Another Columbia

As I understand things, my branch of the Ellsworth family has been in New England since the mid-1600's, starting with a land grant of a tract of farmland outside of Hartford. A lot of family history has unfolded for the Ellsworths outside of Hartford in the past 350 years, as you might expect.

A chapter of that history came to a close last weekend, with an auction. My great aunt will be the last Ellsworth to live in the farmhouse that has been at the center of the past couple of hundred years' worth of our family. Much of the land had already been sold off to pay for the care of her brother, before he died, and last weekend, much of the home's furnishings were sold at auction in a precursor to the sale of the property itself. This to pay for her own elderly care.

My younger sister went down to the auction, and called me excitedly about a Columbia that was for bid. She apparently went to town buying stuff, and filled Michael's truck with stuff of questionable value, sentimental or otherwise. My dad ended up having to haul the bike back my way. It was waiting for me tonight on the porch.

It's a mixte/ladies'-framed Columbia Speedliner from the mid-1950's, according to an ad I found:

http://www.auctiva.com/hostedimages/showimage.aspx?gid=187751&ppid=1122&image=243589025&images=243589025&formats=0&format=0
It has a 2-speed Bendix rear hub shifted by what looks like a brake lever, rather than the kick-back two-speed Bendix hubs that some Schwinns used to have. This allows it to retain "positive foot braking". It should coast beatifully, according to the ad. And only 40 lbs!

It is complete with fenders, chainguard, a rear rack, and a dilapidated wooden child seat. The saddle has a crash rail on it, and it has a kickstand that looks like it'd work in my frame -- ah-ha! To that point, the frame is actually very similar to my Columbia in design, but lacking the second top tube (and in a mixte style, of course). Same wishbone seat and chain stays, and probably the same of most everything else. But I don't think it's retained any of its original paint, and very little of its chrome. It is probably a total loss, honestly. But it was won for a buck, so at least it was priced right.

I'll post a picture later. For now, it's taking up space in my barn, continuing its slow journey back to the iron ore from whence it sprang. I need to figure out what to do with it, at some point.

All for now,

J

Fall Cleaning

As mentioned I would last week, I've started selling off some of my Gravely 2-wheel tractor implements. I've posted four things to Craig's List, and have had one bite so far. Failing a sale, each will go onto eBay, next:

One (1) highly dangerous Gravely open-reel two-stage snowblower:
http://boston.craigslist.org/bmw/grd/1426981656.html
This thing is just crazy. It was my dad's when I was a kid, though he gave up on snowblowing sometime in my teens, and hired a plow guy instead. It looks like it was intended to consume small animals, just as much as throw snow. Not something you want to be messing around with near the business end. It absolutely devours snow, even icy stuff pushed into snowbanks and left to harden for weeks on end. This comes with a spare reel, which I picked up as a package with the rotary plow, below.

One (1) far less dangerous but still beastly Gravely quick hitch snowblower:
http://boston.craigslist.org/bmw/grd/1426994517.html
This one was my most recent acquisition. It's not as dangerous as the first, because you can adjust the chute remotely and it has side cutters rather than open sides. It's a lot wider than the first one, so it takes more power to run through deep snow. But in a normal snowfall, the extra width makes quick work of the driveway. The nice thing about this one, too, is it is very easy to get onto and off the tractor. The downsides are that the chute's remote lever is stiff and finicky, and that it doesn't feel securely mounted to the tractor. This one I bought from eBay several seasons ago. I'm keeping one much like it that's not a quick-hitch model and slightly narrower.

One (1) entirely unconventional Gravely rotary plow tilling/trenching device:
http://boston.craigslist.org/bmw/grd/1427009100.html
I bought this maybe 5 years ago and used it three seasons. It looks awfully funny, but it excels at destroying a patch of lawn to create a new garden bed. And it does a decent job of creating rows/hills as well. In that sense it's perfect for a serious gardener/small farmer with an acre or so to plow and hill. It's probably overkill for a home garden though. If the dirt shield isn't set right, it'll occasionally chuck rocks at your head as it works -- I always managed to duck, but a hockey goalie's mask might be a good accompaniment to this one. I have a spare gearbox for it and I think some other stuff as well. I'd planned to make a spreader for it, but that was in another life.

