pike exit to Cambridge doesn't just back up at morning rush hour, it also backs up at evening rush hour. It took me a full hour to get to Broadway Bicycles and park. That's the second thing -- parking sucks. Cambridge is not a city for a car owner, it's a good place to have a Zipcar membership, a bicycle and a T-pass. Plus feet. Third, it's a neat old city -- low and reasonably green, with people bustling about everywhere, bikes all over the place, and little holes-in-the-wall serving any kind of food you could wish for. Next week I'll give myself time to snag dinner before or after class, in either Central or Harvard square, both of which are pretty close to the shop. The fourth lesson really isn't unique to Cambridge or this class, because I noticed the same thing when I did that cooking class months ago -- it's more fun to do stuff like this with a friend, and I need to find someone to sign up with me! Finally, the fifth lesson is also not likely unique to Cambridge -- that as tolerant as it might be, folks will still laugh at a grown man on a kiddie mountain bike.

In any case, it's "so far, so good" with the class. It was a fun and productive evening, and I'm looking forward to the three remaining nights -- and ultimately tackling that wheel-building class!

All for now,

J

Stretching the Fuji

2010-07-25T14:21:00.001-07:00

Juli is getting taller. I swear she's stretching out noticeably every day, and I just raised her saddle again this weekend, a centimeter or so. And she's getting stronger, too. She's actively using her big ring, now, where she's never touched it before. Though her little Fuji is not quite too small yet, the bars that have been on there have been crowding her. She's claimed not to mind, but she also notices the extra space when she switches bikes to the Gary Fisher at her mother's place. Time to do something about it!

After an hour or so worth of work this weekend, the bike is now in its third incarnation of handlebars and controls. As you can see, it looks a little dorky -- there's a lot going on up front, and it's going on pretty high up (the quill on that stem will only go down so far in that little steerer tube). But the thing is -- it fits. Juli has space to manouver and room to grow, and she actually seems to have enjoyed her first meaningfully long solo ride using a drop bar.

So... what'd I do? This was mostly a matter of swapping components between the girls' bikes, as well as dipping into my parts box.

About a week ago, I stripped the bar and controls from the trailer bike. I set aside the adjustable stem, the bar end shifter, and the Tektro compact brake levers for the Fuji, and tossed the bar into the metal recycling pile at the dump (long story, but I'd intentionally cut one of the ends lengthwise at one point, and I didn't trust them in any other application than the trailer bike). In the place of all these parts, I bolted on the Nitto stem that had been on the Motobecane, the narrow (but proportionally deep) drop bar the Fuji had come with, the DiaCompe compact brake levers that came on Allyson's Bertoni, and a stem-mounted Suntour Power ratcheting shifter that I'd picked up I think for a city bike build that hasn't happened yet. I put only one shifter on, initially, but Ava liked zinging it up and down so much that I bolted the second on just for her to play with. I also ditched the bell, relocated the bottle cage mount behind the bar (rather than in front) to make it more accessible from the saddle, and swapped the bar tape and some of the cable housing so it is now uniformly red at the bars and blue at the housings, rather than a mix of red and blue at each (both at Ava's insistence). And she herself helped me wrap the bars and run the cables!

With the trailer bike done, I now had a pile of parts for the Fuji, but not everything I needed. Had I not cut them, the bars that had been on the trailer bike would have been perfect, but alas... So I bought a set of lightly used Nitto drop bars.

With Juli's help yesterday, I undid all of the cables at the components they controlled (both derailleurs and both brake calipers), yanked off the little crimp-on cable ends, loosened the stem quill, and voila! One complete bar/control setup popped off the bike, ready for reinstallation when Ava is ready for the Fuji! It'll take me about 15 minutes to put it back on and adjust the cables when the time comes. It wasn't the cheap way to go, and Ava has already said she wants them wrapped differently (not twined and shellacked), but it'll still be a time-saver.

From there, the new setup was pretty easy to manage, though Juli had disappeared by then, having lost interest. The adjustable stem went on first -- initially in a fairly upright position, trying to keep the reach in check. Then came the bar, with the main brake levers installed, followed by the shifters, and finally Ava and I cabled everything up (she's hell at cables). Everything worked, but if you think the bike looks dorky now, you should have seen it with the bar raised higher!

Juli took the bike for a ride at that point, and had a couple of complaints. First she said the bar hurt her hands, which I get -- they were bare, and so were her hands. And she didn't like the reach down to the brakes, or the height of the bars. The first and last were easy fixes. The second I anticipated, but in large part is going to be a matter of her getting used to a drop bar. But I could help that with a set of interruptor/cyclocross auxilliary brake levers. A quick trip to my LBS, a quicker adjustment to the stem and bar, plus a half hour or so of splicing the levers into the brake cables, got the bike ready for her inaugural ride.

Looking at it, the control area is undeniably cluttered. Between the four brake levers, four cables, the two bar-end shifters, that bulky adjustable stem and the Minoura water bottle cage holder and cage, things look a little out of hand. And she wants to add a bell somewhere in there! But what really matters is whether the bike works, and it definitely does. The clamp for the interruptor levers is too small for these bars, so they're mounted excessively outboard, but that would have been necessary with that water bottle there, too. That aside, watching her ride, everything seems to fit pretty well, and should continue to work for the rest of the season -- likely into next.

And for the record, yes, I've rerouted the right shifter cable inside the front brake cable -- sloppy assembly, there! And I'm going to take an inch or so out of the front brake cable at some point to make it sit more symmetrically with the rear cable.

We put 10 miles on the bikes today, riding to and from the state park, where Juli solo'd in a kayak for the first time. Ava likes her red tape and cables, and as I said, seems to relish zinging the shifter up and down, regardless of what that's doing to her pedal stroke. And again, Juli seemed to enjoy her first trip on a drop bar. She tends to use the tops of the bar, and swears by the cross levers. But she used the drops on descents for better aero, and seems to understand how to use different positions for different situations, and to keep her arms and hands fresh. As we rode, I showed her how to slow herself from the brake hoods, that there is another hand position on the outside of the first bend on the bar tops, and stuff like that. It's fun to share these tidbits with her, and I'll look forward to the same with Ava.

So... a pair of successful refits. Aesthetics of the Fuji aside, I'm glad the new setups work for them. I didn't have any doubts with Ava and the trailer bike, but was a little worried about Juli's confidence with a drop bar. But she seems to be on her way, there, which is good. And we'll keep that rolling as we look ahead to her next ride. More on that another time.

All for now,

J

Not Everything Works

2010-07-22T17:32:00.000-07:00

As much as I pride myself on being handy around bikes, not everything I try or pick up works out so well. At least not as intended.

I bought the cool old rack you see up top for use on the Motobecane (this is the pic from the eBay posting, and kudos and credit to the guy who shot it -- it's far better than any photo I could muster). Sadly, it appears that it will only work with centerpull brakes. So much for that plan! I could use it on the Schwinn, where it would be too weak to carry anything meaningful (like a big Wald basket), or on Juli's new Schwinn, where it'd likely be destroyed. I could put a centerpull on the front of the Motobecane, as long as I used a thin steel hanger (Rivendell has some). But I really don't want to -- I like the Superbe brakes on there now. I can flip the rack back on eBay, I suppose. It's so pretty though -- and hand-made. Too bad, really.

I bought a short riser stem the other day for Juli's Fuji, with every intention of using a set of drop bars in it. The clamp won't let a set of drop bars slip through, though -- it's not shaped properly, and the bends on these bars are too tight to work with anything but an open-face stem anyway, it appears. I've had this problem a couple of times before, too, but it was a low-dollar bet. It's not a total loss -- the stem works fine on the Columbia, and even matches the fork well. Its installation even got that bike one step closer to a send-off.

On a related note, I bought an older SR alloy stem last spring intended for the Columbia. Turns out that it has a 21.1mm quill, not a 22.2mm quill needed to match the new fork on that bike. Again, I was fortunate to have that recent offsetting failure to finish off the Columbia. But now I think I have three extra 21.1 quill stems -- two of which count as failed experiments. At least any of them could be used on the Schwinn with something other than drop bars, and may, at some point.

I bought a Wald seatpost not long ago for the Columbia. It was ridiculously cheap, for the record. It didn't fit, though, and I had to shim it. Then I felt badly about the lame shim job, so I pulled it out and put the original post back on. It has to be installed upside down to work with the current saddle's clamp -- thus the attempted replacement. I still don't feel good about that, but it's how the bike came to me, so I probably shouldn't sweat it too much.

I bought another Wald seatpost online for the puppydog Specialized. Turns out it's identical to the one that didn't fit the Columbia, and they didn't fit that bike either. Now I have two. And I had to buy another post before sending the Specialized off with its new owner.

The Rivendell Saddlesack XS I had on the Motobecane became all misshapen after a while. It was designed to hang neatly from Brooks bag loops, but my old Brooks Professional has none, and it was getting squnched, sliding down the rails. It's now on Juli's Fuji, under her Brooks B-17S, which does have loops, and its shape is now fine. FWIW, this situation was the impetus for the cute little front rack at top -- I even bought a little camera bag to strap to it to carry my iPhone, camera, wallet, keys, etc... when I ride. That bag now has no place to sit, and is of little value to me, and I'm back to the drawing board again for carrying stuff on my bike. There's a bit of a domino effect at work in some of these examples, as you can see.

I bought a 26.0mm seatpost with a bit more length for the Motobecane, to help me raise the saddle a bit beyond the limit of the original SR post. But really, the bike should always have had a 26.2mm post, and I now have two 26.0 posts (the replacement and original SR) to unload, while a 26.2 is providing outstanding service on Le Mongre. This one wasn't my fault -- I was just relying on what was on there from the factory.

On the Schwinn, DiaCompe centerpulls didn't work well for me, but screechy-skronky Mafacs do. Shimano bar-end shifters didn't feel right to me, but Suntour bar ends do. New Brooks Team Professionals don't fit right, but older, flatter Professionals do. And so on, and so on...

Not everything I do works. It's frustrating, but I'm pretty persistent, and I don't generally give up -- especially when it comes to labors of love. I may need to try a different approach or see if something different fits -- but I usually find my way to a good outcome.

All for now,

J

Pearls

2010-07-18T16:57:00.000-07:00

Though it's not always welcome, I'm often not shy about offering advice -- at least on certain subjects. I probably ought to stop, actually, but sometimes I can't help myself. Bicycles are one of those subjects.

Today, I went kayaking at the reservoir with my sister Alison and her two kids. It was a lot of fun having two boats, and I'd love to partner up with someone this summer to take my girls out the same way. It was windy, and I figured out today that kayaks are easier to control in the wind than a canoe, which was pretty handy. There was a Hobie-like catamaran out there with us (actually the lake was pretty busy), and though all of the sailboats were cranking along pretty well, he was blasting back and forth so quickly, he must have been longing for a bigger lake. In any case, the kayaking was good, and I can feel the workout in my abs as I sit here writing this.

After kayaking, I went over to Belmont Wheelworks and picked up a new seatpost for Ava's old puppydog Specialized. I'd shortened the old one (foolishly below the min insertion line) to allow it to be used for pedal-free coasting with a low saddle height, and I was not about to let the bike go with that one installed. A buyer walked off with it tonight, leaving me with a small stack of bills, and marking a cycling milestone at my house -- no more 16" bikes. And within two years, the 20"-ers will be gone, too. Time flies. And as excited as I am to see them progress, it's hard to watch their early years slip away.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Alison met me here at the house with her kids, and as we were chatting before heading out, bikes came up (probably my fault). She mentioned she was thinking about picking up a cheap department store bike to ride around the neighborhood with the kids. This is the part where I started offering advice.

If you know anything about me and what I'm riding or encouraging others to ride these days, it has little to do with new, and largely doesn't fall to department-store grade. I've got two good steel bikes over 30 years old. My friend Allyson rides a 25 year-old steel Bertoni that she and I rebuilt. Well, actually she rides a Batavus today, but that sort of proves the point even more, and the Bertoni awaits her in a storage container in Burlington. My kids ride older steel bikes, and will continue doing so until they stop growing (they already demonstrate respect for their gear, which makes me proud and them worthy of something new). My friend Ken rides an early 1980's Bianchi he bought from my friend Liz that came to her via me after one of my little sister's college roommates abandoned it. That was, I think, the first bike refit I ever undertook. My friend Brian has a Nishiki undergoing a rebuild at extended intervals at his place, now. Pearls, all -- good bikes that sat unused, waiting for someone to appreciate them.

