C'mon in. Make yourself comfortable. Can I put on the kettle? I'm a little nervous, introducing you to the family like this. Mom? No she's not here...what are you talking about? No it's not like that. I mean, I like you well enough. But I'm not introducing you to my mom and dad. No, it's not about you. But this is a bicycle blog.
When you mention it, I'm not sure me father had ever ridden a bicycle. Pa (yeah, that's what I called him, just like on Little House on the Prairie) grew up not just poor but dirt poor. Grandfather Autrey mined coal, lived in the company town, and died with the company's coal dust clogging up both lungs. He carried a walking stick made of spring steel--it would bend right over if you leaned on it, and break a rib or a shinbone with a flick of the wrist. If they'd had enough money for a bicycle, they'd have bought coffee and meat first.
The war saved them though. Thirty million people died bringing Adolf and Tito to heel, but war fixed my family's problems. Grandfather, Grandmother, and all five kids trekked from south Alabama to metro Atlanta, for jobs in an army boot factory. When the boys turned 17, they joined the Marines, because the Corps will take you a year younger than the other services. One girl, Melba, died young, of something probably related to her various birth defects. Helen got a job at the bomber factory, and climbed the corporate ladder. She spent a lifetime lunching with the ladies and driving new Cadillacs. The boys used the GI Bill when they got home, my dad learning to fix commercial refrigeration units. Their folks got to retire, not for long before their health failed, but in a house they owned and in a town with more than one landowner.
Helen drove a Cadillac, Pa drove a Chevy pickup with all the engine options. It's the way of poor folks who make good. They were tired of making do and didn't want their kids to scratch and scrabble either. So in spring of 1974, when my tenth birthday rolled around, it was decided that I needed a new seat for my bike.
Like Ceasar, the dog whisperer who believes that there are no bad dogs, I maintain a generally high opinion of bicycles; but I've never owned or even known one with fewer redeeming features than my ride. It was a Stingray knockoff, bought originally at Sears and passed to me by a neighbor. Fenders were long gone, the tires were worn to the cord, and it rode as though made of lead. The giant chainring gave it a theoretical high speed, but I couldn't ride up the one hill on my dead end street. The purple glittery vinyl saddle had long ago split its seams and been mummified in duct tape. I didn't hate it. But it was useless--unlovely and unworkable.
When Pa suggested we get a new seat for my bike, I knew better than to demure. We are old south, and we know the value of good manners. But I couldn't get excited, because that bike needed more than a saddle. The previous owner had rattle-canned it several times, each one worse than the last, and the finish resembled Jackson Pollock in his rust and shit period. A new saddle would be a waste of a new saddle. Not to mention the waste of a perfectly good birthday.
But Sis and I piled into Pa's pickup with him. I got the window seat and the seatbelt, what with it being my birthday, and we rode to a Schwinn shop on West Paces Ferry. We walked in and the shop man rolled out a yellow Sting Ray. Pa spoke. "You like the seat on that bike/" "I guess." "Well go over there and look at the name on that bike." I read the tag on the top tube--my name.
The Krate era had slipped past a little before, when a few little boys had ripped their scrotums on top tube mounted Stik-Shifts. (Bad spelling was part of the allure.) The Apple Krate, Grey Ghost, Pea Picker, and Lemon Peeler had withered to just the yellow Sting Ray. A single Huret thumbshifter hung above the right handgrip, and controlled a Schwinn-approved derailleur and a five speed freewheel.
I didn't learn proper shifting until the next bike, but I did learn a few other things. I learned how to keep a chain lubed, and to pick the grease off the tension pulleys with a screwdriver. I got a speedometer and learned to covet the miles, riding endless laps to the dead end and back. (I had no trouble with the hill now.) I learned to use my front brake, and to trust both of them. I learned to wake up early and ride before the sun got angry.
When I started this post, I'd planned on introducing the bikes in my stable, not because it makes interesting reading, but because I'm missing being with my pack and wanted to think about them. They're just in the garage, or the attic over the garage, but we've been estranged for a while.
I ended up following a different thread back to its source, and got to think about some things that don't come up often. Thanks, Pa.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Heading home
I'm heading home.
It sounds strange to say that, and anyone looking over my shoulder at the moment would think I've finally left my senses. Fresh snow blankets the yard deeply enough that not only is the grass concealed, but the driveway and even the street have blended into its homogenous whiteness. No tire tracks mark it, and the weather report suggests that we should all get comfortable.
More to the point, I haven't left the house, even for the mailbox, in twelve days; and most of those twelve have been spent perched in my Lazy-Boy and swaddled in oxycodone. The swirling snowstorm outside is matched by another in my head. But it's okay. I'm heading home.
Back in 2006 or so, I headed out for an early morning ride one Sunday, to an abandoned golf course near my house. The smart money in Atlanta has been migrating north for years now, and the country club community where the ball playing heroes lived in the 80s has withered. The big houses are mostly still occupied, but the golf links turned yellow and weedy and they boarded up the clubhouse.
But the cart paths! The perfect combination of road and off road, not five miles from home. The architect laid them out with a nod to forest elves and low speed buggies. They wind, they twist, they fill up with dirt at the low spots, and all the bridges have black timbers and humped backs. The perfect spot for an hour of full tilt boogie, without the hassle of loading a bike in the truck.
The crash came so suddenly I didn't realize I was falling until I'd already hit the ground. I'd spun the pedals up fast on the approach to a short bridge, caught air off the back side...and found myself on the ground, with the wind knocked out in a way that I'd never felt before. Figured I'd lay there for a while, til I got to feeling better, then I'd ride home and get an ice pack.
But I kept not feeling better. I'd close my eyes for a second, and when I opened them the shadows had moved. I closed them once, and when I opened them again, a deer, a big ten point buck, was sniffing around my head. Shit, I'm getting shocky. It's 25 degrees, and my phone is on the charger at home. It's move or die.
My left leg was strangely unresponsive. My toes wiggled just fine, my ankle rolled, but I couldn't weight it or raise my knee. When I used the bike like a fence gate to pull myself up on, that leg didn't quite reach the ground.
I lowered the seatpost until the saddle touched the top tube, and standing fully on my right leg, pulled the bike back under me. Lifted my left foot and dropped it on the pedal until the cleat clicked in. Pushed off hard with the right, clicked in, and pedaled. Pain? Plentiful, but it seemed a long way away, like someone was telling me about it.
I rode home, just a couple of miles on empty roads, up my front steps that I'd ramped the year before, and through the front door that didn't lock, and made the call. Five titanium screws put the doorknob back on top of my femur. A year with a walker and a wheelchair got me moving again. But I never got back to full speed.
Muscle and fat and brains live off a network of arteries and veins, little rubbery tubes that blood runs through. They stretch and move and occasionally get pinched shut, like when you cross your legs wrong and your foot goes to sleep.
Bone's not so forgiving. The blood runs through vessels in it too, but they're carved in the bone itself, like caverns in limestone. When it gets broken, no matter how carefully the doctor lines the pieces back up, a lot of the vessels aren't going to line up.
My hip eventually healed, and with the screws still in place, actually became stronger than it had been before the fracture. But the blood supply withered gradually, as the vessels that only half matched became blocked by clots, and the doorknob went from living bone to calcified stone.
You could pick a worse material than stone, if you wanted to build something to last. For the first five years or so, the CAT scans and PET scans and x-rays showed an inert mass of bone, bearing up to the physically vigorous lifestyle of a construction worker and cyclist. But in 2012, standing up and walking started taking longer and making more noise than before. Sometimes a pop, occasionally the sharp crack of a gunshot. More pain, too: a dull ache in the morning, that sharpened with exertion. Enough that rolling over in bed woke me up every time.
Anyway, the doc who reduced the fracture the first time took new films and when he put them up on the light box, stood back and whistle. Stone may be long wearing, but it's not immortal and it doesn't grow back. The weight bearing part of the door knob had worn all the way through and shards had split off it. There was a hole the size of my thumbnail going all the way through. Time for a new hip.
Which brings us to the present day. This is actually my second artificial hip, after the first one got installed wrong, and gave me a leg 30mm too short. One scar is a hand's length, purple, and stands proud of the flesh like a pinky. The new one runs from waistline halfway to my knee, and has 45 gleaming staples that look like an upholsterer's tool.
But I can walk. The pain never goes away, but it never gets too close either, a dull thudding ache that physical therapy blames on post-op swelling. Both feet are equally far from my nose too, and my ankle bones bump together in bed just like I'm used to. My walker, an old friend festooned with Dirt Rag stickers and a bicycle bell, carries me from bed to chair to bathroom as fast as you could walk.
So what's all this talk about Home?
Bicycles form the one constant in my life. I got serious about my riding in 1980, as a tenth-grader, and even though I've never gotten good at it, have never quit trying. I raced NORBA and USCF, trials, time trials, criteriums and road races. Never won anything more valuable than a bottle of chain oil, and never valued anything more than that bottle of chain oil. I've been spit out the back of some pretty good packs, and led them briefly when they lapped me.
When I wasn't riding bikes, I wrote about them. In between construction jobs, I scribbled articles for Dirt Rag and Bicycle Times, covering shows for handbuilt bicycles, and project bikes and a few new products. I belonged to news groups, and web forums, and cycling clubs. I owned thirty-odd bikes, not counting the cadavers under the deck. I've got shelves of cycling books, a complete set of Dirt Rag back issues, and most cycling magazines going back to the early 1990s. It was a snug, happy way to live, where most of my reading for pleasure could construe as research for an article, where every weekend trip became tax-deductible because it would sell a magazine piece, and pleasure led to pleasure led to pleasure.
Unfortunately, when you can't ride a bike, it's hard to write about a bike. Hell, it's hard to look one in the face. And the more I rode, the less able I became. Training isn't supposed to work that way. It was all pain, no gain.
When the doc scheduled my surgery, I celebrated by sending a double sawbucks to Randonneurs USA, and a C-note to Compass Bicycles, for, respectively, a year's membership, and brake shoes, taillight bulbs, and tires. I bought a pair of string backed gloves from Bicycle South, and squeeze tube for GU from REI. I started reassembling my long miles bike, a project that hadn't seemed worth it a year ago.
Thomas Wolfe famously said that you can't go home again; that home changes while you're away and you probably change too. Bikes have always been the home for my soul, a comfortably familiar place, a place where I felt competent. I couldn't go there for a long time. I'm going there again. I'm going home.
It sounds strange to say that, and anyone looking over my shoulder at the moment would think I've finally left my senses. Fresh snow blankets the yard deeply enough that not only is the grass concealed, but the driveway and even the street have blended into its homogenous whiteness. No tire tracks mark it, and the weather report suggests that we should all get comfortable.