One (1) aftermarket angling plow blade:
http://boston.craigslist.org/bmw/grd/1427018958.html
This is not a Gravely part, and that shows, in that there's not a whit of cast iron on the thing. But it's a clever design that looks like it'd do the trick in terms of plowing walking paths through snow. It came on a tractor that I bought for parts out in the Hudson River Valley, and which I sold a year ago. I've never used it, but I bet it could be disassembled, sandblasted, painted, maybe updated with some replacement hardware, and serve someone well.

And once the leaves are up, the 430 tractor will be sold off as well. It's doing bang-up job on the leaves this season, as always -- blown engine or not.

All for now,

J

Leaves and Tractors

Just a quick post today, as I'm off to San Francisco in a few hours to Oracle OpenWorld. Normally a trip I'd be looking forward to, as it's one of my favorite cities. But I'll be going out alone, this time, and in this case, the trip is also eating up time that feels scarce on several fronts -- time with the house, time with the girls, and time with a good friend who is moving away.

The girls and I did have a good day yesterday, at least. After Ava's soccer game, the three of us went to Tougas Farm in Northborough, MA, to pick some apples and find some good pumpkins. We filled two peck-sized bags. I largely stuck with softball-sized Cortland (and I'm totally serious about their size, btw) and smaller MacIntosh varieties, while Juli and Ava pretty much sprinted between rows grabbing whatever sounded interesting. We'll be in apples for weeks! We made out well from a pumpkin perspective as well. I got a good pie pumpkin and each of the girls has a Jack-o-lantern pumpkin, too, that we can carve in a couple of weeks, then set out on the porch.

In any case, leaves and tractors. Yesterday I finished assembling my leafing contraption. I'd gotten the box built a week ago, and installed the truck loader onto the front of the trailer yesterday. I filled the old Gravely 430 with the blown engine with gas (and oil), did the same with the truck loader, and they both fired up right away. Well, I first had to figure out that the fuel petcock on the truck loader was off, but it was fine after that.

The girls were outstanding stick collectors while I was finishing up the rig, and each of them took several laps around the yard on the tractor with me (in earplugs). I managed to get the grass cut and leaves vacuumed in the back yard and out along the road and driveway, which is a good start. Next weekend I'll have to mow along the fence to get the leaves and grass away from it, then do the whole yard.

The nice thing about this setup is that in 2-3 hours, I can clean up the whole property, save for flower beds. I just repeat the process every weekend once the leaves start to drop, until they've finished and the leaves are all in a pile.

Previously, I'd brought the leaves to our local transfer station, but starting last year, I've been using them to mulch my garden beds, mulch around trees, and to offset erosion at the edges of my leaching field. The worms are happy, and since nearly all of my trees are maples, the composting leaves are not chemically offensive to other plants. Not that I can tell, at any rate.

The rig is working well, or about as well as it always does. The stovepipe pulled apart yesterday, so I'll need to put it back together then tape it up again. And the tractor has a blown engine and a leaky main seal, so it really needs to be replaced at some point soon. But the replacement engine I installed on the vacuum for last season is running great, and apart from having to lube up the throttle/governor linkage yesterday, it's required no maintenance at all.

Once I get the leaves up, I'm going to start offloading some old Gravely equipment. I have two Gravely snowblower attachments that I'm not going to keep (don't ask why I have two extra snowblower implements). I have a home-made plow blade that I'll either scrap at the metal pile at the transfer station or send off as a freebie with one of the snowblowers. There's a rotary hoe that is a fine rototiller, but not likely something I'll need or use at my next home. And then there's the 430 tractor. I tried to Craigslist it last season to no avail, so I think I'm going to eBay it this time. I paid $430 for it, and assuming it survives this season, will have gotten I think 4 seasons out of it. I really don't expect to or need to get any money for it, but it would be a shame to just scrap it.

