bike curious

tdf - quickies thus far

2011-07-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

-NBC internet package is awful. After trying to use it for 4 days on numerous computers and networks I raised a stink and got my money back. Back on low-res but dependable feeds from cyclingfans.com.

-Crashes. Man, that's a lot of crashes. I am generally a fan of some crashes as a way to take the predictability out of things, but guys going over the edge of the mountains is a bummer. Also, the France TV car incident is just ridiculous.

That guy should be tarred and feathered.

Finally, we're in the mountains. I like watching people get spit out the back more than into a barbed wire fence.

My highly unlikely fantasy podium (based on underdog status or amount of hard knocks taken so far):

-Cadel Evans
-Andreas Kloden
-Thomas Voeckler

Haha! That would be the best.

Moving along

2011-01-01T19:24:00.000-08:00

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Well, I'm feeling like this blog has mostly run it's course.

I finished off the year doing the Coal City Century, my first proper century ride last year, again and ended up with a pinched nerve that screwed my left hand up good for a few weeks. Now we're deep in the bowels of winter and I'm not doing much more than commuting 3 times or so a week.

Heading off to Austin at the end of next week for some much needed riding down there (I'm registered again for the MS 150).

Mostly, though, other things have taken my attention from finding time to write or even just think so much about bikes (of course there's not as much to think about in January). I'm going back to school and have just had an explosion of interest in reading and learning about economics over the last couple of years. Apropos, I have a new blog that is centering around the dismal science and my schooling experience as it unfolds. It's called

theunlikelyeconomist

and it will hopefully be a worthy read for anyone interested in a variety of different things.

May drop in here from time to time, but I think my bike curiousity has been largely sated and now I'm just ready to plain-old ride bikes and spend my time talking about other things. (It helps that I have a borderline embarrassing "stable" of bikes to ride and enjoy. But that's been pretty well documented in these pages.)

Thanks to all for reading and feel free to drop by every so often and see if I've changed my mind and plopped some more words down here!

JW

Workin' my way up to pack fill!

2010-07-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

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I'm a newly minted Category 5 road racer. I duly registered with USA Cycling about 10 days ago and then registered for my first race the next day. The day, Wednesday, July 14th. The place: an empty parking lot between Soldier Field and McCormick place.

This one:

To be fair, in the other direction, it looks more like a place you'd have a bike race:

I didn't tell anyone I was doing it except for, on the morning of, I was emailing with my friend Zac in Syria and I told him about it. Beyond that, I just did a normal work day, did a furtive clothes change in the bathroom around 5:30 and rode on downtown. Dunno why I was being so secretive. I guess I just didn't want to discuss it too much so as not to hype it up too much. I hadn't even really been riding that much lately. Lots of working and going out of town. Was probably doing maybe 60 miles a week for the month before, but I had told myself I wanted to do a bike race before the end of year 40, so I only had about 2 weeks left.

I had checked this race out briefly last year. Got a good laugh out of my previous post on the Soldier Field Cycling Series. Here's a funny paragraph:

Basically, there was a maybe 1/2 mile course made from traffic cones and some temporary fencing and people seem to ride around it for about an hour. Apparently that's a criterium. The women's combined field (women always get the shaft I guess) was only about 9 riders, but it looked pretty fun anyway. I was sorry to be out of town a couple of weeks back during the Chicago Criterium. I guess that's an entirely different affair. Anyway, checking it out made me think I might just go down there and give it a shot. It can't be much different than hauling ass up to the Botanical Gardens which I have managed at a almost 20 mph pace including city traffic before.

Ha! The humor will soon become apparent (for those who have ever done a criterium race, it should be already).

Anyway, here's how the day went down. As I was riding down the lakefront path, I came upon a woman on a Storck Absolutist and asked her if she was going to the race. Yes, she said and we chatted a bit on the ride over. She rode for Chicago Cuttin Crew and told me she was riding in the same race as me. I was unaware that women could ride in the mens heats, but apparently they can, which is cool! I prefer co-ed sports, seems like the boys just behave in a little more civilized fashion. Anyway, I watched the womens race and rode some laps on the big area for warming up. During the first mens race, I went over to each corner and tried to get a sense for what was going on. Also got to ride a few laps before the first mens race. Seemed pretty mellow as far as the course was concerned.

I also met a really nice chap, Laurent, who was sporting a Tour de France shirt and a funny accent. Turned out he was the Bastille Day "feature" and got up in the booth and did a spiel in French before each race. Pretty nice! Le Grand Campion du Chicago and such. He along with Megan, a nice gal who rides for XXX that I met whilst buying some parts the week before, told me they would cheer for me since I didn't have any supporters. Let me tell you. It's NICE to have some people cheering for you.

Here's how the race went down:
I lined up with what I thought was about maybe 30 people(?). After Laurent gave his pep talk, we got the rules: Ride for 30 minutes, timer counts down to 10 minutes, after that it goes to laps. If you get lapped stay to the outside and don't contest sprints, you can be pulled for falling too far back, but he probably won't. And we were off! The speed immediately went up to around 26MPH (that's about 42KPH for you modern rest-of-the-world types) and it pretty much just stayed there. It was about 2 laps before I fell off the back. At first I thought "dear God, I'm just screwed." Then I'd think I would catch up, then I realized I was about to be lapped. I'm still going fast, mind you, like definitely keeping it up around 23, but a few miles per hour is enough to get lapped twice as it turns out in 30 minutes! I think I was first in the people-who-got-dropped part of the race. Also probably came in first in the 40+ year old, first race category too, but who's counting?! What would that be? The grey, stained jersey perhaps. So yeah, some cheering was nice. I didn't ever let up from what I felt like I could do and it seemed like a decent first outing. It's pretty exhilarating to just turn yourself inside out (as Phil and Paul like to say) for a while. There were some crushing riders there and it makes me laugh to think that the guys that were killing me wouldn't even be able to hang on the to back of most stages of a Grand Tour or something. Gives you a whole new respect for the lowliest TDF domestique! During the MS150 back in the spring, my friend Jason (no relation) was telling me he thought I'd be able to hang on to the back of a Cat 5 race, and I'm here to say... I can't. But I'm working on it! One day I'll be bonafide Cat 4 pack fill.

Personal stats:
Distance traveled in 30 minutes: 12 miles exactly
Average speed: 22.75 MPH
Top speed: 30.25 MPH (!!)

One very impressive thing is that Jeanette (I think it was) from CCC, who I met on the way over, was part of the 2nd of 2 "main groups" (such as they were) who lapped me twice. Truly a badass. Way to go Jeanette. Here's something weird though... I felt like there was about 30 people in my field and I felt like I came in maybe 23rd or something, but when results finally got posted, it tells a whole other story, which I think may be a wrong story, but who knows. I'm not really buying it, but it looks a lot better for me here. They have the field at 17 and me at 10. That does not seem right at all, but the race before has all 42 people accounted for, so it's confusing. Anyway, next time maybe I'll stay around for the provisional results. This time I just split pretty quick as it was already kind of late. I thought the ride home would kill me (I had already ridden about 20 miles before I got there that day) but going anything less than circa 23MPH felt pretty leisurely and I went on home at a pretty good clip even with a fairly full backpack.

Overall, what a fun time! Nice folks were met and I'm going to go back I think.

TDF: Was going to try and write some fun stuff about it, but I've just been super, super, duper busy and blogging ain't payin' the bills (in case you hadn't figured that out on your own!). Anyway, a few brief thoughtlets:

- Bummer for Andy Shleck throwing his chain and losing yellow. Nice try today on the Tourmalet as well. You'll be in yellow in Paris soon enough I reckon.
- Armstrong. Should have maybe stayed retired, then would not have to be living and working amongst several hundred news reporters asking nosy questions about doping, selling bikes to fund doping and seemingly lying about his ownership in Tailwind Sports.
- Zabriskie and Hincapie. Are they feeling the crushing weight of the Landis allegations? They have both been such non-factors in the entire tour. No presence in breaks. Coming in with the gruppetto many days, not even a good prologue. Too bad. I hope they come clean with anything they have to come clean about.
- Footon Servetto. For sure the ugliest kits I've seen in my active days of watching racing. Many greats from the past can be found for sure, but they are really keeping in funky in those tan leotards.
- Ryder Hesjedal... Nice tour buddy. Methinks that perhaps Garmin should put some serious resources into you as a GC contender. Oh Canada!
- Contador. Boring. Like the Chicago Bulls in the 90s. I deeply crave the underdog win (speaking of which, bummer about Cadel. He was really hanging in there for a while.). I did like seeing he and Shleck get all buddy buddy after today's Tourmalet stage. I enjoy displays of friendliness between rivals. It was all World Cup style!
-Phil and Paul. Those guys jump the shark so, so much it's kind of wearing thin. I know that when you have to blab all the time, your gonna hit some lean material, but man, PAY attention! When you are calling Andy Shleck "Frank" after his brother broke his collarbone 2 days before, you really are just phoning it in. I like Matt what's his name, the warm up guy better.

Off to Omaha for the weekend tomorrow to run sound for Superchunk at the MAHA festival. Going to bring my newly built 1988 Specialized Allez! Did a stealth build of this a couple of weeks ago. It rips! If I was good enough to not need my Ti crutch, I'd do a crit on it just to be keepin it real!

I'll have to make another post about my 68 mile ride in northwest Dane County, WI soon. That was the inaugural serious ride for this bike and was a warm up for the Dairyland Dare in about 3 weeks.

Palos, city riding and other delights...

2010-07-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

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Okay, so last Monday I remounted my (maybe?) trusty 29er and headed for the much heard of but as-of-then untried "Palos." It seems to officially be part of the Cook County Forest Preserve District, but these guys seem to do a lot of the work involved in keeping up the trails. Closing some, reopening others, making little bypasses when something is eroding too much, that sort of thing. I will say now, nice job guys!

Before I could attempt to ride though, I had to spend a bit of time Sunday de-winterizing my bike. I had last ridden it probably in January. It had Nokian studded ice tires on still (which look so comically small compared to the Conti Mountain Kings that normally go on), a VERY crusty, rusty chain and just needed a going over. I did a deep chain cleansing and lubing, changed the tires, spent some more time tinkering with the rear dropout situation, which was time very well spent. My bike is built around an On One Inbred frame like this:

As you can see, it has rear facing dropouts like you would most commonly find on a single speed bike. Some very mad, mad people (including the wonderful guy I bought this from) apparently ride mountain bikes that way. I cannot fathom how this is done and I currently have this bike set up as a 1x9 speed with a 12-32 cassette in the rear and (I think) a 32-tooth cog in front. Anyway, when I first set the bike up for some reason it didn't seem like the rear wheel would sit all the way up front in the dropouts. SO, I used a trick I read about somewhere on the always trusty interwebs about putting some chainring bolts in there to move the stopping point back some. This caused me to have a problem where, when I really pedaled hard, the wheel would slip a bit because it just wasn't that great having the wheel seated up against the outermost point on a circle instead of being fully nestled inside of a semicircle. Does that even makes sense?! Anyway, on my shoulder separating ride from last fall, I had to stop every couple of miles and tweak the wheel. Not that inspiring to do. SO, I took another crack from scratch with the brake position and such and got it seated all the way up to the front of the dropouts and working well. Still have a little bit of disc brake rub I have to try and futz with soon, but it's not really a big deal beyond the mental zone where I think "this is slowing me down!" Still, I'll have to sort that out soon.

At any rate, the bike performed just splendidly on this trip. I did not eat it in any serious way (did one very comical slow-motion semi-wipeout on a log pile, but nothing except a touch of pride was wounded). Palos is really, really fun and is also in pretty great shape in my limited experience. It looks pretty taken care of. JBI, my guide and riding buddy, has been riding there for years, so even though it had been a good while, he still had a pretty good bead on what was where in there. There are lots of places to drop in and out from these service roads (or maybe it was just one road, I dunno!) and I would have been completely lost without him. We rode for a good 2+ hours and my shoulder did not particularly trouble me and I was careful but still managed to move along at a pretty good clip and have some thrills and chills like one would hope.

Here are some pics:

Dudes at the first stop:

Typical scenery in the non-insane roller coaster parts (why I could stop and take a pic!)

Here's a trail we tried that turned out to be closed (it was a pretty bat cave style entrance to this one and it took a while to be sure that the trees we kept coming across where actually meant to make you not be riding! JBI thought it had been recently reopened as he remembered it from a long time back, but after about 10 unride-throughable barriers we admitted we probably weren't going to get back to anything good without just going backwards. Doh!)

Here is (one of?) the service road(s?) that we came out onto a few different times.

Here's something you don't see everyday:

There are 2 old nuclear reactors buried under us! Follow the link above to see what these looked like. They look like large parts of a building, not just some kind of vat. CRAZY!
Beautiful ride down to the little lake (after a pretty big climb up to the crest:

My pretty raw legs (quite a few thorny bushes on the closed trail part):

And my bike, resplendent in the afternoon swelter:

We even got to catch up with the ice cream man about 5 minutes after we stopped riding and were just puttering around the car. NICE! I had a watermelon and lime Bomb Pop with candy seeds! Looking forward to going back soon.

I LOVE LIVING IN THE CITY!

Actually, I'm not all that crazy about it. Unlike many of my aerospoke front-wheeling, spoke card back-wheeling, carabiner, little caps, no brakes seats too high on a small frame, rolled up jeans, toe-clip sporting brethren and sistren (?!), I'm not really enamored of the gritty, glamorous danger of city riding. In spite of Chicago's #10 ranking in Bicycling mag's bike-friendly cities report, it still seems like a pretty dangerous place to get around by bike. While our bike lanes are nowhere near as disrespected as NYC's Kafka-esque circus of joggers, delivery guys, salmoning riders and cell-phone chatting walkers, it's still not great. Actually, when in bike lanes, things are usually pretty reasonable, but there are still a lot of streets without them and it's hard to rate a city on the amount of drivers who look at you as nothing but a pure obstruction between them and where they want to go. I think to discover that you have to just live somewhere, not cross-reference several lists from other groups and talk to local experts and bike shop owners. Many, many, many people in Chicago simply could give a sh*t whether you are a traffic cone or a human being. I had one woman lay into her horn the other day when I was riding down the street at about 23 mph, right at the speed of traffic and when I pulled up to her at the red light that she had to stop at maybe 3 seconds up the road from where she had to honk and asked "why are you honking at me?" She replied "You out there in the middle of the road like you a car or something. Why don't you get over on the side where you suppose to be?" I began to have discussion about how under IL law, I am required to ride in the roadway and I could actually ride right in the middle of the road if I liked and I was going at the speed of traffic anyway, but then she began throwing up hands and yelling and I just threw a few obligatory expletives at her (maybe not obligatory, but hard to keep in) and just rode off. Of course, she never got as far as me again, but I reckon she had to tap her brake back there or something and over what, a bike!?

Another min-van driving mom-ish looking woman in our neighborhood just was literally throwing up her hands today at one of Chicago's infamous angled intersections because we too were in it waiting to make a left-turn. I reckon she thought we should be on the sidewalk were we belong as well.

My friend Keith was hit about 4 weeks ago, not through neglect but through a good aim and careful timing by some gangbanger dudes who, coming the opposite direction down a neighborhood street, moved over to box him in against parked cars on the right and opened both driver's side doors to send him flying through the air. Just what we all need, thrill-killers. Right?

Here's another great one for Illinois.

Though we certainly don't have a monopoly on ignorance!

We did apparently get a new law signed last week making it a class A misdemeanor to "crowd or throw missiles" at a cyclist, but judging by the sentence given to Armando Reza for drunkenly trying to run over cyclists, I'm not holding my breath for the dawn of a new day of safe cycling from this. Even making it a class A misdemeanor to potentially kill someone with your car is too much for people like this gem of a human being. I'll do my best to stay clear of this suburban bell. Actually, I'll just go ahead and never enter Orland Park, I'm sure that'll work just fine for both of us.

In other Chicago living notes, I always know that summer is in bloom when I take a ride down the lake shore and see all the drinking fountains with their heads knocked clean off, spewing that great Lake Michigan water that we love to use so much of 4 to 6 feet in the air all day and night. Mmm, mmm good!

dopey.

2010-07-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

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Le tour is underway. Seems like 2010 has been especially heavy on crashes, enough to get rider protest on the Giro, Armstrong out of the TOC (quelle timing!), Cavendish, Van De Velde and on and on. The first 3 stages have kept up the trend. Gruesome but Henry Desgrange would be positively delighted (his ideal race would be so hard that only one rider would make it to Paris)!