More to the point, I haven't left the house, even for the mailbox, in twelve days; and most of those twelve have been spent perched in my Lazy-Boy and swaddled in oxycodone. The swirling snowstorm outside is matched by another in my head. But it's okay. I'm heading home.
Back in 2006 or so, I headed out for an early morning ride one Sunday, to an abandoned golf course near my house. The smart money in Atlanta has been migrating north for years now, and the country club community where the ball playing heroes lived in the 80s has withered. The big houses are mostly still occupied, but the golf links turned yellow and weedy and they boarded up the clubhouse.
But the cart paths! The perfect combination of road and off road, not five miles from home. The architect laid them out with a nod to forest elves and low speed buggies. They wind, they twist, they fill up with dirt at the low spots, and all the bridges have black timbers and humped backs. The perfect spot for an hour of full tilt boogie, without the hassle of loading a bike in the truck.
The crash came so suddenly I didn't realize I was falling until I'd already hit the ground. I'd spun the pedals up fast on the approach to a short bridge, caught air off the back side...and found myself on the ground, with the wind knocked out in a way that I'd never felt before. Figured I'd lay there for a while, til I got to feeling better, then I'd ride home and get an ice pack.
But I kept not feeling better. I'd close my eyes for a second, and when I opened them the shadows had moved. I closed them once, and when I opened them again, a deer, a big ten point buck, was sniffing around my head. Shit, I'm getting shocky. It's 25 degrees, and my phone is on the charger at home. It's move or die.
My left leg was strangely unresponsive. My toes wiggled just fine, my ankle rolled, but I couldn't weight it or raise my knee. When I used the bike like a fence gate to pull myself up on, that leg didn't quite reach the ground.
I lowered the seatpost until the saddle touched the top tube, and standing fully on my right leg, pulled the bike back under me. Lifted my left foot and dropped it on the pedal until the cleat clicked in. Pushed off hard with the right, clicked in, and pedaled. Pain? Plentiful, but it seemed a long way away, like someone was telling me about it.
I rode home, just a couple of miles on empty roads, up my front steps that I'd ramped the year before, and through the front door that didn't lock, and made the call. Five titanium screws put the doorknob back on top of my femur. A year with a walker and a wheelchair got me moving again. But I never got back to full speed.
Muscle and fat and brains live off a network of arteries and veins, little rubbery tubes that blood runs through. They stretch and move and occasionally get pinched shut, like when you cross your legs wrong and your foot goes to sleep.
Bone's not so forgiving. The blood runs through vessels in it too, but they're carved in the bone itself, like caverns in limestone. When it gets broken, no matter how carefully the doctor lines the pieces back up, a lot of the vessels aren't going to line up.
My hip eventually healed, and with the screws still in place, actually became stronger than it had been before the fracture. But the blood supply withered gradually, as the vessels that only half matched became blocked by clots, and the doorknob went from living bone to calcified stone.
You could pick a worse material than stone, if you wanted to build something to last. For the first five years or so, the CAT scans and PET scans and x-rays showed an inert mass of bone, bearing up to the physically vigorous lifestyle of a construction worker and cyclist. But in 2012, standing up and walking started taking longer and making more noise than before. Sometimes a pop, occasionally the sharp crack of a gunshot. More pain, too: a dull ache in the morning, that sharpened with exertion. Enough that rolling over in bed woke me up every time.
Anyway, the doc who reduced the fracture the first time took new films and when he put them up on the light box, stood back and whistle. Stone may be long wearing, but it's not immortal and it doesn't grow back. The weight bearing part of the door knob had worn all the way through and shards had split off it. There was a hole the size of my thumbnail going all the way through. Time for a new hip.
Which brings us to the present day. This is actually my second artificial hip, after the first one got installed wrong, and gave me a leg 30mm too short. One scar is a hand's length, purple, and stands proud of the flesh like a pinky. The new one runs from waistline halfway to my knee, and has 45 gleaming staples that look like an upholsterer's tool.
But I can walk. The pain never goes away, but it never gets too close either, a dull thudding ache that physical therapy blames on post-op swelling. Both feet are equally far from my nose too, and my ankle bones bump together in bed just like I'm used to. My walker, an old friend festooned with Dirt Rag stickers and a bicycle bell, carries me from bed to chair to bathroom as fast as you could walk.
So what's all this talk about Home?
Bicycles form the one constant in my life. I got serious about my riding in 1980, as a tenth-grader, and even though I've never gotten good at it, have never quit trying. I raced NORBA and USCF, trials, time trials, criteriums and road races. Never won anything more valuable than a bottle of chain oil, and never valued anything more than that bottle of chain oil. I've been spit out the back of some pretty good packs, and led them briefly when they lapped me.
When I wasn't riding bikes, I wrote about them. In between construction jobs, I scribbled articles for Dirt Rag and Bicycle Times, covering shows for handbuilt bicycles, and project bikes and a few new products. I belonged to news groups, and web forums, and cycling clubs. I owned thirty-odd bikes, not counting the cadavers under the deck. I've got shelves of cycling books, a complete set of Dirt Rag back issues, and most cycling magazines going back to the early 1990s. It was a snug, happy way to live, where most of my reading for pleasure could construe as research for an article, where every weekend trip became tax-deductible because it would sell a magazine piece, and pleasure led to pleasure led to pleasure.
Unfortunately, when you can't ride a bike, it's hard to write about a bike. Hell, it's hard to look one in the face. And the more I rode, the less able I became. Training isn't supposed to work that way. It was all pain, no gain.
When the doc scheduled my surgery, I celebrated by sending a double sawbucks to Randonneurs USA, and a C-note to Compass Bicycles, for, respectively, a year's membership, and brake shoes, taillight bulbs, and tires. I bought a pair of string backed gloves from Bicycle South, and squeeze tube for GU from REI. I started reassembling my long miles bike, a project that hadn't seemed worth it a year ago.
Thomas Wolfe famously said that you can't go home again; that home changes while you're away and you probably change too. Bikes have always been the home for my soul, a comfortably familiar place, a place where I felt competent. I couldn't go there for a long time. I'm going there again. I'm going home.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Golden Age
This is, my sister informs me, the Golden Age of Military Surplus. You can almost hear the capital letters when she says it. Laurie's got an IQ that makes mine look like a shoe size, and enough research time to fill those of us with day jobs fill with bile and envy. So if she wants to pass the pronouncement to me, I'll give it the proper emphasis.
Her logic runs like this: We've been at war for a decade now, and thousands of soldiers have cycled through training camps and combat bases. They use a lot of gear, but don't always use it up. Moreover, the army has switched from the green blotchy camouflage to what's called digital camo, which makes the leafy patterns our of quarter inch squares. It makes a uniform shirt look like a screen capture off a Jumbo-tron. That means all the old style has to be turned in, worn out or not. (They call them 'uniforms' for a reason.) And lastly, they've swithced from A.L.I.C.E. (All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment) to MOLLE (MOdular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment). While the ALice to Molle switch sounds a lot more interesting than it is, it means thaat the old stuff has gotten even cheaper. And a quick look at Ebay proves the point.
I used to ride a lot more miles than I do. Back before they had drugs to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder, I logged six hours in the saddle most days. And when the Paxil fixed that, and I didn't know what to do with myself, it was what my body expected and needed. So I still ride a lot, and think randonneuring and endurance mountain bike races are a lot cooler than they really are.
My first Camel-Bak lasted four or five years and a couple of restitchings before it got pilfered. THe second one made it two years, and the third I gave away because I couldn't stand its tiny capacity, crinkly nylon, and graphics that looked like a Mountain Dew can. Oh, and each of these cost more than a C-note each. My most recent one came from Palmer Tactical, a local cop shop, and is made for SWAT team use. It's black canvas, has all the little lanyards and lash points, and almost contains all my gear. But after two years, the shoulder straps are ripping out and it doesn't look repairable.
Laurie introduced me to the fave of the survivalist set, the army's tactical load carrying vest. It looks kind of like a photographers vest, only better ventilated. It adjusts for sizing with drawstrings, has pouches for ammo clips and grenades on the front, and ALICE straps on the back. It will accommodate a variety of packs, from overnight to campaign size, plus a hydartion bladder sleeve, and other pouches as you see fit to purchase. You can get them on ebay, used and marked with someone else's name, for 15 bucks. The hydration sleeve, made by Camel-Bak, is five. Even if I went back to my 1992 mileage, I couldn't wear this stuff out in a lifetime.
Now the GI Joe aesthetic is one I've never cared for. When you see a young man with a neat haircut and proud bearing in camo, you're proud to know him. WHen you see someone as dissipated and middle-aged as me, you either expect that I've got a bible with the entire book of Revelations highlighted, or else a self-written screed with the word 'manifesto' in the title.
Anyway, I'm going to test this new gear out, and report back.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Godamn kids
I rodde out from the house this evening, in a desperate attempt to get some after-work miles and maybe spend a day not getting any older. Neither one worked out quite.
A couple of miles from Stone Mountain, I noticed a couple on the side of the bike path, one bike turned upside down. I slowed down, as as is my habit, asked if they had all they needed. Most people, similarly stopped, are just resting or looking for that Heath bar in the backpack and send me on my way.
"Actually," said the young man, we don't." It turned out that Her rear tire had blown, and the had no spare tube. I always carry a couple of tubes, in the Forty Pound Camelbak, so fishing one out and handing it over wasn't much trouble. "Uh, do you have a pump?" They also had neglected to bring tire levers, not that I had any room to talk. Mine were still in the bottom of my suitcase, underneath the Dahon. So I showed Him the trick where you take out a QR skewer and pry the tire bead off with it.
While He struggled to tuck the tube in the tire and worry it back on the rim, I took a look at His bike. White Indy Fab, set up as a singlespeed. Paul's canti's, and DUgast sewups in 35mm. I looked closer. The Paul's angled upward, the arms pointing to 10 o'clock and 2, not the 3:30 and 8:30 that God and Mafac intended.
If you've read this blog before, you probably know that I've got an obsession with brakes. I went through a long study period with the early V brakes on my Bontrager, and eventually repalced them with very old style Dia Compes, and for one reason: the Compes work. So do Mafacs, and their modern Paul clones.
Th reason is the geometry. When the arms pointslightly below the horizon, then the pads move toward the rims quite fast as they pass through horizontal, and the long arms make them grip quite hard. When they're positioned above horizontal, the leverge just drops off the tighter they're squeezed.