I'll hold onto the truck loader and other leafing rig components just in case I'll need them for my next home ownership experience, whether that's a year or more away. I'll also be keeping my extremely reliable Gravely walk-behind tractor, though it's been leaking a bit this season as well. Also not going up for sale are a snowblower attachment and the 50" deck that I bought new maybe 5 or 6 years ago. I can always shed these later, if I don't end up needing them at my next place.

All for now,

J

Plans

It's almost leafing season, and today I'm procrastinating building up my leafing rig by blogging instead of doing that work. In truth, I don't really have time to get the rig built today anyway. I'll say more about that later, but first, I wanted to share a bit about my plans for the Columbia.

I mentioned last week that I've got sort of a vision for the straight bar heavyweight cruiser I bought over the summer, then promptly crashed. I should start by saying that this bike will never be more than a clunker. I'm not going to blast it down to bare metal and get it resprayed or otherwise restored. The vision is to make it a functional, fun utility bike. Something good for tooling around town on, picking up ice cream, milk, pizza or beer.

The bike is comprised of a solid frame, a decent set of cruiser wheels and tires, a too-short seatpost, an old sprung leather saddle, a set of kids' size cruiser handlebars and grips, a one-piece crankset, a junky set of pedals, a junk headset and a bent fork. It functioned before I crashed it, but it was an $80 bike, so it functioned about that well.

So what's the plan? Start by replacing stuff that won't work with stuff that will work, then add racks and baskets to round out the package as a utility bike. Simple. And, I've started collecting stuff to that end.

I have a replacement fork for it. It's a 1"-steerer version of the black Tange fork I put on the Paramount last winter. It's a crazy-strong mountain bike fork with cast dropouts and fat Prestige-tubing legs. It has cantilever bosses to accept a front brake, which also gives me two points from which to mount a front cantilever rack. The steerer is plenty long, and I'll leave some extra length to allow for plenty of bar height with a regular road stem.

I have a new Tioga BMX headset for it. I'll have to put it together with an old top nut from a road bike (the OEM top nut from my wife's Bianchi) so a road stem can pass through into the steerer. A BMX headset has a top nut sized for a smaller inside diameter steerer and stem, but swapping the top nut is an easy fix when using a fork with a non-BMX 1" threaded steerer.

I have a pair of racks for it. These are the two aluminum racks that were once on the Paramount when it was set up as a commuter. Front cantilever rack (cheap Nashbar unit), and a rear Blackburn rack sized for 26" wheels. I'll have to sort out the forward/top mount for the rear rack, since there are no rack braze-ons, but that shouldn't be hard.

I have a set of beefy Sun rims in 36-hole with Schraeder drilling, and a set of 36-hole SR hubs ready to be built into a set of wheels. I also have a single-speed freewheel.

I have a cantilever brakeset for it. These are old Dia-Compe wide-profile cantis that should offer plenty of bite. There's no way to mount the rears, but the fronts will be fine. I'm going to give some thought to a rear brake. Not sure how to pull that off given the frame's configuration, but I'd like the added stopping power. One option is to take the bike to a frame builder and have a set of braze-ons added, but that sort of violates the "no paint" tenet I spelled out above. Maybe someday.

On the Paramount today are a set of pedals that will be transferred over to this bike. The Paramount will get back its SPD-style Look pedals.

Still needed are a stem, a set of Nitto Albatross bars in CrMo, a longer seatpost and a nice pair of brake levers. I'm contemplating buying a second set of those pannier baskets I put on Juliana's bike, and maybe another Wald basket (a deep one) for the front rack. I also need to think about the crankset. The one on there is functional, but there are a couple of options to consider, there. First, I could pop in an MRP crank adapter and put on a 3-piece crankset with a nice, little chainring to give me plenty of power and not much speed. I'd probably save a pound or two in the process. Or, I could install a smaller front chainring and tolerate the heavy and battered one-piece crank (repacked, of course). I'll also need a new single-speed chain.