Not really pulling for anyone specific (I guess that's not really my style in general, but this year even more so). Liked Wiggins last year, but now he sort of seems like an over-hyped contract breaker, so it kind of took the wind out of my sails. I think I'm pulling for Ryder Hesjedal actually.

Just got led to some HEAVY DUTY links on the Landis biz by Joe Lindsey's almost-always enjoyable Boulder Report blog. Landis seems to have a flair for memory that I don't really have, but then again, if I was doing sh*t that crazy and having to make up complex and intertwined lies about it, I guess such things might focus the mind a bit more than making dinner and having a chat about some job that pissed me off that day or whatever.

If you want more details in this sordid affair (allegations, I reckon it must be said, though some allegations are easier to believe than others), here are the two new insane articles I just got done with:

from the WSJ

from ESPN

Some of the detail in there is just crazy. Selling maybe up to half the team bikes to finance the doping program, I guess it makes sense. Can't exactly put that stuff in the annual budget. Thanks Trek!

Went on a great MTB ride Monday, my first at Palos. More on that soon. For now, it's off to work.

One bike to rule them all...

2010-06-08T19:52:00.000-07:00

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Not much posting for not a ton of riding lately. I have been out of town and just had all manner of heavy workload and too many extracurriculars going on lately to get much riding done.

I did get some bike building done though. About three weeks back I purchased this beautiful third-hand Bill Holland 60cm Ti frame with Reynolds fork and CK headset. It arrived in just gorgeous condition. Why I cannot keep a bike that nice for any length of time, I dunno (maybe being clumsy is one, city living too I guess). There is not a lot to find out about these bikes on the interwebs. A few forum threads, a reference to one being used in a quest to build the "lightest bike in the world" in Popular Mechanics. A few references in a Joe Bell interview as he shares a building with Holland and apparently came up under his tutelage somewhat in the (?) late 70s (I think it said). For some reason, that was enough to make me take a chance on this thing.

First impressions...let me start with the welds. They look like fillet brazing. I have become an instant Ti weld snob. There is some fairly gnarly environmental harshness from welding titanium, but I guess at least it lasts roughly forever. It's light. Very light. It even says so here:

A sense of humor to boot (sorry for the crappy photo)!

Building it up was pretty easy. I had to come up with a 1" stem, but I found a fellow parting with this nice Ibis 120mm 0 degree stem and snapped it up. Beyond that, I just moved all my Campy Centaur stuff over to it from the trusty old Look KG381. It came with it's own Ti seatpost. Here it is in progress:

And here is the finished build.

I've only ridden some 50-60 miles on it as of yet, but it is pretty amazing. It's about a half lb. lighter than the Look, coming in just right at 18 lbs. Really feels like it can just go 25-30 mph all day long. Rides similar to a steel bike in terms of road chatter, but feels almost like aluminum when you are out of the saddle. I have yet to climb anything on it, but am dying to! My original impetus to try something else was that the Look was a little on the creaky/flexy side when really out of the saddle on a climb. I think I've got that solved. More to come on all that.

Had a full head of steam to write something about the Landis doping stuff, but it seems like it's all been said better already. Here are a few things that are worth peeping:

Joe Lindsay's column had links to most of the good stuff and some pretty good writing himself.

Then you have to check in and get the BSNYC perspective.

I had actually just finished reading Paul Kimmage's "Rough Ride" about a week before all this came down and I was thinking that he was really just kind of a super downer (and for me to say that, you've gotta really be cramping some style!). Not that I doubted any of what he knew/alleged/suspected (he goes on at length in the 6 or 7 mega-epilogues about different doping scandals after the book was published up to Landis and the 2006 TDF. I was thinking "Geez man, maybe you are TOO suspicious!" but then this stuff all came to light.

In some way it's weird to draw the line at tweaking every tiny manner of aero-bike dweebery and skinsuits on your shoes and wind tunnels etc, but to think that tweaking your body chemistry is cheating. However, I tend to think the same thing. Part of it is perhaps that it's just so GROSS to be stashing away your blood in a fridge so you can pump it back in later and get all your stats to settle down after you've been making blood pudding in your veins for a few weeks or what have you. Estrogen, testosterone, corticoids, etc. etc. What ever happened to Clif Shots? That seemed gross to me for quite a while (I guess I'm more Paul Kimmage than I might like to think, he held out on caffeine tablets for quite some time).

Mostly though, I think it's that cycling is, more than other sports, really aspirational for a lot of the fans. Unlike maybe US football, for instance, where it's difficult to put on 50 to 100 lbs and get a giant kit of armor and play with large teams on a well-groomed field, it's feasible for many fans to get a decent bike and some fancy clothes and ride down the road like you are on a solo breakaway. It sucks to think that you aren't really doing it "like a pro" until you know how to get your microdosing program all sorted out. Training rides ain't gonna do it! Landis amusingly points out in one of his rambling screeds, correctly, that Amgen (of the Amgen Tour of California) is the manufacturer of EPO. Quelle irony! Those letters actually make me feel worst for Dr. Brent Kay, who spent years and years of his life (and one can only imagine piles and piles of money) defending Landis, starting his own procycling team to help Landis come back, etc. and seems to betray a woozy sense of defeat at finding out how much of his life has been misspent in these sad emails.

I think the thing about all this heavy duty, seriously gross, seriously complicated doping stuff that freaks me out the most is that all these dudes (and face it, most people are more or less normal as far as general personality traits, etc. go) had to learn to spend large portions of their adult lives being professional liars, going on and on and on about how clean the sport is or how they've never taken performance enhancing drugs etc. Imagine doing an interview and going on about unproven allegations against you and then heading on over to your flight to go "consult" with Dr. Ferrari and pick up your EPO vials. And so on. Ugh. I think my head would explode in short order. I don't even like little tiny white lies, let alone having to have an entire false narrative about your life (see Landis's now especially amusing book for an epic, epic example of this).

Anyway, I still enjoy watching racing, but what a giant pile of shit that stuff all is. Beware of professional sports is the overarching message for yours truly.

Time to get back to basics! Here are some quality freak bikes I have encountered lately. You ain't gonna attack the group on these things, just enjoy the ride my friends.

Spotted a few blocks from the U of M commencement (featuring our leader, B.H. Obama) which I attended last month:

Here are a couple of specimens from a house several blocks from me. I tend to swing by here now to see what's cooking. I think this house may be from whence issues a biker that could be described as my own modern-primitive lone wolf. Perhaps I'll post a shot of him someday.

Anyway, first here is a rare shot of two freak bikes entwined in the delicate act of making sweet freak bike love:

And here is a handmade cargo bike that puts the Surly Big Dummy to shame:

With that, I take my leave. Let's get out and ride!

Another nice old Trek

2010-05-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

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For the money, you just really, really can't beat a late 80s Trek. They are just great riding, light, attractive (and still made in the USA) lovely steel bikes. This 1988 Trek 360 that I fixed up for a friend has a nice Suntour 12-speed setup with indexed shifting. I swapped out the bars/levers for something a little more upright. Eric, if you're reading this, I take back the aspersions I cast at the Sturmey Archer brake levers, they look very nice and are terrific levers to boot. Thanks!

This bike was gotten for a mere $230 in gorgeous perject working order and after another hundred-ish dollars in persnickety parts swapping, it's a fleet 21 lb. city bike. What does $350 get you new these days? A decent saddle and a set of cheaper STI levers maybe. Certainly not much of a whole bicycle.

dark lord day and other delights

2010-05-09T19:45:00.000-07:00

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Went to Three Floyds Brewery's much discussed "Dark Lord Day" a few weeks back. Missed it last year due to I-can't-remember-what, but I DO remember realizing during whatever it was I ended up doing that the weather was a bucket of sh*t around the time folks would be riding their bikes back. I mean, ripping winds, temperature dropping 20+ degrees and very, very cold rain style. In other words, a typical Chicago Spring day!

Well, my buddy Arman was up for it again in spite of the brutal beatdown he took on that one. I think he was also in charge of leading a rather mixed crew of riders in terms of amounts of stops per trip and such, so I believe it came as a relief when only a couple of people sounded like they were going to turn up this year to ride down. The weather was looking pretty bad this year too, but he scoped out a METRA ride home option for this year, riding the 10-ish miles over to Flossmor and catching the train, so I guess one way in some potential rain seemed doable.

We met up on the Lakeshore path across from Buckingham fountain at the 9am hour and while sitting there up rode Jay and Alex, some friends of his, who were heading down too so they decided to join up. Then up rode about 25 other people asking if we were heading to Three Floyds. When we said yup one guy started getting in his bag and asking us to sign in and such. After a moment of confusion in which one of our little gang just signed up (weird what you can get if you just ask!) I asked a few questions and found out this was the (forgive me if I've got this wrong) Chicago Cycling Club official ride down group and we quickly cleared up that we were just heading that way on our own, which I think snapped Arman out of some flashbacks from last year's perhaps overly Keystone Kops-ish experience. He looked relieved anyway. We ended up running across that lot later during the ride, but they had some different instructions so it didn't last more than about a mile or two.

With the late arrival of Tiber, we set off. It was a pretty gloomy overcast morning but no rain, so all was well. Rode down the path and on down S. South Shore drive and continued on what turned out to be a really nicely sorted out route (click here for a PDF of the map)
. Just took a largely neighborhoody and pathy/parky way most of the way down. Got my first ride on the Burnham Greenway, which was just like any other bike path except that it had a dozens and dozens of covered up graffiti spots on it (along with a few fresh examples!). Got my first flat on my year plus old Schwalbe Marathons, found out I can still do a roadside tube change (it's been a while), and with a couple of quick stops, we made it down it something like 2.5 hours (37.5 miles or so).

Some crazy biz, this Dark Lord Day. I forsee it not being in it's current location for much longer as trying to squish about 8000 drunk broheims into the 1/4 mile street of a small office/industrial park doesn't seem like the way to keep up neighborly relations. It was a pretty good scene though. I ate about a year and a half of my normal meat intake. Something like 5 sausages, a brisket taco, some more brisket and probably another thing or two I'm forgetting. Not a very veggie friendly event. Tasted some very tasty brews. Followed my buddy Andrew and his rather large posse through the Dark Lord Russian IPA buying line and helped to portage the beers safely back to the car (I got to buy in on 2 bottles for my trouble). There were some heavy bands playing in the brewery, but the overall drunky far-from-home vibe made me eventually want to head back to the cozy confines of home.

After hanging out for about 2.5 hours, it still hadn't rained and I was feeling like going to the METRA was just going to be a pain (apparently wasn't, but I felt like riding more anyway). I decided to go it alone on the bike back up into town. A couple of pounds of meat and the equivalent of maybe 4 hefty brews made this a different sort of "sport" than the way down. I did quite respectably thank-you-very-much, but was DEFINITELY feeling a bit knackered by the time I hit the Lakeshore path back in town. The map worked pretty well on the way back (Arman guided down so I didn't really have to pay much attention), but I did get off at one point and end up going through some unknown southside zone. Pretty mellow altogether, though I did get a few garbled SOMETHING-UNINTELLIGIBLE-WHITE-BOY! comments cutting through the wind. Guess it's not a well road-biked area in a few spots down there.

Anyway, a fun new trip out of town. I feel a little less intimidated by getting into Indiana on a bike now. You can really just slip right into Hammond by the back door and even in a few spots were we had to brave a bit of heavy-ish traffic, I found Indiana drivers to be pretty courteous and chilled out, at least on that particular day.

Pics!

Our Gang

Burnham Greenway with blacked out graffito

A VERY slow moving train in Hammond. Note awesome mid-century madness on the 2nd Baptist parking garage behind.

That's some lineup (to buy expensive beer!). Several hours long.

A swamp of party bros.

An expensive litter display.

Glad to have biked. These were ALL OVER, only set off by the occasional
"PARK HERE $40" signs.

A ridiculously undetailed version of the route thanks to the crappy GPS of iPhione 3G.

In other news:

I rode to Milwaukee again today, my first completion since last Summer's aborted attempt (3 flats and a wifely pickup). It was pretty fun, only occasionally grueling. Light to moderate headwind almost the entire way and pretty chilly (low 40s in the morning up to 50-ish by the afternoon).

I can do the whole thing with only a very occasional map consultation. Actually, I might not have had to at all had part of the Wisco bike trail not been closed, but that put me back on the road sooner which speeded things up nicely anway. That gravel is SLOW!

Anyway, home to just shy of downtown, 94 miles, in a total of 6 hours 4 minutes. Probably stopped for a total of about 15 minutes en route, so riding time was about 5 hours 50. Between the gravel and some headwinds and no one to draft on, that ride is some good exercise!

Tried to tune in the Giro when I got home, but managed to just catch the exact spoiler ending 20 seconds. Groan! Anyway, Tyler Farrar finally got some.

Looks like my trusty Look KG381 and I are parting ways. There's a new (to me) frame coming down the line here in a week or so. It's been real, but I like to keep things interesting (I am bike curious after all) and I have to sell to help mitigate the costs of the new steed.

MS150 report!

2010-04-24T18:31:00.000-07:00

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It was one week ago today when I set out with some 14,000 other riders on the 26th annual (now sadly "BP") MS150 ride from Houston to Austin. Here is my best attempt to run it down for those very few who may be interested in the details.

Flew into Houston on Thursday evening and went to a wonderfully filling dinner with my folks and my friends Bob and Carrie who just happened to also have flow in the very same day. We had a big pig out at Cyclone Anaya's, which I do like to hit every so often when in Houston. Kind of local chainy, but muy delicioso!

Crashed out promptly that evening. Awoke nice and early (6:30) as a warm up for the truly gruesome get up times that would be required the next couple of days. Ate a salad for breakfast, which was mentioned in this cheesily written but overall very gripping and inspiring book I finished reading that very night. Not bad for breakfast, a salad. Does bring on the lunch urge a little faster than normal though. Kind of makes me want to get into running too, but we shall see. If my wife goes a bit more whole hog, perhaps I'll be her pacer!

I headed over to the Omni hotel, where registration and whatnot was going on. Registered and poked around in the expo area, which was not nearly a gianormous as I'd imagined it would be. Just one largish meeting hall deal with about a dozen or so vendors. There were some pretty great deals to be had on lycra and other plastic based clothing items, so I picked up a few bits, including this pretty nice Capo bib short (pair of bib shorts?!) for 50% off.

While that special chamois bears an unnerving resemblance to a presenting baboon, I can assure you that it's the most comfy chamois I've ever had in contact with my taintal region. I also picked up a cheapish rain shell/jacket as I forgot mine at home. My bike arrived shortly thereafter with Jason and his lovely mother, Rita straight from Austin. I had ebayed and sent to Austin a Shimano R700 compact crank to have installed on my trusty Paramount as I was a bit apprehensive about the hills of day 2 on a normal 53/39 (probably would have been fine as it turned out, but anyway). It was a weird aftermarket gearing the seller had on there of 52/34, rather than the normal 50/34. Upon giving this thought for a couple of days the week before, I realized a 52 big ring would probably prove less than ideal as on my normal road bike in Chicago with a 50/36, I'm almost always, always kicking around the lowest gearing on the 50 ring, so a 52 would just make that a little bit less appropriate. I ended up ordering a 50 tooth big ring at the last minute and figured I'd change this out at the hotel. Once I got my bike out, I realized that the shop in Austin (which I guess shall remain nameless) did a kind of half-assed job of changing the crank out, leaving the chain at least 2 or 3 links to long (it was sitting 3 cogs up on the rear cassette when I got it out but the chain was already rubbing on the fully collapsed rear derailleur. Thanks for the questionable work small certain Austin bike shop I have spoken kindly of recently in these pages....)! Fortunately, there were a few local bike shops set up at the hotel, so I took this mess over the the West End Cycles folks who sorted me out in short order. Afterwards I took a little 6-mile spin and tweaked some seat height and front derailleur position until everything seemed kosher. Thanks West End! Whilst tweaking my seat, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that my seat post has some sort of stripped seat pivot situation going on. I kept finding my seat in a more backwards angle / taint hurting position than I thought I put it in and eventually realized it was popping back every so often. Groan. It was too late to do anything there but keep an eye on it.

The steed:

The weather was predicted to be pretty poopy, with 50% to 60% chances of rain on Saturday and Sunday respectively. While not as bad as the storms that resulted in the cancellation of the first day last year, it wasn't looking ideal. But if there's one little advantage being from Chicago provides, it's that a bad spring day in Texas is a pretty decent summer's day in the midwest.

