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

Columbia Straight Bar Clunker

Today I took my kids to the Larz Anderson museum for a bike swap meet -- my second such excursion this year.

It was a short morning, but a good one. We met a friend of mine and her dog, and they joined us for a walk around the grounds and to look at the bikes and parts for sale. It was fun to watch the girls today -- they were looking forward to the bike show, but getting time with a dog (they really want a dog) was an unexpected bonus. He seemed to draw as much of a crowd as any of the bikes, especially with kids.

About halfway around the grounds, I saw an old straight-bar cruiser hanging on a rack. It was very much what I'd been thinking of when I wrote about picking up a Schwinn Cruiser a few weeks ago -- sort of halfway through the rework process. The bike had at one point been a Columbia De Luxe, but was wearing a modern fork and was missing all of its bodywork -- stripped to its essence. It wasn't a fancy bike (no complex construction techniques, here), but still an interesting design worthy of appreciation. In sum, it's a clunker. But the frame is very cool and I'm looking forward to tearing it apart and rebuilding everything. And for $80, it was perfect. There was actually a very similar Columbia there that wasn't rolling, but was more complete from a bodywork perspective. I skipped that one, but it's nice to know there are others out there, from a parts perspective. Schwinns appear to be growing on trees on eBay, but Columbias (made here in Massachusetts) not so much.

The frame has a very elegant design that makes me wonder why Schwinn ended up dominating the US bicycle market. The answer is probably that Schwinn built a better marketing and sales machine back in the day, but from a product perspective, the Columbia's frame is much more interesting to look at than contemporary Schwinns. For example, the top tube sweeps past the seat tube to intersect the seat stays in sort of a wishbone, rather than terminating at the seat tube. And the seat stays and chainstays are each formed from a single piece of tubing bent into a long U-shape. Also, there's a short tube running from the bottom bracket to the chainstays that's bisected by another tube that forms the kickstand mount. In any case, roughness aside, it's pretty cool to look at.

The parts on the bike appear to be a random mix of stuff, and it's hard to tell what, if anything, is original. The seatpost was turned upside down in the seat post to accommodate a sprung leather saddle and its clamp, which was made for a larger-diameter than the tapered end of the Columbia's post. The twin-rail sprung leather saddle is old and pretty cracked, but in usable condition. It's marked Dunelt, which as far as I know was a bike brand, not a saddle, so it may be an OEM Wrights or Brooks. The wheels are in decent shape. There's a Bendix coaster-brake rear hub and wide chrome rims in not too-terrible condition. I don't think they're S7 rims, which is probably a good thing. The headset is a generic chrome BMX piece, and the fork is a generic cantilever-brake BMX/MTB fork (with no installed brakes). The stem looks like a chrome Schwinn piece, or a knock-off. And the chrome bars look like kids cruiser bars. Blue grips and too narrow, but a nice bend. A bit of peppering in the chrome, but not awful. There's a generic 4-leaf clover chainring on the 1-piece crankset, and a set of metal-framed Wald pedals with rubber grips overlays (they're not rubber block pedals, in other words). There is no kickstand in that mount, unfortunately, but I'll look for one.

Mechanically, it works reasonably well. The bottom bracket and headset were recently repacked, and are oozing their share of fresh grease. And there's an obviously recent and generous application of oil on the chain, sprockets and pedals to quiet things down. Even so, there's a tick in the crank, and the coaster brake has a bit of a crunchiness to it as well. Both of which I can take care of during a teardown/rebuild.

Which I'll definitely have to do, because (as you can see) this afternoon I crashed headlong into a pallet full of cinderblocks, wrecking the junk fork. Seems you have to get used to having the right pedal position to adequately brake a coaster-brake bike. I remember reading something like that on Sheldon's website not too long ago. Should have paid more attention.

I wasn't hurt at all -- I wasn't going all that fast, and I stayed in the saddle, even. The poofy front tire served nicely as an airbag, and as I said, the fork crumpled, absorbing more of the impact. The legs bent back at the crown, and it's now scrap. The frame itself seems no worse for wear -- didn't see any signs of bending behind the head tube, probably because of the dual top tubes (and if it really didn't bend, that strength gives me a new appreciation for why the Rivendell Bombadil MTB was designed the way it was). I haven't checked the front wheel for damage, but am hopeful it didn't get all out of round on me -- I really don't want to spring for new wheels right now (though I may need to do that to support a front brake anyway).