Though there's surely a lot of junk out there, my own experience tells me there are many fantastic old bikes hanging in America's garages that deserve far better than to sit idle or be scrapped. With eBay and Craig's List, finding a pearl is no longer hard (though they're not always bargains, given the wider market), and I think it's almost incumbent upon someone with a modest cycling budget to try to find something better and older before turning to something recently welded up and painted a bright color over in China.

So you know where this is heading, of course -- I've started shelling my sister's inbox with worthy bikes currently posted to eBay. Any one of the half dozen candidates I found today would be fantastic. Look at the Bianchi above: It's not new, so it doesn't have the latest in shifting in braking from Shimano. It's got three manufacturers in its drivetrain alone -- Shimano cranks, Suzue hubs and Suntour derailleurs and (I think) shifters. But it's all good stuff. It has friction shifters with levers bolted to the down tube, not brifters or twist shifters up on the grips. And it has only six cogs out back, though I imagine most department store bikes don't better that by much. The tubes are slender and the geometry classic. It's a pearl that my sister could ride for thirty years if she kept it in a dry place.

Now, in fairness, bikes of this sort will certainly need some time with a mechanic (I have my hand up), plus a bunch of new parts (tires, tubes, cables, brake pads, bar tape, saddle, grease, ball bearings, maybe more). But in some cases the seller has already done this as sort of a home business. However it gets cleaned up, the result can be a classic worth savoring and showing off, not just another cheap bike -- another fat-tubed example of our trade imbalance with China.

My advice to my sister is to pick up something like this, and swap out the bars and brake levers if a traditional drop bars doesn't match her imagined riding posture. And I can even suggest parts from Rivendell or Velo-Orange to do just that. My advice to this Bianchi's current owner is to replace it with a bike that fits -- maybe a 58 (this is a 53) -- just look at that hyperextended seatpost! And my advice to the bidders who ran it up from $150 to over $400 as I was writing this (and with over 7 days left on the auction) would be to chill out a bit. It's probably worth that much (it's a nice frame, with really nice and interesting components fitted), but all this early bidding just drives the price up.

My advice to you? Look for pearls.

All for now,

J

Potential

2010-07-17T04:22:00.000-07:00

I mentioned not too long ago that Juli is getting a little big for her Fuji's current setup. So I've been gathering parts in the hopes of getting her onto a drop bar on the Fuji within the next couple of weeks. She's been objecting to the idea, largely because she found the too-big Fuji terrifying to ride, so equipped, when she was seven. She's now nine, and much taller. The seat clamp sits three or four inches off the binder lug, where the post was once all the way down. And her knees, which once cleared the shortened V-O Belleville bar with ease, now threaten to collide with the bar ends on turns. I hope her increased height and some careful fitting will offset her fear, but I have one more trick up my sleeve if she's still uncomfortable -- cyclocross levers. We'll get there.

I've already gotten Juli the new Nitto drop bar, and am working on a stem that'll work. I've also been swapping parts around on the trailer bike, which will give Ava a more compact drop bar than she had, a new shifter setup (still bar-end, but without breaking up a set of Shimano bar end shifters to achieve it), and a more coordinated set of cable and bar tape colors (always important!). Juli will end up with a relatively high and compact bar fitted with bar-end shifters. I'll share pictures and more details once the updates are done and outcomes determined, but it's all pretty minor stuff, really.

And given that she'll get at most one more year out of her little Fuji, I've started work on Juli's next ride. This week, I bought (on eBay) the mid-1980's Schwinn World Sport ladies' frameset you see at top. I hesitate to use the word mixte, because it doesn't have the twin top tubes, middle rear brake position or extra set of stays in back that a true mixte has.

This little frame is a fairly hot sort of raspberryish/pinkish color, and given Juli's consistent opposition to the color pink, I honestly don't she'll like my selection. But that's OK -- it was cheap ($50, shipped!), and we can do interesting stuff with color accents to make it work for her, I think. There was an equally cheap and small Motobecane Grand Touring mixte frameset on eBay, in the same champagne and brown livery as mine. Loving my own as I do, I almost went for that one instead of the Schwinn. But there are build complexity issues with an old French frameset (seatposts, bottom brackets, headsets, front derailleur clamps, and handlebar stem quills) that I'd rather not deal with this time -- there's just a lot more stuff I'd have to go buy to get her rolling, and not all of it is cheap (I'm thinking of Phil Wood bottom brackets and Swiss-threaded rings, here).

The frame definitely has potential. It's made of steel, as you can tell. Japanese or Taiwanese in manufacture -- probably the latter -- definitely not a Chicago Schwinn. The main tubes are cromoly, and the fork and stays are surely milder, heavier stuff. The bottom bracket and headset specs are normal(!), and the rear dropouts have both a derailleur hanger and a dirt-simple approach to wheel alignment that I'll talk about another time. The lugs are for the most part pretty plain, but it is a fully lugged frame, and the spear-pointed seat tube lug and curvy 4-point bottle braze-ons are surprisingly pretty exceptions to the plainness of the other lugs. It even has a kickstand plate, so there's a chance it won't regularly find itself dropped callously to the ground! In fairness, I should say that Juli is very kind to her Fuji in this regard.

It's not a great frame, in the Nervex-lugged, silver-brazed, 531-tubed, pedigreed sense. Not at all. It's even got one of the least cool frame layouts extant. But for all that, it appears to be a very good frame for the intended purpose -- stout, properly fitted with braze-ons, and offering tire clearances generous enough for really any application. And if it's shy on greatness, the frame is pretty comparable to my Motobecane's -- and that's a bike I just love to ride. Hopefully this one will bring each of them as much joy, in turn.

The frame was designed for 27" wheels, and when I measured the reach from the brake bolts to the braking surfaces on a 700C wheelset, it looked like a medium-reach (47-57) caliper would do the trick at both ends. And as I said, in that configuration it would easily accept whatever tire we wanted to put on it. So in the worst case, I have a simple path to getting it rolling.

But to help out as much as possible with Juli's confidence on the bike, I'd really like to keep the standover height low. So I'm going to try a set of smaller-diameter 650B rims with long reach-brakes, to see how those work out. I think Ava is going to turn out to be fairly petite, and the smaller wheels would also be a boon for her, when this bike eventually is handed-down. It may even be worth swapping the fork out for one with slightly shorter legs, if the reach up front is just too long. The angles look pretty shallow, so I don't think steepening them a bit by shortening the fork would hurt anything. smaller wheels and shorter fork would lower the bottom bracket, though, so I need to play with some measurements before I end up making the bike unsuitable for pedaling around corners.

If 650B wheels seem to fit, I'll build a set up for the bike. I've signed up for the Advanced class at Broadway Bicycle school in Cambridge starting in a couple of weeks, because it's a prerequisite for the wheelbuilding class. I'm no good at trueing wheels so they asked me to take it, even though I know how to do everything else on the syllabus. After that ends, my plan is to take their next wheelbuilding class. I'll use the hubs that came with the Motobecane, and since I'm lacing up new wheels, I should be able to space the rear for a 7-speed freewheel. If 650B rims won't work, I'll just use the wheels currently on the Shogun. There's really no bad outcome, either way, here.

As for the rest of the build, my plan is to use components I have on hand, cannibalizing the Fuji or Shogun. And I'll collaborate with Juliana on the build process, making it a father-daugher winter project. It'd be simplest just to use the Shogun's bits once it comes back from my friend, since that's a bike none of us rides anyway, and that would also give Juli some overlap with the Fuji to get comfortable with her new ride. On the other hand, cannibalizing the Fuji would mean having to completely rebuild it. While it's apart, I could get it stripped and resprayed in the color of Ava's choosing, and she and I could build it back up using the Shogun's parts. I suspect that process would make the bike more "hers" than just one more hand-me-down from her sister. And there's a lot to be said for sharing that experience with her, even if it's not the easiest or cheapest path.

Whichever approach we take, I'll have to get a few new parts for the Schwinn, but not many. Most of the build should be painless, given the frame's origin and age (again no funny specs or threading to deal with). Only the rear brake threatens to be at all tricky, since the frame was designed for a rear brake whose cable comes from below, not above. I can't find any nice road calipers in that layout, and I don't want to put a crappy old caliper on it. So I'll experiment with running a cable up the seat tube to the seatpost area, and hope that I can come up with a routing that won't add too much friction to the brake lever, or get in the rider's way. I may have to go with a center-pull rear brake, and route a bare cable up behind the seat tube to a Mafac pulley-style cable hanger (shown below in a photo cribbed from eBay) clamped into the seatpost binder bolt. This shouldn't be too hard to figure out, in any case...

The girls will be back from vacation with their mother tonight, and I'll see them both tomorrow evening. I can't wait to show Juli her new frame, and talk through some of the possibilities of the builds this arrival will spawn! With any luck, she'll see past the pink paint, and they'll both see an up-side to spending time with Dad, making the two bikes their own.

All for now,

J

Riding Wet

2010-07-11T02:24:00.000-07:00

In my early teens, my Raleigh was the way I got around. I even once rode it across town to a friend's house in a snowstorm bad enough to keep the schools closed. But once I had my driver's license, an income and a car, cycling became a recreational activity. A bike isn't getting me to work, or hauling my goods to market, so to speak. And when it rains, I have the luxury of just staying off the bike.

But as we all probably have, I've been caught out in the rain on regular workout rides, when I misjudged the weather. And I've participated in one or two benefit rides that involved a wet day on the bike. Plus there was that first day in Italy I wrote about in May. It happens.

There's a lot that sucks about riding in the rain. Your socks get trashed with road crud, you end up with unidentifiable nastiness pasted to your legs, you get a stripe up the back of your t-shirt, and if you ride in a group, the spray from the folks ahead gets all over your face. Yuck. And if you get caught out in a cold rain, as I did in Italy, there's hypothermia and spastic shivering to consider.

Then there's your gear. Water bottle tops get sprayed with God-knows-what, and need to be rinsed before you drink from them. Brakes get gritty with sand rinsed off the road, which in turn grinds away at your rims under braking, even as your brake effectiveness drops. The resulting aluminum dust stains your sidewalls, and is hard to completely wash off. Drivetrains and other exposed steel rusts. Chromed hardware, too, though water isn't generally a problem for stainless and aluminum hardware or stainless/lined cables/housings. Computers stop working reliably as water infiltrates the sensors and computers themselves (my cadence sensor is particularly vulnerable down by the chainstay bridge). Bags leak, which means whatever's inside gets wet. Leather saddles, if you have one, soak through. Bar tape gets slick underhand, and can degrade, depending on what it was made from.

And yet, there are things to relish in a wet ride. After an initial period where I resist getting wet, dread the filth, stress about the potential damage to the gear, I ultimately give myself over to the uniqueness of the experience: The rainwater washing down my head through my helmet vents. The variations in the spray hitting my shins as water depth varies on the road, and as it's redirected by the tire as I thread my way along. And on a bike without fenders, there's the small fan of water coming forward off the front tire, reaching ahead of me in its own little patterns.

There's a different head game going on upstairs, too. Feeling and compensating for reduced grip and braking capacity. Looking around and through rivulets and droplets on my glasses. Having a heightened awareness of cars -- can they see me? Are they going to douse me with that puddle? It isn't ideal, but it's far from all-bad.

I mention all of this because yesterday, the girls and I got caught out in the rain for some distance. Which itself isn't remarkable, except that it was their first experience riding wet -- a milestone they encountered far younger than I did. I knew rain was coming, but we all needed to unwind after a stressful mid-day of doing chores, and I hoped we'd be able to beat it. Nope!

When we got about two miles into what was to be a 14-mile ride, the skies pretty much opened up, so we backtracked a bit and shortened the loop. Mid-way, we stopped at a building in town that houses a Starbuck's, a Quiznos, a Cold Stone and the like, and huddled under its awnings for fifteen or twenty minutes. I left my emergency $20 and my wallet back at the house (oops), so we didn't go leave puddles inside any of the shops -- we just hung outside until the rain started easing up a bit, then made our way home.