The current bars, stem, seatpost and wheelset will all go on eBay, and I need to start listing stuff pretty soon, actually. The crank may as well -- will have to see. I'll reuse the saddle, tires and tubes that are on there now. The result should be a fun and funky around-town utility bike, and the project should keep me busy, once I've gotten the leaves up and other outdoor activity starts to dry up.

All of this sort of assumes that I'll have space, time and money in my next life to keep this bicycling hobby/habit rolling. Today a "For Sale" sign went up in front of my house, and the first open house will be held later today -- in less than an hour as I post this. There are appointments to see the place next week, and with any luck, we'll get some decent offers quickly. It's a pretty house, inside and out. It has beautiful light and a lot of character and interesting details. It's a house to be proud of. I've enjoyed my time as its custodian, and I'm proud to be leaving it in better shape than when I arrived, just over a decade ago. But not just anyone wants an antique home, and the sale may take some time.

I'm ready to move on, and am looking forward to exploring my new path -- however it unfolds from here. I'll probably be shedding a lot of stuff as I leave the old path behind, and that's probably a healthy thing. But with luck, I won't have to leave any of the bikes at the curb, so to speak. Even this old bruiser Columbia that still needs so much work.

All for now,

J

Camping

"Dad," Juliana asked, "can I play with your iPhone?"
"No", I responded. I was in the middle of trading IM's with a friend, after all.
"Living in the wilderness is hard" was the flat reply. Not a trace of emotion or sarcasm in her voice.

This was last Saturday night, just after she'd downed a S'more, sitting around the campfire after dinner. The tent was up, the Dinty Moore Beef Stew was down, and the fire was keeping us warm, now that the sun had retreated from the day's beautifully clear sky. The three of us had driven up to Tully Lake Campground that afternoon, set up our campsite then gone off to explore a bit before settling in for the evening.

Tully Lake is the campground I'd ridden to last year on my Schwinn, but this year I drove, and without bikes, at that. Nighttime temperatures were forecast to be frosty, and I didn't relish the idea of riding cold the next morning before packing up. Instead we brought our sneakers and hiked for entertainment. Turned out to be just as much fun anyway, and I didn't risk denting my car's roof with the gooseneck of the trailer bike, like I'd done when we took the bikes down to the Cape.

We started by heading up to Doane's Falls just outside the campground. There are several distinct falls and natural sluiceways where Lawrence Brook makes its way down an insanely steep little hill into Tully Lake. Tully Lake itself was created by the Tully Dam, a flood control dam built just after World War 2 out in Royalston, MA. Just as an aside, the top photo was shot from the top of the dam overlooking the lake.
Anyway, back to the falls. They've apparently been the site of several mills over the years, though none stands today. There are two obvious building foundations along the brook, and someone who knows what they're doing could probably identify other such sites. There's a trail that follows the falls and whether you're supposed to or not, there are a bunch of places to get close to the edge of the rocks overlooking the falls for a better look.

I have to say it's a bit nerve-wracking to hike with little kids in those conditions. The brook isn't a raging river, but it moves along fast enough at this point to wash someone away, especially someone small. Plus it's all rocks at this point -- no sandy bottom to break one's fall.

Neither of my girls has much experience in the woods, and Juli in particular tends to gallop along rather than moving with any degree of care. That's why we have a picket fence at the house, actually -- to keep her from running blindly into our busy street. She did a fair amount of stumbling and tripping along the path, as a result, but I don't think she ever fell. Ava is generally more cautious and seemed more open to my suggestions/requests to slow down and plant each foot with at least awareness, if not deliberation.

In any case, it's a pretty area and a good introduction to camping to the girls. You can park reasonably close to the sites, but the sites themselves are either right on the lake shore or in wooded patches that are nicely isolated from other sites.

The weather gave us only one challenge -- cold. I have a +35 bag, and the girls have Disney Princess bags that have no identifiable rating on them. We borrowed a friend's 4 person dome tent, which kept the condensation nicely at bay -- much better than my own tent (which is at least 30 years old, and acquired as points award from I think a Cub Scout fundraiser). It's time for an upgrade.