So I now have another bike project, just when I was fresh out. This one will be equal parts cleanup, leather care and mechanical rebuild. There's another swap meet coming up in the next couple of weeks, and I already have a short parts list for it -- stem, seatpost, chainring, and most improbably, a Columbia kickstand. Should be fun figuring this one out!

All for now,

J

Dedicated Time

Focus is a good thing.

And given that Juliana has a way of sponging up all of the attention that anyone present might have to offer, Ava doesn't get as much focus as her sister. From me, from my wife, from my parents -- anyone really. It's one of those things that's there in plain sight, that you want to do something about, but is very hard to address whenever both girls are present.

So we split them up this weekend -- yesterday I had Ava, and today my wife does. And vise-versa for Juli. It's amazing how much more I got out of Ava yesterday than I usually do. She's a sweet, adorable and playful little girl. And she's not as quiet one-on-one as she is when Juli is around -- not by a long shot.

Yesterday was a good day. I picked her up at 9:00 from her mother's apartment, and took her back to the house. We ran a couple of errands and I made a couple of phone calls relating to selling the place, then got the Schwinn Sports Tourer down from the barn ceiling and hooked up her trailer bike. I also pulled out my Nashbar shopping panniers and put them onto the Velo-Orange rack on the Schwinn, then loaded them up with pool stuff -- towels, sunscreen, flip-flops, noodle float, etc. The pool, you see, was the first item on the schedule Ava spelled out for us. Riding over was my idea.

The ride to the pool is just under 5 miles, and it's pretty flat. Even so, I was reminded of how noisy the Mafac front brake, in particular, became when I replaced the machined-sidewall rims with the polished alloy wheelset that came on the Motobecane. Not sure what I need to do there, besides try to wear the rims in a little and toe in the pads. But it's pretty loud and annoying, honestly.

After spending so much time on the Motobecane, switching to the Schwinn was interesting. The cockpit feels much more compact than the Motobecane, for some reason. I should do some measuring to see what the difference really is. And the ride quality is good, but the frame is not nearly as supple as the French bike's. The plump tires do a nice job of smoothing things out, though. The steering is fine, but I think I need to give the headset a little snugging-down. Also, I need to make some tweaks to the front derailleur, as it seems to rub a lot. Maybe the cage is just narrower than I'm used to.

On the ride over, Ava spent pretty much the whole ride talking and sharing what she was observing in the world around us. I noticed this much more than when I'm riding with the two of them, because though Juli is on her own bike, I'm spending as much time coaching and watching her -- helping to keep her safe -- as I am listening to Ava. Maybe more.

The pool was fun, but I got my iPhone pretty wet on the way back to the changing room, when a water botle with an open top leaked a third of its contents into the same bag my iPhone was in. I shook it out pretty good, but couldn't turn it off for several hours (it was stuck in a wierd loop). I'm hoping for the best, there; it's sitting in a ziploc bag with a bunch of rice (serving as a dessicant) down in the kitchen, and with any luck that'll do it. Or, Juli and I may be at the Apple store later today.

Wet phone aside, I have to say that shopping panniers are a pretty useful thing. They're out of the way, low and on the back of the bike, and they hold a good amount of stuff. If I had a job closer to home, I swear I could spend summers nearly car-free for most of my running around and commuting. Wire shopping baskets to hold reusable shopping bags would probably be even more useful, with a higher weight limit.

The ride back was fun, other than the noodle float uncurling a couple of times and popping out of the bag. And it was longer, because of all the stopping to fix the cargo, plus we detoured through a couple of neighborhoods where there are homes for sale. Nothing new to look at in the "non-money pit" and "5-year house" categories, but I'm trying to warm the girls up for a move. Juli is farther along than Ava on that score -- Ava just doesn't like talking about it, where Juli asks questions.

After cleaning up, our afternoon included a sushi lunch, an afternoon showing of "G-Force" the Disney movie centered around rodent commandos (which as was well done from a CGI perspective as Transformers or others like it, but also no less tedious from a story or dialogue perspective). Before dinner, Ava asked me to dance with her -- a curious blend of gymnastics and ballet, it turned out -- to music on her iPod. No, 5-year-olds don't need iPods, but they're good for certain situations. Like when my iPhone is sitting in a bag with uncooked white rice, for example. Her clip-on Shuffle sits in a bowl on the kitchen table most of the time.

