Riding Wet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All for now,

J

Coaster Brakes are a Laugh Riot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All for now,

J

Guest Post: Immersion

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

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

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

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

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

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

But back to finding pleasure in biking…

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

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

Strong and Simple

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All for now,

J

Duty Cycle

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