I had a lovely dinner at home with my folks Friday night (Grilled shrimp, couscous, roasted veggies and a wonderful bottle of Chardonnay, thanks ya'll!) and went to bed around 10:30 in order to rise at the gruesome (for me) hour of 4:45am. As is the norm when I'm doing a big ride, I slept rather spottily and ended up laying awake from about 3:15 am until 4:20, when I finally just gave it and arose.

DAY 1:

My folks were up shortly thereafter and after wolfing down some sort of slightly preservative laden breakfast burrito and some fruit and coffee, we headed over to my meetup with Ryan, Jason H and Danny at Ryan's sister's place about 3 miles from the start at the Omni hotel. Got there, realized I didn't get safety pins in my lil packet to use for my bib number. Ryan had to wake up his sister for this (who was inexplicably sleeping on the couch at her own place when I arrived). Thanks Sally, sorry about that! She was kind enough to wake up and take a few snapshots of our motley crew. Here we are in all our pasty, chilly pre-dawn glory:

We finally rolled out of there at about 6:30, so as not to be late for the 6:45 start. Almost ate sh*t a few times on the very dark way over. Some pretty industrial sized gaps in the little drainage bibs that stick out into the road. Smooth it out Houston!

We rolled up to the start to find that there was NOT A BIG HURRY! Note to any future riders, unless your oil company sponsored team raised $250,000 or something, you may as well take your time getting to the start. We got to listen to a good 45 minutes of verbal tongue-lashing through a portable squawk box setup that sort of comically threw the breaker on the generator powering it a few times. Accompaniment was provided in the form of various hits of the 80s, Huey Lewis and the News, Survivor, etc. We finally managed to squeeze in with some team that must have rolled out around the 8,000 to 9,000 riders mark. It strikes me that if you pay your fee and do your fundraising, maybe you shouldn't have to sit on a cold road and listen to an obnoxious emcee for most of an hour, but I digress...

It's all better once you're rolling! We took a windy path up N. Eldridge twisting around NW Houston and ended up on some farm road (FM154?) while getting a light raining on for about 45 minutes to an hour. That finally petered out around mile 20 or so. At the first rest stop we almost immediately ran into my old friend and sometime roommate Todd. He joined our little train and we spent a few hours on the road catching up about the last, oh, decade or so! He was on the Sweet Leaf Tea team, but they were pretty well atomized all over the "field" such as it was, so he joined up with us for the day.

Nothing too eventful to report over the course of the day. I had some of the usual energy ups-and-downs that come with 100 mile ride. The route had some very modest rolling hills but was pretty flat overall and we had favorable winds. One thing that is always amusing at these sorts of giant rides, but seemed ESPECIALLY intensive at this ride, is the whole "on your left" etiquette. We all know that sometimes it's quite good to give riders on your right verbal notice if, say, you are passing them pretty closely or perhaps very quickly. However, I think it's fair to say that if you are in a field of 14,000 riders and you are riding on the far right side of the road at around 11 to 13 mph, there are going to be a LOT, LOT, LOT of folks coming by "on your left" pretty much constantly and all day long! It really should come as no surprise! That did not stop a lot of people from seeming really surprised and ENDANGERED that some riders were coming by about 4 to 6 feet away from them on the left without a CLEAR ANNOUNCEMENT to the effect. Reactions ranged from a light sort of tu-tut-ing (yelling "riders on the left" up ahead of them as a little rebuke) to some straight up "you need to call out buddy!" etc. Here's my hunch: Maybe this is a combination of people who have just read the "rules" of riding etiquette and just tend to the pedantic in matters of safety combined with a smaller minority of riders who want to reserve the right to swing wildly over to the left side of the road at a moment's notice and consider it really dangerous that anyone would ride by them without crying out "ON YOUR LEFT!"

At any rate, I think I must have given out at least a few thousand on your lefts over the course of 2 days. Sometimes there were so many in a row that I'd just realize I was saying it a few times even during big empty spots on the road, just sort of muttering it like a crazy person.

With about 20 miles to go on "Stage 1" we got passed by a few of Todd's buddies on the Sweet Leaf team and ended up jumping on their train and powering into the day's finish at a nice 20-ish mph clip. I think one guy pulled us the whole way. No complaints about that, he didn't seemed to object or care one way or the other. Some pics of day 1 (psychedelic photos courtesy of the my pHoine somehow):

The end was at the LaGrange fairgrounds and was an instant village of corporate team tents, miscellaneous vendor and support tents and the like. Pretty cornfusing layout, we wandered around in a semi-daze for a while before we all met back up at the Sweet Leaf team tent where we were graciously allowed to park our bikes for the night, saving us from the (presumed but not confirmed) mess of official bike parking. Wandering around ensued. Got some tasty morsels of food from a few friendly grillmasters, some delicious beers courtesy of old Emo's alum Vince, who now is the brewmaster at St. Arnold's in Houston (who also had a large team out on the ride).

Eventually our trusty "team car" in the form of Jennifer, Ryan's S.O. came along and scooped us up and off we went to our digs for the evening in the evergreen woods outside Smithville, TX about 20 miles away from LaGrange. Her sister has an incredible little spread out on 7 acres on a dirt road off a dirt road. We couldn't have asked for a nicer spot to relax and recharge. After showering, we drove to Bastrop and had a nice dinner at a little local Italian/Greek joint. Bellies full of pasta, we didn't last long upon our return. I think I was in bed by 9:45 and got to sleep through a night of pretty glorious thunderstorms with just a screen door between myself and the great outdoors. Beautiful music to sleep to. Must have rained a couple of inches overnight!

Buddy, our host and VERY reluctant outdoor dog:

Jason relaxing with his personal digital device:

Mini-cabin and my sleeping digs for the night:

The lovely grounds and our trusty team car:

Ashen, team dog along for the ride from Houston:

More beauty from the front door:

Relaxing, porch style!

DAY 2:

Another 4:45 wakeup. In hindsight, we should have probably been quite a bit earlier, as we rolled back up to the fairgrounds right at 6:35 or so to find WELL OVER 10,000 of the 13 or 14k riders all lined up already being barked to anew by the emcee. There was no team x leaving first deal this day, just letting the line trickle out the gate. The place was a swamp with all the overnight rain and we were running all over creation to try and find our way back to the Sweet Leaf tent. Finally managed to locate our bikes (schlepping through soupy fields in cycling shoes does not rate as one of my favorite activites!). We queued up with the Sweet Leaf folks on our little arterial roadway and waited while they slowly let people out the gate by the few hundred at a time. UGH, wait, take 2 steps forward, wait, take 1 step forward, wait, wait, take 1 step forward, etc. etc. Took about 40 minutes to get out of the joint. We probably rolled out around riders 10,000-ish, an inauspicious start for the second day in a row. Fortunately there were 2 routes right out of the fairgrounds, us taking the hilly challenge dealy, which seemed to be at least a bit less trafficked once we got going. Left into a light rain again and it was QUITE chilly for TX, like 53-ish degrees).

Here are some images of the morning including the ridiculous lineup getting out of that joint:

Riding, riding, riding. After about 25 miles, we hit Buescher State Park. It IMMEDIATELY got really beautiful. Small road, just barely 2 lanes. Towering trees. This part of the route was about 12 miles of pretty decent rolling hills. Maybe 100-200ft. each, probably rode a couple thousand feet of elevation change. I really enjoyed this part. Did most of my climbing out of saddle using my big chainring. It got to be a sort of experiment after a while. I only gave in and went to the little ring twice for about a minute each time. Feels good climbing and you always get the downhill payoff. A bunch of exhilarating 40-ish mile downhills throughout. I was sad when we suddenly got dumped out onto Highway 71 with the rest of the riders. We powered along to lunch and on, keeping a pretty great clip for the remainder of the ride. There were some pretty decent headwinds here and there, but we got a fair share of nice tailwinds too. Lots of false flats that seemed MUCH harder than the actual steep hills of before. After some time, it was just Ryan and I doing a little 2 man "breakaway" all the way in for the final 20-ish miles. We must have passed a few thousand riders in that time averaging around 19mph for the whole end of the ride.

Came into Austin on FM969, nee MLK JR. Blvd. Eventually got routed through a neighborhood, over to Manor Road and on into town on Dean Keeton/26th street. Had a nice surprise when we found my brother and a couple of old friends waiting out on Dean Keeton for us, they gave a big yell and took off on their bikes to meet us on the other side of UT at the finish. We turned into campus and ripped through there on those nice rolling campus roads with almost no one at all around us, having just happened to find a big break in the pack there. It was REALLY fun and brought on a nice burst of energy that carried us all the way back onto MLK through the barricaded last few blocks with thousands of spectators lining the road. Felt like a little faux race finish and actually got me a little verklempt to see all that support. What a big event this thing is!

Then, it was over! We decamped from our bikes on a little right of way a couple blocks past the finish and waited for our friends. St. Arnold's was no longer providing beer, saving what was left for their team. BOOOOO!!! Have some more for sale for cryin' out loud. People who have just ridden 80 miles will often need a beer! The whole second day I felt remarkably good. I was worried about feeling like a wet noodle after the first day where, at times, I was feeling pretty shagged out on the route (around miles 60/75). Not to worry though. No problems from my right knee, even with all the climbing and just felt pretty great overall. The 4 mile ride back to my brother's house did leave me feeling like I had ridden enough for the day, but it wasn't excruciating by any stretch.

The rest of our "team" made it in within about 20 minutes total and the lot of us rode back to my brother's house for a very nice BBQ dinner party that had been put together. Showers for all and a nice beautiful sit around (it got sunny and ALMOST warm for the rest of the afternoon!). Thanks to Eric Hartman who very generously brought over a massive spread of pulled pork and brisket, mac/cheese and beans. Good times!!

quick post

2010-04-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

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Heading off to TX in about 15 minutes (to the airport to go there anyway).

Had a great weekend riding in Madison. Took my googled route out to Mt. Horeb. Didn't end up going all the way there, turning off about 4 miles before it to follow a different route back for the sake of variety. It never got superhill overall, but some nice semi-gentle rollers. I did veer off on a few singular quests when I saw a pretty harsh looking hill. Here's one that had me wheezing on the way up (in the distance there) and having to ride the brakes to keep it at 40mph on the way down! Pretty fun though.

Here is a lovely little creek-y, drainage-y oasis out on Saddleback Road off Hwy 14 and County Road P where I (in the parlance of Phil and Paul) took a "natural break!"

Rode a total of 55 miles on this ride, about 45 on this big loop then puttered around the lovely Shorewood neighborhood in Madison, riding around a loop on this biggish hill about 4 times. Also tacked another 10 on it later that evening riding back to my folks-in-laws' house.

Here's the mapmyride result. Still losing about 20-25% of my miles with this alleged GPS stuff. Oh well, get what you pay for I guess!

Put in another mellow 23 miles with the missus on Sunday. Just regular commuting after that. A lovely weekend all in all. Just my regular commutes this week. Going to try and get in a nice 20 miles with Ryan in TX tomorrow and then it's off to the big ride.

Not bringing a computer, so will probably have to report on all this next Tuesday or Weds. Supposed to be something like 50% chance of rain both days, but rain in the 70s sounds pretty alright to me. Dry wouldn't be awful either though!

Horribly Hilly 65

2010-04-09T16:55:00.000-07:00

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Heading off to Madison today for the weekend. Not a ton of riding this week. Ended up doing something like 150 last week though. Probably rode 60 miles until today, but I went on a mellow 45 miles today with my pal Shea. I have a ride planned tomorrow from Madison to Mt. Horeb that I'm hoping will be some sort of approximation of my MS150 day 2. Supposed to be good and hilly out there. I will report back! Got some good tips from folks at the Serotta forum and just riffed off of those and came up with a route. It goes like this:

Should end up being something like 65-ish miles from the look of it. The title is a riff on the Horribly Hilly Hundreds ride that is apparently a staple of the Madison area. I'd be tempted to try it, but my experience last fall or riding the North Shore Century all alone (boring, not that fun) will probably keep me from doing it unless I make a new cycling buddy right quick!

Tour of the Basque Country stage 5 is almost over in my replay watching. Inspiring hill riding going on now! Txurruka just wiped out, bummer for him. That guy's got moxie!

Do you know?

2010-04-05T17:13:00.000-07:00

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I'm not a terribly thin-skinned person, but I'd like to send these Gram Parsons lyrics out to the 70 or 80 cyclists I tried to give a little friendly nod or wave to on the lakefront path today.

Do You Know How it Feel (to be Lonesome)

Do you know how it feels to be lonesome
When there's just no one left that really cares
Did you ever try to smile at some people
And all they ever seem to do is stare

And you remember how it feels to be cold again
When the happiness of love has gone away
And you never want to go out on the street again
And you only seem to live from day to day

Do you know how it feels to be lonesome
When there's just no one left who really cares
Did you ever try to smile at some people
Yes, and all they ever seem to do is stare
Yes, and all they ever seem to do is stare

It's true, all they ever seem to do is stare. Is it a sign of weakness to give a little human acknowledgement?! Must be discouraged in the Chris Carmichael book or something. Anyway, if you see some old dude trying to give you a little flick of the hand or nod of the head, it may be me, though I just give up after a while.

Rode 38 miles today. More good wind "training" for the MS150, pretty stiff headwind out of the south around the lake today. Nice quick ride back up though.

In other big news, I'm switching to "normal" type size. I realized my "small" type selection seems to be an outlier among the bloggerati.

Big props to Fabian Cancellara for just crushing all comers at the RVF Sunday. Damn!

Cycling TV/internet time is officially on. The Tour of the Basque Country is on Universal Sports about 3 times a day now too. Good inspirado. Stage 1: Alejandro Valverde, get a life. You were not squeezed. Bad call. Must feel kind of lame to stand up on the podium and put the funny hat on when you just whined your way up there.

one more thing...

2010-04-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

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I'm so distinctly behind on the interwebs most of the time that I must have been the last person who cared to find this out, but the iconoclastic Bike Snob NYC, a writer whose verbose marriage of deprecation and self-deprecation along with occasional (and hilarious) references to the CroMags and Agnostic Front make me feel like it's not so bad to be a part of the aging "Gen X" crowd (that is what we were supposed to be, right?), has been unmasked.

I think the big news was broken in the WSJ a couple of days ago, but I actually came across it on Bikefag's blog, which is always a pretty funny read as well, though I'm pretty sure that guy is Gen Y (and not to be trusted). I like how he just links straightaway to the guy's USA Cycling race stats when you click his name. (BTW, nice job Eben, you aren't near as bad as you say you are!).

You like bah-logging?

2010-04-03T15:13:00.000-07:00

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Anyone? Anyone?

2 posts in one day!! Wow.

Just finished a nice 43 mile ride to the bottom of the Botanical Gardens and back. Average pace, 15.1 mph. Wind=yes, very! What a wonderful day it turned out to be.

Starting to feel something just shy of terrified about this MS150 ride on April 17/18. It is a 2-day ride from Houston to Austin, TX. 1st day is from Houston to LaGrange, TX, about 99.6 miles, second day is from LaGrange on in to Austin, 77 miles, if you take the "Bechtel Challenge" route (not to be confused with the "Pfizer Lunch Express" route, all really rolls right off the tongue, eh?). While I'm at it, this is actually the "BP" MS150. Those allegedly earth-loving, actually drill-baby-drilling Brits really know a good cause when they see one! What about the Goldman Sachs sag wagon?! "I've flatted and I don't have a spare tube, bail me out, bail me out!!"

Going to ride this with my old compadre Ryan with whom I rode the Hotter 'N Hell 100 last year. He rode it last year too, but last year was the year that the first day was cancelled for the first time ever (on the rides 25th anniversary), so he felt like he didn't really ride it (and honestly, he's right, even an old man like me can pretty much buck up and ride around 100 miles almost any old time, but can we do it two days in a row? Very different question!!). SO, in the interest of having felt like he did it and wanting to pal around with yours truly, we are making a go of it this year. I'd like to give a special shout out to all my friends and family that were kind enough to help me raise the required funds for the very worthy cause of working on a cure for MS too. Y'all are cool!