My question is: who set up this bike? I haven't looked up Indy Fab's prices (and won't), but I doubt that even a very simple TIG frame runs less that a grand and a half, and just the two Dugasts are a couple of bills besides. So let's call the whole build a minimum of $2500. Who buys a bike of that quality and expense, and doesn't know how the brakes work? Who buys a singlespeed 'crosser and puts a cowhorn bar on it? Who needs a custom bike and has that little knowledge?
When I was a twenty-something, my dearest ambition was to be something like This Guy. I wanted the disposable incoome to ride a resepcted brand, and to have the sort of girlfriend that other riders undressed with their eyes. In those days, I was a shameless decal-sniffer, and honestly believed that because John Howard rode a Raleigh Professional, that I should too. (I didn't know then that John Howard actually rode an Eisentraut A, that changed its plumage every time Long John changed sponsors.) So I would have bought a boutique-corporate bike like an Indy, and set it up with arcane and less-than optimal parts. But I would have gotten the brake geometry right.
But what's going to happen to this guy when he catches a shard of glass in one of those high-buck tubulars? As much trouble as he had with a tube change, I can't imagine him regluing a sew-up on the road. And I sure can't imagine him restitching one. Hell, I can't imagine ME restitching one either, or at least not restitching one right.
So, after They got the tire changed, and thank yous and you're welcomes had been exchainged, I set off again. I rode my one lap of the mountain, then headed back. I never saw them, even though they'd said they were going the same way I was. I suspect that He pinched the new tube between the tire bead and the rim and split it, or that the piecce of glass that punctured the original tube was still inside the tire and killed the new tube as well. I realized this on the way home, after I'd taken a different route from the one I'd used inbound. They' were probably right in the same spot I'd left them.
And no, I didn't go back to look.
A couple of miles from Stone Mountain, I noticed a couple on the side of the bike path, one bike turned upside down. I slowed down, as as is my habit, asked if they had all they needed. Most people, similarly stopped, are just resting or looking for that Heath bar in the backpack and send me on my way.
"Actually," said the young man, we don't." It turned out that Her rear tire had blown, and the had no spare tube. I always carry a couple of tubes, in the Forty Pound Camelbak, so fishing one out and handing it over wasn't much trouble. "Uh, do you have a pump?" They also had neglected to bring tire levers, not that I had any room to talk. Mine were still in the bottom of my suitcase, underneath the Dahon. So I showed Him the trick where you take out a QR skewer and pry the tire bead off with it.
While He struggled to tuck the tube in the tire and worry it back on the rim, I took a look at His bike. White Indy Fab, set up as a singlespeed. Paul's canti's, and DUgast sewups in 35mm. I looked closer. The Paul's angled upward, the arms pointing to 10 o'clock and 2, not the 3:30 and 8:30 that God and Mafac intended.
If you've read this blog before, you probably know that I've got an obsession with brakes. I went through a long study period with the early V brakes on my Bontrager, and eventually repalced them with very old style Dia Compes, and for one reason: the Compes work. So do Mafacs, and their modern Paul clones.
Th reason is the geometry. When the arms pointslightly below the horizon, then the pads move toward the rims quite fast as they pass through horizontal, and the long arms make them grip quite hard. When they're positioned above horizontal, the leverge just drops off the tighter they're squeezed.
My question is: who set up this bike? I haven't looked up Indy Fab's prices (and won't), but I doubt that even a very simple TIG frame runs less that a grand and a half, and just the two Dugasts are a couple of bills besides. So let's call the whole build a minimum of $2500. Who buys a bike of that quality and expense, and doesn't know how the brakes work? Who buys a singlespeed 'crosser and puts a cowhorn bar on it? Who needs a custom bike and has that little knowledge?
When I was a twenty-something, my dearest ambition was to be something like This Guy. I wanted the disposable incoome to ride a resepcted brand, and to have the sort of girlfriend that other riders undressed with their eyes. In those days, I was a shameless decal-sniffer, and honestly believed that because John Howard rode a Raleigh Professional, that I should too. (I didn't know then that John Howard actually rode an Eisentraut A, that changed its plumage every time Long John changed sponsors.) So I would have bought a boutique-corporate bike like an Indy, and set it up with arcane and less-than optimal parts. But I would have gotten the brake geometry right.
But what's going to happen to this guy when he catches a shard of glass in one of those high-buck tubulars? As much trouble as he had with a tube change, I can't imagine him regluing a sew-up on the road. And I sure can't imagine him restitching one. Hell, I can't imagine ME restitching one either, or at least not restitching one right.
So, after They got the tire changed, and thank yous and you're welcomes had been exchainged, I set off again. I rode my one lap of the mountain, then headed back. I never saw them, even though they'd said they were going the same way I was. I suspect that He pinched the new tube between the tire bead and the rim and split it, or that the piecce of glass that punctured the original tube was still inside the tire and killed the new tube as well. I realized this on the way home, after I'd taken a different route from the one I'd used inbound. They' were probably right in the same spot I'd left them.
And no, I didn't go back to look.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Day one in Austin
At least I got my miles in.
I probably rode 12 or 15 miles today. That's not counting the 811 aboard a DC-9, the forty or so of Laurie driving me to the airport, or the trips scurrying around in the truck this morning, mailing mail and accumulating the ephemera that any trip out of town seems to require.
Being a bike geek, and in town for a bike show, I would have felt foolish renting a car. THat would be like hiking the Grand Canyon on a Segway, or buying a ticket to Carnegie Hall and keeping your earphones in. It would have marked me as a faker, a charlatan, and even more of a loser than God made me. ANyway, the books aren't balancing so well on this trip, and parking at the convention center was roundly scorned online. So I brought a bike.
SO you think you've got it tough, bunkie? 'Cause it costs extra to check a suitcase, and Pan-Am discontinued its Clipper Service? Bicyclists have been taking it up the ass for years, and it's got nothing to do with those narrow saddles. Domestic flights charge as much as $250 each way to carry a bicycle as checked baggage, and they require it to be disassembled and boxed. Most of my bikes aren't worth $500, and like I said, the books weren't balancing too well to start with. So I brought the Dahon.
Dahon bicycles are a triumph of design over manufacturing, ideals over reality. Designed for Asian commuters, these Korean clown cycles feature 16" wheels, a band brake and a hinge in the middle. WHen the seatpost is telescoped, the bars turned down and to the side, and the frame catches opened, it folds into a package small enough to fit in the kneehole of a salaryman's desk. Or in a suitcase.
I had to buy a slightly bigger suitcase, after all, and sit on it to make the zipper zip, but it went in, along with a U-lock, patch kit, tube and pump. Delta body slammed it enough times between Atlanta and Austin that on arrival, the frame was tweaked just enough that the hinges wouldn't seat fully. Anyone who has ridden a Dahon for long knows that eventually it comes unlatched in flight. I generally try to slam it shut with a couple of hard turns, like you might with a car door that opened at high speed, except that it never works.
Bed time. To be continued
I probably rode 12 or 15 miles today. That's not counting the 811 aboard a DC-9, the forty or so of Laurie driving me to the airport, or the trips scurrying around in the truck this morning, mailing mail and accumulating the ephemera that any trip out of town seems to require.
Being a bike geek, and in town for a bike show, I would have felt foolish renting a car. THat would be like hiking the Grand Canyon on a Segway, or buying a ticket to Carnegie Hall and keeping your earphones in. It would have marked me as a faker, a charlatan, and even more of a loser than God made me. ANyway, the books aren't balancing so well on this trip, and parking at the convention center was roundly scorned online. So I brought a bike.
SO you think you've got it tough, bunkie? 'Cause it costs extra to check a suitcase, and Pan-Am discontinued its Clipper Service? Bicyclists have been taking it up the ass for years, and it's got nothing to do with those narrow saddles. Domestic flights charge as much as $250 each way to carry a bicycle as checked baggage, and they require it to be disassembled and boxed. Most of my bikes aren't worth $500, and like I said, the books weren't balancing too well to start with. So I brought the Dahon.
Dahon bicycles are a triumph of design over manufacturing, ideals over reality. Designed for Asian commuters, these Korean clown cycles feature 16" wheels, a band brake and a hinge in the middle. WHen the seatpost is telescoped, the bars turned down and to the side, and the frame catches opened, it folds into a package small enough to fit in the kneehole of a salaryman's desk. Or in a suitcase.
I had to buy a slightly bigger suitcase, after all, and sit on it to make the zipper zip, but it went in, along with a U-lock, patch kit, tube and pump. Delta body slammed it enough times between Atlanta and Austin that on arrival, the frame was tweaked just enough that the hinges wouldn't seat fully. Anyone who has ridden a Dahon for long knows that eventually it comes unlatched in flight. I generally try to slam it shut with a couple of hard turns, like you might with a car door that opened at high speed, except that it never works.
Bed time. To be continued
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Bicycles are like porn stars
Bicycles are like porn stars. Okay, this sound like a setup for a litany or borsch-belt zingers about hard rides and things between your legs. About expensive rides and too much effort. But I mean it seriously, and if you ride and watch porn, I think you'll agree with me.
They're like porn stars because we have opinions about them, even though we've never met them. Gentlemen, you can go to big-time strip clubs, buy all the DVDs, and even get your copies autographed at the Playboy Club, but the chances of having an intimate interaction with Miss January are represented by one of those mathematical functions that approaches zero.
It's the same with quality bikes. Especially if you're a bike magazine geek like myself, you've read plenty of road tests, from the mid-line all the way up to cost is no object artwork. You may have discussed relative strengths and weaknesses with your geek buddies. But even if you're in the position to afford a $12,000 Pinarello Prince, it's very unlikely that you've ever seen one. Bob's Bike Shop can't keep sstuff like that on the floor--hell, even if they did, what makes you think it'd be the right size? It's all special order, and you're going to buy it blind, or on the strength of a factory test ride. Magazines are the only bridge across this divide for most of us, and often the expensive bikes are not just a dream of how we wish to ride, they're a fantasy of who we want to be.
My dream bike for a time was a John TOmac Raleigh. Titanium frame, disk rear wheel, fork that changed, chameleon like depending on who his sponsor was that week. But most importantly, it had a head angle of 72 degrees. This is pretty normal for a road bike, but extremely quick steering for a off road. I wanted to see myself as someone quick enough, skilled enough to keep an expert's bike reeled in: to ride that bull, not the sleepy mare.
The reality of my bike handling skills was less glorious, and the quick-steering bikes I've ridden in the years since have spit me off the side more than once. It's a good thing that 1991 didn't leave me with that kind of cash, because I would have bought nothing with it but crashes.