When we got back, we were all pretty wet, but poor Ava got the worst of it. My Schwinn's fenders did a decent job of keeping the road spray off of me, but the water coming off the lower part of my rear tire was mostly directed at her, and she was wet and grungy, head-to-toe. Juli was wet the way you get wet on an unfendered bike -- a good mix of rainwater and road spray.

What was great about it, though, is that the girls pretty quickly let go of the initial stress of the situation --the unknown of riding wet, the fear of the distant thunder -- and embraced the ridiculousness of it all. Ava was in great humor about being soaked, and she and Juli chatted excitedly under the awnings, swapping experiences and observations.

As I tend to do, I went into problem-solving mode along the way, as I watched my girls, their condition and their bikes. I made a mental note to look into fenders for the Fuji, and to install the Zefal Croozer II mud guard I'd bought for the Paramount years ago on the trailer bike, which has braze-ons under the down tube/goosenesck that fit it perfectly (done). I added mud flaps for my own fenders to my list, and remembered that Rivendell has some that will coordinate well with the Schwinn's saddle, bar tape and other lugage. I imagined fitting a Nitto rack to the trailer bike, with something slung underneath the platform to block the spray, or possibly just a seatpost-mounted spray guard. And though I forgot to bring my own (I was really ill-prepared yesterday), I resolved to pick up two more Aardvark saddle covers, and two larger saddle bags for the girls, to hold them. But in truth, we don't ride in the rain much, so most of these investments don't make a lot of sense. Maybe just the bags and saddle covers.

The shortened loop was just north of 7 miles, if my (wet) computer is to be believed, though that seems a little long. Whatever the distance, when we got home, all of our wet clothes went immediately into the washer, along with a bunch of Simple Green, detergent, and Oxy Clean stuff, trying to keep the road stains from being permanent. Seems to have done the trick! My sneakers were chain-marked already and now thoroughly in need of a wash, but theirs (badly beaten up from school and camp duty) I just tossed into the trash. I hit the saddles with Obenauf's leather conditioner last night as I was heating the grill up for some burgers, and noted they were all still a bit discolored. We'll see how they do as they dry out, but if they stay that way, I suppose they'll just have that much more character.

Today, I'm going to show the girls how to go around the bike, re-lubing and rust-proofing after a wet ride. After all, if I'm successful in getting cycling to stick, this won't be the last time they have to care for their bike after getting caught out in the rain.

All for now,

J

Coaster Brakes are a Laugh Riot

2010-07-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

I took the Columbia out for a ride yesterday, to the local state park's boat dock, where I rented a kayak for maybe forty-five minutes. It was like 95 degrees out yesterday, which is pretty ridiculous as far as heat goes, and it was fairly muggy, too. It definitely felt good to be out on the water, even sweating as I was in a layer of insulating foam disguised as a life jacket. I like kayaking, though I won't claim to be great at it. A kayak seems to glide through the water more effortlessly than a canoe, and it's easier to keep on a desired course. Of course, there are fewer passenger options, there, and half the time I have two passenger candidates kicking around. Jake has thus far been relegated to shore duty.

Out on the water, I ate a nice lunch of some imported brie on multi-grain crackers. The brie had been warmed by the air temps on the ride over, so it was a soft and gooey complement to the light and flaky Breton crackers. The grapes I had went bad, so I didn't bring any of those, which would have been perfect. As it was it was merely fantastic. Given the temps (and the biking and kayaking, for that matter) I skipped the wine -- tap water had to suffice, and plenty of it! I brought two liter-sized Sigg bottles with me. One came with me into the boat, and the other stayed behind, wrapped in ice that had completely melted away by the time I got back onto the bike. The water was still cool, so that worked out great.

Overall it was a nice venture out. Not very long, though. Both because it was hot and I didn't loiter, and because even on the single-speed Columbia clunker, eight miles roll by pretty quickly.

The Columbia is largely as it will be when it is sold off, with only a couple of post-ride adjustments and swaps to make to it before I throw it up on Craig's List. It isn't all that different than it was when I got it. It has a new and much better fork, a new headset, a different stem, new pedals and a new seatpost. The basket and probably the rack, too, will be coming off before I sell it.

The fork is the same model that I put on the Paramount after I trashed its fork, too. It's a really nice Tange part, outclassing everything else on the bike, with very beefy Tange Prestige chromoly tubing forming the blades and investment-cast tips nicer than any fork tips I've seen elsewhere. The headset holding in the fork isn't working out so well, because the cups don't seat firmly into the head tube, I think because the tube has been milled out a bit inside at each end -- Columbia may have had its own spec for headsets, vs. what Schwinn and everyone else used. That or the headset is way out of spec relative to the BMX standard. It's shimmed with aluminum tape for now, but I don't want to let the bike out of my hands that way. I'll sort it out, but it's been more of a nuisance than I expected.

I left the steerer tube the length it came, and fitted it with a brake cable stop and a bunch of headset shims. The cable stop will allow the next owner to run a front brake, and the long steerer tube will let them get the bars a little higher if they need to. A front brake would require a wheel with braking surfaces (these rims were not designed for rim brakes, and have none), but those are plentiful and cheap. I'd planned to build up a set of wheels for the bike for just that purpose. I may still build them to learn how, but putting them on this bike would be throwing away money -- I won't recover it in a sale.

The stem in the photo is the one that had been on the Kestrel, and it clamps the bars and grips that the bike came with. I couldn't use the original stem because of the fork change (different inner diameter to the steerer tube, which was fully expected). There's really too much reach with that long stem, and it looks awful on this bike anyway. So I'm going to pull it off and put something else on. But it got me through the test-ride.

I swapped the seatpost, as I mentioned, with a new Wald post based on what turns out was hasty measuring, and it's just a bit undersized. I used a seltzer can to shim it -- again, it looks like Columbia's spec is a little different than Schwinn's. It may be easiest to simply revert to the old one, since I'm not going to be riding the bike anyway. If I were to keep it for myself, I'd need a post probably three inches longer (possibly more) and I'd be sitting waaaay to the rear with that setup. I don't think it's likely I could make the bike fit me well.

The rest of the changes were mostly just little things to make it work better. New tubes. Greasing the bearings up. Drying the over-oiled chain out. Stuff like that.

The shakedown ride revealed a couple of necessary adjustments to my work: I need to loosen the bottom bracket cones just a hair, snug down the bearings on the right pedal spindle a lot, and repack the rear hub with grease (which I'd skipped). The pedals were new, as I said, but Look pedals (and one pair of Look clones) are literally the only ones I've ever gotten from the factory which have had sufficient grease and proper bearing adjustment out of the box. Every other set of pedals I've bought has been gritty -- undergreased and overtightened. Even MKS pedals, which aren't half bad. So I generally tear them down and repack them before installing them on a bike, but it seems I was sloppy on the adjustments in this case. I'd left the rear hub alone because I didn't want to mess with it, but on the work stand, I could feel the bearings rumbling as it coasted, through the crankset. The rear brake was also a little grabby, which made me think it was on the dry side. Not good, but easily fixed.

I also confirmed on the ride that riding on a too-low saddle is absolute hell on your knees. At least on mine. The discomfort was far worse than on the 20 mile ride Allyson and I took last July 4th, with a slightly-too-short seatpost on the Motobecane. I won't ride a bike set up so low again! My left knee is still a little achy, and I gave it a rest today.

It was also interesting riding with a loaded basket. Two liters of water is pretty heavy, plus I had a hat, a beach towel, ice, sunscreen, lunch, cable lock and a handful of other things in there. I could definitely feel the extra mass up front, but the bike (this bike, at least) was still plenty stable. This is good data, because I'm toying with the idea of moving to Cambridge at some point, or somewhere else a little more urban and bike-friendly. If I do, having a bike that can handle a basket at both ends would be good for shopping and commuting and the like. The Schwinn might fit that bill, but it may not -- it gets a bit of a shimmy on downhills with a handlebar bag right now. A lower load and more upright bars may keep that at bay, though. I suppose I'll find out. The front loading was a good experience to have, in any case.

The ride reminded me that a coaster-brake hub is massively less efficient than a regular hub, but for short and non-competitive trips like this it hardly matters. The single gear ratio also wasn't a problem -- I just stood up and grunted it out on the hills. That was actually a great thing to experience, because I'm also toying with the idea of a one-speed or fixed-gear bike, but have thought it wouldn't be much fun out in my area, with the hills I have to deal with. Wasn't so bad, though -- I'd just need to have a strong handlebar that could take being muscled upward when climbing. I also think a single-speed or fixed-gear could be a great setup to ride with folks who aren't as fast as I am (my kids, for instance), to drop my speed and get a different kind of workout (more anaerobic on hills, for one).

I think the biggest take-away, though, was how much fun a coaster brake can be! It was awesome, snapping the pedals backwards, locking up the back tire and skidding the back-end, then looking back at the stripes on the pavement. Each time I did it (occasionally at an unhealthy speed, I'll admit), I remembered with a grin doing the same as a kid, and it's just as much fun, now. Probably not all that good for the spokes, but if I took a wheel-building class, banging a wheel up wouldn't be an intimidating or expensive prospect. You can lock up a rim-brake wheel with a strong set of calipers, too, of course, but the nice thing about a coaster brake is that the cranks effectively lock up towards the rear, rather than freewheeling backwards. That gives you different opportunities to use your legs and their leverage to control the bike underneath you -- almost like you have motorcycle pegs or something. Good stuff!

I could totally see building a bike up with a coaster brake hub just for giggles. It'd probably be best on a mountain bike frame, because the geometry and riding position would more readily allow body-English to control a skid. And imagine the fun in the dirt! The bike wouldn't be suited to distance riding, given the inefficiency of the hub. But for short trips around town, that could be so much fun! I know... it's dangerous and irresponsible, particularly with trail damage in the case of off-road use. But it's important to giggle like a little kid, sometimes, too!

So -- the Columbia is a cool old beater with odd specs, that's a clumsy kind of fun and all the wrong shape for my knees. I did manage to get one fun ride out of the money I've thrown at it, at least, and hopefully I'll be able to recover a bunch of that in the sale. I was playing with the idea of getting in one more before sending it out into the world, but no -- I'm going to need those knees.

All for now,

J

Guest Post: Immersion

2010-07-07T05:37:00.000-07:00

Today I have a guest post! I've mentioned Allyson in several posts, and she's been a partner in the experiences behind several others, dating back surprisingly far, at that. She's one of those impactful figures in my life that I hope will be permanent, whatever roles we end up playing for one another.

Allyson, like me, loves to write, though she's as much a poet as anything, while I'm zero-parts poet. She moved to Amsterdam last year; now immersed in a cycle-bound culture, rather than our car-bound one. I asked her the other day if she would write a guest post, to share her perspective on cycling now that she's in Amsterdam, and I was pleased that she accepted. I like what she's had to say, here, and hope she'll share more!

J
Bikes have always been a part of my life, but I’ve never been a “bike person”. Some of my bike experiences have been good: playing cops and robbers on bikes in the cul-de-sac by my best friend Heather’s house, or riding past windmills in Holland on a warm spring day. Others haven’t been as good: my brother getting a bike on my birthday when I was in second grade, crashing into a mailbox and injuring my tailbone, or crashing into a rack of bikes to avoid a pedestrian.

But not until moving to Amsterdam did I really understand the personal pleasure of bike riding. I’d always perceived biking as an obsessive pastime – about speed and time and distance – things that I couldn’t keep up with, and frankly, don’t get off on. But living and working in Amsterdam, it’s almost a necessity to have a bike. Cars are impossible with medieval roads and serious congestion. Walking is fine, but only for short journeys. Trams are mostly reliable – mostly.

By the end of my first week living in Amsterdam, I’d bought a bike. It’s a second-hand Batavus – no idea what year – bought from a bike dealer who’s shop is adjacent to the metro station. This guy must have had over a thousand bikes, all used, all in various states of repair or disrepair. My challenge was finding one small enough for me. The Dutch generally are very tall – the tallest people in the world, in fact – and their bikes are sized proportionally. I managed to find one that, when the seat was allllll the way down, was passable. I spiffed it up with two red vinyl saddle bags, and of course, a matching red chain.

Riding home that night was an adventure. I followed the tram route I knew, which thankfully had proper bike paths almost the entire way. Over the next few days, I tried out a series of different routes to work – specifically meant to avoid congested intersections, left turns, and other obstacles. I found one that worked well and tucked in. For several weeks, though, I only ever rode my bike to and from work. Part of that was due to not wanting to get lost, and another part was due to the chaos of parking. Seriously. It’s chaos.