The girls slept on the Thermarests I picked up for backpacking at the Grand Canyon a dozen or more years ago, in clothes, in their bags and under fleece blankets. I slept on a poofier ground pad (getting too old for a Thermarest), in clothes in my bag, and then later in a fleece sweatshirt. I was awakened no less than 6 times in the night by Ava, who wanted me to stop snoring ("Daddy, stop doing that!" "Doing what?" "Making that noise!") or to change the batteries in a dimming flashlight (one was left on at all times) or to fix her blankets. We all slept cold, and I rebuilt the campfire the next morning to warm our bones. The frost was thick and clumpy on my car when we made our way up to fetch our breakfast and hit the bathrooms.

After breakfast, we took a guided hike around the campground, then made our own way back to the falls for a bit, and then over to the little recreation area for a game of horseshoes and to exercise the playground equipment over by the dam. All in all, a good 24 hour camping trip.

The only equipment-related challenge we had was my stove. I had a Camping Gaz campstove (note the past tense, there). It was an impressively compact and hot unit I bought probably 12 years ago for the aforementioned trip out west. I had also bought a large Camping Gaz propane/butane canister for it, because I figured it would make a more stable platform for cooking than the smaller one. Problem is, the flame burns so hot that unless you're cooking constantly with it, you just don't use much gas, so I had that same canister for 12 years, and it was still well over half full. With age, the seal on the canister's valve wasn't so good. Some gas escaped around the seal, causing some flaming down by the valve, which in turn melted the attachment point on the stove. Scratch one Camping Gaz stove.

I used it outside to boil a Caphalon spaghetti pot full of pasta the other day (which it did just as quickly as my Thermador range), let it burn for a few hours to try to burn the gas off, and then dropped it at the propane tank area of our recycling center yesterday. So in addition to a bigger and better tent, I need a new stove. Next time I'm going with a Trangia set (burner, stove and cookware). REI has a mini-set and Rivendell carries two larger sets that look like they'll trap the burner heat really well. Based on my experience with the Gaz setup, I really don't need what amounts to a blowtorch to cook with, and I like the idea of little refillable alcohol burners rather than tanks that become a disposal question later. Plus I keep denatured alcohol around for shellac, so I'll consolidate those two supplies into one.

I'd like to return with the girls for a similar trip next year, and this time maybe work in the bikes. Speaking of which, I've got a plan and have been gathering parts for the Columbia, and will share more about my goals for that bike next time.

All for now,

J

Wald Baskets

Lately, I've been trying to make my bikes useful.

Bikes are already useful, of course -- for exercise, sightseeing, family fun, sport, and with bags and trailers, they can even carry cargo and stuff. But I've had this sort of fantasy, I suppose you'd call it, of being able to commute by bike or do a lot more shopping and stuff by bike. It's a fantasy because I live in Southborough and work in Lowell, which is a long way away, and because the closest supermarkets are either a very dangerous 5 miles away by bike or a less dangerous 7 miles away. Not insurmountable, but not five blocks south and two west, either. Short of the fantasy, I'd like at least some of my fleet to be able to schlep stuff around readily for when the opportunity arises.

I've got bags of various sizes on all of my bikes, and racks of various types on a couple of them (and more to come). Bags and racks make it easy to carry a snack or jacket, or lash something down to bring it with you. Oh -- to the snack thing: I've found that bananas tend to liquefy in handlebar bags. In the skin, so it's not messy -- but not appetizing either. Anyway, I've even got shopping bag panniers, and those are pretty useful for lugging stuff around or doing actual shopping. But they're not very rigid and won't carry heavy stuff very well.

When I was on vacation with the kids on the Cape this past summer, I was impressed with how handy Juliana's little white plastic handlebar basket was for beach duty, so a month or two back, I bought a Wald basket from Rivendell. It's the smaller of the two they sell. And it has pretty much sat around, since, while I figured out what to do with it. I don't have a sufficiently substantial front rack on any of my bikes to hold it, and the drop bars on all of my road bikes are narrow enough that I wasn't fond of the idea of mounting it up front.