But that didn't stop me dreaming. I dreamed of Bontragers, with the front wheel tucked so far back that it couldn't wash out on hard turns. I dreamed of Moots, especially after they switched to Ti only. I dreamed of a Ti Xixang, assorted Litespeeds, Steve Potts. Ti turned me on, because of its alleged anti-vibration qualities, not that I'd ever ridden it. My list of two wheeled porn stars started with a Bontraager Ti-lite and a Moots Ybbeat.
Its nearly twenty years since my last race, but reckless financial choices and a much better paycheck have let me buy some of the bikes I'd dreamed about, especially the first two from the list. My Moots was built to order for me, with the soft tail rear and a greasy smooth 80mm fork. The Bon came from Ebay, with a somewhat decrepit Judy but a mixed XTR/XT group. So now the dream begins: time to ride.
The Bon has been my everyday off-raoder for all of this year as I dialed in its fit. I swapped out the ridiculous, complicated Vee brakes for cantilevers, and the oxidized tires for a pair of Velociraptors.
THe Moots came with an LX group, but upgraded (Nukeproof )wheels, and the rear derailleur was upgraded to an XTR. The fork needs service and the chain is worn. The tires, giveaways I recieved for re-upping a magazine subscription, have worn nearly slick and drift alarmingly.
So, I'm going to bring the Moots up to fighting trim, and test it back to back with the Bon. I may be old, and too sorry to race, but it's never too late to dream.
They're like porn stars because we have opinions about them, even though we've never met them. Gentlemen, you can go to big-time strip clubs, buy all the DVDs, and even get your copies autographed at the Playboy Club, but the chances of having an intimate interaction with Miss January are represented by one of those mathematical functions that approaches zero.
It's the same with quality bikes. Especially if you're a bike magazine geek like myself, you've read plenty of road tests, from the mid-line all the way up to cost is no object artwork. You may have discussed relative strengths and weaknesses with your geek buddies. But even if you're in the position to afford a $12,000 Pinarello Prince, it's very unlikely that you've ever seen one. Bob's Bike Shop can't keep sstuff like that on the floor--hell, even if they did, what makes you think it'd be the right size? It's all special order, and you're going to buy it blind, or on the strength of a factory test ride. Magazines are the only bridge across this divide for most of us, and often the expensive bikes are not just a dream of how we wish to ride, they're a fantasy of who we want to be.
My dream bike for a time was a John TOmac Raleigh. Titanium frame, disk rear wheel, fork that changed, chameleon like depending on who his sponsor was that week. But most importantly, it had a head angle of 72 degrees. This is pretty normal for a road bike, but extremely quick steering for a off road. I wanted to see myself as someone quick enough, skilled enough to keep an expert's bike reeled in: to ride that bull, not the sleepy mare.
The reality of my bike handling skills was less glorious, and the quick-steering bikes I've ridden in the years since have spit me off the side more than once. It's a good thing that 1991 didn't leave me with that kind of cash, because I would have bought nothing with it but crashes.
But that didn't stop me dreaming. I dreamed of Bontragers, with the front wheel tucked so far back that it couldn't wash out on hard turns. I dreamed of Moots, especially after they switched to Ti only. I dreamed of a Ti Xixang, assorted Litespeeds, Steve Potts. Ti turned me on, because of its alleged anti-vibration qualities, not that I'd ever ridden it. My list of two wheeled porn stars started with a Bontraager Ti-lite and a Moots Ybbeat.
Its nearly twenty years since my last race, but reckless financial choices and a much better paycheck have let me buy some of the bikes I'd dreamed about, especially the first two from the list. My Moots was built to order for me, with the soft tail rear and a greasy smooth 80mm fork. The Bon came from Ebay, with a somewhat decrepit Judy but a mixed XTR/XT group. So now the dream begins: time to ride.
The Bon has been my everyday off-raoder for all of this year as I dialed in its fit. I swapped out the ridiculous, complicated Vee brakes for cantilevers, and the oxidized tires for a pair of Velociraptors.
THe Moots came with an LX group, but upgraded (Nukeproof )wheels, and the rear derailleur was upgraded to an XTR. The fork needs service and the chain is worn. The tires, giveaways I recieved for re-upping a magazine subscription, have worn nearly slick and drift alarmingly.
So, I'm going to bring the Moots up to fighting trim, and test it back to back with the Bon. I may be old, and too sorry to race, but it's never too late to dream.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
January 13, 2010
A couple of years ago, I was talking with a guy who knows a lot about old bikes. He’s got multiple degrees, in disparate subjects like mathematics and geology, and he knows how to do a good scientific analysis. But he loves old bicycles, and he loves good bicycles (not that the two are necessarily the same thing), and he knows what makes a good bike good.
He’d been telling me about Rene Herse and Alex Singer, and building up a pretty good head of steam enthusing over these guys, and over the evolutionary approach that they took to bicycle design. They’d each sponsor a team of fast sport riders and build bikes for them. Then the riders, experienced men (women too—Lyli Herse could ride my legs off and yours too, and she’s reached an age and class where garden trowels and triangular sandwiches are more the norm) would tell them what worked and what didn’t. The result was bikes of integrated design, with racks and generator lights, with hubs that allowed a spoke replacement without removing the wheel, and fenders that didn’t rattle. I knew that a new Singer (pronounced Saun-zher) goes for 6900 Euros, not including the trip to Paris to get measured up.
So I asked him, speaking as a poor scribbler, what builder could approximate Singer or Herse performance, but at a price more associated with PayPal than a mortgage. He didn’t hesitate: Jack Taylor, he said. They got the geometry right.
So I did my research. If you know anything at all about old bikes, you know the Taylor brothers story, how they built a frame shop in a tiny, urban-blighted English town; that Norm (a hard man on the road, gentle in person) brazed the frames, Jack designed and painted, and Ken built up the wheels and bikes. They used French-dimensioned tubing, and rode hundreds of miles a week to figure out the fine points. Over four decades give or take, they built close to ten thousand bikes, including unicycles, BMXers, and youth. But mostly they were touring, racing and sport riding bikes, with geometry that let you stay in the saddle all day, take both hands off the bars to grab a bite or pull off a sweater, or choose a road with decaying pavement.
Being a good little rabbit, I immediately started searching EBay, Craig’s, and Classic Rendezvous for a Jack. I wanted one with a compliant frame, 700c wheels, and a front rack. Paint didn’t matter, as all my bikes get ugly in a hurry; size 58 please.
With nearly ten thousand of them out there, I could afford to get picky. This one was too much money, that one too small. (You can find anything in 56cm, but 58s are a lot more scarce.) Another came with sew-ups, one more with Super Tourist tubing. Sigh. All these choices, no perfection.
One seller had been present when the Taylor works closed down, and bought Norm’s repair stand. It’s the old kind, with a cradle for the bottom bracket and a spar running up to catch the down tube. The base is just a big can that you fill up with sand, and it was plastered with decals, for Jack Taylor bikes, local bands, and television characters. While he didn’t have the Taylor bike that I wanted, he did offer to sell me this stand, which I jumped all over. At the time I was fantasizing about becoming a frame builder, and I assumed that if Norm Taylor had used it, it would be useful to me.
In between the time that I wrote the check and the stand arrived, Norm Taylor, aged eighty-something, slipped away for that ride that you don’t come back from. And just as immediately, all the Jack Taylor bikes disappeared out of the market.
Obviously, there weren’t going to be any more Jack Taylor bikes. But there weren’t going to be anymore anyway. Norm had been living in a nursing home, Jack was too feeble to travel, and all three of them had been happy to close the shop and retire. Ten thousand of anything, whether it’s bicycle frames or French fries, is enough for a lifetime, and if the world wants more, then it’s probably too greedy.
I turned Norm’s stand into a bedside lamp, by clamping a photographer’s clamp-lamp to it and filling the base with non-authentic sand. I mean, now it’s a collector’s item, and I dare not pollute its patina with my own brazing fumes. And the price of Taylors, one and all, has jumped from ‘enough money to notice’ to ‘too much to think about.’
I’m reminded about all this by a posting on the iBob list yesterday, where a fellow was selling a 700c Taylor frame, size 57, with fenders and racks, for 300 dollars. The paint looked like the bottom of a city garbage can, and the derailleur hanger was for one of those long-extinct Cyclos. And it was gone before I could send the email, likely gone in the first five minutes.
As cyclists, we like to pretend to be complete pragmatists, justifying titanium bolts and 125lb tires for speed, and a stable of bikes for varying conditions. The reality is, the fashion market is as absurd here as it is for antique cars that you can’t actually travel in, or stamps that won’t carry a letter. Two years ago, nobody could spell ‘randonneur.’ Now Vittoria has a tire with that name, and an EBay search turns up two pages of bike items.
But when you boil it down, I’m not hurt by my lack of a Jack. Yeah, after talking with the Doctor of Old Bike Science, I wanted to start training for Paris-Brest-Paris. I wanted a Jack Taylor to hold me over ‘til I could get a Singer. And I wanted to ride those bikes like a champion. The reality is that I work out of town for a year at a time; that I’m forty five, and that this year’s goal of riding a double metric, without dying, is no more likely to be attained than it was last year. In a way, having a randonneur bike is no different than riding a Trek Madone, or the Raleigh 753 I drooled over as a teen. It’s just a form of posing, albeit in wool instead of Lycra. You can call it hope, or a dream, or a useless fantasy. But it all starts with actually riding, with using all those bikes that are choking my front bedroom, your garage, our imaginations. So I hope you’ll excuse me now. It may be twenty degrees here, but I need to get some miles.
He’d been telling me about Rene Herse and Alex Singer, and building up a pretty good head of steam enthusing over these guys, and over the evolutionary approach that they took to bicycle design. They’d each sponsor a team of fast sport riders and build bikes for them. Then the riders, experienced men (women too—Lyli Herse could ride my legs off and yours too, and she’s reached an age and class where garden trowels and triangular sandwiches are more the norm) would tell them what worked and what didn’t. The result was bikes of integrated design, with racks and generator lights, with hubs that allowed a spoke replacement without removing the wheel, and fenders that didn’t rattle. I knew that a new Singer (pronounced Saun-zher) goes for 6900 Euros, not including the trip to Paris to get measured up.
So I asked him, speaking as a poor scribbler, what builder could approximate Singer or Herse performance, but at a price more associated with PayPal than a mortgage. He didn’t hesitate: Jack Taylor, he said. They got the geometry right.
So I did my research. If you know anything at all about old bikes, you know the Taylor brothers story, how they built a frame shop in a tiny, urban-blighted English town; that Norm (a hard man on the road, gentle in person) brazed the frames, Jack designed and painted, and Ken built up the wheels and bikes. They used French-dimensioned tubing, and rode hundreds of miles a week to figure out the fine points. Over four decades give or take, they built close to ten thousand bikes, including unicycles, BMXers, and youth. But mostly they were touring, racing and sport riding bikes, with geometry that let you stay in the saddle all day, take both hands off the bars to grab a bite or pull off a sweater, or choose a road with decaying pavement.
