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.
Monday, March 21, 2011
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.
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