The little Specialites TA rack on my front Mafac brake is teeny and really limited to steadying my front bag hanging from my Velo-Orange decaleur, or perhaps carrying a small box of Munchkins back from Dunkin Donuts. The saddle bag support on the Motobecane is not suitable for a basket, really -- just for holding up a saddle bag. One larger than the one currently on the bike, at that.

So that really leaves the rear Velo-Orange rack on the Schwinn as a likely perch -- at least until I rack-up the Columbia or Paramount. But today I got home from a Saturday at the office and figured I'd cable-tie it to the Schwinn and see how it looked. Looks fine, as it turns out, and should be out of the way of the gooseneck on the trailer bike, too (the concern for which is what kept me from just lashing it on here in the first place).


I'm not the only one in the family who needs to carry stuff on their bike, either. On my two most recent rides with the girls, Juli had a skateboard lashed to the modified Pletscher rack on her Fuji, and my handlebar bag was full of her body armor. Riding in pads isn't convenient, and the skateboard hung way off the back of her rack like a set of wheelie bars on a dragster -- it looked pretty silly. So I told her a week or so ago that I'd find a set of baskets for her Fuji. Which I did, as you can see, and they're now mounted to her bike.


As you can see, they're these neat pannier baskets with a lightly arched inner side. They came with all this crazy hardware designed for mounting them to either steel balloon-tire cruiser fenders or the rear supports of a banana seat. After a quick look-over this stuff, I gently put it back in its bag so as not to disturb the past, and proceeded to mount the baskets with a single Nitto band clamp wrapped around the frame of the Pletscher. Then I cable-tied each basket to several other points on the rack or its struts, mostly for added stability -- the clamp is really where the strength is -- however much that is. The mousetrap on the top of the Pletscher is unaffected by the baskets and is still an option for holding stuff down. The arched sides stand a little proud of the rack top, though, so they might get in the way of something wide and flat going up there. I think these look great, and I might get another set for myself.

When the girls were dropped off at the house today, I sent Juli out to the barn to take a look. She gave me an A+ on the job (I'm so proud). Her skateboard will fit just fine on one side and her pads in the other, though a bungee net is probably called for to keep everything in place. I'll pick up a pair at some point -- one for each of us.

In both cases (mine and hers, that is), the baskets appear to be uncoated steel wire, though they may be galvanized. I'll give them a light coating of car wax every once in a while to protect them and they shouldn't rust. Of course I don't expect them to last forever, especially Juli's -- kids are hard on their gear in this stretch.

Incidentally, Wald is a company that has made stuff for bicycles for over 100 years. If you go up on eBay and search on Wald Baskets, you'll find an amazing variety of new and old styles of baskets for bicycles -- sexy (if there is such a thing) and modern quick-release ones, and simple old-fashioned ones like the one I bought from Rivendell. Their website is also a good source of info for the stuff in current production, of course, but eBay seems more fun, somehow. They're still making bicycle components in Kentucky today -- a true rarity these days.

This post, by the way, marks my one year anniversary of blogging and of Bronze Gears. I'm enjoying sharing and hopefully my visitors are getting some value from what I've posted here.

All for now,

J

White Hole

I've discovered a new spatial phenomenon. It's similar to a black hole -- you know... collapsed star, all this matter compressed into this little teeny space, super gravity, light can't escape, etc. Well, a white hole is the same thing, except it's time that can't escape. Oh, and it's my house, not a collapsed star.

(Actually, there really is a white hole in astrophysics -- at least hypothetically. And the definition is a lot different than mine above. But I've already made up a new word in French on this blog, so let's just ignore that for now.)

I've noted before that my house consumes an astonishing amount of time, and that's never been more true than in the past month. Literally every weekend since my last post (four weeks ago) has been consumed with mostly housework. Plus many nights in between. I've been going like hell getting the place ready for listing.

The outside is now (professionally) painted, and much of the inside too. One room downstairs has been completely recolored. Most of the trim downstairs has been repainted, the upstairs and downstairs hall walls have been repainted in a lighter shade than they were, and in general, the place just looks fantastic. All I have left to do is to paint some grit-laden paint on the stairs to the basement, paint the front stair balusters (that'll be fun) and finish spackling and painting the ceiling in the downstairs front hall. A few more hours worth of work is all that's left and it's done.

