Duty Cycle

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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.