Being a good little rabbit, I immediately started searching EBay, Craig’s, and Classic Rendezvous for a Jack. I wanted one with a compliant frame, 700c wheels, and a front rack. Paint didn’t matter, as all my bikes get ugly in a hurry; size 58 please.
With nearly ten thousand of them out there, I could afford to get picky. This one was too much money, that one too small. (You can find anything in 56cm, but 58s are a lot more scarce.) Another came with sew-ups, one more with Super Tourist tubing. Sigh. All these choices, no perfection.
One seller had been present when the Taylor works closed down, and bought Norm’s repair stand. It’s the old kind, with a cradle for the bottom bracket and a spar running up to catch the down tube. The base is just a big can that you fill up with sand, and it was plastered with decals, for Jack Taylor bikes, local bands, and television characters. While he didn’t have the Taylor bike that I wanted, he did offer to sell me this stand, which I jumped all over. At the time I was fantasizing about becoming a frame builder, and I assumed that if Norm Taylor had used it, it would be useful to me.
In between the time that I wrote the check and the stand arrived, Norm Taylor, aged eighty-something, slipped away for that ride that you don’t come back from. And just as immediately, all the Jack Taylor bikes disappeared out of the market.
Obviously, there weren’t going to be any more Jack Taylor bikes. But there weren’t going to be anymore anyway. Norm had been living in a nursing home, Jack was too feeble to travel, and all three of them had been happy to close the shop and retire. Ten thousand of anything, whether it’s bicycle frames or French fries, is enough for a lifetime, and if the world wants more, then it’s probably too greedy.
I turned Norm’s stand into a bedside lamp, by clamping a photographer’s clamp-lamp to it and filling the base with non-authentic sand. I mean, now it’s a collector’s item, and I dare not pollute its patina with my own brazing fumes. And the price of Taylors, one and all, has jumped from ‘enough money to notice’ to ‘too much to think about.’
I’m reminded about all this by a posting on the iBob list yesterday, where a fellow was selling a 700c Taylor frame, size 57, with fenders and racks, for 300 dollars. The paint looked like the bottom of a city garbage can, and the derailleur hanger was for one of those long-extinct Cyclos. And it was gone before I could send the email, likely gone in the first five minutes.
As cyclists, we like to pretend to be complete pragmatists, justifying titanium bolts and 125lb tires for speed, and a stable of bikes for varying conditions. The reality is, the fashion market is as absurd here as it is for antique cars that you can’t actually travel in, or stamps that won’t carry a letter. Two years ago, nobody could spell ‘randonneur.’ Now Vittoria has a tire with that name, and an EBay search turns up two pages of bike items.
But when you boil it down, I’m not hurt by my lack of a Jack. Yeah, after talking with the Doctor of Old Bike Science, I wanted to start training for Paris-Brest-Paris. I wanted a Jack Taylor to hold me over ‘til I could get a Singer. And I wanted to ride those bikes like a champion. The reality is that I work out of town for a year at a time; that I’m forty five, and that this year’s goal of riding a double metric, without dying, is no more likely to be attained than it was last year. In a way, having a randonneur bike is no different than riding a Trek Madone, or the Raleigh 753 I drooled over as a teen. It’s just a form of posing, albeit in wool instead of Lycra. You can call it hope, or a dream, or a useless fantasy. But it all starts with actually riding, with using all those bikes that are choking my front bedroom, your garage, our imaginations. So I hope you’ll excuse me now. It may be twenty degrees here, but I need to get some miles.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
It's never too early to make your New Year's resolutions...
...especially if you're not going to follow any of them anyway.
It's kind of ironic that I'm making New Year's resolutions for bike stuff, considering what a state of absolute wreckage the rest of my life is in. But I figure I've got to start somewhere, and bikes have been on my mind a lot since my time is no longer taken up with mundane pursuits like employment.
First off, I want to get more miles. The goal last year, and the one before, was to get fit enough to complete comfortably a double-metric century. I've done 126 miles before in a day, but only once, and at an age when thirty wasn't yet on the horizon. I've done a hundred once or twice more, with 6-hr times, and plenty of 75s. I could do a metric century right now, except that it would get dark too soon to finish.
Second, I want them to be miles that I can feel proud of. I've always had a vague sense of embarassment every time I put my bike in the back of the pickup truck. I've tried to observe the rule that a ride needs at least to last longer than the drive to the start, but it needs to be more serious than that. I want to ride out my front door, put in my miles, and ride home. Mountain biking will have to observe different rules, as I can't imagine doing the forty mile turnaround to Yellow River, and get some meaningful dirt too. But I'll make honest road miles my sustainance, and keep dirt for dessert.
Third: Bikes for transportation. There's no reason I can't use my fixie to drop letters at the post office, or Pee Wee Patel to ride to CVS. I've got a butcher's bike that would be great for grocery shopping, and few enough time constraints. If I've got to trip over 30 bikes scattered all around the house, they may as well earn their keep.
Fourth: Finish up some projects. Pee Wee's got bad brakes. I bought a new set of pads but haven't gotten around to installing them. The butcher's bike is in just as many pieces as it was when I opened the box two years ago. You can't ride what doesn't work. And I can combine this with...
...Fifth: More hours at SOPO. The South of Ponce Bike Co-op needs warm bodies and weak minds, and I've got both. If I volunteer there and help other folks fix their bikes, it buys me credit and cred, and my own projects get done too.
There's more, that doesn't merit it's own number or bullet point. At 45, I feel stupid wearing a pro rider's jersey with sponsor names all over it. It feels as absurd as dressing up like an old-west prospector to go to the supermarket. ("Yipee! I done found me some bread! An' some o' them-there individually wrapped processed cheese slices!") So I"m looking for functional bike clothing that doesn't make me look like a lycra billboard, or cost like the Rivendell retro guys. I"m buying interesting used jerseys off Ebay (my favorite is Aeroflot; I mean, what brand name has less credibility than the Soviet national airline?) but the wool ones bid up in a hurry, and most of them contain a lot of orange, a color that makes me look like I've got a liver disease. So I'm looking for knit woolens from other sports and casual wear. I want to get some quality slacks in a dark color and wool or wool-blend, and convert them to cycling knickers. And I even want to take that Butterick pattern for cycling shorts, jersey, and cap, and run up a set or two, since I do have that serger now.
It's kind of ironic that I'm making New Year's resolutions for bike stuff, considering what a state of absolute wreckage the rest of my life is in. But I figure I've got to start somewhere, and bikes have been on my mind a lot since my time is no longer taken up with mundane pursuits like employment.
First off, I want to get more miles. The goal last year, and the one before, was to get fit enough to complete comfortably a double-metric century. I've done 126 miles before in a day, but only once, and at an age when thirty wasn't yet on the horizon. I've done a hundred once or twice more, with 6-hr times, and plenty of 75s. I could do a metric century right now, except that it would get dark too soon to finish.
Second, I want them to be miles that I can feel proud of. I've always had a vague sense of embarassment every time I put my bike in the back of the pickup truck. I've tried to observe the rule that a ride needs at least to last longer than the drive to the start, but it needs to be more serious than that. I want to ride out my front door, put in my miles, and ride home. Mountain biking will have to observe different rules, as I can't imagine doing the forty mile turnaround to Yellow River, and get some meaningful dirt too. But I'll make honest road miles my sustainance, and keep dirt for dessert.
Third: Bikes for transportation. There's no reason I can't use my fixie to drop letters at the post office, or Pee Wee Patel to ride to CVS. I've got a butcher's bike that would be great for grocery shopping, and few enough time constraints. If I've got to trip over 30 bikes scattered all around the house, they may as well earn their keep.
Fourth: Finish up some projects. Pee Wee's got bad brakes. I bought a new set of pads but haven't gotten around to installing them. The butcher's bike is in just as many pieces as it was when I opened the box two years ago. You can't ride what doesn't work. And I can combine this with...
...Fifth: More hours at SOPO. The South of Ponce Bike Co-op needs warm bodies and weak minds, and I've got both. If I volunteer there and help other folks fix their bikes, it buys me credit and cred, and my own projects get done too.
There's more, that doesn't merit it's own number or bullet point. At 45, I feel stupid wearing a pro rider's jersey with sponsor names all over it. It feels as absurd as dressing up like an old-west prospector to go to the supermarket. ("Yipee! I done found me some bread! An' some o' them-there individually wrapped processed cheese slices!") So I"m looking for functional bike clothing that doesn't make me look like a lycra billboard, or cost like the Rivendell retro guys. I"m buying interesting used jerseys off Ebay (my favorite is Aeroflot; I mean, what brand name has less credibility than the Soviet national airline?) but the wool ones bid up in a hurry, and most of them contain a lot of orange, a color that makes me look like I've got a liver disease. So I'm looking for knit woolens from other sports and casual wear. I want to get some quality slacks in a dark color and wool or wool-blend, and convert them to cycling knickers. And I even want to take that Butterick pattern for cycling shorts, jersey, and cap, and run up a set or two, since I do have that serger now.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
a rough and timorous piece that helped me figure out another one
December 6, 2009 riding rabbit blog
This is going to be less of an essay than the sort of wordy self-indulgence that makes diaries and blogs so enjoyable. I’m starting out with hardly any thesis, expecting to ramble for a few hundred words, then with a flash of insight, make a rhetorical leap worthy of Spider-Man, and wrap the whole thing into a neat bundle. It’ll probably peter out after a few depressing paragraphs, draw no conclusions, and I’ll go back to playing solitaire.
I’ve always been of the solitary sort, sometimes due to circumstance, sometimes social ineptitude masked as choice. The seeming ease with which other people interact looks like a magic trick, or a fantastic lie. One reason I gravitated to bicycling, besides the fact that it got me out of the house when I was too young to drive, was the fact that I could do it without anyone else’s cooperation. Now, with nearly thirty years of semi-serious riding under my wheels, most of my miles have been solo.
Apparently this isn’t true for everyone. Once, after a particularly bad shellacking in a criterium, I purchased a paperback book entitled Beginning Bicycle Racing. In the chapter on handling, the author suggested a drill in which you would gather five or six of your riding buddies, and scorch around the local little-league diamond bumping wheels. At the time, I didn’t have five or six acquaintances, much less buddies. Moreover, I was the only person I knew who rode a bicycle. Later, he suggested borrowing equipment from other riders in your club. Even today, it still seems to me that if I belonged to a racing club, I wouldn’t have needed to buy a book called Beginning Bicycle Racing.