Throughout the day, I was really struck by how much Ava just wanted to engage. She normally sort of hangs back, watching. I've even talked about that before up here. And I'd assumed that was just how she preferred things (I, myself am quiet that way in large social groups). But my sense now is that there's a dynamic at work that's triggered by the force of her sister's personality, which isn't good. But being aware means we can compensate and respond.

I have both girls together next weekend. We're going to ride, hit the pool, work on some house stuff together (siding the grain room on the barn) and head to the Lars Anderson Museum for a bike show on Sunday. I'm looking forward to all of it -- even if it's not quite as focused.

All for now,

J

Praise

My girls and I took a week away from camp and work and getting the house in shape, and spent it at a house borrowed from a friend of my parents on Cape Cod. It was a short week (M-F), but it was still a lot of fun to be at the beach and away from our normal routine. And I managed to keep most of the work stuff at bay for the week. Most of it.

Apart from spending time at the beach (which Juli is drawn to; Ava not so much because she's a little afraid of waves), we drove up to Provincetown, read, ate greasy food at the house and at seafood places, and rode our bikes. I even bought a new carrier for my Thule bars so I could bring down Juli's mountain bike, my Paramount and the trailer bike for Ava, while also schlepping food, clothes, bedding and beach stuff needed for three people for 5 days in my little Mazda.

The bikes came in handy for getting to the beach, and Juli's little plastic handlebar basket was invaluable for carrying a pair of rolled-up beach towels. Enough so that I'm thinking about picking up a couple of Wald wire baskets to cable-tie to the various racks on our bikes when we need them. We also took a couple of longer rides - one around 5 miles and one just over 14.

The 14-miler was mostly on the Cape Cod Rail Trail, which starts in South Dennis, about two miles from the house we borrowed, which was in Dennis Port. And it was on that ride that I was reminded of how important praise is to kids. Well, people in general, when they do something well. But kids get a lot of negative feedback from adults -- particularly kids like Juliana who have strong wills and short attention spans -- and it's important to highlight for them what they're doing well.

At the head of the CCRT,we passed a youngish couple with their new baby about to set out on a ride. The parents were both trim and athletic and had nice bikes. Their baby was riding in a handlebar-mounted seat on Dad's bike, which I thought was both cool and a little scary, having always kept my kids low and in a Burly trailer when taking them out as infants and young toddlers. Anyway, we saw them, they saw us, and off we went, leaving just ahead of them. We kept up about a 16mph pace when we were rolling.

If you do the math, you can see we did about 5 miles each way on the trail. Just a little past the first rotary in Harwich. Probably half a dozen street crossings each way, and a couple quick stops for water breaks. During one of our water stops, the other threesome passed us, and we quickly overtook them shortly thereafter. I didn't hear this directly, but at around our halfway point, Juli told me that as she passed the group (Juli was at the tail of our procession most of the ride) the man remarked to his partner, "That kid can ride!" as she cruised past on her little 20" Performance mountain bike. Which, of course, she can.

My response at the time was to the effect that she is a strong rider, yes, and that it was neat that someone else had noticed. But of course I ride with Juli all the time, and I've spent the past few years coaching her with choosing gears and keeping up a spin -- I take Juli's riding strength as a given. It wasn't until later in the ride that the impact really sank in.

When we got back to the trail head, that litle family had beaten us back, having turned around a bit sooner than we had, and/or not dallied at the rotary on the way back like we did. We bumped into the dad as he walked from Barbara's Bike Shop back to the parking lot of the rail trail. He and I gave each other a "Hey" as we passed, but he made a point of telling Juli she is a really good rider. She was obviously proud, and it stayed with her for the next couple of days.

Juli is a wonderful girl, but in some ways she's a tough kid to parent. Bright, eloquent, strong-willed, artistic and always turning over what she can create. She's still working out how to get along well with others, and she's quirky enough not to fit in with many of the other children, particularly other girls. Her self esteem has suffered from the social challenges at school, from power struggles (strong willed, remember) at home and at school, and from the collapse of my marriage. She's having a tough run right now.

That other rider offered Juli genuine, unsolicited praise. Praise I've also offered, but in this case unencumbered by a parental relationship. I don't know if she will remember all of this in a year or five years, but I can say that in the moment it made her realize she's good at something. For a little girl struggling to find her place, it meant a lot.

And for that simple act -- of kindness, of enthusiasm, and of respect -- he has my gratitude.

All for now,

J