But back to finding pleasure in biking…

My “commute” is about 30 minutes, which includes about 18 minutes of bike time and twelve minutes of getting to and unlocking/locking up my bike. During that 18 minutes, I get to experience Amsterdam with all my senses – I feel the bike’s response to the brick and cobblestone paths, I smell fresh baked bread from the half dozen or so bakeries I pass (which are hard to resist!), I taste the always cool (sometimes cold) air, I hear the bells of the trams blocks over, I see canals and Amsterdammers making their way to work or school or home from a late night at the pub or the Red Light district… I’m at once alone and connected to this city, all at the same time. There’s a certain peacefulness in that.

And I’ve proven it’s not a race. I’m not the fastest one out there. I do follow the rules of the road and stop at red lights. But I get where I’m going, and enjoy it along the way.

Strong and Simple

2010-07-05T06:58:00.000-07:00

I've been in maintenance mode the past few days, working on a couple of little things and two bigger projects aimed at offloading bikes.

Juliana is riding her mother's Gary Fisher mountain bike, over at her place, now that she's outgrown her little MTB. The Gary Fisher is still a little big, but Juli is doing really well on it. Unfortunately, it's been too tall at the handlebars to fit in the storage cubby at my ex's apartment, which makes the bike hard to get out of the way, over there. So yesterday, I spent a few minutes swapping the steel riser stem the bike came with for a TIG-welded aluminum stem just like the one on my Shogun -- same roll marks and everything, but no ZOOM on the side. It has a shorter quill and more acute extension angle than the original stem, so I was able to lower the bars quite a bit, which should help the bike fit both the cubby space and Juli herself.

I also needed to spend a few minutes on the Motobecane, when I discovered on a ride Sunday that the chain made a hell of a racket in top gear (big ring, small cog -- a combination I almost never use). I assumed the chain was rubbing the front derailleur cage, but I couldn't trim the noise away on the road. A little investigation on the work stand revealed that the chain was rubbing on the right seatstay tip, down where it meets the lug. I've never seen that before, but the bike was designed for a 5-speed wheelset, and I'm running seven sprockets, now. Also, the current wheelset was originally a 6-speed Uniglide that I retrofitted as a 7-speed Hyperglide, so who knows how the cog-to-frame spacing compares to the designer's expected norm. Anyway, simply shifting the axle forward in the dropouts eliminated the noise, so NBD. The seatstay tip is a little chewed up, but not too badly. It's steel, so I'm not worried about it.

But those tweaks aside, I've spent most of my labor the past couple of days on two bikes equipped with one-piece cranksets, which got me thinking about this old technology a bit more. The bikes are the Columbia balloon tire cruiser I bought last summer and promptly crashed, wrecking the fork, and a little 12" Schwinn Hotrod. They'll both be leaving my hands at some point soon, and I'll post something more substantive about the Columbia before it goes.

As to the other, I found the little Schwinn at the swap shop at the Southborough Transfer Station a year or more ago, and had planned to fix it up and donate it to a nonprofit or something. But my nephew Jack took a shine to it when he and his parents were over at the house for dinner a week ago, and I promised him I'd get it working. The little Schwinn will fit him today, where Ava's Gary Fisher (which they took with them when they left) is still a year or two too big. The Schwinn wasn't ready for him, though -- the training wheels weren't turning, the crank and chain felt pretty stiff, and I wanted to make sure the headset and coaster brake were OK -- both are pretty important. It's all set, now, and he'll get it this week.

The Columbia has had a pretty siginficant overhaul the past week or so. It's hard to tell, becase it looks largely as it did when I got it. But the changes are definitely there. Again, that's a post unto itself -- let me stick with one-piece cranks for a bit.

Most of the bikes I've put a wrench to have had "three-piece" cranks, the pieces being the left crank, right crank and bottom bracket, an example of which can be seen below at right. These cranks are from the Kestrel, which I've started disassembling (though this particular BB has been off the bike for a few seasons, now). The only one of these "three pieces" that's actually just one piece is the left crank -- the other two are really assemblies.

The one-piece crank shown above, at left, is from the trailer bike. It's a steel forging that's bent into a single shape comprising the left arm, axle and right arm, and pieces of the bottom bracket thread onto it to lock it all into the frame. On a three piece setup, the bottom bracket is a standalone assembly that threads into the frame first, and then the cranks mate to either end of the spindle and are secured by a bolt. If you're reading this blog, you probably already know this. Looking at the two piles of parts, it's easy to tell which is lighter and more refined!

Prior to taking the one-piece crankset off the trailer bike several years ago to install a three-piece unit, I think the last time I'd opened one up was in 6th or 7th grade, when I got my old banana-seat Ross working again so I could jump it over boulders at the bus stop. Then more recently, I regreased the cranks of both of Ava's bikes last year. Then the two bikes this weekend. Three of four of these were on kids' bikes, you'll note. And for me, these cranks have been inexorably linked to heavy and inexpensive bikes from older American brands -- Huffy, Ross, Columbia, Murray and Schwinn. So to someone used to working on lightweight three-piece cranksets fitted to lightweight bikes, these cranks can seem a little low-brow.

The bottom-feeding impression is really reinforced when you sit down to look at typical examples of these cranks. The bottom bracket bearings are generally not well sealed, and the hardware itself is often coarsely made. And the cranks are heavy, and often not carefully finished. The ones I've handled have all been pretty crude, with obvious grinding marks and the like. And in a way, working on them is not far removed from working on one of my Gravely tractors -- sturdy, old, unsophisticated stuff.

On the other hand, old and unsophisticated doesn't necessarily equate to bad. A one-piece crank allows anyone with a big adjustable wrench and a large flat-head screwdriver to adjust and overhaul one. These are inexpensive tools that any farmer and possibly most households would have on-hand. Servicing a loose-ball 3-piece crankset requires a crank-puller, a lock-ring wrench, a pin spanner, and if you want to take out the fixed cup, a fixed cup wrench (though often the lock-ring wrench has one of these on the other end). That's three or four specialized, relatively hard to acquire and relatively expensive tools that would serve no other purpose in the toolbox. An adjustable wrench and a screwdriver -- it's brilliant, really.

I should add that while none of the cranks I've handled have been nicely finished, there are nice examples to be found out there, and they're not expensive. And far more styling effort was historically spent on these chainrings than those on more expensive crank styles -- 4-leafed clovers, 5-spoked rings evoking muscle car wheels, hearts, cyclonic vortexes and other cool styling jobs were found on Schwinns alone. The fanciest chainrings I've seen on 3-piece cranks have been drilled extensively for lightness -- lovely, but driven by function, not form. And check out this suit of cards chainring on a one-piece crank on the Alternative Needs Transportation Boston Roadster.

The first time I saw a Boston Roadster online, I was surprised at the choice of a one-piece crank. It just didn't seem to align with the bike's price and custom nature. But I'm not so sure that's a fair conclusion, having had time to reflect on it, and having serviced the two one-piece cranks this weekend.

A steel bar forged into the shape of a bicycle crank is a heavy, but very strong thing that will survive countless bashes into curbs and tipovers onto concrete sidewalks with no more than cosmetic damage. Hammers tend to be forged from steel, too, after all. That's why these cranks are still used on kids bikes -- toughness! On reflection, there seems nothing wrong with having simplicity, serviceability and ruggedness underfoot on an expensive bike designed to provide a lifetime of errand and commuter service. And it's hard to argue that this polished chrome crank and machined aluminum chainring aren't beautiful.

There's not much that's beautiful about my old Columbia, of course, but I still think it's pretty cool. Its old Schwinn crank and chainring (at top) have seen better days, cosmetically, but they work and spin just fine, and no amount of bashing around is likely to hurt them. It's nearly ready to roll, now, and once it is, it'll roll on out to its next home. That'll leave me with only the Schwinn and Motobecane in service -- down from five. Progress!

All for now,

J

Duty Cycle

2010-06-30T12:02:00.000-07:00

I went looking for and found the sales receipt for the Kestrel today. Only took a few minutes. I found it folded into the Kestrel owner's manual I got with the bike; a generic bike manual with a Kestrel cover and a Kestrel-specific 8.5x11 sheet of paper folded into it. The back lists Schwinn as the Kestrel distributor.

The date on the slip was August 15, 1992. Nearly 18 years ago. So I was 25. I thought it was later than that -- that I'd bought it in '93 or '94. The slip says I also bought a pair of lycra gloves (I believe they were the Paramount PDG-branded gloves I finally threw away 4-5 years ago), and a Clif bar. I must have been hungry from the ride over to Landry's Westborough store from Framingham.

That day, I'd first dropped my Golf off for an amp/speaker/subwoofer installation, then taken the Shogun off the roof rack and ridden to Landry's in their original downtown Framingham location. I'd probably ridden an MS ride not long before, giving the hardware envy a good stir in the process. The Kestrel that caught my eye in that storefront was sexy, but too small for me to test-ride. Even so, it was enough to get me to ride out to Westborough to try one in the same size as my Shogun. I had no business chasing a car audio install with an extravagant bike purchase that day, but there really was no resisting after the test-ride. I haven't regretted the purchase for even a moment, since.

I've said all of this before, I know.

The bike cost me $1299.00, plus tax -- three times the cost of the Shogun just 2-3 years prior, and still a fair chunk of change, though no longer an unusual sum for a bicycle purchase. I'd talked them down from the mid-$1400's I think. The Bicycling Magazine sitting on the dining room table downstairs says you can buy a carbon fiber Jamis with Shimano's fancy new electronic shifting for $11000. That's nearly the price of a Honda Interceptor motorcycle, and with deference to Jamis and Shimano, that number just makes no sense at all to me.

I've probably spent more than that $1300 on components and accessories for it, since. A carbon fork, new wheelset, new derailleurs, new crankset, new bottom bracket, headset, a couple of saddles, a couple of sets of bottle cages, a couple of pumps, a couple of seat bags, bar tape, chains, cassettes, brake pads, tires, tubes and the like. Most of those dollars spent weren't strictly necessary, but they ultimately allowed me to build-up or upgrade other bikes in a fleet that grew and grew in recent years. Cross-pollination.

It's been an enormously satisfying ride, and I've enjoyed it, to say the least. But 18 years(!) is plenty of duty for a carbon frame. So today, I took the first small steps in decommissioning my baby, as has been my plan for sometime this summer. The blinky came off the seatpost mount. The under-seat wedge bag came off the saddle rails and now hangs under the Brooks on the Schwinn, carrying a spare tube and tools. I took the picture above, to record its final state of build.

At some point in the next few weeks, I'll break it down, clean and overhaul each of the components, and box them all up for someday. The parts that make it a Kestrel -- the frameset -- will be thoroughly washed and waxed, then wrapped and boxed. It may emerge to hang on a wall once I find my next home (it wouldn't look right in the house, here), but will otherwise stay retired. When someday arrives, I'll build up a new frameset using many of the components the Kestrel has worn.

But not today. Today, a steel-framed Motobecane nearly twice the Kestrel's age is officially my duty bike. Since its last ride, it's been fitted with a newer 7-speed wheelset (with virtually no miles since I had the Shogun's original 105 hubs laced to Velocity rims, years ago) and an early-'90's Shimano 600 rear derailleur. Le Mongre, as I call it, doesn't have the magical mix of stiffness, efficiency and comfort the Kestrel does, but it's an honest bike with honest handling, and I love to ride it, too.

It's obvious that the Motobecane isn't far from the end of its own rational duty cycle. But I'm in no rush to retire it, and will take my time to find the right bike to serve as my primary ride for my next 18/whatever-year stint. As in other parts of my life, now is a time to enjoy what I have, explore what I want and what I need, and look forward to the day it all comes together.

All for now,

J

Old Flame

2010-06-27T14:05:00.001-07:00

Today I spent a couple of hours getting my old Shogun Katana ready for a hand-off to a friend of mine who wants to do a triathlon, but doesn't have a road bike. As it appears here, the Shogun is very similar to the way it was when I first got it, which was in '89 or '90, as a leftover from '87 or '88 I think. Shogun was (maybe is, if they're still around) a low-to-mid-range maker, and this bike was pretty high up the ladder in their line-up, from what I have been able to find (not much).