Anyway, here's the route for those of you who have some idea of Texas geography:

Should be fun-ish. I'm hoping to find a quite hilly ride next weekend in Madison, WI, to simulate some of day 2. Day 1 is supposed to be typically quite windy, so I have been getting a decent dose of that this week in our fair city. Trying to get used to long periods of time in the drops pursuant to that issue. For my day 2 related problems, I have procured a nice Shimano R700 compact crank to put on my trusty P-Mount down in Austin. Changing equipment one day before a big ride, mmmm, sketchy, yes. BUT, riding a 53/39 on 77 miles of fairly ferocious hills (I am a 40 year old man with a bad right knee after all), perhaps even more sketchy. Only two weeks time will tell.

Otra cosas:

I've been reading the pretty enjoyable "A Significant Other", which chronicles the 2003 Tour de France from the viewpoint of Victor Hugo Peña, one of the USPS and Lance's more heavy hitting domestiques. It's a pretty nice read, with a historic overview of the TDF interspersed with VH's personal recollections and some pretty gripping writing about stage 15, where Lance bites the asphalt really hard after hanging up on some idiots goodie bag on Alpe D'Huez, then gets up, fixes his chain, takes off, racks himself while coming out of his pedals about 30 seconds later and then just goes all Popeye-on-spinach (literally all but the bulging arms and steam) and rides away past everyone to win the stage by a good 40 seconds. Good stuff.

I got the word on this book from the great blog, Cycling Inquisition. There you can find a treasure chest of great writing about cycling in general, but with a strong focus on Columbian cycling history. Check it out! Also, if you enjoy whiling away your winters (or whenever) with cycling related writing, a lot of these books including A Significant Other are just cheap as dirt on the interwebs. I think I got this one for about $.99 plus $4 shipping on ebay or half.com or some such thing. Cycling "literature" is a pretty cheap habit.

Enyoy!

rainy day blogging

2010-04-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

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11am

Well, that's another 2-ish months without even a half-assed post to show for it. Who cares, right?! Now is the time to begin writing about matters cycling again. Fortunately, February's this:

Has given way to some Spring showers. Blissfully 70s and 80s weather for the last three days. Now it's 50s and showers, but I'm not complaining much as water is MUCH better than snow in this blogger's humble opinion.

I'm sitting, waiting for the rain to stop, or at least simmer down a little. It's pretty much pissing down outside my window right now. Had plans to do a small group ride out to some sort of big northern suburbs loop today, might still happen if this stuff will settle down by around 1pm which it is supposed to according to the dudes with the doppler radar.

Meanwhile, let's look back over what there is to recount in the last couple of months.

When I last left you, faithful reader, I was recounting a fun late-ish January trip to my home away from home (and the true home of my heart), Austin, TX. Upon my return, I began to build up my new Surly Long Haul Trucker touring bike in earnest. Here is how it went:

Frame/fork: Surly LHT 60cm (in the rather boring Tan colourway, and made of the rather boilerplate 4130 cromo)
-This plus a nice Cane Creek 100 headset were had for a fantastic price from my pals over at Smart Bike Parts. I'd like to throw in another plug here for these guys. It is the most non-attitude-y bike shop I've ever had the good fortune of having to ride past almost every day. If you're decent company, they might even offer you a beer.
Wheels: Mavic A119 36h rims laced 3-cross (of course) to Shimano Deore XT hubs
-These came from Rocky Mountain Cyclery via ebay (new) and were a great deal at $150 shipped! Not terribly light, but just good strong touring wheels.
Cranks: 175mm Shimano Deore LX mountain bike triple (48/36/26)
-Got this from Blue Sky Cycling, some mail order place with a good price on it. Had advice from some to not get a MTB triple as the gearing would be too low for descending, but as I'm not planning on taking this thing down Alpe D'Huez yet, I think it's going to be just fine. In town, I have yet to go onto the big ring even with the strongest tailwind.
The rest of the buildout was made from a hodgepodge of internet and locally sourced new and used stuff. Brakes (these nice Shimano BR-550 cantilevers that are made to work right with road levers), Shimano cassette (11-32)/chain and a Cateye computer came from Jenson USA, saddle and fenders from Smart Bike Parts, tires and cables from Boulevard Bikes in Logan Square, misc. used stuff included seatpost, derailleurs (Ultegra triple FD, Tiagra long-cage RD, Dura Ace bar-end shifters from a great little craigslist purchase a while back, like $60!). Thus a bike is born!!

I put this together over a few days and I think I rode it to work once or twice before finally getting a nice enough late-winter, snow-partially-melted day to take it on a bit of a longer ride. On said day, I went on a decent little 15 mile ride down to the lake front and around through downtown and back home. Still lots of cruddy ice around the path, rode into stuff I had to get off and walk out of a couple of times, but it felt good to do something more than commute to work. Here we are thawing out in the Millenium Park parking garage entrance across from the Art Institute Modern Wing (winter cycling tip, this is a pretty nice place to defrost. They have a sort of big baseboard heater thingy in there and you are free to chill (no pun intended).

Did a lot of latex glove under regular ski gloves riding and right at the end of the winter, I wondered if it might be good to ride in those sort of heavier, much more reusable dishwashing gloves. Going to try that out next winter, will report back. Another big end of winter deal for me is that, after riding all winter in my regular Specialized "spinning" shoes with plastic bags over my feet inside them (if you will remember my fancy shoe covers came apart at the end of last winter), I was inquiring into buying a pair of the super heavy duty Lake winter cycling boots from Smart Bike Parts, owner Eric incredibly (at least it was incredible to me!) offered to sell me his that he had ridden that year. I guess if you are a bike shop owner you like to keep rotating your personal stock. I will not divulge the very generous terms this deal went down with, but suffice it to say, I feel VERY lucky that I'm the same shoe size as him! Thanks Eric. So, I'm ready to ride all over next winter, but HEY, no hurry or anything! Seriously...

Things are all good with this ride. I did have one unfortunate experience involving the infrastructure of the City of Chicago and a real hole-in-one. I was riding north on California in a rush to get to my Spanish class. At the light at North Ave. I was sitting there and went to change the display on my computer to see the time. You do this by sort of clicking it down on this pivot point that is part of the mount and it's a little kludge-y, i.e. sometimes it doesn't get seated right and won't click. So in my big heavy gloves, I went to try and reseat it on the mount and it went skittering out of my hand and bounced twice across the pavement right in front of a car as the light was turning green. I was fully prepared to throw down and make that car wait a second when it took one more bounce (this is a total of about 6' of bouncing) and just plopped straight into the one rather tiny hole in a giant non-holy manhole. UNBELIEVABLE!! It's in the hole!! At that point, I just said to myself "unbelievable" and rode onward. Here is the computer eating manhole.

Oh well, it wasn't that great of a computer anyway.

Anyway, I just got back this week from a 2 week mega road trip back down to SXSW and all the way around the horn of Louisiana, Georgia, NC all the way to NYC and then home. 4200 miles were put on the odometer. Need to do lots of bike riding to make up for that!!

And bike riding I must do. I am now officially in training for the MS150 coming up in two weeks in Houston. I've got a lot of work to do. Got back in the swing of things this week with a 25 mile ride Tuesday (came home from out of town Monday night), regular commute Wednesday, 50 miles Thursday and regular commute Friday (yesterday). More on this ride and my working up to it later, as I'm about to take off, the rain seems to have stopped.

I will leave you with a pic from the foot of the Chicago Botanical Gardens taken on my morning ride of 2 days ago. Happiness!

bad blogger redux

2010-02-03T21:34:00.000-08:00

100203

I'm not a good blogger. Especially in the winter, which seems counterintuitive. Unless moderate S.A.D. makes one not want to blog. Not a lot of "epic" rides to go on about in the winter either. Anyway...

I finished the Paramount rebuild some time ago. It turned out really, really nice. Took it down to Austin and got some good riding in a couple of weeks ago. Here's a pic in all it's new-ish glory:

I had a whole big ordeal with the wheels. Bought some wheels from a guy on eBay who turned out to be a royal chiseler and sold me some wheels that, upon arrival, turned out to be fairly damaged in ways that all his super detailed pictures just happened not to picture! Quelle surprise! The rear axle was bent. Someone who had no idea how to use a tire lever (Rule 1: Don't use a steel one with alloy rims!) had mangled parts of the front rim and someone without the proper spoke tool had made a big mess of a few of the spoke nipples, and these were some exotic Shimanos with the nipples on the hub and whatnot. I had to have several pointless emails with the guy to find out that he had no interest whatsoever in taking responsibility for this (though he never disputed any of the conditions I described) saying "you can't expect them to be perfect, they are used wheels" and other such pablum. I don't expect perfect, just AS DESCRIBED YOU ASS! Anyway, I had to do a full-court eBay dispute on this guy. Lengthy explanation, photos, even a video on youtube

showing the messed up rotation of the bent axle.

In the end I, of course, prevailed (actually, I was pretty surprised I prevailed, but boy did it feel good! What a schmuck!). I got my money back and just in the nick of time found a terrific set of 09 Mavic Aksiums for sale on CL. Nice local guy from the Spidermonkey racing team selling them for $150, in perfect condition, nice normal spokes/nipples, easy to maintain, very attractive, etc. Things seem to work out most of the time. I got them the afternoon before departure, went home and built the bike until about 10 at night, finished, took it apart and put it in a box. It went down on the flight with me uneventfully.

Didn't get to ride the first full day as it was raining like the flood for the entire day. Halfway through Saturday morning though, it cleared up and I took off. Some weird noises eventually led me to discover that I was light a shim for the rear cassette, it was jangling around. Fortunately it was rideable and I rode downtown to Mellow Johnny's where a nice fellow fixed me right up for $7 while I had a coffee. After that, fuggedabahdit! I was tearing up the place. I missed this bike!!! Ended up riding around with the missus and mi hermano for another 17 or so miles that day. S on her newly reminted Trek 500.

Looking good, right?! Ready for some hilly city riding with that triple on the front.

Went out with my pal Jason and some of his buddies for an east of Austin trek into the sticks. We headed out from south Austin and went out through Buda and Webberville and such. Ended up doing 42 miles as our navigator broke a spoke on his posh Ksyrium SL wheels. Made me glad to have normal old 32 spoke 3-cross wheels. That thing went all crazy when one spoke broke, rear braking was out of the question. Fun ride and great company anyway. We were buzzed by a humorless mob of Cat 1 and 2 cyclists at one point maybe 50 deep. As long as you guys aren't having any fun out there! I'm watching you! Otherwise, just very occasional cars and a couple of dogs having a go at us. Good times, fantastic weather (a little chilly actually, but I'm definitely not complaining!).

Since my return, I have completed the morphing of the Surly Pacer into someone else's future bike. Going through the process of estrangement with my once trusty steed. Shorn of it's preferred grupo, it's sort of alien and offputting through no fault of it's own. We had many good miles together, but it's time to move on. Still my daily ride for maybe another week though. Still pretty ripping too. I must have hit 24 mph on the way home up Kedzie this eve.

My new Long Haul Trucker frame is coming into my hands tomorrow. The nice folks over at Smart Bike Parts are even giving it a free frame saver treatment for me. Thanks guys! I think it will take me about a week to get this built up. Will be posting!

winter building

2010-01-03T21:09:00.000-08:00

100103

A good new year to you, loyal and inscrutable reader.

Bikes are on the move again. I am in a mad scramble to sort out a new bike situation for Austin, as we are headed there in about 10 days. My wife's bike that is down there has a number of issues.

1) It's really a bit too small
2) The rear wheel is biting the dust in a big way (have had numerous spokes replaced numerous times now and new ones just keep breaking) every couple of days of riding
3) It's a friction shifting 12 speed in a town where it's not a terrible idea to have a triple chainring.

SO, I resolved after our last trip all the way back in early Sept. to sort out some modern-ish parts and to convert the Trek 500 that has of late been mothballed here in Chicago in favor of the (admittedly much nicer) Look 194 that she's been riding for the last year.

Here's a shot of the Trek in it's hodge-podge-ish previous state. It has pretty ancien brakes, original Suntour 12 speed stuff, some nice 36-spoke Deep Vs but built on pretty "vintage" Malliard 500 hubs. Just kind of a grab bag of stuff.

and here it is in it's nearly complete new "Stealth bomber" incarnation. I think it's looking rather nice (iPhone pic notwithstanding)!

It is now sporting a Shimano Sora 8-speed triple setup with a Sugino XD300 crankset all culled from some good bargain hunting on CL and eBay. All that is rolling on a Mavic Cosmic wheelset with decals removed and Panaracer Messenger tires from the previous setup. A much more flattering setup for a pretty quality frame. I'm just waiting on some interrupter levers to cable up the brakes and she'll be all set.

As for myself, having sold my Felt 85 back in the late summer to finance other obsessions of the moment, I am currently bikeless in Austin. My brother likes this state of affairs just fine as he has moved into a considerably less-cavernous domicile since my last trip, but I'm going to have to try and stuff a bike in the guest room as I can't be bikeless!

This bike will be the trusty old Paramount. I picked it up from UV Metal Arts today and it really just looks incredible. I had to forgo decals as they supposedly would not deal with powdercoating temps well and would yellow, but after seeing it in it's naked monochrome glory, I'm not missing the decals anyway. I took it straight over to Boulevard Bikes and got a new headset put in as the Shimano 600 that was on there showed some pitting and you could feel it too. They had a nice Tange headset there for me and all seemed to enjoy the new paint job, which Kevin described as "root beer." I like that. It's a dark graphite-ish color with an undercoating of copper flakes, so it's got a very subtle orange-ish tint in the sunlight, kind of looks like a coffee-ish/stout-ish tone to my somewhat colorblind self.

Here are some pics of it.

Here it is swaddled in the basement.

I am lacking wheels (on the way) and an adapter clamp for my front derailleur (scavenged for the Trek, hopefully will pick one up tomorrow) and that's about all that's stopping me. Hopefully I'll have this thing built by the end of the week. Not sure yet about transportation logistics. It'd be cheapest to fly both of these down, but I may ship the Trek. Better figure it out pretty soon!

Perhaps you are wondering where all the other parts for the Paramount are coming from? (Probably not, but I'm going to tell you anyway as you must be a glutton for punishment getting this far anyway.) Well, they are being mostly reclaimed from the Surly Pacer that has been my trusty steed for the last year plus. I have also been squirreling away enough parts to convert this over to a decent setup and am going to pass this along to a friend and will shortly (cash allowing) fill this hole with a bonafide touring bike setup. I'm thinking Long Haul Trucker. More on that soon. Here is the almost totally converted Pacer. I rode it in the blistering cold yesterday and it performed well save for the vintage brakes on it. Riding on the hoods especially and really just generally (I had been squeezing DuraAce 7700s for the last year on it), the single pivot older Shimano brakes I had on there just didn't seem to be doing the trick. So, once I source some reasonable brakes and wrap the bars for real, this thing will be taking it's leave. Thanks a bunch Surly Pacer, that was an enjoyable couple thousand miles.

Finally, all the old parts off of the Trek 500 especially the pretty nice wheelset seemed like a shame to not put to use and since I'm kind of blowing through a bit of money with all this, I realized it'd be a splendid pairing with the reasonably decent old Raleigh Marathon frame/fork I've had kicking around in the garage for about the last 2-ish years. I kind of figured it'd never ride again, but that was mostly because it just didn't seem worth the trouble to sort out a decent setup for it. Turns out it should make a pretty decent bike for someone and will at least put a modest dent in the parts budget for all this other nonsense above.

Any pretty tall dudes (5'11" to 6'3") looking for a hardy city bike for a pretty reasonable price, drop me a line!

Here is my impromptu winter shop. I didn't cannibalize the piano this year, just doing it in a more temporary fashion. One old rug and a Rhodes 73 to lean things against and wrenching can happen. This weekend in the shop was sponsored by the delicious bottle of Half-Acre Daisy Cutter and a bunch of episodes of Radiolab.

I leave you now with this great sizing article from Peter White Cycles. I think it puts the lie to some of the voodoo sizing information that is being purveyed all over creation. Bikes are pretty simple and they are one case where I think an inquisitive mind and a bit of common sense and trial and error is the best prescription for a quality bike fit.

Stay warm!

Snowy riding

2009-12-23T14:36:00.000-08:00

091213

Just got home from a 30 minute, fairly nerve-wracking ride home. Let's call it tension in slow-motion. I left work in a sort of middling sleet/snowstorm with about 1.5 to 2" of fresh mess on the road. It was out ahead of the plows, mostly just an already driven-on mix of packed snow and slush here and there.