For all this time, I’ve been virtually the only cyclist I knew, by far the most serious one, and every book or magazine article I read appeared to have been written on some velo-centric planet, a place where Andy Singer has his picture on billboards like Chairman Mao. They suggested haunting the flea markets in search of a titanium Bontrager with the custom-geometry fork, riding secret stashes of trail, and of nighttime rides that ended in trailhead keggers. All of this was as distant and unlikely as the planet Vulcan. That is, until today.
Three or four years ago, I was chatting with a guy at the Yellow River trailhead, and he mentioned an illegal trail he’d been riding, with a ladder bridge, a wall ride, and a lot of sinuous singletrack, all hidden on a patch of undeveloped land in an industrial park. He gave me very explicit directions and recommended that I check it out. I followed his directions on the way home, and couldn’t find the entrance. Came back the next day and had no better luck. Got hurt and couldn’t ride, got caught up in school and couldn’t ride, got sent out of town and couldn’t ride. Never found the place.
Then, this morning, I was back in town for the weekend, and needed a mental-health ride really bad. The Ti Bon was on the roof of the truck, it wasn’t yet eight o’clock…and I just couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for Yellow. So I figured I’d make one more search for the elusive trail. On a whim, I reversed the directions I’d been given—right off the interstate, then second right--- and sure enough, there was a little sliver of singletrack running back into the woods. I parked the truck, clipped in, and followed it.
Okay, it’s not great riding. There’s virtually no elevation gain, and the trails are zigzagged so tightly that they occasionally grow together. The woods are just calf- to thigh- diameter trees, clearly new growth on land that was cleared but never developed. It’s too tight for my full-speed-ahead Bon, and I was constantly running wide on the corners. But it does have a ladder bridge, of erratic width and haphazard slope, a wall ride without enough run-in, and a plank bridge that dumps you down the spine of a rain gully. But the best part wasn’t the riding, but the ambiance. The outside sweeps of the curves are marked with lines of old softball trophies. There are bridges made from a refrigerator door and an old sliding board. Race banners, weathered into illegibility, hang in tatters from the trees, along with an Irish flag. And best of all, like Ralph Steadman hallucination, you come around a twisty and meet up with a giant fiberglass chili pepper, pilfered from the top of a Chili’s restaurant.
I rode the whole loop, twice, savoring the ambiance, the feeling of being one of the in-crowd. I noted each incongruous element: the pair of hiking boots, the little silver trophy cups, the way the trail was purposely built right at the edge of the ditch. After an hour and a half, I wasn’t tired or even winded, since there was never any space to build speed or hills more than head high to climb. I pulled the trash I’d picked up on my ride out of my coat pocked, stuffed it into the garbage back hanging from a nail at the trailhead, and rode away, feeling like I’d finally become part of a larger fraternity.
This is going to be less of an essay than the sort of wordy self-indulgence that makes diaries and blogs so enjoyable. I’m starting out with hardly any thesis, expecting to ramble for a few hundred words, then with a flash of insight, make a rhetorical leap worthy of Spider-Man, and wrap the whole thing into a neat bundle. It’ll probably peter out after a few depressing paragraphs, draw no conclusions, and I’ll go back to playing solitaire.
I’ve always been of the solitary sort, sometimes due to circumstance, sometimes social ineptitude masked as choice. The seeming ease with which other people interact looks like a magic trick, or a fantastic lie. One reason I gravitated to bicycling, besides the fact that it got me out of the house when I was too young to drive, was the fact that I could do it without anyone else’s cooperation. Now, with nearly thirty years of semi-serious riding under my wheels, most of my miles have been solo.
Apparently this isn’t true for everyone. Once, after a particularly bad shellacking in a criterium, I purchased a paperback book entitled Beginning Bicycle Racing. In the chapter on handling, the author suggested a drill in which you would gather five or six of your riding buddies, and scorch around the local little-league diamond bumping wheels. At the time, I didn’t have five or six acquaintances, much less buddies. Moreover, I was the only person I knew who rode a bicycle. Later, he suggested borrowing equipment from other riders in your club. Even today, it still seems to me that if I belonged to a racing club, I wouldn’t have needed to buy a book called Beginning Bicycle Racing.
For all this time, I’ve been virtually the only cyclist I knew, by far the most serious one, and every book or magazine article I read appeared to have been written on some velo-centric planet, a place where Andy Singer has his picture on billboards like Chairman Mao. They suggested haunting the flea markets in search of a titanium Bontrager with the custom-geometry fork, riding secret stashes of trail, and of nighttime rides that ended in trailhead keggers. All of this was as distant and unlikely as the planet Vulcan. That is, until today.
Three or four years ago, I was chatting with a guy at the Yellow River trailhead, and he mentioned an illegal trail he’d been riding, with a ladder bridge, a wall ride, and a lot of sinuous singletrack, all hidden on a patch of undeveloped land in an industrial park. He gave me very explicit directions and recommended that I check it out. I followed his directions on the way home, and couldn’t find the entrance. Came back the next day and had no better luck. Got hurt and couldn’t ride, got caught up in school and couldn’t ride, got sent out of town and couldn’t ride. Never found the place.
Then, this morning, I was back in town for the weekend, and needed a mental-health ride really bad. The Ti Bon was on the roof of the truck, it wasn’t yet eight o’clock…and I just couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for Yellow. So I figured I’d make one more search for the elusive trail. On a whim, I reversed the directions I’d been given—right off the interstate, then second right--- and sure enough, there was a little sliver of singletrack running back into the woods. I parked the truck, clipped in, and followed it.
Okay, it’s not great riding. There’s virtually no elevation gain, and the trails are zigzagged so tightly that they occasionally grow together. The woods are just calf- to thigh- diameter trees, clearly new growth on land that was cleared but never developed. It’s too tight for my full-speed-ahead Bon, and I was constantly running wide on the corners. But it does have a ladder bridge, of erratic width and haphazard slope, a wall ride without enough run-in, and a plank bridge that dumps you down the spine of a rain gully. But the best part wasn’t the riding, but the ambiance. The outside sweeps of the curves are marked with lines of old softball trophies. There are bridges made from a refrigerator door and an old sliding board. Race banners, weathered into illegibility, hang in tatters from the trees, along with an Irish flag. And best of all, like Ralph Steadman hallucination, you come around a twisty and meet up with a giant fiberglass chili pepper, pilfered from the top of a Chili’s restaurant.
I rode the whole loop, twice, savoring the ambiance, the feeling of being one of the in-crowd. I noted each incongruous element: the pair of hiking boots, the little silver trophy cups, the way the trail was purposely built right at the edge of the ditch. After an hour and a half, I wasn’t tired or even winded, since there was never any space to build speed or hills more than head high to climb. I pulled the trash I’d picked up on my ride out of my coat pocked, stuffed it into the garbage back hanging from a nail at the trailhead, and rode away, feeling like I’d finally become part of a larger fraternity.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
bontrager, again
Bontrager
I finally rode the Bontrager this past weekend, with a fair amount of vigor, and I’m still not sure what to think.
I got up early on Saturday, and took it out to Yellow River. The trails are sufficiently dried out from the last batch of floods to re-open, and were surprisingly free from damage. The only pedals I could find were an old pair of not-quite SPD clones, made by Wilderness Trail Bikes. Their bodies resemble the old Ritchey pedals, very flat, but with bright yellow plastic washers instead of springs to control the release tension. I must have bought these at a yard sale, probably as a box lot, because I can’t imagine a price low enough to have been fair. The plastic (“elastomer”) washers went the way of all pplastic washers—that is, they embrittled, either from cold or just age, and split. The previous owner tightened down the adjustment to make up for the lack of springiness, discovered that they wouldn’t release, and, with a florid curse, sold the damned things. To me, apparently.
Anyway, they were the only stray pedals I had, so I threaded them in, adjusted the brakes, twisted the fork adjusters to see if they’d turn, then mounted up and rode. The Bon is long in the top tube, and is equipped with a 135mm stem and straight handlebars. These combine to rotate the rider far forward and head down. I felt like a missile ready to be launched. The real effect of the rider’s position is to weight the front wheel quite heavily.
The drop-in at Yellow River is a downhill, off-camber sweeper, steep enough to pull you into it too fast, especially when you’re still finding your position on the bike and trying to warm up. I picked my way through it, just trying not to look like a tyro, tripod-ing along with one foot out. The first climb, on the other side of the creek is one of those that falls between the middle ring and the granny, washed down to the bare clay, with wrist-sized roots standing 3 or 4 inches above the surface. I usually do these in the middle ring, using steady, heavy power to keep the front wheel light. If I’m really strong, I’ll wheelie over the roots, just touching down between every third or fourth one, and letting the rear wheel walk over them. But in the push-up position the Bontrager demands, I feel myself pushing the front wheel into the terrain. I keep the power on, and let the fork bully its wway through. The rubber fork boots are always squished, and the fork feels like it’s already used half its travel. I haven’t taken a measuringing tape to it, but it may actually have.
The tires have to go. I don’t recognize the model, but they’re something from Specialized with tiny, shallow trianglualr knobs. They look like they’d be okay on pavement, but on dirt, there’s no bite, much less the increasing grip you’d want as you bank the bike over. I can’t say how much ofthis is from their age—I mean, what can compete with that new-sneaker feeling?—and how much is the design, but I’ll swap them for a pair of Velociraptors before the next ride.
So, I was riding Blankets Creek the next day, on the advanced loop, where the trail is just a narrow shelf sculpted out of the cliff side. There’s a wall on the right, and a drop on the left, going down maybe 25 feet to the lakeshore. It’s not quite a sheer drop, but much steeper than 45 degrees. The trail is about handlebar width, gradually ascending, and there’s a stairstep rock in the way, maybe the height of a curbstone. I unweight the handlebar, give a good hard pedal strok, and expect to wheelie over. The front wheel stays stubbornly on the ground, deadheads into the rock, and stops me short. I unclip on the left, stab my foot at the ground…and there’s no ground there.
That’s one of the noble traditions of mountain biking, is falling end over end, wondering when it’s going to stop, and how much it’s going to hurt. And at the bottom, there’s the other noble tradition, that of the bike landing on top of you. No injuries, just a mounth full of leaf mulch, and the chore of climbing back up, with a bike that, although made of the wonder lightweight metal, is still to heavy to carry effortlessly.