It's a 12-speed club racer, wearing a hodgepodge of mostly Shimano components from the '80's and '90's; original, upgraded and in some cases cross-pollinated from other bikes. For example, the wheels are the mid-'80's 600 wheelset originally from Allyson's Bertoni, that pre-date but out-class most of the rest of the components (her Bertoni now wears a 7-speed wheelset using my Kestrel's original hubs laced to a set of Velocity Aerohead rims -- but that's a post for another day). The 105SC derailleurs are from the early '90's, and the rear was original to the Kestrel. The derailleur pulleys are Carmichael, I think -- aluminum with cartridge bearings at any rate, which shows you how obsessed I was with efficiency back in the day. The crankset (including Biopace rings!), shifters and brakeset are all the original Exage Sport parts, and they all work pretty well. The Exage Sport brake levers even have two nice little details that my later 105SC levers lack -- quick release buttons, and little rubber nubs on the lever faces that provide some texturing under the fingers. Nice! I believe the Exage Sport groupset was largely the same as the contemporary 105 6-speed components, much as RSX was the same as 105SC, but with a different finish. The headset is a lovely 600/Ultegra part from the late '90's. And so on.

The frame is of lugged steel, brazed in Japan. The tubes are Tange Infinity (double-butted chromoly), and the rear dropouts have both one set of eyelets and adjuster screws. The fork is unicrown, rather than lugged, but it suits the bike well, I think. It doesn't have any front eyelets for fenders, unfortunately, but the geometry and build are both pretty sporty, so fenders probably weren't part of what was envisioned for the bike, despite the rear eyelets. The lugs are all pretty plain, but a couple of other interesting details on the frame are a pump peg up on the head tube, and a chain hanger brazed inside the right seatstay. Plus there are noodles under the bottom bracket to guide the derailleur cables from the shifters, rearward, and cable guides for the rear brake cable housing situated on top of the top tube, which make the bike less painful to shoulder than if the cable ran underneath. It's also got dual bottle cage braze-ons. Pretty standard stuff, in all, but there were fewer corners cut with this frame than with my Motobecane. Maybe the bar had just moved in the decade-plus between their manufacture.

The bike is too small for me (and that set me on the path for the Kestrel to be wrong-headedly undersized as well), so the 90-degree stem was added at some point to give me more room and higher bars, shortly after the Kestrel got a similar configuration. So it doesn't have a "traditional" road bike look in the handlebar area, but the rest is about as old-school as you can get -- save for the unicrown fork. I've always thought it a handsome bike. I'm not really a fan of the stripey decal near the top of the seat tube, but I do like the combination of a white rear triangle and a mostly blue front half. And it's a good blue -- not too navy and not too royal. The decals are under clearcoat, so the paintwork isn't super-cheap either.

Today's refit was pretty straightforward, and the bike is pretty much all set for my friend's training. The wheelset was swapped with the Motobecane, as I've mentioned I would, and the brake pads reset to line up with the braking surfaces of these rims. The shift from 7-speeds to 6 also entailed swapping the shifters that were on there for the bike's original 6-speed indexed shifters, and tweaking the derailleur travel a little. I also swapped the old cup and cone bottom bracket (113mm) for the 111mm Phil Wood cartridge unit that gave me knee pains on the Kestrel and Moto, pinching it in place with the British-threaded rings that had held it into the Kestrel. I haven't measured the Q to see if it will fit me well with these cranks (I bet it would), but this isn't a bike I plan to ride much, so I'm not worried about that. Narrowing the cranks meant also tweaking the front derailleur travel. And finally, I swapped all of the (original!) cables and housings for new stuff (housings in red), and rewrapped the bars in red cork wrap. I think the red accents look pretty good!

There are three things that could use some attention. First, the saddle is pretty much awful (too soft and oddly-shaped), and should be replaced with something red to further highlight the bars and cables. And the cheap tires are too triangular in cross-section, and a little dried out, and could stand to be replaced. Finally, the brake hoods are dingy and sticky with age, which is kind of gross. I'll see if my friend is worried about these once he's started using the bike, and figure out what to do about them, if anything.

At the time I got it, the bike showed me just how good a modern racing bike could be. It just worked so well! Shifting, braking and handling were all far, far better than the comparatively cheap and primitive Raleigh Rapide I'd depended on in my teenage years. The ride quality was awful, as I recall. But I have to temper that judgement by also acknowledging that I was riding around on an OEM saddle and ridiculously narrow 700x20 tires, back then, too. Don't ever do that to yourselves, folks.

When I hopped on the Katana today to try it out after the updates, I was still impressed by how good it is -- 20 years later! It's relatively light, all of the controls work really well (except the front shift lever, which is over-leveraged, pulling way too much cable per degree of travel), and it's plenty responsive -- snapping-to under power and stopping hard under braking. The handling is lovely -- less twitchy than the Kestrel, but with steering that's direct and responsive, and not at all "trucky" through the bars. As I said, the bike won't hold my friend back any.

But as it couldn't with me, the bike may not be able to hold his wandering eye. It's a good bike, needing no apologies. But neither is it especially sexy or remarkable. Even back when it was new, it was relatively humble, and in the days when I spent summers training for MS-150 rides brimming with more exotic and expensive bikes, my attention was drawn elsewhere. Hardware envy -- many a boy's curse. These days, racing bikes have 9, 10 or even 11 cogs out back, brifters, double-pivot calipers, oversized bottom brackets with external bearings, and fat, sculpted frames that few dreamed of when the Shogun was designed and made. The comparatively classic Katana was my primary ride for three seasons, I believe, and then I saw my first Kestrel at Landry's in Framingham. Its fate as a secondary/loaner bike was sealed perhaps an hour later, when my right leg gave the first stroke of my Kestrel's crank. It felt magic, by comparison to the Shogun. And in truth it still does, whether I feel I can trust its sculpted carbon curves or not (I don't).

Whether it held my attention back in the day or not, it's not a bike I've been able to let go of, either -- it's just too good. So I'm going to take my old Shogun for a workout/shake down ride before I hand it over. I do trust this bike's steel frame, and any problems I encounter with the components are sure to be minor adjustment sorts of things. The ride won't just be to shake any problems out -- it'll be to enjoy the simple and solid charms of an old flame, too.

All for now,

J

Updated 6/28:

Just got back from a quick shake-down ride. What a great bike that is! It feels a lot like the Motobecane, actually, except perhaps a litle more responsive. I can no-hands it, just as I can the Moto, too. And the tires felt just fine, triangular profile or not. The saddle isn't that bad once out there and on it for a while, which was a pleasant surprise. Between the 28mm tires and the current saddle, the ride quality was really very good -- not at all harsh like I remember it being. The toe clips did a nice job of keeping my feet on the pedals, which was nice, but they're a pain to get into. I should do something with clips for my bikes, because having my feet slip off is getting old. It's a nice bike.

As expected, I did have to make a couple of tweaks on the road. First, I had to trim the front derailleur cage a bit so it didn't rub on the inside in first gear. And second, I had to adjust the derailleur cable in back so it indexed properly in all gears without excess chain noise. I also noticed that the Hyperglide chain skips a bit over the old twist-tooth sprockets on downshifts, though upshifts are fine. It might need a new or different chain, because the same wheelset and freewheel didn't do that with a SRAM chain on the Motobecane (though shifts are possibly quicker with indexing, so who knows...).

An unexpected surprise is that I could see a lot less chainring deflection with the new bottom bracket, as I pedaled the bike -- hardly any, really. I suspect the old one might have been slightly bent, or otherwise out of kilter. In any case, the Phil Wood is a possibly stronger and definitely more finely made part, and the cranks run true on it.

In any case, it's ready to go, now, and I think it'll serve my friend well!

It's not the bike, it's the...

2010-06-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

My best-ever pace on my workout loop on the Kestrel is an average speed of 16.8 mph over the 24-odd miles. The loop starts at my house, and runs through downtown Southborough, following Rt 30 into Westborough center, then picking up 135 at the rotary. Then a right onto Spring Street takes me around the back side of Whitehall State Park, after which I get back onto 135 until downtown Hopkinton. Route 85 offers a screaming descent (nearly 50, if I push) north out of Hopkinton center, and takes me back to the village of Cordaville in Southborough, where I pick up back roads to get back to my house. It's a decent loop. Not too busy, though some of the roads aren't great and there are a couple of dicey intersections. I'd describe the terrain largely as rolling, though there are two hills that aren't much fun without a solid base of conditioning to draw from.

Today I averaged 16.7 on the Motobecane, over that same loop, which is for all intents and purposes smack-dab the same pace. Just by way of comparison:

They wear the same computer, and both were calibrated to their tires' measured circumference
They both wear 172.5 cranksets with very similar gearing (39/52 and 39/53)
They both have 13-26 clusters, though the Kestrel spreads that across eight cogs and the Motobecane makes do with six
Both wear 700c wheelsets, though the Kestrel has 23mm Vittoria Rubino Pros, while the Motobecane wears Panaracer Paselas in a 28mm width
The Kestrel is probably 3-4 pounds lighter, but my scale says I swing 1-2 pounds either way, any given day, and neither is what I'd call heavy (my Schwinn -- now that's a heavy bike)
Both are now well-tuned, with no brake drag, wheels that spin well, well-lubed chains and derailleur pulleys and the like

All things considered, the Kestrel probably should be a little faster, because it's lighter and generally leaner. And if I kept a rigorous log, I might find the difference in what I can get out of each bike to be more than that .1 mph I measured in the past week or so. But really we're talking about rounding errors, here, and I'm guessing that weather/wind and luck with traffic signals are probably as significant to my pace as which of the two bikes I plucked from the ceiling that day.

In any case, I was plenty fast this morning, and the old mongrel felt solid, vibrant and responsive under my hands and feet. Different than the carbon-fiber Kestrel, of course, but not worse. The nearly identical pace between the two bikes is great illustration of that old adage, I think. And a great reason not to obsess about having the latest and greatest equipment.

In that spirit, and to try to spread the cycling bug a little wider, I've decided I'm not going to eBay the Shogun right now, after all. I just got it back from my brother-in-law, and I'm going to give it a quick once-over to get it ready for regular use, again. A friend is thinking about a triathlon, so I offered to lend him the bike that got me back into cycling. If he likes it, he can decide whether to spring for something fancier or stick with a classic lugged-steel racing bike. Based on my experience with the Motobecane, I know for certain the Shogun won't hold him back, any.

All for now,

J

Flats

2010-06-24T03:22:00.000-07:00

Juli got a flat yesterday.

Her Fuji has 24x1 tires, with presta tubes -- 520 bead diameter. Small racing tire size that graces the handful of available kids sporty bikes and those Terry bikes for petite women that have the big 700c rear and the little 24" front. They're narrow, high-pressure tires on small wheels, not kids 24" MTB or balloon tires -- high-pressure small dealies.

Yesterday the three of us were headed to Hopkinton State Park to rent a canoe, and naturally I wanted to ride there. It's only 4-5 miles each way, and I'm trying not to use the car as much as I can while I have the opportunity not to. Not just to be fit, but also to try to be conscious of what's possible without burning gasoline. I picked Ava up from school on the Schwinn and trailer bike on Tuesday, for example. She was grinning, and I got in a short workout.

As I was putting the bag full of towels and sandwiches into the Schwinn's basket, Juli started riding around the driveway. Things felt wrong to her and sounded wrong to us both -- lots of vibration. She immediately began angling for a new bike, since Ava just got a new-to-her little MTB of her own, but sadly (for her) it turned out to be just a flat rear tire.

I pulled the tire off and the source of the flat was immediately apparent -- there was an inch and a half of shiny, slender nail inside the tire, with no head. I'm guessing it was a broken nail from the re-siding job next door, that ended up in our driveway somehow.

The nail pierced the tube twice -- both out at the tread and in at the rim, in a diagonal path. I gave up on glued patch kits years ago, having gone to the sticker variety. Probably not a hot tip for this kind of flat, though. The outside patch held, but the inside patch didn't -- twice. I had to go buy a new tube, and we'll put it in this morning, then go for a ride later today. Yesterday was demo day for fixing a flat, and I showed Juli how to do it. Today will be hands-on day, which should be interesting.