Cruising along at an average of about 9 mph, I was sort of shimmying around in the car tire tracks for several blocks until I finally got to some road with a fairly undriven strip along the side. This stuff is much better to ride in as it kind of holds you in place better than sliding around in some hard packed stuff that the cars have had their way with.

It's fairly shocking (well, I guess it's really not), just how little cars seem to notice or care that you are making your way in a pretty precarious fashion on two wheels right next to them. I had a sort of vague visualization of slowly sliding over and getting my leg run over or my head crushed by a tunnel-visioned driver at about 18mph. The slow horror! I guess it helped me keep focused though.

I am just a little bit proud to say that I did not tip over at all in my 4.2 mile commute and kept a cool head at all times. It was ALMOST fun at times, those times being when there weren't any cars around (few and far between).

Anyway, kudos are due to a couple of things:
-Schwalbe Marathon tires. Kept a pretty good grip in this "wintry mix" from hell.
-Fenders. Let's hear it for "wheelbrows!" I am a big proponent.

Here are some pics from the end of the ride beginning with a shot of the conditions from my front porch. Feast your eyes on this mess my southern friends!

Days are getting longer again anyway. Only 3 weeks until Austin!

And just for good measure, here is my annual winter message once again (actually one more kudo here to the intrepid and unknown snow sculptor who crafted this masterpiece).

Paramount refurb begins

2009-12-19T20:39:00.000-08:00

091219

Not much going on these days in a bikely way as you can probably tell from the extremely infrequent posts. I graduated from physical therapy this week. My right arm is at least about as strong as my left. However, the physical therapy I did made me realize that I have some pretty weak muscle groups altogether in my upper body. I'm going to try and keep up the good work to sort that out. I got two pages of exercises to take away. Perhaps if I bulk up a bit it will hide the GIANT bone sticking up out of my shoulder a little bit.

About a week and a half ago I did go ahead and take my long dormant Paramount frame in to have it stripped and powder coated. I had every intention of sending it along to Waterford Precision Cycles for the full factory refurb. However, once I started looking at it critically, I realized it would be a VERY expensive prospect to make it something like "as good as new." I was discussing this with my friend Lee and he told me he was about to take a load of frames over to UV Metal Arts
. After seeing the bike-centric focus that Yuval there seems to have and checking my bank balance, I decided that keeping it local would probably be a lot better move overall.

I dropped it off and picked out a color that looked (to my semi-colorblind self) like the sort of gray/graphite color used on the original Paramounts. I also called Waterford and found out that their decal sets would not do well at the curing temps of powder coating clear coat process, so it's going to be a naked Paramount. I reckon that should keep me in a bit more of a stealth mode in terms of the ever-present threat of thievery. Anyway, I'm hoping to get it back in the next few days and to get it set up to take with me down to Austin in a couple of weeks.

Here are some pics from dropping it off last week:

This is the color I'm going for. (Nice picture, I know, I know!....)

...bowie

2009-11-15T16:05:00.001-08:00

091115

Just glancing at my last post made me wonder whether it was just a thought about how to introduce a freak bike that looked pretty funny or whether I had this:

Still ringing around in my head. I must admit to having watched it quite a few times. "That's pretty freaky Bowie."

Here's another more understated "freak" bike. It's freakishly small, but has a full adult sized seat. My wife pointed it out to me out on Milwaukee Ave. Sadly, we did not get to see this rider mount his or her steed, it'll have to be left to the imagination what sort of rider this bike takes.

In about the only other news to report, the Bridgestone 400 I purchased and was hoping to build up for a friend arrived in a pretty oddly shaped box...

Upon opening, I was greeted by what looked like a great packing job. Actually, it did not look very good at all now that I think about it.

Something doesn't look right here.

That is one narrow rear dropout spacing. Maybe it was for some older exotic track bike hubs, a one off for Bridgestone?

Nope, actually it looks like this bike was crushed to death. At first I thought the guy I bought it from was just an unconscionable dolt, but then some things started to seem weird. First off, he shipped it from some sort of fancy bike outfitter place, so it seemed weird that such a chap would put a bike frame in a giant empty box with some pipe insulation on it. Then I began noticing that the label looked kind of like it had been taped on more than once. Finally I took a look at the dimensions on the label and it became clear that this box was just a UPS warehouse special. I guess someone must have dropped a pallet full on this thing and just pulled the bike out of the annihilated bike box it was in and stuck it in this cavernous thing, taped the label on and off it went with nary a mention. I could've dug something like "Hi, this is UPS, we destroyed your shipment but thought you might still like to receive it. Enjoy!"

Between this and my f-ed up front wheel from August, I'm not feeling much love for brown these days. What can brown do for you? I'll tell you what it can do for me, don't destroy my shit! Thanks.

Going to the orthopedic surgeon again tomorrow morning. We'll see what the verdict is, if anything. I have been doing pretty well, but have only ridden a bike around the block a few times thus far. I've had a few unfortunate bouts with overdoing it after feeling good for a few days, so I'm trying to not continue being an idiot. Might try a ride this week. Dying for it.

that's pretty freaky...

2009-10-29T07:29:00.000-07:00

091029

Freakbike of the month:

What the?! That is some freaky geometry. Sadly, I did not see this being ridden. It's so tiny I could just stand over it, but perhaps it's a tall freak bike to a 4'8" person?

Not much else to report. My arm is mending pretty reasonably it seems. I'm still having a hard time getting used to the shockingly big collarbone end popping up out of my right shoulder, but I guess that's the new me.

I have not tried to get on a bike yet. The guy said 4 to 6 weeks, but I have improved a lot and it's tempting to just go try and putt around the neighborhood. I probably shouldn't push it though, I've been pushing it enough just doing regular household stuff I think. It's coming along though.

I've been finding a few too-good-too-pass-up deals on some bike bits lately. I have a back burner build to do for a friend, so perhaps these things will come in handy:

Gorgeous 57cm Bridgestone 400 frame/fork with BB and chain: $105 shipped to me
Shimano Tiagra derailleurs and DA bar end shifters: $65

My next thing to do is to start trying to get my Paramount refurbished though, so I'm hoping to build something I can make a little extra scratch from for the fund to do this.

I'm missing some pretty good riding weather these days. It's real hard to drive almost everywhere, I am just getting used to not feeling like a bike when I pull up behind a long line of cars in stopped traffic. Oh yeah, I don't get to go by on the side, I'm part of the problem now! Boo Hoo!!

injured reserve

2009-10-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

091019

Dateline: Yankee Springs, MI

I do believe I mentioned a few posts back that I was building up my very first mountain bike meant for mountain biking (I spent many a sad year riding a mountain bike in the city, but we won't dwell on that here). Anyway, it all came off pretty well, I found 3 great to good deals on nice used 29er parts/frame and added a new rear derailleur and seatpost and this was birthed:

I have had it put together for a few weeks now. I had to learn about hydraulic disc brake bleeding and do that, I had a near miss with a pretty cut down steerer on a very attractively priced used White Brothers fork (it worked with a little selective stem selection!), but all was well in the end (of part 1 at least). I rode it about 5 or 6 miles in town Saturday to a friend's house to see how it was and did some critical seat adjustment from that and I was ready to go hit the trails on Sunday.

My friend Shea and myself headed over to Yankee Springs, MI. It's a pretty good haul from Chicago, but I would say (even in light of subsequent events) well worth the drive. It's a 13 mile loop of intermediate difficulty, and October is a pretty great time to go see this place. I actually appreciated fall for once! Hooray.

Checking the route:

We're underway:

Nice colors:

We were stopping at semi-regular intervals to appreciate the gorgeous scenery (and also to rest!). The new bike was performing pretty terrifically, though I have to see if I can find some more purpose-made dropout spacers for the rear wheel (the On One frame is a combo single-speed/geared design and one suggestion for holding the rear wheel in the right spot I read and used was to put a pair of chainring bolts as spacers in the dropouts, but it seems like a rather crude method and I found the wheel was scooching slightly under heavy torque). Otherwise, the bike was a dream and was much easier and more enjoyable to ride than the Gary Fisher rental I had used a couple months before at Kettle Moraine, WI.

Here is a pretty funny digression for anyone who has spent any time working on audio equipment wiring. Shea had a fraying rear derailleur cable on his hands, so he did what any self-respecting audio geek would do, he crimped an EDAC pin
on it!

Ingenuity:

The right way to ride:

Everything was going along swimmingly until I had to get my high-school BMX style foolishness on and try to bypass the easy root/stair steps down this one particular downhill berm thingy and go for the high side bowl ride type line. What didn't seem like it would play such a major role was the cut-off tree root sticking out along my intended path. This very quickly grabbed a hold of my front wheel and I went ass over tea kettle to the (thankfully) soft ground below (and I mean a few good feet below). Fortunately everything came down on my right shoulder (does that come off as facetious?). I laid on the ground just trying to get my half-breath knocked out of me self back into speaking shape as Shea sensibly made his way down to right behind me and asked "are you alright?" I said "I don't think so." At first I thought I may have broken or dislocated my shoulder/arm, but I realized I could flop it around fairly convincingly, so I decided to get up and see what was going on. It had a sort of electric/in shock feeling going on and I could move it pretty good, but then I hit a few spots where it was apparent that something was no longer attached correctly. Just as I was noticing that my (always very pointy and bony) end of my clavicle was sticking up quite a bit further than I was used to, a trio of guys we had been taking turns passing and being passed by rolled up. They kindly stopped to see what was going on with us and one of them announced himself as a Physical Therapist and asked if he could take a look, I gratefully obliged him and he felt me up in a very doctorly way. It only took about 15 seconds for him to tell me that I had experienced an AC joint separation and basically gave what turned out to be a pretty exacting diagnosis of my deal and what it's aftermath would likely be. Didn't catch your name, but thanks friendly Michigan mountain biking PT! You rule! These guys also knew the trail well so they were able to tell us that we were only about 100 yards from a medical emergency bypass spot to a service road. We proceeded to walk along (me in a pretty grimacing fashion) and make a plan for Shea to take off and go down the road to get my car and meet me back at the exit of the service road. I walked along the 1.25 miles, did a little gentle riding on the hard packed parts (this was a pretty comical sight seeing me try to get rolling without being able to put my right arm on the bars at all) and made it out in about 15 minutes or so.

Aftermath of the wrong way to ride (and that thing that looks like a little mountain on my right shoulder IS the end of my collarbone):

We (and by we I mean Shea) picked up some ice and ziplocs and I began icing for the 3 hour ride back to Chicago. Fortunately it was filled with good chatting and I was able to keep my mind off of the situation pretty easily. I ended up heading over the the emergency room by about 8pm with the wife and they basically just did x-rays (diagnosis confirmed), put me in a sling and gave me a referral to an orthopedic surgeon. I went over there this morning and here's what the deal is with a shoulder separation:

-I was a 3 on a scale of 6, so about middling severity
-He did not see any reason to operate unless I couldn't live with my poky collarbone
-4 to 6 weeks should see me back in action, provided I do the right stretches, etc
-I should be good as new more or less

Lesson learned:

-When you're 40, it's okay to take the easy line down the trail

Sadly, it'll probably be next year before I can try again, but c'est la vie. I feel like that was a pretty cheaply bought lesson and I am going to just try and watch it a little bit.

Back to normal bike geekery, here is what the build ended up being for my pretty awesome new (to me) 29er:
-On One Inbred frame
-White Brothers suspension fork
-Bontrager Race disc wheels
-Avid Juicy 3 brakes
-Truvativ single speed crankset (33)
-Sram stuff (9-speed cassette, RD, shifter)
-Conti Mountain King tires
-Bontrager bars
-Race Face seatpost and Deus headset
-Easton EA50 stem

It's a nice bike!! I was able to cobble this all together for just a shade over $700. A new build I think would have been something more like $1600, so this was the only way I was going to pull off a decent bike at this juncture. Seems like it'll be a long time before I need to tinker with this formula as A) I'm getting a grip on my purchasing insanity in general and B) I'm just not as obsessed with the aesthetics of mountain bikes. I think this is a good looking bike, but it's no Serotta Legend or anything in the looks dept.

Anyway, I'm pretty gimped out now, regular daily activities are taking 30 to 50% more time, but I'm keeping a good attitude and am very thankful I did not screw myself up much more badly. Onward! Let the healing begin.

you can do it!

2009-10-10T12:28:00.000-07:00

091010

Here is a pretty interesting article from Scientific American (discovered via Bike Pittsburgh) regarding the rather large national gender gap in bike commuting. The gist of it is that women are A) more risk-averse than men and B) still tend to do more of the practical, errand-running trips in a family and the conclusion drawn is that this large difference (which incidentally in not the case in most of Europe at all) tells us that existing bike infrastructure in most of the country is somewhat unsafe and also not conducive to practical trips.

In Chicago (and many, many other cities to be fair) I would say this is all on full display. While the city has done a pretty nice job of doing all the easy and cheap stuff, i.e. painting a bunch of lines down the sides of a lot of streets and putting up cute little junior street signs with the mileage and direction to local destinations, it's the more expensive and politically difficult things that will help to close this gap and increase cycling as a real way to get things done. Where are the "safe" places to ride a bike? The lakefront (though safety is in question for this route as it is, on most decent days, a veritable Frogger game of trying not to crash into texting fixie riders passing on the left or headphone wearing rollerbladers, legs akimbo all over the route) and the North Branch and North Shore paths. Not exactly the most practical routes for your daily needs.

Anecdotally, I see a lot of women riding down Milwaukee, etc. but it ain't the safest route in the world, and I'm a pretty reckless rider to be making that statement. It's high time for some separated bike lanes, and paint just ain't enough. In NYC where there is a nice 3 to 4 foot paint "barrier" cops and delivery vehicles are still parked all over the bike lanes along with UPS dudes rolling dollies full of stuff the wrong way down them, etc. Separate bike lanes are what will move cycling from a popular fringe activity to a real alternative to sitting in traffic fuming. One of the more promising things that I am hearing more and more about is the idea of making the street laid out this way:
sidewalk-bike lane-car parking-roadway-car parking-bike lane-sidewalk

This can mostly be done with new lines and has the added benefit of making the Chicago human right of passing recklessly on the right no longer an option. This place could use some serious traffic calming anyway and the possibility of doors opening to cars rather than bikes should definitely move things in that direction.

In the hopeful category, I'm in Clarksville, AR for a friend's wedding and right outside the Hampton Inn off the I-40 feeder road, there is a lonely little yellow "Share the Road" sign with the ubiquitous bicycle silhouette. These have been popping up in the darnedest places too. If this picture were any good at all, you'd be able to see what I'm talking about:

north shore century

2009-09-13T20:37:00.000-07:00

090913

My first attempt at a 100 miles solo ride began in a scatterbrained fashion. I left the house without my helmet, gloves or glasses at 6:10 am, I got my key out of my seat bag turned around and got those. So I'm off at 6:10 am for Evanston, headed up Kedzie to the North Shore Trail. The streets of Chicago are a beautiful thing at the crack of dawn. If this pic was at all in focus, you'd be able to tell what I was talking about, but here is a delightfully empty Kedzie Ave:

Got to the registration at 6:45, picked up my packet and hit the route. This was a start-whenever-you-like ride, so there were just a smattering of people (total riders was not more than 1600 for all distances, so it was pretty mellow altogether).

After riding for a few miles, one nice fellow rider (thanks buddy!) finally let me know my seat bag was open. Turns out that after I got my key back out to get in the house and get my helmet, etc. I had left it open. Nice move dude. The only thing that made this not a total disaster was that I did not put my little ziploc with ID, credit card, cash and house key back in the bag after I got it out to get in the house. It went in my jersey after. Now, I can put a lot of stuff in this bag, it's fairly large (and has a tendency to swing when I ride, my friend Ryan is reminded of these when he sees it swinging)

At any rate, I just ended up losing half of my "food" stash (quotation marks are meant to indicate doubt at the proposition of calling things like GU and Clif Shotblocks food, but you get the idea. Fortunately my multi-tool, tubes and cartridges were all still in there. I was annoyed nonetheless.