I’m still of two minds about the Bontrager. I like the non-conformist design, the pioneering name, the Ti frame with its crooked decals, the XTR/XT group. I don’t care for the greasy wooden tires, the flat-footed fork, or the flying-over-the-bars position. Oh, and brakes are Rube Goldberg at his worst, although they work better on the trail than you’d think from adjusting them in the workstand. I’ve already bought an old pair of Dia-Comps, cyclocross brakes from about 1986, and found a pair of Velociraptors in a giveaway box at the curb. I’ll switch the pedals for real SPDs, and start looking for an 11 degree bar and a shorter stem. I’m reluctant to delve into the black art of fork repair, especially with an orphan like Judy, an acknowldeged dog when it was new. I’ve got a couple of possible trades in the junk box, that can’t be worse and might be better. Or I”ll see if there’s an Arlo Englund Total Air kit to be had. I don’t trust myself to measure the offset correctly, and don’t want to wreck the handling of a bike that I find marginal already. I really want to like it, but the Moots has set the bar awfully high.
I finally rode the Bontrager this past weekend, with a fair amount of vigor, and I’m still not sure what to think.
I got up early on Saturday, and took it out to Yellow River. The trails are sufficiently dried out from the last batch of floods to re-open, and were surprisingly free from damage. The only pedals I could find were an old pair of not-quite SPD clones, made by Wilderness Trail Bikes. Their bodies resemble the old Ritchey pedals, very flat, but with bright yellow plastic washers instead of springs to control the release tension. I must have bought these at a yard sale, probably as a box lot, because I can’t imagine a price low enough to have been fair. The plastic (“elastomer”) washers went the way of all pplastic washers—that is, they embrittled, either from cold or just age, and split. The previous owner tightened down the adjustment to make up for the lack of springiness, discovered that they wouldn’t release, and, with a florid curse, sold the damned things. To me, apparently.
Anyway, they were the only stray pedals I had, so I threaded them in, adjusted the brakes, twisted the fork adjusters to see if they’d turn, then mounted up and rode. The Bon is long in the top tube, and is equipped with a 135mm stem and straight handlebars. These combine to rotate the rider far forward and head down. I felt like a missile ready to be launched. The real effect of the rider’s position is to weight the front wheel quite heavily.
The drop-in at Yellow River is a downhill, off-camber sweeper, steep enough to pull you into it too fast, especially when you’re still finding your position on the bike and trying to warm up. I picked my way through it, just trying not to look like a tyro, tripod-ing along with one foot out. The first climb, on the other side of the creek is one of those that falls between the middle ring and the granny, washed down to the bare clay, with wrist-sized roots standing 3 or 4 inches above the surface. I usually do these in the middle ring, using steady, heavy power to keep the front wheel light. If I’m really strong, I’ll wheelie over the roots, just touching down between every third or fourth one, and letting the rear wheel walk over them. But in the push-up position the Bontrager demands, I feel myself pushing the front wheel into the terrain. I keep the power on, and let the fork bully its wway through. The rubber fork boots are always squished, and the fork feels like it’s already used half its travel. I haven’t taken a measuringing tape to it, but it may actually have.
The tires have to go. I don’t recognize the model, but they’re something from Specialized with tiny, shallow trianglualr knobs. They look like they’d be okay on pavement, but on dirt, there’s no bite, much less the increasing grip you’d want as you bank the bike over. I can’t say how much ofthis is from their age—I mean, what can compete with that new-sneaker feeling?—and how much is the design, but I’ll swap them for a pair of Velociraptors before the next ride.
So, I was riding Blankets Creek the next day, on the advanced loop, where the trail is just a narrow shelf sculpted out of the cliff side. There’s a wall on the right, and a drop on the left, going down maybe 25 feet to the lakeshore. It’s not quite a sheer drop, but much steeper than 45 degrees. The trail is about handlebar width, gradually ascending, and there’s a stairstep rock in the way, maybe the height of a curbstone. I unweight the handlebar, give a good hard pedal strok, and expect to wheelie over. The front wheel stays stubbornly on the ground, deadheads into the rock, and stops me short. I unclip on the left, stab my foot at the ground…and there’s no ground there.
That’s one of the noble traditions of mountain biking, is falling end over end, wondering when it’s going to stop, and how much it’s going to hurt. And at the bottom, there’s the other noble tradition, that of the bike landing on top of you. No injuries, just a mounth full of leaf mulch, and the chore of climbing back up, with a bike that, although made of the wonder lightweight metal, is still to heavy to carry effortlessly.
I’m still of two minds about the Bontrager. I like the non-conformist design, the pioneering name, the Ti frame with its crooked decals, the XTR/XT group. I don’t care for the greasy wooden tires, the flat-footed fork, or the flying-over-the-bars position. Oh, and brakes are Rube Goldberg at his worst, although they work better on the trail than you’d think from adjusting them in the workstand. I’ve already bought an old pair of Dia-Comps, cyclocross brakes from about 1986, and found a pair of Velociraptors in a giveaway box at the curb. I’ll switch the pedals for real SPDs, and start looking for an 11 degree bar and a shorter stem. I’m reluctant to delve into the black art of fork repair, especially with an orphan like Judy, an acknowldeged dog when it was new. I’ve got a couple of possible trades in the junk box, that can’t be worse and might be better. Or I”ll see if there’s an Arlo Englund Total Air kit to be had. I don’t trust myself to measure the offset correctly, and don’t want to wreck the handling of a bike that I find marginal already. I really want to like it, but the Moots has set the bar awfully high.
Monday, October 26, 2009
bon bon bon
I was poking around on EBay the other day, and I stumbled across a bike worth looking at. It was a Bontrager titanium mountain bike, size large, complete with an 8-speed XTR grouppo. I started lusting after a Bon in about 1992, when Bicycle Guide (blessings on its long-departed soul) featured a Bontrager RaceLite. Keith Bontrager came from a cyclocross background, and built his mountain bikes using what he’d learned there: short top tubes, steep head angles, and comparatively little fork rake, all combined to put more of the rider’s weight on the front wheel for traction. At the time, I had relatively few hours on singletrack, but plenty of playtime in construction site mud pits, where the red Georgia clay turned into an excellent lubricant at the first sign of rain. I had a hearty terror of my front wheel washing out at speed, and the Bontrager’s design assuaged that a little.
Keith also has a background in mechanical engineering. Unlike a lot of builders who worked from rules of thumb or tradition, he calculated loads and strengths, and had concluded long ago that bicycles needed more strength vertically at the head tube than anywhere else. So he built his frames light, too light to survive, and then welded little scalloped gusset plates at the sites of stress, like the headtube junction and the bottom bracket. They had a look somewhere between purposeful and Frankensteinian, and I was smitten. Unskiddable in front, expensive, with weird features, and a name I couldn’t pronounce. I started saving my pennies.
Fast-forward to 2006. I’d bought an entry level ‘cross bike, with an aluminum frame and fork, steep geometry, and loads of toe overlap. I was riding at Yellow River (all my bikes get singletrack time, even the velodrome fixie) and hating it. My hands were on top of the bars, and I was keeping my weight on the saddle, just trying to keep from getting shaken to death. On a downhill, I moved my hands to the drops, just to reach the brakes, and suddenly, it made sense. With weight on the front wheel, the running-on-stilts feeling disappeared. The front tire knifed into the dirt, and the rear drifted just the least bit as I swept the turns. And I realized again that I still needed a Bontrager.
Seventeen years later, I still haven’t ridden a Bontrager. But there’s one heading for my house right now. In the time since reading that first review and now, I’ve gotten the kind of career that makes a $1400 frame a matter of flashing the plastic. Unfortunately, Bontrager hasn’t waited for me.
At the time of that first review, Bon frames all came with a Switchblade fork, straight replaceable blades pinch-bolted into a machined crown. The idea was that the blades could be made light enough for resiliency, and just tossed if they got bent. When suspension forks, with their unvarying geometry started springing up (ouch!), Keith simply bolted Mag-20 fork legs into his own crowns and raised the head tubes on his frames. But shortly thereafter, the oil-pissing Mag series went extinct. For a while, RockShox was willing to make custom- crowned Judys for a few larger small customers, like Tom Ritchey, with his penchant for 1” steerers, and Bontrager. But soon enough, the books quit balancing, and Keith folded his frame shop, taking a job designing (and destruction testing) components for Trek.
When I bid on the EBay Bon, the price was holding at $510, with less than a day to go. I bid a grand plus a buck, not to buy it, but to keep the other bidder from stealing a nice bike for half of nothing. And I won. Total price, with shipping, was $950.
I hadn’t had time to think, or to ask too many questions, either of myself or the seller. But the more I think, the more I believe that I haven’t realized any Bontrager dream.
This is a titanium Bon, a last ditch attempt to give cachet to a bike that deserved it but had lost its market. It was probably made by Litespeed, which isn’t bad in itself, but the master (or should I say El Patron) never even saw it, much less wielded the torch. Since Ti frames are always strong but occasionally noodle-y, it’s almost certainly made from straight-gauge tubing, with no need for gussets. And finally, by ’95 or ’96, the custom fork crowns were long gone, and Bontragers were all married to that bitch Judy, with geometry to accommodate her.
It sounds like I’ve just bought a regular Ti bicycle, just another damn Litespeed. A nice enough bike, especially with the XTR, but nothing to get overwrought about. And one that’s unlikely to threaten my custom-geometry Moots. I look forward to riding it, and finding out. I’ll keep you posted, but I expect that I’ll strip the Bontrager, give its better components to the Moots, and ride it as a singlespeed.
More to come.
Keith also has a background in mechanical engineering. Unlike a lot of builders who worked from rules of thumb or tradition, he calculated loads and strengths, and had concluded long ago that bicycles needed more strength vertically at the head tube than anywhere else. So he built his frames light, too light to survive, and then welded little scalloped gusset plates at the sites of stress, like the headtube junction and the bottom bracket. They had a look somewhere between purposeful and Frankensteinian, and I was smitten. Unskiddable in front, expensive, with weird features, and a name I couldn’t pronounce. I started saving my pennies.
Fast-forward to 2006. I’d bought an entry level ‘cross bike, with an aluminum frame and fork, steep geometry, and loads of toe overlap. I was riding at Yellow River (all my bikes get singletrack time, even the velodrome fixie) and hating it. My hands were on top of the bars, and I was keeping my weight on the saddle, just trying to keep from getting shaken to death. On a downhill, I moved my hands to the drops, just to reach the brakes, and suddenly, it made sense. With weight on the front wheel, the running-on-stilts feeling disappeared. The front tire knifed into the dirt, and the rear drifted just the least bit as I swept the turns. And I realized again that I still needed a Bontrager.
Seventeen years later, I still haven’t ridden a Bontrager. But there’s one heading for my house right now. In the time since reading that first review and now, I’ve gotten the kind of career that makes a $1400 frame a matter of flashing the plastic. Unfortunately, Bontrager hasn’t waited for me.