Because she couldn't ride, we drove over to the park, and for all of my high-horsiness, I was grateful burning gas was an option. There were no lines yesterday, and the girls had a genuinely good time canoeing, as you can see above. We're planning to go over again on Friday -- this time in our bathing suits. There are a couple of little islands (former hilltops) in the reservoir to climb around on and swim from, so it should be a lot of fun. And from a workout perspective, I need to do more for my upper body, and get over there regularly. I'm a bit of a one-trick pony, with cycling making up most of my exercise hours, and it felt great to be paddling. I may even sign us up as members at the boat dock, so we can take a boat out any time this summer. Only members can use the day sailers, too, which would be fun.

All for now,

J

Updated 6/25:

Fix didn't work. The new tube went in just fine, and held air just fine. For about 45 seconds. But under pressure, the weakened spot on the Pasela's sidewall where the nail went in (didn't know it was a sidewall puncture) tore open in a V-shape about a quarter of an inch per side. Which in turn allowed 90PSI of freshly pumped air to blast its way through a $7 (plus tax) Specialized butyl tube, taking a fair bit of butyl with it on the way out, and leaving a 1/8" ragged hole (not a puncture -- a hole). Sounded like an air pistol shot, or maybe a .22 short, and looked like it had been shot. Anyway, the bike is sidelined until next week, when a new Panaracer Pasela and two new tubes should arrive via UPS. Those 520 tires and tubes are hard to find.

Fathers and Daughters

2010-06-21T18:22:00.000-07:00

I always though that I was a father committed to cycling with his daughters. This guy beats me hands-down.

Picture is from Florence. Allyson and I were walking down Via Nazionale, I think it was, and this guy came along with his daughter, turning onto the sidestreet, here (which might have been Guelfa -- Allyson would be more trustworthy on that than me). He was somehow remaining upright, with her sitting this way and her bike laying across his front carrier, in case you couldn't quite make that out. I snapped it with my iPhone right after they stopped so that he could get a lick of her gelato cone. She was assessing the damage, I think, or perhaps just calculating her next move, as he started out again.

I didn't pay much attention to the bike in the moment, but if you look closely at it, it looks to have been designed to carry two children plus the rider. That thing in front of him holding her bike looks like a child seat set into a dedicated carrier that's part of the frame, and the frame seems designed to hold up her sissy bar perch as well. If the bike plus his cargo and passenger added up to less than 100 lbs, I'd be shocked.

I was a day late in posting this to make Father's Day, but it still seems appropriate...

Mongrel in Blue

2010-06-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

The small collection of parts I needed to up the Motobecane's game a little bit arrived this week, and I spent a few hours this morning putting it back together with these new pieces, having taken it apart to the extent needed earlier in the week. I had three express goals in this little refit of one of my favorite rides: make it work for my knees, make it safer and try to improve the looks a bit.

Knees: After a recent ride on Le Mongre, I noticed the same ache that I'd been feeling in my left knee when training on the Kestrel on rollers over the winter. Apart from the knee, the common element between those two bikes in their pain-inducing configuration was the Q-factor -- the distance between the outer faces of the crank arms, at the pedals. They wear a very similar crankset model (both 105SC in 172.5, one 7-spd and one 8-spd) and each in turn the very same 111mm Phil Wood bottom bracket. The Kestrel now has a cheap Shimano cartridge BB in 108, and it's been fine since I made that change. But not the Motobecane with the 111. Narrower Q, OK. That Q, ouch. Gotta fix it.

Safety: I also rode with a group not long ago, after many years' hiatus, and plan to again tomorrow, assuming anyone else cares to show up at 8:00 on Father's Day. In a group, there's one thing you need plenty of, and that's brakes. They have to work well, respond quickly and your levers have to fall to hand right away, or you might smack into someone who slows unexpectedly to avoid something you can't yet see. The brakes on the Moto were lacking in lever placement, lever feel and effort, and power. Also in the safety category, I was riding, as it turns out, a youth handlebar stem (and a skosh beyond its maximum height at that), and old tires starting to fray a bit in the sidewalls.

Looks: When I first finished rebuilding the Motobecane, it was quite pretty. But through no fault of its own, the attractive original fork had to be replaced, and the one I found to replace it is a different color -- blue. A late-1970's Ford medium metallic blue, if there ever was one (my first car was a '77 Granada, in what my memory insists is about the same color). The rest is a champagney metallic tan-gold, with decals and panels in burgundy and gold lug outlining. So it really doesn't match well at all, and I've said before and will again that it's an ugly bike, now. I'd last built it with red cables, and had thought about red bar tape for this redo. And if the original fork was still fitted (long gone) I'd probably have stuck with that plan. But since I had to redo the bars and cables anyway, I figured I'd take a whack at improving the bike's color scheme as well.

So what did I replace? All kinds of stuff, and I should add that the Motobecane now wears some of the priciest examples of components of a kind that I own:

Bottom Bracket: The Phil Wood Swiss-threaded rings now pinch in-place a 108mm Phil Wood bottom bracket, which should drop the Q below 150mm -- I'm guessing 147 or 148. In addition, the cranks are snugged down with a little more torque than I'd done previously. This is the nicest, most expensive BB setup in my fleet.

Tires: The Continentals are gone. They worked fine, but were very old and starting to lose threads. Seriously, I think they were 10 years old. Maybe 12. They've been replaced by Panaracer Paselas in a 700x28, and with a black sidewall. They look different -- fine, but I think I prefer contrasting sidewalls on old bikes. But on the "I care" scale, this is way down the list. The tires feel a little more harsh, too, but that's probably just air pressure. In other wheel-related news, the fenders are gone from the fork and stays, too. I thought about a 7-speed freewheel, but I'm not going to do that. I might instead swap the wheelset with the one on my old Shogun at my brother-in-law's house. I might actually reclaim that bike and sell it off, because he's adamant that he's never going to use it. Might as well get it out of his way, then.

Handlebars and stem: The handlebars are the classic Nitto 115, which has a 25.4 clamp area. The Nitto Young stem is gone, and has been replaced with a forged Nitto Technomic Deluxe. The Technomic has a 26.0 clamp area, so I've also got a Nitto stainless steel shim in there. The stem looks almost exactly like the old one, from the saddle (same reach and a very similar shape), but has a much more elegant nut situation for the bar clamp, and has a much longer quill. I've raised the bars only a few mm, but the stem is not even close to overextended at that height. I had a recollection that the steerer tube on this fork was tight, but that wasn't the case -- slipped in perfectly. This is the nicest stem in my fleet, too.

Brakes: I swapped the original Suntour Superbe non-aero brake levers for a set of nicely sculpted Tektro levers. I can actually slow the bike now from atop the hoods, and reach the levers without worry from the drops. The level of effort is far lower, and the levers feel far better under my fingers. The lever bodies and hoods aren't shaped the way I'd prefer, but they're not offensive underhand. If I were to do it again, I might look for a NOS set of Shimano aero levers, to match the feel of the brake bodies on my two other road bikes (both of which wear mid-'90's 105 SC levers).

The old Superbe sidepulls don't bite as hard as a new double pivot brake, but they've got the reach I needed to run a 700c wheelset on what was a 27" bike in this market, and they will still lock a tire, which is plenty of bite. When I was looking the brakes over, I found a couple of things in need of adjustment, too. First, I found that the pivot nuts weren't snug enough, and there was a fair amount of flex in the calipers that resulted from that looseness. I tightened the nuts down, and that cleaned up a bunch of sponginess in the brakes. Then I adjusted the front brake so that it didn't drag on the right side of the front rim, which it was, just a little. And finally, noticed that the left-side rear pad was toed out, rather than in. I don't remember noticing this previously, but it needed fixing. A little leverage with a wrench on the brake pad flat twisted the caliper arm a few degrees, and put it right.

Cables: I had to remove and reinstall the brake cables anyway, so I bought a blue brake cable kit from Velo Orange. And to match, I also changed the rear derailleur cable and the snippet of housing heading into the rear derailleur. These kits are cheap, they fit, and they're perfectly nice parts. Most of the time, LBS's have either bulk cable housing you have to cut to fit, or expensive sealed cable kits. The V-O kits are the easiest, most sensible option I've seen in years. Lots of colors, too, and they even have braided stainless steel under clear plastic.

Derailleurs: I didn't replace anything, but I came "this" close to swapping the rear derailleur for an Ultegra unit I have. But that would have resulted in mismatching the only matching components left on the bike (front and rear are both Suntour Cyclone II's). And more importantly, I didn't want to mess around with opening and shortening the chain to make the swap. So I just adjusted the front derailleur travel stops to match the crank's move inboard, and called it good.

Bar Tape: With the brake levers and cables swapped, I needed to re-cover the naked aluminum bars. I chose a mostly solid blue bar wrap -- Bontrager gel wrap -- which is the only blue tape Landry's had on the hang rack in their Westborough store. In truth, I'm not thrilled with it. It seems like very tough stuff -- hard to cut with a utility knife -- but it's a little too spongy, almost like those old foam 2-piece bar covers from the '70's, and feels plasticky under the fingers. It's also a slightly lighter shade of blue than I wanted. I'll see how it holds up, but at some point I may end up rewrapping with Cinelli cork wrap, which feels better and I'm pretty sure comes in a slightly darker shade of blue.

Cable ties: There are various cable ties on the bike, for the purpose of securing the different sensors and magnets of the Blackburn Delphi 3.0 computer, an example of which can be found on all four of my active-duty bikes. Most of the ties are now blue, rather than faded neon pink, but I ran out, and need to get a few more at Home Depot.

In its new, bluer configuration, the bike works great. I took it for a short shakedown ride to a nearby State Park this afternoon. I had every intention of parking it there for an hour or two, and renting a kayak to get a little upper body exercise and enjoy what was a beautiful day. But the place was a zoo, I got there too late (having cut the grass yesterday, too), and the wind was up. A sailboat would have been fun, but that would have taken even longer to get into.

I should say that I was sloooow, on that ride. My head was suffering mightily from a cold I'm fighting and the effects of stirring allergens into the air with the mower. Plus I probably needed more recovery time from my ride on Friday, which (on the Kestrel) showed my personal-best average speed on my training route. Then there's the brake drag I corrected after that ride, the new and tight bottom bracket, and the new tires -- all of which could affect my average speed (albeit only marginally). But the knee feels fine, which is good.

Though the verdict isn't yet in on how fast the Motobecane will be in this new setup, thus far the refit seems successful. It's still a mongrel, looks-wise, but a less clashy mongrel. And while the refit wasn't cheap, fixing knee problems and improving the safety of the bike are worth the investment. I'm going to use the bike on that Father's Day ride, which should give me a good sense of how it will perform as my primary ride.

Happy Father's Day!

All for now,

J

Updated Father's Day:

It was just me, out there this morning, but that isn't surprising, given the date and the fact that most of the invitees are Dads. The bike felt great, but my average speed was off a half mph from Friday.

Out and about, I could tell I was down two sprockets in back vs. the Kestrel, and tighter gear spacing might help keep my cadence more conistent and my pace up. Rear shifting is pretty sluggish, too. Not sure if that's the derailleur, the shifters or the relatively widely-set 6-speed cluster (a 7-speed smooshes 7 cogs into the same width as a 6-speed). Probably a combination of all three.

Back at the barn, with the bike suspended from the ceiling by just its front wheel, I noticed that the rear brake was dragging just a touch, and the (very old Shimano 600) freewheel sounded gritty. The combination made the wheel spin down to a stop relatively quickly. These were easy fixes, for whatever impact they may have had on my average speed.

Anyway, the bike feels good, and won't be hard to make better with a few more tweaks. I'd start by swapping the wheelset as described earlier. That will allow me to tighten the gear spacing, while keeping the same upper and lower limits, without laying out any more money on the bike. I have a 13-26 cassette out in the barn (the freewheel is 13-26, too, but a 6-speeder), lightly used on the Kestrel before I made it an 8-speed bike. And then I'll have to think about what type of shifters to use and where to mount them. I'll use that 600 derailleur either way.

Is any bike ever really done?

A Blinky on a Basket

2010-06-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

I've gotten the Schwinn back into its errand guise, post-trip. That means that the seatpost has the trailer bike hitch back on, and the Wald basket I use to lug groceries around is back on the rear rack. It's just cable-tied on there, and as long as I'm not carrying a case of beer (I don't), that's probably fine.