It was quite a brisk morning out there. low-ish 60s and super duper moist and overcast. By moist, I mean I had dew all over me like I had been sitting in someone's yard overnight. It was a good 2-ish hours before the sun began to make a meaningful appearance. I got in a little 3 person line early, that turned into 4 and we were motoring along at a pretty good clip until the delightful roads of the "North Shore" intervened. For some rich "villages" and suburbs, the greater north-of-Chicago area has some of the most bootleg roads in this part of the state. I mean, REALLY, many of them make Chicago's average road look pretty nice, and that is not an easy feat. I had already hit a couple of large bumps that almost caused my seat tube mounted bottle cage to spit out it's large, rather heavy bottle of gatorade, but had managed to catch it and put it back. Going around a corner up in Glenview or somewhere at about 18 mph, it finally popped out again and did a neat trick of flipping over into my rear wheel, popping open and disgorging it's contents all over my wheel. I stopped, bent my bottle cage into a tighter grip, put the empty back in, realized that whole mess had also knocked my chain off, put that back and began to try and claw back to my little group, but the moment had passed. I ended up passing a couple of them later no longer working together. Ah well. We went for a while on this nice path that looked to me to be brand spankin' new. The Skokie Valley bike path (?)

Check out the fresh sod and freshly tarmac with newly painted lines. Nice!!

When the sun finally came out about an hour later, I realized I had also forgotten to put on any sunscreen. I hereby resolve to make a list for future rides.
1) Zip up your seat bag, you dumb****!
2) Bring your helmet, etc.
3) Put on sunscreen
4) Make sure you have tight bottle cages.

I'm sure I'll think of some more things once they too go wrong.

At the first rest stop around 30 miles, I found that there were ample power bars, shot blocks, etc. and a nice gentleman volunteer went to his car and got some ancient 15spf sunscreen for me too. I left there feeling much better. Jumped into a line with a couple of guys that just came up around me and rode the next 25 miles with them. This was at a burning pace (for me at least), averaging about 23/24 mph. It definitely helped my average, but it was killing me after that much time. They stopped for a moment, I carried on and they passed me shortly after never to be seen again. This was around the time we got to the lake shore at Kenosha. It was a pretty scene up there.

I slowed my roll considerably after the blistering speed of the previous stretch as things also seemed to begin to be much more slightly uphill and headwindy than before. Puttered along around an average of 16 for a while though after another rest stop I had a bit more of a second wind and got moving again okay.

What else can I tell you? Crappy roads, a few nice ones (mostly in actual nice neighborhoods, I think that's the other side of NIMBY, nice roads IMBY!). Went through a bunch of places I kind of recognized, Glencoe, Fort Sheridan, finally to Wilmette and back down into Evanston. I pulled back into the registration zone at 105.5 miles for the ride, done in 6 hours, 15 minutes.

More ride stats:
Ride time (excluding stops): 5 hours 48 minutes
Max speed: 27.3 mph
Average speed (excluding stops): 18.1 mph
Average speed (including stops): 16.9 mph
Fun quotient: 2.5 of 5 (would have been a lot more fun to have a buddy out with me, roads were killing my lower back)
Total mileage including my ride to and from Evanston: 127!

A personal best time-wise anyway. I think this may wrap it up for the road riding "season" such as it was. Methinks I'll not repeat this bone-jarring event again. The roads at the Coal City Century were like butter overall compared to this, and that's including gravel sections and all. Pay for some roads North Shore!!!

I'm going to be off the bike for about a week and a half starting this Thursday as I leave town to make a new album in Kansas and play a couple of shows with Kid Congo Powers. Probably ready for a little extended recovery time anyway.

In other cycling news:

WAY TO GO VALVERDE! He looked to be cracking on the final climb of the Vuelta's stage 14 today, but then just found the extra gumption to actually extend his lead with no help from teammates. Way to suffer dude, my hat is off to you.

the week ahead...

2009-09-07T21:36:00.000-07:00

090907

Going to ride the North Shore Century solo this coming Sunday. That'll be another first. I guess it should end up at a solid 200km as I'm going to ride up to Evanston and back too. Does this qualify as epic?! Probably not... Personally epic?

I reckon I need more riding buddies around here. I only have one who will tackle such rides with me and he's going to be out of town. The next closest one is in Houston, TX (Doh!). Anyhoo, I'm considering trying to make my own gels as per the cycling tips blog. Can homecooking save me from eating soylent green? We shall see. I am sort of addicted to these Honey Stinger natural energy gummies, but I bought a gross of them a while back, so I'm still "holding."

I have been pretty beat up over the last week since the HHH ride. My knee was in pretty sketchy shape after, and then Friday I came down with some pretty harsh lower back pulled muscle action. Was walking like a crippled old man Friday night, Saturday day, feeling a bit better Sunday and finally felt pretty human again today. Did my first two days in a row off the bike in quite some time (since May?). Got back on the iron horse today for a 30 mile ride around with my lady and JBI today, but I better put in another good solid 50 before Sunday I would think.

Got to go see a man about (hopefully) saving my deformed front wheel (see last post) tomorrow. It's not turning out to be easy to find a couple year old Mavic Ksyrium front wheel in black thus far, so I'm going to go to a straight up posh shop tomorrow and see what sort of tricks they may have up their sleeves for getting a pretty severe hop out of a low spoke count wheel.

I'm in the midst of building up a 29er now. I would say "this just in" or some such, but I've been putting this mess together for some weeks now and just not sharing about it. I found a guy on a roadie forum selling a very well-kept On One Inbred frame with a smattering of parts still attached for the low, low price of $150 plus shipping and it just tripped my mental "buy order" to put one of these together. Another guy with some Bontrager disc wheels, another with a White Bros. fork (so cut down it just BARELY fits, but thanks to a really short headtube, I think it fits nonetheless. Who needs to cut their fork down that low?!? Just use a few spacers and flip the stem for the love of God!), and I'm pretty much in biz. I'm waiting on a rear derailleur now, but I think it'll be here in a few days. Here are some pics of the beginnings of a (hopefully) fun offroad bike slash crappiest part of unplowed-streets-winter bike (I can put my Nokian ice tires on this thing in a few months. A few short months....... (sigh)

This:

plus this:

equals this!

I'm beginning to learn some ins and outs of hydraulic disc brakes which is kind of making me shudder with recognition of my car tinkering past. I don't miss prying back disc pads, brake fluid, etc. but I guess once I get all this crap together I can just enjoy some quality braking.

There is an embarrassment of bike racing on the interwebs right now. The Vuelta is in full swing, dudes started coming unhinged in the mountains just today. Also, the considerably less dramatic first stage of the Tour of Missouri happened today as well. Mark Cavendish is the 90s Chicago Bulls of cycling, not a terribly exciting afternoon of watching to see who's going to win a flat stage that he is riding in. Great sprinter, but makes for a pretty boring finish to some often boring (flat stages) overall days. Chalk up another vote for losing the radios (Thanks team Motorola!).

Finally, from the same blog as above, I had to repost this (Thanks Rebecca!):

(I want it to happen to me!)

hotter 'n hell 100

2009-09-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

090901

Hotter 'n Hell 100 special report!

First off, I'll just spare the suspense and say IT WASN'T HOTTER 'N HELL! I mean, none of us really have any way of knowing how hot it may be in hell, but I'm thinking mid-80s is a little on the low side for the fiery home of eternal damnation.

Anyway, here's what happened:

After the Coal City Century ride of the previous Sunday, I cleaned and packed up the Look and shipped it off to Austin on Monday.

My 'ol right knee was a bit on the aching and tender side after that ride. This knee used to give me pretty regular mild-ish problems, I played soccer with a compression sleeve on it for years, but it has been behaving rather well for quite some time. So, though I was disappointed, it wasn't a big surprise.

At any rate, I figured I'd better keep to something resembling training during the week. The Tuesday after, I met up with my friend Joe who was in town for the day with his bike and did a nice mellow 30-ish miles with him from River North to Hyde Park and back before going to work. It actually made my knee feel a bit better. Took the day off on Wednesday, which was our travel day to Austin. Wednesday night I reassembled my bike at my brother's house and went to bed. The missus and I had Thursday to go and have some fun, so we rolled out on our bikes around midday to do some shopping/eating, etc. As I rolled my bike across the floor towards the door, I noticed to my dismay that my front wheel was pretty terribly out of true. I just sighed, loosened the brake and headed to The Peddler bike shop down the street to see what the situation was. In a nutshell, the situation was that UPS screwed up my wheel, which is not a cheap wheel (Mavic Ksyrium Elite, black even). Tom at The Peddler took a crack at it and basically got it back in true vertically (forgive any improper terminology here), but radially, it had a pretty significant hop in it that he could not do anything about. Kind of a bummer, made even more so by the fact that there wasn't really visible damage. They must have just plopped something heavy down on my flexible bike box and done a nice little job on that poor wheel. Being the bargain hunter that I am, I paid for that whole pristine wheel set, the price of replacing the front one, so after a bit of poking around on the internet, I realized I was going to have to just see how it went and worry about it later. After riding about 20 miles on it that day, it did seem like it would get me through the ride on Saturday, so I decided to stop worrying about it.

Myself and my friends R and J packed up a rented minivan from Austin Friday afternoon and got on the road around 4pm, about an hour later than we were hoping. Registration as well as the spaghetti dinner we had prepaid for ended at 9pm and it was about 5 hours drive to Wichita Falls, so it was going to be tight. We stopped at Czech Stop in West, TX and picked up some kolaches for easy fueling in the morning. We ended up in a big rush as we headed into Wichita Falls. It was around 8:45 when I took an exit that said "Downtown" which turned out to be poorly signed or poorly interpreted by me. Either way, after a 5 minute trip in the wrong direction, I punched the name of the local coliseum that was the epicenter of activities into my phone and got going back in the right direction. We figured we were screwed, but that we'd go ahead and give it a shot as one of us was not pre-registered and the other two of us needed to pick up packets anyway and doing this at 5am or so didn't sound ideal.

I pulled up to a parking spot at the Kay Yeager Coliseum that was hilariously great. In Chicago, I wouldn't have been able to get within a 1/4 mile of the door of a place like this, but here I pulled up into a space right on the circular drive about 30 yards from the entrance. We raced in and found that things were still humming along nicely, so we were able to register, pick up packets, and even make it into the spaghetti dinner at the coliseum. This place had an active ice rink inside and we got to feast on a styrofoam plate full of overcooked spaghetti and iceberg lettuce salad in an almost empty 55-ish degree cavern. Yum! Still seemed like it'd beat driving around looking for food at 9-ish pm.

After the dinner, we headed over to our local accomodations. The organizers put together those in need of lodging with local folks who are willing to host for a modest fee. We found ourselves about three blocks from the ride start in front of an old garage turned into a lofty sort of hangout space with about 5 other riders. Our hosts for the evening were Linda and Keith. The place was comfortably appointed with a ping-pong table, Wii, cold water and ice, air mattresses and other bedding. Showers were some PVC piping al fresco jobs set up out in the driveway area. They were actually pretty nice. Also, we had the pleasure of getting some puppy kisses from our mascoté for the night, Xena!

Sleep was crappy (is it always before a big ride?). Every little sound woke me up. Another thing that woke me up was when my lovely wife forgot I'd already be well asleep and called at 1:20 in the morning, sending me into hyperventilation practically. If anyone knows how to make an iPhone only make the alarm sound, please comment below! I think I managed a poor 4 hours altogether. The upside of which is that it tends to be a relief to finally get up and get on with it!

Ate some kolaches, showered, stretched, dressed and we were rolling out to the start by about 6:50am. Here is the scene:

After a really tinny rendition of the Star Spangled Banner (through some little high-school type PA horns), there are a very well-executed Air Force flyover of some F18s or something in the "missing man" formation, which I'm told was for Kennedy (way to go TX if so!). They drop a little sonic boom right over the top of us and we were off. Well, by off I mean, we began to spend the next 10 minutes watching the 5 to 6 thousand people in front of us begin. If I ever do this ride again, I'm definitely cramming up the very, very, very front. When we finally began moving, it was this curious little scooching situation, half of folks were clipped in with one foot, sort of skateboarding along with the other, and the smarter ones (I eventually woke up and got on board with this group) just got off and walked their bikes. After a few hundred yards of this, we finally were able to go fast enough to sit on our bikes, just barely though. Judging by the bib numbers we saw, there we close to or better than 14,000 riders at the start of this. I believe many of them were 20, 50 or 70 milers, but thousands and thousands were certainly going the distance. We rode along in a claustrophobic fashion after finally reaching speeds of 15-ish mph. There were a steady stream of fast traffic on the left and people inexplicably dropping bottles about every 50 yards or so. Lots of shouted warnings and such, a few single person wrecks and flats starting within the first mile. Whose bike is in such crap shape before a ride like this?! I guess lots of them.

In short, we ended up skipping the first 3 rest stops and not stopping until mile 40 so that we could pass up about maybe 3000 or so riders and get into a more sane grouping on the road. During that stretch, we began to see a couple of what I imagine were some coronary incidents with ambulances screaming up the road from the other direction, etc. One funny incidental scene at one of these sorts of episodes found several hundred riders get off and walk for a hundred feet or so and being out in the middle of pretty quiet nowhere, it sounded like some weird tap dance army hearing all the various horseshoe sized cleats clopping in approximate unison.

We were doing a nice 17-ish mph average during most of the ride. After our first 40 mile stop (featuring some really friendly country dogs serving as county ambassadors!), we stopped again at 60, then at 70 and 80 too. The rest stops featured long lines at the bathrooms most of the time and plentiful cut fruit along with a lot of chipper volunteers filling bottles with Gatorade and water. There was amusing scenery amongst the riders along the way with some wacky recumbents and a couple of guy in some bootleg land-speed-record type torpedo contraptions. Lots of fancy, fancy bikes, lots of fancy lycra and whatnot too.

Throughout the ride, I was holding up pretty good in terms of legs, never really felt too thrashed, my butt and feet were doing pretty great too. I made the risky move of wearing some new (to me, but slightly used) SIDI genius shoes I had bought from a guy online and ridden once for about 30 miles, but luckily they worked out just great, super comfy. My right knee was pretty tender, it had been since the Coal City Century. I had taken a couple of Celebrex pills that my brother had which I think helped with the inflammation, but I ended up wearing a compression sleeve for about 40-ish miles, which made everything feel quite nice, but was a bit rash inducing after a while.

Every time we hit nice pavement (and there was plenty of it that was not particularly nice...big, clunky, pebbly, ashpalt as the road grade for maybe 30 to 40 of the miles) I noticed the hop in my front wheel, whup, whup, whup, whup. I fear that it's basically shot, but I also knew it would make it through the ride.

At mile 63 (?) we came to HELL'S GATE!! This was the much ballyhooed cut-off point (I think you had to do that distance in 6 hours or something to not get pulled, not too difficult). Talk about an anticlimax! It consisted of a freeway underpass with a sign and an inflatable hulk guy. No flames, no fake flames, c'mon people! What about some of those things that blow the streamers upwards?! Something...

At one point, we came upon some guys around mile 75 giving away fresh cut watermelon. We made a special stop for that, thanks guys! Keep in mind, it never got above around the mid-80s, I barely sweated a drop all day long (though I am a light sweater, but still!).

Around mile 92, we came onto a big wide highway shoulder headed back into Wichita Falls. It was on a slight downhill with a tailwind and I found myself going around 21 and just feeling like it was effortless. All of a sudden, since we were within about 10 miles and had been riding pretty conservatively, I thought it'd be fun to just go for broke and make a little personal race of it for the last 8-ish miles. I ramped it up to a good 27-30 mph for the next few miles, really fun stuff! I was flying past hundreds of people and was surprised I didn't poop out at these speeds. Maybe it was the GU gels I'd been snacking on here and there during the day. I did end up hosing myself down with water on a few occasions, it was a big help. I did not realize that the whole time I was blasting along, my buddy R was madly chasing me down! I thought I was just running a little personal time trial, but it was actually a mad race. I didn't even let myself look at the odometer for about 3 miles and when I did, I thought "you'll never finish at this pace!" During a few windy/slight uphill stretches, I did some down to 19-24-ish mph and it ended up being a full 10 miles to the finish for just over 102 total. However, only one guy passed me in those last 10 miles, I drafted off of him for about a 1/2 mile the first time, passed him again on a giant freeway overpass that was the last big climb before town and was passed again by him in the last half mile, but I don't think he'd been going like the devil for 10 miles either! It was a lot of fun anyway, I think I kept up a 24-ish mph average for that last 10.

Came through the finish, went over and stood in some blasting water and about 1.5 minutes later I ran into R and found out he'd been within shouting distance of me a few times! Probably would have gotten creamed were it not for the element of surprise at the "start" of our little race. Here's me looking, perhaps not as fresh as a daisy, but not TOO bad:

Got some nice finishing pics of J who kept a more sane pace the rest of the way through about 10 minutes later.