At the time of that first review, Bon frames all came with a Switchblade fork, straight replaceable blades pinch-bolted into a machined crown. The idea was that the blades could be made light enough for resiliency, and just tossed if they got bent. When suspension forks, with their unvarying geometry started springing up (ouch!), Keith simply bolted Mag-20 fork legs into his own crowns and raised the head tubes on his frames. But shortly thereafter, the oil-pissing Mag series went extinct. For a while, RockShox was willing to make custom- crowned Judys for a few larger small customers, like Tom Ritchey, with his penchant for 1” steerers, and Bontrager. But soon enough, the books quit balancing, and Keith folded his frame shop, taking a job designing (and destruction testing) components for Trek.
When I bid on the EBay Bon, the price was holding at $510, with less than a day to go. I bid a grand plus a buck, not to buy it, but to keep the other bidder from stealing a nice bike for half of nothing. And I won. Total price, with shipping, was $950.
I hadn’t had time to think, or to ask too many questions, either of myself or the seller. But the more I think, the more I believe that I haven’t realized any Bontrager dream.
This is a titanium Bon, a last ditch attempt to give cachet to a bike that deserved it but had lost its market. It was probably made by Litespeed, which isn’t bad in itself, but the master (or should I say El Patron) never even saw it, much less wielded the torch. Since Ti frames are always strong but occasionally noodle-y, it’s almost certainly made from straight-gauge tubing, with no need for gussets. And finally, by ’95 or ’96, the custom fork crowns were long gone, and Bontragers were all married to that bitch Judy, with geometry to accommodate her.
It sounds like I’ve just bought a regular Ti bicycle, just another damn Litespeed. A nice enough bike, especially with the XTR, but nothing to get overwrought about. And one that’s unlikely to threaten my custom-geometry Moots. I look forward to riding it, and finding out. I’ll keep you posted, but I expect that I’ll strip the Bontrager, give its better components to the Moots, and ride it as a singlespeed.
More to come.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Meet Pee Wee
September 12 2009
Blogger
I rode PeeWee last night. I have to point out that there was a time, a period of my life I refer to as ‘a body in search of a personality’, that I named all my bikes. My Kona single speed, for example, was Sofia, an acronym whose first two letters were Single and Orange, the rest being too banal to report. Admittedly, that bike needed a better identifier than its model name, which was a Hawaiian word of at least twenty letters that covered the entire top tube. When I had to speak with the distributor about a warranty issue, I just described the bike as ‘the single with the stupid name,’ and he knew which one I meant.
Anyway, PeeWee is the only bicycle who still has a name, or needs one. He’s an Indian knockoff of a Raleigh Tourist, a rod-braked behemoth with twin top-tubes and 28x11/2 wheels. He’s got a full chain case, a mousetrap luggage rack, and a hairpin saddle that looks like a Prince Albert’s truss. Sold under the name RetroBike, he was actually manufactured by Avon bicycles in Hyderabad, and embodies a wistful nostalgia for the empire, and the sun setting upon it.
I call him PeeWee because of a passing resemblance to the balloon-tired tanker that PeeWee Herman rode in Big Adventure, and Patel because it’s the only Indian surname I know. His head and seat angles recline to a hammock-like 65 degrees, and the narrow bars simultaneously put you in a position that gives nothing to pull against for climbing, and no leverage for steering. The rod brakes are imperfectly copied from their Raleigh originals I suspect, and even if they aren’t, well, there’s a good reason why nobody except Avon and Flying Pigeon uses rod brakes anymore.
Oddly enough, though, the whole amalgam seems to work. The bars shouldn’t be able to control the huge wheel flop of that Easy Rider head angle, but the gyroscopic effect from the giant wheels, more appropriate for a Conestoga wagon than a bicycle, comes on with any perceptible motion. The result is that he rides easily at walking pace, hell, at window shopping pace. Trackstands aren’t necessary when you can cut your speed to half a mile per hour, and creep along, a two-wheeled black snail, while waiting for the traffic light.
Even more surprising is the brakes. With an action best described as ‘placebo effect,’ the pull-rods and pivots manage to create just enough shoe pressure on the rims to make a pulsing vibration, accompanied by the sound of a freight train uncoupling, The levers bottom against the bars regardless of adjustment, and the pad bolts strip out with a stern look, much less over tightening. In spite of all this, I’ve never felt myself endangered by a lack of stopping ability. In part, it’s the same manufacturing tolerances that make them ineffective when applied, also keep the brakes from releasing fully either. Partly it’s the little bottle generator that drives off the rear tire sidewall., and seems to engage spontaneously. And partly it’s those big wheels, that just let you drive right through the pothole or off that curb instead of stopping. But yesterday, I rode in rush hour traffic, from the house on Carter Road to Emory hospital, with a basket full of Little Debbies and cookies, then rode back in full dark, down Clifton Road and Dekalb Avenue, on a Friday night, and never felt myself to be in danger. Exhausted, yes. Knees and hips blown, yes. But entirely confident in road holding, in spite of the clatters and clanks PeeWee emits at speed.
Every time a real Raleigh Tourist comes up one EBay, I put in a hopeful bid. I run a search for ‘rod brake’ every week and bid on all the men’s Brit bikes that show up. (I won’t stoop to a Flying Pigeon, though because it’s likely no improvement over what I’ve got.) But in the foreseeable future, PeeWee will be my errand bike and townie, rattling and juddering through Decatur. At least until I finish my Avon butcher’s bike.
Blogger
I rode PeeWee last night. I have to point out that there was a time, a period of my life I refer to as ‘a body in search of a personality’, that I named all my bikes. My Kona single speed, for example, was Sofia, an acronym whose first two letters were Single and Orange, the rest being too banal to report. Admittedly, that bike needed a better identifier than its model name, which was a Hawaiian word of at least twenty letters that covered the entire top tube. When I had to speak with the distributor about a warranty issue, I just described the bike as ‘the single with the stupid name,’ and he knew which one I meant.
Anyway, PeeWee is the only bicycle who still has a name, or needs one. He’s an Indian knockoff of a Raleigh Tourist, a rod-braked behemoth with twin top-tubes and 28x11/2 wheels. He’s got a full chain case, a mousetrap luggage rack, and a hairpin saddle that looks like a Prince Albert’s truss. Sold under the name RetroBike, he was actually manufactured by Avon bicycles in Hyderabad, and embodies a wistful nostalgia for the empire, and the sun setting upon it.
I call him PeeWee because of a passing resemblance to the balloon-tired tanker that PeeWee Herman rode in Big Adventure, and Patel because it’s the only Indian surname I know. His head and seat angles recline to a hammock-like 65 degrees, and the narrow bars simultaneously put you in a position that gives nothing to pull against for climbing, and no leverage for steering. The rod brakes are imperfectly copied from their Raleigh originals I suspect, and even if they aren’t, well, there’s a good reason why nobody except Avon and Flying Pigeon uses rod brakes anymore.
Oddly enough, though, the whole amalgam seems to work. The bars shouldn’t be able to control the huge wheel flop of that Easy Rider head angle, but the gyroscopic effect from the giant wheels, more appropriate for a Conestoga wagon than a bicycle, comes on with any perceptible motion. The result is that he rides easily at walking pace, hell, at window shopping pace. Trackstands aren’t necessary when you can cut your speed to half a mile per hour, and creep along, a two-wheeled black snail, while waiting for the traffic light.
Even more surprising is the brakes. With an action best described as ‘placebo effect,’ the pull-rods and pivots manage to create just enough shoe pressure on the rims to make a pulsing vibration, accompanied by the sound of a freight train uncoupling, The levers bottom against the bars regardless of adjustment, and the pad bolts strip out with a stern look, much less over tightening. In spite of all this, I’ve never felt myself endangered by a lack of stopping ability. In part, it’s the same manufacturing tolerances that make them ineffective when applied, also keep the brakes from releasing fully either. Partly it’s the little bottle generator that drives off the rear tire sidewall., and seems to engage spontaneously. And partly it’s those big wheels, that just let you drive right through the pothole or off that curb instead of stopping. But yesterday, I rode in rush hour traffic, from the house on Carter Road to Emory hospital, with a basket full of Little Debbies and cookies, then rode back in full dark, down Clifton Road and Dekalb Avenue, on a Friday night, and never felt myself to be in danger. Exhausted, yes. Knees and hips blown, yes. But entirely confident in road holding, in spite of the clatters and clanks PeeWee emits at speed.
Every time a real Raleigh Tourist comes up one EBay, I put in a hopeful bid. I run a search for ‘rod brake’ every week and bid on all the men’s Brit bikes that show up. (I won’t stoop to a Flying Pigeon, though because it’s likely no improvement over what I’ve got.) But in the foreseeable future, PeeWee will be my errand bike and townie, rattling and juddering through Decatur. At least until I finish my Avon butcher’s bike.
Monday, September 7, 2009
You've got to start somewhere
You've got to start somewhere, or more accurately, I've got to start somewhere. In the same way that you get fit enough to ride long miles by riding long miles, you turn writing from a blood-sweating chore into a routine occurance by stretching the writing muscles, opening up the metaphor glands, and flushing the lactic acid out of the logic system. So I'm writing for an hour every day. Most of it won't be literary gems. In fact, to say that any of them will be gems is a statement of sheerest optimism.
The Venn diagram that describes my life consists of circles whose only point of commonality is, in fact, myself. Disparate as they are, I'm guessing that nobody who is interested in one will want to know about the others. Thus is born Riding Rabbit, the blog. And as Friends of the Rabbit, you won't be subjected to unwanted information about my largely fallow sex life (unless a yeast infection keeps me from riding), my weird and annoying social circle (unless they are riding with me or preventing me from doing so), or issues of home renovation (excepting the new bicycle room I need to put onto the Shabby Shack). These all have seperate blogs, all on different hosting sites, and under different user names. Thus I can have the sort of wide-open frankness that airs out your soul, without running into the Facebook phenomenon that results in everyone knowing all your business.
The Venn diagram that describes my life consists of circles whose only point of commonality is, in fact, myself. Disparate as they are, I'm guessing that nobody who is interested in one will want to know about the others. Thus is born Riding Rabbit, the blog. And as Friends of the Rabbit, you won't be subjected to unwanted information about my largely fallow sex life (unless a yeast infection keeps me from riding), my weird and annoying social circle (unless they are riding with me or preventing me from doing so), or issues of home renovation (excepting the new bicycle room I need to put onto the Shabby Shack). These all have seperate blogs, all on different hosting sites, and under different user names. Thus I can have the sort of wide-open frankness that airs out your soul, without running into the Facebook phenomenon that results in everyone knowing all your business.
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