By the way, there are 5 posts on the front porch, as you can see. Four of them were made by me (the one just to the left of the front door was made by the previous owner -- the rest are mine), along with a similar but shorter pair on the Kitchen porch. I wrote about starting one post here. As you can see (far left in the picture) it's done, and with the help of a friend, I put it in place earlier this summer. The old one broke into three pieces as we took it out, even though it looked mostly fine on the surface until last fall. Houses are exciting that way. Especially old ones.

The real question is what's next. I have a good feel for what the place is worth, and I could start over somewhere else with the cash I'd take out of the place. But I'm struggling with letting go of it. It's not just a nice and unique old house, it's been my home for the better part of the last a decade (notwithstanding the 9 months I was in Framingham). And it's essentially been a the source of a lifestyle -- making it mine and keeping it in shape has been a labor of love, a source of pride and a constant challenge to the skills I brought to the table when I moved in. It's a white hole, yes, devouring time like nobody's business. But's it's mine, and I'd like to hang onto it if I can. Not at the expense of everything else, mind you -- only if I can make it work.

Anyway, as I've been doing all of this work, I've stil managed to get some biking in. Last week I had my kids for a few days before the first day of school, and we got out for 14 miles or so. Juli strapped her stakeboard to her Pletscher rack, and we went over to her school's playground, stopping first for lunch at the local pizza place. Then this weekend I've logged two 24-mile days on my two older road bikes followed by a shorter ride today with the girls.

Riding them back to back I was struck by how different they are. The Schwinn is better sorted than the Motobecane, and it feels like a more modern bike, even though it's older. The brakes feel better, the shifters pull more cable and are more responsive, and the bike is more stable. It's also much stiffer in the frame than the Motobecane, which feels willowy by comparison. If I watch the big ring for deflection as I crank up hills, there's little to no flex in the Schwinn, where the Motobecane's big ring flexes a couple of millimeters left to right as I pedal. So the lower part of the main triangle is much stiffer on the Schwinn than the Motobecane. The trade-off, though, is that even with a Brooks Professional (vs. the wider B-17 on the Schwinn) and narrower tires, the ride quality of the Motobecane is sooooooo much more supple -- it's really a lovely bike. Anyway, it's fun having a bunch of bikes and experiencing their differences back and forth, back-to-back.

In terms of projects, I've been playing mostly with accessories the past few weeks, having bought a handful of Wald baskets (one for my use, and two for Juli's Fuji for schlepping her board and pads around). I'm still working out the installation of those, but I'm looking forward to having some carrying capacity. I also picked up a couple of new bags from Rivendell, and have been gathering parts to fix the front end of the Columbia. I have a fork, a headset, and a set of hubs. I still need a front brake cable hanger and a new stem and bars for it. Optionally, I need a new seatpost.

The short-term plan is to install the fork with the appropriate spacing on the steerer tube to handle a set of front brakes. Then replace the bars with adult-sized bars, and the stem with 22.2 stem to match the new fork. I'll have to cobble the headset together a bit, using a top nut that I have leftover from my wife's Bianchi project (the original steel top nut), but that's not hard.

And then when I'm ready to put a cantilever brake on the front (and I have a cool one to put on -- an old Dia-Compe) I'll need to figure out what to do about wheels. My thinking is to have a coaster brake setup with its fat tires, and a second set of wheels with a front canti brake only. I could mix it up I suppose, too. Easy enough to figure out. When the time comes, I'll get the hubs I picked up (SR suntour threaded hubs and a single speed freewheel) built up with some silver 26" rims and that'll be that.

That project may drag into the winter though. Fall is fast approaching (it was 50 degrees this morning), and that means that I've got only 4-5 more weeks before I have to start dealing with leaves and it's already time to think about taking the gardens down and putting all the vines into the compost pile. Whatever happens with staying or selling, I've got at least one more autumn here, and it's generally a lot of work.

All for now,

J