After gasping and standing around and watering up for a bit, we rode back to our humble abode, ate some pasta, drank a beer, packed up and headed back to Austin. Final times:

Total ride (including stops): 6:48
Ride time (excluding stops): 5:51
Total mileage: 102.8
Max speed: 35.5 mph
Average speed (while moving): 17.54 mph
Average speed overall: 15.1-ish mph

I felt really good after this ride, not at all as devastated as the first on the week before. We drove back to Austin and had a tremendous feast and margaritas at El Si's and I got some good sleep!

the first century

2009-08-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

090823

Not the date, the length of bicycle ride. I did my first one today and ended up going fairly well beyond an imperial century to nearly a metric double century. Feeling not very well-prepared for next weekend's Hotter Than Hell 100 ride in TX (I've had a cavalcade of out-of-town guests and a busy work schedule conspiring to keep me off of the bike), I spotted the posting for the Bike Psychos Century ride on the chainlink yesterday and quickly recruited my friend Zac to come along and do it with me.

I arose at 4:30 am this morning, not terribly well rested. I did go to bed at the pretty civil time of 10:45 PM but was pretty amped up about it and kind of had a tossing/turning/went-to-bed-too-early-to-sleep-well sort of a night. Probably got circa 4.5 hours of decent sleep maybe. I did have the presence of mind to pack and prepare about everything I'd need for the morning including pre-loading the coffee maker and prepping a nice eggy breakfast last night, so the getting up and being ready part was pretty easy.

We left Chicago at about 5:35 for Coal City, IL, a small town just southwest of Joliet. The pre-dawn light in Chicago was quite nice and I had a crazy vision driving east on Belmont upon seeing this TREMENDOUS bank of clouds over Lake Michigan. It literally looked like mountains and weirdly made Chicago look like a flattish street in California or Colorado. It was eerie, but quite beautiful. Once on the Kennedy, the whole lake was like a cloud mountain. Construction crews found a way to make traffic at 6am on a Sunday, namely but blocking the freeway down to one lane, but we were soon on our way out past the deep burbs.

We arrived at the Coal City Early Childhood Center and registered up in minutes, borrowed some sunscreen from a nice fellow rider parked next to us and were on our way. It was a beautiful route of mostly cornfields and some other crops, a lot of farmhouses and just some nice woodlands as well as quite a bit of the Illinois River. Almost completely car-free roads greeted us for quite some time in the morning and even throughout the day, cars were a very minimal sight. What a welcome change from Chicago where you are watching out for your life every few minutes throughout the day!

After taking our second ride-lengthening detour of the day through this old park that dead ended at an Army Corp of Engineers facility (there was an little unmarked dogleg in the road that we chose the wrong way on), we (perhaps foolishly) skipped the first rest stop at 25 miles and kept on plugging away. We started hitting the first few hills shortly after that. I was finally glad to have a compact double crank on my bike! Not that these were Pyrenean by any means (I don't even think they would change the route description from "flat" on a grand tour), but pros we ain't!

At one of the steeper hills a young-ish guy on a carbon Orbea fairly blasted by us and Zac decided he wanted to catch this guy, so we pounded away back on the flat up above and caught him, forming a little three man pace line for about 10-ish miles, eventually the three of us came upon another guy we had passed earlier in the day. This guy was on a new-ish carbon Lemond and was clearly a bit older from his grey crew cut and mustache. We were feeling the strain of our approximately 20-22mph pace by now, Lemond and Orbea were in front of us just chatting away, like they were riding to the farmer's market from brunch or something. We heard Orbea say he was from Colorado, so he must have literally been drowning in oxygen on this clear 60 to 70 degree day in sunny Illinois. Eventually, we found it wiser to simply get back to a more sane personal pace and dropped off the back of these two. About 5 miles later we came to a much needed 50 mile rest stop.

After eating some very "al dente" slightly seasoned dry pasta and some much nicer fresh fruit, we re-embarked just a little behind old Lemond. He was cruising along in his report 2005 jersey just riding his ride. We both decided he was our new hero with his easy cadence, looking like he could do a double century and mow the yard after. I told Zac I'd feel good if we simply kept him in sight for a while, but after warming back up, we somehow bridged up to him from a few hundred meters back. I jumped on his wheel and asked if he minded some hangers on. He told us it was fine and eventually we got to chatting after he remarked that he remembered a certain hill we rode up to. I asked him how many time he'd done this ride and he said "Oh, 5 or 6 times." After a bit more chatting with me mentioning how he seemed a bit older than us and we were really impressed with his riding, he told us he was SIXTY!!! Holy crap, this guy's calf muscles looked like a current pro tour rider! He said this was his 11th or 12th century ride of the year. I must say that I found that pretty inspiring as a newly minted 40 year old. The idea that I could ride 100 miles in a day for a couple more decades plus makes getting older seem pretty alright, especially the way this guy obviously could have simply notched it up and left us in the dust at any moment. I shamelessly sucked this guy's wheel for most of the next 20 miles and he just didn't think a thing about it. Didn't catch his name, but on the off chance that he's a crazed internet scourer, thank you kindly sir! That was a fun leg. We all made it to the 75 mile rest stop and there we parted ways as we took off a bit sooner than him.

At this point, the ride was starting to seem a bit long. My previous longest ride was the 81.5 miles to Milwaukee, so we'd hit that by this rest stop. We still managed to plug along at a decent rate, maybe circa 17.5 average, but we hit 100 before the last 87.5 mile rest stop. We finished up the last couple of miles with a nice woman on a really fancy Guru carbon bike with a PowerTap hub, aero bars, the whole nine yards. She had dropped her husband a few miles earlier after we passed them all and she gave us a much needed steady pace into this rest stop. She turned out to be a social studies teacher at Decatur High School, where Zac went to school for a year. They chatted about who was retired and who was still there. Always a small world. It was pretty hard to leave this final oasis. I ate a PB&J and more fruit. Hydration and eating went pretty well over the day. I was always remembering the mantra "eat before you're hungry, drink before you're thirsty," and it did not let me down. My knees were feeling pretty weird by this point, not really in pain, but just a feeling of unfamiliar worn-outness. (Later that evening, they would feel genuinely achy, but I think I'll survive.) We just rather grimly pushed on through the last 13.5 miles. Still kept a nice pace up. It was at this point that we went through a pretty great wind farm area. I'd never been so close to these goliath turbines. We were practically riding right underneath them. I find them quite beautiful in their minimalist splendor. They must be about 15 stories tall, just silently cranking away in the sky. This was also one of the most hilly sections (damn you, route planners!). I never thought I'd be so happy to see a street called "Carbon Hill Rd" as we made our last turn and rode the final mile or so back to the start. We pulled up right at 114 miles and just rode straight to the car and plopped down in the hatchback for about 10 minutes of panting and staring before we packed up to head back to Chicago.

We fueled up on some McDonald's (?!?!..groan) french fries and a chocolate shake on the way out of town. This was they first time I've given McD's any of my money in as long as I can remember, but there wasn't much to choose from in Coal City on a Sunday afternoon. It was necessary to split the drive between us some we did not pass out and kill ourselves, but we made it back in one piece and now I feel like I sort of know what I'm in for in Wichita Falls next week.

Here are our final stats:
Miles ridden: 114
Total time (including stops): 7 hours 8 minutes
Average speed including stops: 16.05 mph
Actual riding time: 6 hours 26 minutes
Average riding speed (excluding stops): 17.74 mph!
Max speed: 38.6 mph (there were some pretty good downhills!)

Sadly, I did not take a single picture. For some strange reason, I left my phone in the car. Much good scenery was missed.

Bike shop owners/employees

2009-08-21T17:29:00.000-07:00

They are easy to take shots at, with often seriously asshole-ish, superior, condescending attitudes flying around every which way you turn. However, they are also often pretty underpaid and perhaps underappreciated skilled workers* (at least many of them). This best of craigslist post sheds a little light on some of the sorts of people and questions they perhaps have to deal with.

* A good friend of mine has been having nightmares with the shop in Houston he purchased his bike from. It was supposed to have free service for however long, but these dillweeds started making him feel like an idiot from about the second time he brought it in, bent his derailleur hanger when he brought it in for a tuneup before a big ride and then did their best to tell him he bent it, slammed the Park Tool maintenance book down on the counter in front of him on another trip in to get the wheel trued, and so on. He subsequently went to another shop to see about getting his wheels to stop having constantly loosening spokes and going out of true and they told him his rear wheel had been trued too many times and probably wouldn't last much longer. This is a Mavic CXP22 and a Shimano hub purchased new with perhaps 1500 miles we're talking about here. How hard is it to not screw that up!? This is why I generally opt to learn how to do it myself, no offense to bike mechanics as a class, it's just such a crapshoot. I'm also a raging autodidact, so if it's feasible, I'd just as soon do it myself. However, I have learned many good tricks/procedures and been bailed out once or twice by a skilled mechanic, so I will give mad props to many of them.

viral vid / other things

2009-08-16T16:30:00.000-07:00

I'm usually the last person to see these things, if that's so, I apologize for posting it, but there must be other virally challenged people like myself. This thing is pretty, pretty funny.

I tried to ride to Milwaukee today again with my pal Zac, but I had some serious "mechanicals" as they like to say in the biz. Namely, 3 FLATS! What the!? Well, in the name of training for the HHH100 ride, I wanted to ride my fancy pants bike and the Michelin Race 2 tires that were on there were sort of coming apart, so I am in the midst of replacing them with some Vredesteins, but they were not here yet, so I put on the older Conti Gatorskins I had taken off of my Surly a couple weeks ago. Now, this was sort of dumb because I had gotten a couple of flats on those, which is why I replaced them, but I also thought I was sort of over reacting and maybe they weren't totally shot. Now I know that they are! Anyway, Zac was riding the same tires as I'm getting and he had no problems all day, so that makes me feel better! To be fair to the Gatorskins, I probably put 600+ pretty hard city miles on those without one flat and I had gotten them used on a bike to start with. They are good tires.

Fortunately, our support car (i.e. my wife, who was driving up to Milwaukee to visit her Grandma) came and picked us up in Racine (Thanks again iPhone, you overpriced albatross. Score one for you!) as she was just on her way past us anyway on the highway. We "abandoned" and just went and ate a big lunch. Still got 63 miles in and didn't get lost in Racine this time. We were doing a pretty smoking pace too, riding along at circa 20-ish mph on the gravel paths even. I was wheelsucking most of the time as I'm in the ballpark of old enough to be Zac's dad, but I was hanging in there alright! It's so rare that I have anyone to draft off of that I had to take advantage. We also got rained on for a good half hour, always a fun time. Gotta go give some TLC to my filthy bike now.

critical mass and whatnot

2009-08-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

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I made it to last Friday's Critical Mass ride. What a hoot! Highlights include (and see pics below for all of these):

-Hippie dude in a crazy tent cart thing jamming electric guitar
-PENNY FARTHING RIDER!!
-Very touching and brilliant marriage proposal
-Guy with a pretty jamming stereo playing Parliament/James Brown/disco hits as we rode down Michigan Ave.

The only lowlight was getting a flat and losing the ride on the outskirts of downtown. Doh!!

Afterwards, my wife and I went to eat at a delicious restaurant in the heart of the frat boy haven that is Damen and Division (how things have changed in a decade!) and while sitting on the sidewalk eating, we were passed by the ride! I was immediately jealous, but we just watched and enjoyed and took a few pics.

massing at Daley Plaza:

Aforementioned hippie dude:

Doing the swirl before takeoff:

Your humble servant:

Penny Farthing guy! Hooray!

The proposition:

Suitor on bended knee (she said yes!):

This guy had the stone cold jams, we stayed behind him as long as we could!

Still jamming on Division St:

Also last week, I went by the Soldier Field Cycling Series races on Wednesday for a little look-see. I watched the women race for about a half hour. I was surprised by A) how not very well attended it was and B) how fairly bootleg the whole affair seemed. I guess when you have a fairly fancy website, one thinks it'll be a big crowded event. Basically, there was a maybe 1/2 mile course made from traffic cones and some temporary fencing and people seem to ride around it for about an hour. Apparently that's a criterium. The women's combined field (women always get the shaft I guess) was only about 9 riders, but it looked pretty fun anyway. I was sorry to be out of town a couple of weeks back during the Chicago Criterium. I guess that's an entirely different affair. Anyway, checking it out made me think I might just go down there and give it a shot. It can't be much different than hauling ass up to the Botanical Gardens which I have managed at a almost 20 mph pace including city traffic before. We'll see though, as I've had this nagging cough for over 2 weeks that I just got medicated for. It's not helping my preparation for the HHH100 ride in just over 3 weeks! Very annoying, but I have some meds now.

Finally, I've decided to make the Surly Pacer my sensible ride. I resisted anything that made a bike heavier for the last year, but realizing that always carrying a backpack or depending on the locks of others is not that practical. I'm going to try and morph it into a sem-touring bike. I was also further inspired by Jay Ryan's lovely Surly Long Haul Trucker I saw on our ride today (Thanks Jay and Nate, that was fun!). So, I have some decent fenders back on now, I had to mod the front one for toe overlap, it's perfect now. I also got some new Schwalbe Marathon tires as my Continental Gatorskins were pretty hacked up, turned out I had a nail head stuck in them on the Critical Mass ride. I also got a new rack today. More on this project as it progresses!

bits

2009-07-28T18:53:00.000-07:00

090728

I squeezed in a 22 mile ride after work today. Went up the really stinky North Shore Trail again up into Evanston. It really, really smells like ripe and mildly toxic sewage anywhere within about 15' of the Chicago River. Way to go Chicago! At least we send it out to those poor saps downstream of us, misery loves company as they say.

Rode into downtown Evanston and stopped at Turin, as I like to stop at a LBS anytime I pass by one and just pop in, pick up something cheap, etc. I discovered while buying a tube there that Turin joins Rapid Transit in Wicker Park in having the distinction of the most expensive tubes I've ever bought. Not $5, not $6, but $7 for a regular 700c/23-25 tube! I mean, REALLY! How can the same thing be $5 at Boulevard Bikes, $4 at Smart Bike Parts on Armitage and need to be $7 at these places? Methinks I shall abstain from shopping at Turin in the future. Tubes are not a luxury item, they are like oxygen to a cyclist (or beer). Anyway, I got my 22 miles in.

Also, I spent the weekend in Madison, WI and enjoyed riding about 85 miles in 2 days on the bike-tastic paths that the city is infested with. It was like shock treatment coming back to the streets of Chicago. Oh Madison, why can't you not be a frozen wasteland in the winter, I love thee in the spring/summer! While there I popped into Cronometro and had the pleasure of being entertained by the owner Colin for a good 15-20 minutes as he showed my wife and I around the shop, discussed the fitting process, Seven and Serotta bikes, etc. etc. A VERY nice guy and a perfect example of what a small bike shop owner should be like, i.e. FRIENDLY! Anyone could be your next customer. And while Cronometro may have $7 tubes as well (I didn't check, but I like to think not), greeting someone in a friendly manner and taking the time to give them a nice shop tour even when they say they are just there to look around would make such things go down a lot smoother. I'm not sure when I'm going to get around to buying a new bike in the $4,000 to $12,000 range, but when I do, that place will be a the top of my list. Thanks Colin!

If you are all carbon-fibered out from Le Tour, here is a little old-fashioned racing to cleanse the palate:

Finally, I'm seriously considering going ahead and building up a 29er bike. I keep thinking about doing more of that riding. I'm now online browsing and early-lusting, we'll see where it goes. Could be fun for some fall trail riding and also really handy for the deepest armpit of winter as I don't think my big ice tires will fit on my Surly Pacer very well, but they'd go swimmingly on a 29er frame. We shall see!

And finally-finally, my other developing lust is for putting together a S and S coupled bike. They had an incredible Seven Alaris at Cronometro with that setup and my wife was being a super sweet enabler and telling me how I had to get one. She is really good for being the "just do it" devil (or angel depending on your point of view) on my shoulder when it comes to not prudent purchases, god bless her! Anyway, I think I'll manage to hold off on that insanity for a while, but it got me thinking about doing that to my Paramount frame. Waterford Cycles, where I was planning on sending that thing for the beauty treatment, does the retrofits and I could also have it done by Bilenky Cycles in PA, which is perhaps the leading retrofitter of this setup. If you do not know what I'm talking about, click here. The idea of having a regular sized suitcase to take on trips is pretty awesome to me. I hope to be doing more and more bikeable travel in the coming years, and I think the Paramount was coming in at just over 20 lbs. with a pretty heavy set of wheels and pedals, so I think it'd make a pretty swell sub-40 lb. suitcase bike. We'll see on that one too. Probably at least several months away no matter what, but my interest is piqued!