One thing about this configuration is that putting a blinky light on the back isn't easy. The rack doesn't have anywhere to hold it. The bike doesn't have an empty set of rack eyelets to hold a mount. There's no saddlebag to hang one from, because the trailer bike mount interferes. Yes, the basket wires can accept a blinky clip, but neither securely nor silently.

After cutting a blinky slot in a Sackville Saddlesack XS the other day, I stood there in the barn, looking up at the basket-wearing Schwinn, suspended upside down from the ceiling, wondering how to get a blinky on there. Then, I had an idea -- secure a leather strap to the basket! I'm sure this has been done before, and more neatly, but here's what I did:

I measured 6 wires worth of space on the basket, which worked out to about 7 inches. I cut up a close-out leather belt from TJ Maxx with an X-Acto knife. Then I notched the back side of the belt about an inch from each end, across its width, in order to allow the thick leather to fold more readily, after which I folded the resulting "ends" back behind the rest of the strap. Next, I quickly drilled a hole through both layers of leather, to accept a bolt. Finally, I installed it on the basket by wrapping the ends around a wire, and bolting the ends in place using brass hardware (#6 machine screws, finishing washers, nuts and flat washers). And voila -- the result, as shown!

The blinky strap rides on top of the center reinforcing wire, as you can see, and is three wire-gaps wide. The outer two gaps frame the bolts and flaps. Within the inner gap sits the blinky, clear of the bolts. And the two wires framing that gap seem to keep the blinky more or less centered on the strap.

It works great in the driveway. I'll let you know how it holds up in practice. Maiden run for groceries tomorow, if the weather is still good. Chief short-term concern is that the blinky itself may be loud, vibrating away back there against the basket wires. We'll see.

All for now,

J

Updated: 6/16 -- I rode to the store, as I mentioned I was going to. I could hear the blinky back there; a light tapping triggered by road imperfections. But it was hard to discern against a backdrop of other bicycle sounds -- rustling plastic fenders, the hiss of the chain wrapping its way through the derailleur pulleys and around the rear sprockets, the staccato clicking of the chain rubbing against the front derailleur cage as the bent outer ring wobbles through its orbit, etc. So I'm declaring the mount a success, here.

Growth Spurts and Swap-Outs

2010-06-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

As I'm putting together a pile of parts for making the Motobecane a more user-friendly choice for daily use, I've been sorting through my parts boxes, earmarking parts for different bikes and projects. I have a lot of parts left over that really need to be offloaded, but I've got a bunch of projects in mind, too.

For example, Juliana's Fuji is starting to look like a great fit for her as she rides, which means it will be too small before long. The seatpost isn't down on the clamp, now, and if anything the shortened Velo-Orange Belleville bars are crowding her knees a bit. So I'm planning to swap out the pulled-back bars, short stem and all of the hand controls with a more traditional road setup for next season. That will give her more room in the cockpit, and should allow for her getting one more year out of the bike, and teach her how to use more typical road bike shifters. I have most of the parts I need for that (save for shifters), so it's just a matter of making the time to execute the changes later this summer or over the winter, depending on her growth rate. Her mountain bike, in the mean time, which is at her mother's place, is already too small, and we're going to try her out on her mother's old (but small -- my ex is petite) Gary Fisher MTB as a bike for her to use over there.

At the same time, Ava has gotten too tall for her two little 16" BMX-style bikes. She can ride around like a champ, now, but her legs don't extend enough at the maximum saddle height to give her any power. A shame, really, that she went from being timid on the bike to perfectly capable in such a late and short window. But the bikes are in good shape, and I should be able to recover some cash from them. Maybe this weekend, I need to fit her to her sister's too-small mountain bike, and then find something for her to use here at the house, apart from the trailer bike.

Anyway, in going through parts and thinking about the Fuji's next build state, I meandered onto the question of what the best state of build for the Schwinn might be. It's built as a touring bike today, with narrow Belleri drop bars with a randonneuring bend (swept back tops, and a slight flare to the drops). But in truth it's not laid out as a real touring bike. The tubes are stout, sure, but the chain stays are short enough that I get heel strike with panniers, and the bike shimmies if I load up my handlebar bag at all (not that I should be carrying big loads up there). Also, the quill of the handlebar stem I have is short, and can't be raised high enough to make riding on the drops comfortable for any sort of distance. Ironically, that short stem means that my touring bike has the lowest bars, relative to the saddle, of the three road bikes I'm riding -- the opposite of what's most comfortable.

There are plenty of solutions to these issues. I can lighten up the bar bag, or move the front load lower to fix the shimmy. And I can troll for a taller stem with the old American steerer spec (21.1mm) that will thread a drop bar through the clamp. I have an aluminum gooseneck stem that I bought for the initial build that I had planned to use, but it won't take a drop bar because the clamp is too fat to allow the curves to slip past. And switching the stem also means un-twining and unwrapping, then redoing, the Brooks leather handlebar tape on that bike. And I'd rather not do that again (recalling the blistered knuckles on both pinkies from the last time).

Looking through my parts boxes, I have most everything I need (save grips and maybe a nicer set of brake levers) to turn the Schwinn into an upright English-style tourist bike. I've got the bars, the stem, and a set of shifters to clamp onto the stem. The stem shifters are clumsy-looking Suntour Power Shifters, which are ratcheting shifters like the Suntour bar-end and thumb shifters. Retrofriction shifters give you a nice little zing of feedback as you shift, with fine little ratcheting clicks intended to equalize shifting effort in both directions. Anyway, they won't win me any contests for chicness, but I'm guessing they'll feel and work just fine, and their placement on the stem will hopefully prove to be a decent ergonomic match for an upright bike. It's an interesting thought. And with that change in configuration, I'd gain enough space up front to mount a real rack to support a basket. I can' t fit a basket up front today with the drop bars, or support one with the now-trashed Mafac racklet. But having a Wald wire basket sitting on a sturdy rack would facilitate much larger grocery excursions than the bike can currently handle (however much that matters).

The plan would be to simply undo the cables and take the whole bar, cable and control setup off the bike as a unit, making it a relatively painless swap back to the original configuration if I don't like it, or decide to give it all up and embark on a global excursion. Same thing with the Fuji, by the way -- two bar and control setups, with maybe an hour's worth of work to change the bike back over.

If I think about my time on that bike on my recent two-day tour in Italy, I really rode on top of the bars the whole time. I was on the brake hoods for shallow descents, of course, but only down on the drops for fast downhills that called for more braking power and a more certain grip on the bars under braking. And in truth, bending way over with that short stem and threading my fingers past bar-end shifter cables to get to the brake levers gave me more than I'd like to have to think about when riding -- all of the controls on a bike should require no thought at all to operate.

In any case, it's something for me to noodle on, and I may very well give that configuration a shot, just for grins. I'm not a distance tourer, and I don't think the bike's value for a typical training loop in the wet (it has fenders) would be too heavily compromised. It may prove just that much more versatile.

All for now,

J

Fine Tuning Le Mongre

2010-06-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

I mentioned a few posts ago that my Motobecane Grand Touring is in all likelihood going to serve as my main ride for a bit, as I'm planning to retire the Kestrel out of concern for its structural integrity. To get there, though, I need to fine tune the Motobecane, as there are a few things I'm just not happy with, right now.

Most importantly, the bottom bracket is too wide. Where I can ride the Kestrel and Schwinn without any knee ache, that's not the case with the Motobecane. After a twenty or twenty five mile loop, my left knee isn't quite screaming, but I know I wasn't kind to it. So I need to get a narrower bottom bracket, to get the outer crank faces a few millimeters closer together, as they are on both of my other bikes. I've ordered a Phil Wood replacement for the one that's in there now. That one will go on eBay with a bunch of others (cup-and-cone and cartridge alike) that I don't have any use for anymore.

The second most important issue is that the brake levers are too stiff. I wouldn't be at all comfortable on that bike in group rides with the brakes the way they are -- I can't actuate them well from the hoods, and the way the bodies are shaped, I have a hard time reaching the levers from the drops. And though I don't go on many group rides, I think you'd agree that having confidence in my brakes is still pretty important. My hope is that this is mostly just about the levers, and not so much about the brake calipers themselves. I've got a set of Tektro aero levers tee'd up to replace them, and am hopeful that they'll fit better, give me more accessibility to the levers, and move more easily than the antique Suntour Superbe levers that are on there. The Tektros are basically copies of non-Ergopower Campy levers, and they're fantastic levers. I've put them on a couple of other builds, but never one of my own. My turn to enjoy them! If that doesn't do it, I'll be in the market for a set of mid-reach calipers, and there are several good choices out there these days.

Third, the stem needs to be changed out. The one on there is, I recently realized, a Nitto Young stem -- Young as in youths. It's the right size in terms of reach, but at the right bar height, I'm just past the maximum safe height line. Couple being just over that limit with the fact that it wasn't made for adult men, and it's enough to raise my left eyebrow a bit. It's a Nitto, so it's stronger than it needs to be for kids, but I'm not so sure it's as strong as it needs to be for me. A Nitto Technomic is on the way. Forged, long in the quill (so at the same height there will be plenty of quill still stuck in the steerer tube) and generally bulletproof. The one I bought is also 90mm, so the fit won't change, just the strength. I seem to recall the steerer of the blue fork being a little undersized (not French, but snug, just the same), so fingers crossed, with respect to fit. I may have to scrub the steerer out a bit with a wire brush to get some crud out of the way, but hopefully it all just won't be a problem.

Since the bar tape has to come off anyway, I'm going to redo the bars in blue, rather than black. Same tape -- Cinelli cork wrap, just trying to match the fork. And since I'll have to mess with most of the cables as well, I'll swap the housing out for blue, too.

And since I broke a front fender stay on a ride the other day (the break-away clip broke, and no longer grabbed the fender), I'm going to be stripping it of fenders, too. I put them on so the Moto could be a wet-road bike, but I'll worry about fenders when I get myself a nice frameset to replace the Kestrel as my main ride someday. In the mean time I can use the (fender equipped) Schwinn for wet-road duty for now. Taking off the dull-black fenders will also lift the bike's color a little, I think, so it may look better for that change as well.

Speaking of wet roads, it needs new tires, too, so I've got a set of blackwall Panaracer Pasela's ready to be loaded up. The (snug) Continentals will be a PITA to get off the rims, so I'm not looking forward to the swap, but once they're off, I'll never have to deal with them again!

What else? I've thought about a 7-speed freewheel and new (retrofriction) shifters, but neither of them is strictly necessary, and neither is particularly a priority. What is a priority is getting the bike comfortable and safe for fast group rides -- fast rides period. I think all of this will do just that, and it won't take me more than a couple of hours to do the refit. Then I'll have a bunch of stuff to put on eBay or into my parts box, too.

I may go after a chrome fork at some point, but having ridden the bike hard a few times this summer, the fork feels stiff and strong, and the handling is good. So I'm not going to worry about it for now, and risk making it handle badly. The bike will stay ugly, between the champagne frame and blue fork, but with blue accents instead of red, it won't be as bad, I think. But if it is, I'll wear the ugly-bike badge proudly, rather than trying to make it pretty. And given its age, I'll keep the speeds down -- no 45-mph blasts out of Hopkinton center on this one. Whatever its limitations, it is what it is, and I love the way it feels. It doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to work well!

All for now,

J

Florence

2010-06-02T18:23:00.000-07:00

My trip to Italy really had three parts. The first and last parts were mine. The first was the trip over through the bike ride from Siena to Florence. The last was a solo day I spent in Lucca and Florence, plus the travel day, home. Both blocks gave me good "head" time -- so, very much my time.

In the middle were three days spent in and around Florence with Allyson. And really, those three days weren't my trip, they were our trip. If you were to ask, I'd struggle to define our relationship right now. But I'm not sure it needs a traditional label, and as far as that goes, it's been a highly evolutionary relationship anyway, and any given label probably wouldn't stick for long. Labels aside, we're good together -- seemingly any way we're together -- and that's really what matters.

What I wanted most from the three days was to reconnect -- spend time exploring the city, sure. But get some face time, talk, and generally just see how being together felt after the past several months apart. Months in which I've been hit with a lot of change and turmoil. It's been hard not to have her nearby during all of that, and in truth the ongoing shifts in our relationship have been part of that uncertainty. In any case, I really wanted the time.

We didn't overplan the days' activites. If anything we probably under-scheduled. But we did have some cool stuff on the agenda. First, Allyson had suggested we sign up for a cooking class. I'd seen the same class during my search, but it didn't really fall inside the range of stuff I was thinking about (museums, churches and bikes), and moved right on past. But Allyson wasn't so encumbered, and when she saw it, she suggested we do it. I love to cook, and once she floated the idea, it resonated for some reason. Funny, that.

Second, I wanted to get into either the Uffizi or the Academia to see some art. I'd been to both my last trip to Florence, but that was 15 years ago, so it had been a while. My memory of the Academia is that it was basically full of those panels of "Madonna with Saints and Child" or "Christ with Saints and Pope" or other combinations of Jesus, his mother, and/or various historical Christian/Catholic figures. With all due respect, there are only so many of those a guy can look at before they all just blur together into one big gold-leafed, uhh... blur. Of course David is at the Academia, and that's one incredible piece of art. We'd figure out which to do as we went.

Third, I wanted to get into the Duomo this time, as I didn't have time last time I was there. Beyond that I was pretty much open to just exploring.

When I picked her up at the airport Thursday evening, Allyson didn't profess much of an agenda beyond the cooking class, having gelato, and spending time connecting (all good in my book). So we pretty much winged it (wung it?) from there. As it was, things worked out pretty well without overplanning. I think we'd agree that next time we should plan a few more things like the cooking class in advance, and I'd assent to the bus tour without argument (dumb of me to decline), but I'm not sure much else would need to change.

We had never never really traveled together, and there's always the chance of disaster when you first spend that kind of time with someone. There are anxious travelers, obnoxious travelers, complaining travelers, overscheduling travelers, clueless travelers... all sorts. And your travel style doesn't necessarily come out until you travel. I like to have a plan, but I don't like being shackled to one. And I don't like to stand out when I travel -- if there's a dramatic scene to be made, I want no part of it. We turned out to be pretty complementary on this front, which really isn't a surprise. And as a bonus, Allyson has a much better sense of location and direction than I do, and I eventually figured out she was always right about where we were and which direction we should go and ceded navigation responsibilities, to mutual benefit, and hopefully to her satisfaction as well.

Just some highlights of our few days in Florence:
Climbing the bell tower at the Duomo
Tuscan churches and cathedrals often seem to be skinned with white marble, accented with dark green, black, and/or pink marble. The most recognizable of these is the Duomo in Florence, which is really stunning. It's in the process of being cleaned, and the clean sections in particular are just gorgeous, shining brightly in the sun. At the time it was built, the dome was the biggest ever attempted, covering a larger space than any other. In any case, its a beautiful building, with quite a roof. Unfortunately, it's difficult to photograph, because the turret-like baptistry was plopped right in front of it, just about where you'd need to stand to take a picture of the whole thing from head-on. At least with my little digital snap-shooter -- a wider-angle lens might work better.

When we got to the Duomo on Friday morning after breakfast, there was already a hefty line to get in the building. So we sort of made our way around the outside, snapping photos and ooh-ing and aah-ing. One of us (can't remember which) noticed that you could climb up the tower, too. No line, either -- sweet! Lots of steps, though -- 414 each way, and pretty narrow. But well worth the climb, because the views from the top level were fantastic.

Cooking and Food
For me, there are no two countries that say "food" more than Italy and France. And in hindsight, the idea of taking a cooking class in Italy really borders on brilliant.

We signed up for a cooking class through The Accidental Tourist. They offer several different packages, including wine and olive oil tasting, but we just went with the cooking class, followed by a multi-course lunch. We were picked up at a little park across the Arno from the city center, and driven by our lively host out into the countryside, up into the hills and down twisty dirt roads to our destination -- a centuries-old stone farmhouse where flour, eggs, cheese, herbs and hand-crank pasta machines awaited. Wine, too -- always wine.

Making pasta by hand was a new experience for me. I have a Simac pasta machine that I pilfered from my mother when I moved into my first apartment. She'd literally never used it (a gift from my father, when what she really wanted was a hand-cranked one), which I thought was just a shame, really. I've put it to good use since, and I've got experience with pasta dough consitency and texture that served me well in the class. But I've never made the dough by hand, or used a hand-crank machine to stretch and shape the noodles -- they've just always squirted out like a Play-Doh pumper, after two minutes of machine kneading, well-formed in the desired shape.

Not here! Here, we had to pour a cup of Semola pasta flour (coarser than Semolina, said our instructor, Steve) onto a plastic-coated table cloth. Then make a donut shape out of it, break the egg into the hole, and pop the yolk. From there, it became all about mixing the egg up with our index finger, while slowly working in more and more flower, until pretty soon we were working with a ball of dough. As we kneaded, Steve coached us through getting the right consistency -- not too dry, and not too sticky -- in prep for running the dough through the machines. This was tricky because you needed to knead it well to mix in enough flour to dry out the center of the ball, or it'd all be too sticky, and you couldn't tell by looking at the outside alone how sticky it was inside the ball.

Once it was ready, we set it aside and Steve added the ingredients for some ravioli filling to a bowl. Simple stuff -- Ricotta, parm, chopped spinach and a little nutmeg. I mixed the filling for Steve while he ran upstairs to get something. And I must say, I mixed like few before me could possibly have mixed. It was outstanding. Seriously.

In the process of making the filling, I was introduced to a MicroPlane. I'd never seen one of these magnificent graters before, though Allyson informed me that Rachel Ray has one. I was absolutely taken by the speed and ease with which it dismantled a block of Parm, plus the fine, delicate texture of the resulting shavings. Good stuff, and I had to have one. And now do -- thrice used already, once to make ravioli. Oh! There was a mezzaluna knife, too. My mother has one of these, but I never knew it was for chopping spinach and the like. So now I have one of those, too. It's just a cheap little one from Bed, Bath & Beyond, but it works. I'll find a bigger, nicer one someday, maybe.

Once the filling was done, we divided our dough balls in half, and ran the halves through the machines repeatedly, making them thinner and longer with each pass. They ended up maybe a yard long and six inches wide. My second one was really good, and as you can tell I was definitely feeling good about being good at this stuff. The first ribbon was turned into ravioli shells, and the other was turned into fettucini. We filled and folded the shells (the half-moon variety of ravioli, not the square kind) and used a pastry wheel or a fork to cut and/or crimp the edges. I have a pastry wheel, now, too -- also used once so far, and principally by Juliana at that.

All of the resulting pasta went upstairs to be prepared, and after Steve snapped photos for us, we made our way first to the sinks to clean up our hands, then upstairs to eat. The food was fantastic, and the pasta we'd made was only two of the five courses. The ravioli was prepared with sage, butter and parm, and the linguini with olive oil, fresh tomatoes, and I forget what else. There was a pizza course, and a mushroom and artichoke frittata (about as eggy as I'll venture), and gelato -- it was all just so good!

At one point during lunch, Allyson leaned over and asked me what I thought Steve's accent said about where he was from. I guessed he was an expat Brit, but it turned out I was pretty far off. He's originally from North Carolina, and as he tells it, he once met a girl in Florence (also from NC) and he decided to stay. They're no longer together, but they're apparently both still there. I can't blame them, really -- it's a fabulous city just brimming with life. Anyway, he seemed like an interesting guy, and it struck me that he has a fun job. The class was a great idea, and a great experience, and it's one I'd like to repeat in other places in the future. Like in multiple regions of France, and other places in Italy. Someday.

That was really just one of many great meals we had there. I'll skip details of what we ate and where, but really, all of the food, save for the free stuff at the hotel buffet, was very good. Breakfasts, lunches and dinners all had something to remember, and even in cases where what I got wasn't quite what I expected, I wasn't disappointed. And yes, the gelato, invented in Florence, was spectacular.

The Boboli Gardens
This was a bit of a letdown. The Palazzo Pitti is sort of the Florentine version of the Louvre, except it's smaller and sits at the base of a hill. It's a palace built by the Medicis, and it's got gardens up and behind it for which a bready, supermarket pizza shell was named. I just made that up, but it might be true.

In fairness, we didn't see all of the gardens, it seems -- there was a bunch of stuff we somehow missed off to the East side -- but even so, I'd probably skip this next time. I mostly wanted to walk around outside in a nicely manicured floral setting, but it was hot and not shady and not so floral or manicured. Not that it was bad -- the views were great and there were some romantic nooks where you just knew a dalliance (or a hundred) had transpired. It just wasn't quite what I expected.

There was this cool work of art though -- the Medici Grottos. This was a fountain of sorts, built as an open-front building, and decked out like a cave, with sculpture worked into what looked like stalactites and stalagmites and other limestone formations. It was really the most interesting part of the gardens, not counting the views of the city.

The Uffizi
The Uffizi is also sort of like Florence's version of the Louvre, except that it's not a former palace that's been turned into a fabulous art museum, it's the former city offices. And again, smaller. It's a cool old building with great ceilings and is a much more manageable size than the Louvre. The Uffizi can be appreciated in a matter of hours, whereas I think most people (myself at least) ought to spread the Louvre out over several days, because it's very hard to appreciate that much great art all at once without getting jaded, bored or just overwhelmed.

The big deal at the Uffizi for me was the collection of Botticelli's. Of those, the two I liked best were Spring and The Birth of Venus. But Pallas and the Centaur is neat, too. All of his women look about six months pregnant, which you may know -- Google those works, and you'll see what I mean. Somehow that makes the work more fun to me, though I'm not sure what that says about me, now that I've written that down.

We also got there the day they opened the Caravaggio and Caravaggisti exhibit, which was a cool surprise, since neither of us had known anything about a special exhibit. The opening Caravaggio is the recognizable painting of Medusa's severed head. I never realized this painting is on a parade shield, rather than a canvas. But there it was -- the parade shield, sitting in a glass case. That shield sort of tees up more of his work, plus those of men and women who picked up his very realistic and softly-lit style from there. Biblical Judith makes several appearances, along with Holofernes and/or his head, including in Caravaggio's version.

I'm no Art History major, and there's plenty more in there to see, of course. But those are the parts I enjoyed most, and the two Botticellis left enough of an impression for me to pick up the postcards in the gift shop at the end.

Shopping
What would Italy be without shopping? I needed a belt, since I forgot mine at home, and since I've lost a bunch of weight, and haven't been able to really keep up with my falling waist size in buying new clothes. On that note, Allyson gave me a good talking-to about that while we were there -- arms crossed, sitting back in her chair, etc. Must have had an impact, because I seem to have leveled off, since I got back (lighter than when I left), and have added a pound or two back since. We'll see what happens over the summer.

In any case, I needed a belt. Plus some sunglasses, since I broke mine in the car on the ride to the airport, at home. And wine and olive oil, of course. Plus gifts for the girls. I ended up getting a small red leather (very nice, too) purse for Ava, a very cute shirt for Juli, and simple glass-pendant necklaces and hard candy for both. I considered, but passed on, both a hat and a wallet. Allyson picked up a bunch of stuff, too, but was most focused on finding a red leather bag. Florence is definitely the place for leather bags, and she was wildly successful at finding one worth buying, in the same red leather as the one I bought Ava.

None of this was extravagant stuff, except maybe my Ray-Ban's, and most everything seemed haggle-ready at the shops we went into. Certainly at the open air market, they started you off with a discount, with plenty of additional room to fall as the day progressed. And the prices rose like the sun to their original levels the next day, to repeat the cycle again. It may have been this way for centuries -- who knows?

But I wasn't really there for the food or the shopping or the art or architecture. All of those made the venue fantastic, but I was there to connect. And happily, we did. Allyson and I have a really good dynamic -- a dynamic I've missed in the six months since she left, and missed even more after I dropped her at her gate at the Florence airport. As I said earlier, labels are hard to apply right now, and it's hard to see precisely where our relationship is headed, how it will evolve, and what parts of it will survive and/or thrive. It's even hard to predict where she'll end up, now that she's tasted living abroad and has easy access to all these fabulous destinations. Or where I'll end up, as I make my way through my divorce, the sale of my house, and the re-establishment of my career. The re-establishment of my life, in a sense, though I understand now more than ever that you don't ever really start over the way you might initially think.

What I can say is that it felt good to be there. And to be there with her. I'm hopeful -- I trust -- that as we continue to build separate lives on two continents, we'll stay connected. So that when we emerge on the other side, we'll have a pair of solid foundations upon which to build something new.

All for now,

J