Some truly insightful analysis

2009-07-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

090725

I've become instantly addicted to this guy's TDF analysis.

personal TT

2009-07-24T06:40:00.001-07:00

090724

In honor of the individual TT yesterday I went out and ran my own little faux-TT out to the Chicago Botanical Gardens. Departing at 2:45pm, I had my 7-ish miles of city riding to do before I got to the head of the North Branch Trail. I did some very fun drafting behind a couple of slow trucks (slow for automobiles that is!) going up Kimball and drafted behind them for about a 1/2 mile each at around 30 to 32 mph! It's amazing how fast you can go in the vacuum of a large truck. Pretty fun!

Rode maybe half the ride in these new clip on bars I stuck on the Look. It's pretty easy to keep it up over 20 with those things. Steering a little tweaky, but you can do pretty reasonable turning, etc. with them. The windy asphalt trail is good fun for trying to keep the pace high. I got out to the top of the loop around the little lake up there in an hour and 15 minutes for 23.5 miles. According to my computer, average speed of 19.8 mph including city traffic. Pretty okay, I reckon.

On the way back, it started sprinkling and I rode on until it changed to a good solid drizzle, then a pretty heavy downpour. I put away my computer and iPhone and just plowed on through it. I had shoes full of water and numb hands and feet by the time I got back home, but it was a pretty fun 56-ish mile ride. Still can't emulate the heat I'll be looking at on the Hotter Than Hell ride in August, the good old midwest just won't cooperate!

Going to Madison this weekend and if the weather cooperates, I'm hoping to get a good 60 to 70 miles in on the Capitol City Trail.

Pics:

Milwaukee calling

2009-07-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

090721

Well, I did the ride to Milwaukee. There was a group ride going on Saturday via the Chainlink, but it wasn't good timing as we went to the PItchfork Festival followed by a housewarming party on Friday night, so I decided to go it solo on Sunday. My lovely wife's grandmother resides in Milwaukee (St. Francis actually), so we had a plan for her to drive up to visit and for me to meet them and catch a ride back.

I poked around on the internet and found a route on mapmyride.com which was someone's route all the way to Door County, but it was free of any sorts of cues or landmarks, etc. Searching around I found chunks of information on the trail system that gets you there, but I kept coming across this pesky book that seemed to be just about how to ride your bike on the trails from Chicago to Milwaukee. Really?! A whole book? Seems like the kind of info that any bike loving human would just want to share with anyone. I know I do. I'll do my best here, but there was some ad hoc poking around here and there and some kindness of strangers involved, so you have to be a little self-motivated and remember which way north is.

One good move I made Saturday was to go on a recon ride with my wife and my friend JBI to check out the Chicago trail that starts the whole odyssey. It's the North Shore Trail (not to be confused with the North Branch Trail which is in the Cook County Forest Preserve District). This trail basically runs along the north branch of the Chicago River. Consequently, it's quite stinky for a lot of it's length. We rode back and forth past it a few times before finally picking it up quite a ways north of it's actual origin and I saved myself a lot of time by later riding back down it to discover that it begins on Francisco just north of Lawrence Ave. This is a little one way street south between Kedzie and California and you just ride up it the wrong way past a beautiful old sanitary district pumping station (they really don't make them like they used to!).

Francisco basically ends and the street veers right and it is at this corner that the trail begins. There is a point a few miles north where you get dumped off onto Kedzie again, but just go up to Devon and hang a left and you'll hit it again at the NE corner of the next intersection. Here you'll find a nice windy asphalt path with a miles long sculpture garden built right in!

This is the part that leads all the way up to the Ladd Arboretum in Evanston. The path turns to the first section of many, many miles of crushed gravel pathway here. I found myself debating the merits of staying on these paths a number of times during the day. They are a bit slower to ride on, though not like something you need a mountain bike for, any reasonable road bike tires work just fine.

This path ends at Green Bay Road. If you go left along Green Bay Road and get to the north side of it at Lincoln, you begin seeing signs that run you through a very posh neighborhood. This route leads through Wilmette, where it turns into a proper bike path through downtown, then through Kenilworth and eventually you will get to the Green Bay Trail. This is a pretty decent asphalt path along the Metra tracks along Green Bay Road. This path goes for several miles and (if memory serves) it eventually turns to crushed gravel up around Ravinia (you go right through the back of Ravinia actually). After some time you end up being put a wide sidewalk that takes you past Fort Sheridan and is the beginning of the McCrory bike path. This sidewalk is pretty irritating as the squares of concrete have all begun to settle and have a fairly significant bump between each of the hundreds of them you have to go over. (City planner types, FYI, it's MUCH better to make an asphalt path, concrete sucks and I'd think it's got to be more expensive to put down.) This cement world gives way back to gravel then ends up on another sidewalk along a highway-ish road that approaches the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Here, look for a sign across the road that says "McCrory bike path north" which will indicate that you need to go across the road (at 24th street) and take a loop under the highway to another little industrial road to the west. Here's a pic of the intersection:

Which reminds me... NOTICE THE LITTLE CIRCLE WITH A SLASH THROUGH IT PAINTED ON THE SIDEWALK!!! This seems to be the universal sign for the bike path, at least on this route. It kept me on track many, many times throughout the day. This little sign is the breadcrumb trail to follow when signs are not appearing before you.

This dead ends into a messy torn up T intersection that looks into a factory and a little service drive. Go across here and you'll see the path on your left. This heads a back into crushed gravel world and this is the path that goes straight to Wisconsin, and I mean straight!

North of this area, you finally get back into something like small towns that aren't super posh suburbs. Here is an old closed high school I came across in Zion (I reckon from the name of the school anyway).

You'll just go and go crossing a big road every so often until you finally see a trail sign after Russell Road that says Kenosha County trail-something. You're in Wisconsin!

This trail goes on again for some time and eventually dumps you out on 30th street in Kenosha. Follow this road for about 5 miles (stop in at the nice little Southport Rigging bike shop you'll pass if you need anything!) until you see Gateway Technical College. On your right you'll see the Gateway Cafe. After this landmark, take the next right (at the light) and about a half mile down, the path starts again. This path goes straight to S. Racine. At this point of the day, I'd been doling out some Clif bars and some tasty little energy gummies, but I was bogging down pretty hard in between Kenosha and Racine. After averaging something like 16 mph for the first half of the trip, I was slogging down to 12 or 13 here for some miles. I thought maybe I was in trouble, but I think I was in a food lag. It is SUPER important to eat before you are hungry on such long rides. I was also drinking every 10 to 15 minutes.

In Racine you are dumped onto West Blvd. Follow this north and go right on Kinzie (you'll be in a large cemetery area here). Take Kinzie around (it bends north-ish), go right on W. 6th St., left on Memorial Dr. and then a right onto State St./38. At this railroad tracks right after this turn, you should pick up a path again that goes on out of Racine. I got a bit lost during this Racine part, but came by a fire station and figuring those guys know about some town geography, stopped for advice and got put right by a local fireman (sorry for interrupting the Brewers game!).

This trail takes you up into the hinterlands south of S. Milwaukee. At the end of the trail, go west (left) on 6 Mile and take a right onto Douglas Ave/32. This is your road for quite some time. After hours of being on the gravel, it felt VERY good to be back on a roadway! I suddenly found my third (?) wind and was bombing along around 20-ish mph for miles and miles.

32 turns into S. Chicago Road as you come up into S. Milwaukee. Most of the time the shoulder is nice and wide and is a pretty nice ride. Drivers were uniformly courteous and scooching over even when it wasn't really necessary. Thanks Wisconsinites! One up into S. Milwaukee (the city of), you jog over on Marquette to stay on 10th Ave./S. Chicago. This eventually turns into Packard and I took this up to S. Kinnickinnic Ave. and headed up that to my final destination. I was SO VERY hungry by this last 4 or 5 miles, that I was basically sprinting to get to food, running for miles around 23-24 mph. I felt like I was on a solo breakaway on a Grand Tour stage!

I made it to the St. Francis Brewery having ridden for a total of 5:45 (including stops) for a total of 81.6 miles. I probably ate about 2500 calories in an hour. (St. Francis Brewery has delicious food and a great Kolsch Beer BTW!) My average was something like 14.5 mph, but that includes about a total of 20 minutes of stopping for "natural breaks" (in the parlance of race announcers) and a few directions checks and photo ops. Not bad for this almost-40-year-old on my longest ride to date.

For those heading all the way up into Milwaukee, there are a few other ways/paths up into town. More info can be reverse-engineered from this route
, which is from Milwaukee to Chicago. This is an enjoyable ride. You can do it on a road bike, but just make sure you have some fairly sturdy tires. I rode my steel Surly Pacer with Continental Gatorskins and I think I'd have gotten at least one flat if I was on my Look with the Michelin Pro 2s. The gravel is quite well packed and smooth, but it's just a long ride with a lot of odd rocks and things you can hit. Also, take at least a couple bottles of water and 500 to 600 calories of grub. It's a very mellow ride and I hope to do it again soon.

For a little packet of images of the route that I put together from Illinois trail maps and Google maps, click here

Claustrophobia?

2009-07-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

090713

Try this one on for size:

Kettle Moraine, etc.

2009-07-11T10:22:00.000-07:00

090711

Last Sunday I went for my first ever proper mountain bike ride. Having spent years riding a mountain bike in the wrong terrain before discovering that road bikes are for roads (!?), I finally went to see some of the terrain that spawned the most common bikes in the city.

As stated on the Wisconson Off-road Bicycling Association's website:
"Located in the Southern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest are some of the best mountain bike trails in the country. Both the John Muir and Emma F. Carlin trail systems offer a great opportunity to test your riding skills.

Well, my friend JBI and myself drove up so I could take said test. He is an old, old hand at the mountain biking who had hit these trails many times, but hadn't been in a couple of years. After some reallly dumb driving detours courtesy of the iPhone's Google Maps app (do not put too much trust in such maps in rural areas as "approximate location" can, and did in this case, mean "give or take 20-ish miles"), we arrived at Backyard Bikes where I was to rent a suitable bike for my foray. I just told them my size and to set me up with what seemed good. What I ended up with was this Gary Fisher Cobia, a 21" frame 29er mountain bike. These are mountain bikes with 700c wheels (rather than the smaller 26" wheel), which seem to be all the rage these days.

The first thing I had to do was ride this thing about a mile and a half down the road to the trailhead and, let me tell you, I remembered why I was so floored when I first rode a decent road bike. Riding even a modified mountain bike in the city is like riding a road bike through molasses, but with the Stay-Puft tires on this thing, it was like riding through setting cement! I pulled up to JBI in the parking lot and asked "are these tires really necessary?" to which he replied "you'll see once we're in there."

He did a little parking lot tinkering on his custom built Ted Wojcik bike, which apparently regularly gets some "whoa dude, old school!" reactions in the forest, I futzed with my seat position and went over and bought a couple of trail passes and off we went.

We went in on the Blue Trail, which is the big loop around the whole area (10 miles) and is "intermediate" apparently. I would not yet want to see "advanced" because intermediate was plenty! This trail is like a roller coaster that you have to navigate yourself. In many places the clearance is barely wider than your handlebars and its just a shoulder shaking, upper body crushing job to move along at a decent pace and keep yourself on the trail. I found it highly amusing what you could roll over on this bike. I'd be swinging wildly back and forth on the narrow trail and suddenly hit a little jog left, not quite staying on the trail and see that I was veering into a 2' high boulder and think "I'm done for," only to roll right up over it without even trying. Same for giant tree trunks in the path, pipe-sized tree roots, etc. etc. It was pretty funny! Another thing that you learn very quickly (thanks for the tip beforehand JBI!) is that it doesn't really pay to climb out of the saddle as your traction pretty much completely disappears if you are not in the saddle to weigh your back wheel down. Sometimes it can't be avoided (standing) and then you just end up in this comedic mix of climbing and skidding in place. There were a few climbs where I was absolutely sure I was not going to make it, but somehow I always did.

I had to stop about every 15 to 20 minutes to just sweat from every pore in my body and gulp down some precious water. The nice part was that the sweat was great air-conditioning once you started back up.

Did I mention that this is some GORGEOUS, GORGEOUS forest out there? Every once in a while we'd come into a clearing where you could look around (like the area in the picture above) and it would just take my breath away. We rode around 3/4s of the John Muir trail loop and then went off onto the Emma Carlin connector trail to add a few miles in. The main loop is one way, which means that once you're on it, you're on it! The connector was ostensibly two way, but we ended up being the only people we saw going back the way we came, so that was a bit confusing. There were some pretty new cuts and confusing signage back there though, maybe next time I'll ask at the bike shop.

After a couple of miles on the connector trail, JBI came down with a flat and we decided to fix it and head back as the day was waning a bit by then.

Speaking of which, what a beautiful day it was! Low 80s, sunny, just a picture perfect day. All told, we rode something like 15 miles in about an hour and a half. Not exactly a marathon distance, but it left me feeling as if I'd ridden 60 hard miles on a road bike.

Once we got back to the bike shop, we sampled the wares from their great little cafe/snack shop. They make an assortment of tasty healthy sandwiches and salads and also have a STELLAR beer selection. I pounded a New Glarus Cherry Ale (750ml) to slake my considerable thirst and then finished off the last 1/3rd of JBI's for good measure. We had a nice drive back home (nice for me anyway as I just vegged out in the passenger's seat) and I collapsed onto the couch for an hour or so before I could do anything. Exhausting!

I would not describe it as relaxing, by any measure, something that I often think of with road biking, but it was certainly exhilirating! I am looking forward to my next trip. Not sure if I'm ready to dip my toes into building/owning a mountain bike yet, but knowing myself, I'm sure that will change eventually!

In other news, I have ridden about 140 road miles this week and am still hoping to squeeze in another 30 today. I'm feeling pretty good about my very unstructured "training" so far. I did a really nice ride day before yesterday into the Forest Preserve off-street trail system up northwest of me. It is a pretty beautiful ride up there. Similar to Madison but with more crappy major street crossings to contend with (Touhy, sheesh!!!). I didn't make it all the way to the Botanical Gardens, but got pretty close before having to ride back to some work in the real world. We'll see if I make it today. The missus might come up there with me for a ride later.

I am going to shoot for riding to Milwaukee a week from tomorrow. I'll have to research the route, but I feel ready to do it. This will be the real test run for the HHH ride. I got some clip on aero bars in the mail yesterday at work, though I probably will not get them mounted until Monday. I think having this option will be a big help on a long, windy ride. Also, provides a great position to stretch a tight back out.

More soon...

TDF watching / HHH100 training

2009-07-09T18:04:00.000-07:00

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So, Tour de France watching is happening after all. Starting on day 2 (unless I missed it before, but I thought I looked), there was suddenly an online package thingy at Versus.com to watch on the website. It's not super great quality video, the first hacker guy I found at dustin.tv was a much better feed of Versus' broadcast, but it's pretty decent, and it was not terribly expensive, like $35 I think for the whole tour.

Lots of weird action over the last few days. I liked the hard TTT. I guess a lot of riders don't but, man (respectfully) if all the courses were just made to be easy to ride, this probably wouldn't be a multi-million dollar spectator sport. Half a team crashing does shake things up a bit and those who did their homework (like Astana) had some serious spoils to gain.

I'm hard at work getting up to snuff for my late August century ride. I rode 31 miles along the lakefront Tuesday and 35 miles out on the Forest Preserve bike path towards the Botanical Garden today. It was my first day to go riding out there and it's pretty nice, though it's also pretty broken up by roads and crossings of very major, highway-like streets. Nice for around here anyway.

I'm going to try for at least 30-ish miles every other day and at some point, I'm planning on riding to Milwaukee to see what a 16-17mph pace is like for something close to 100 miles.

I just realized I haven't put anything up here about my first ever for reals mountain biking experience. Crazy, crazy riding. Coming shortly!

TDF watcher - It's not going to be that easy

2009-07-05T05:25:00.000-07:00

090705

Doh!!

I'm picturing a massive control room full of copyright control specialists in the Amoury Sports Group batcave with massive supercomputers scouring the world for any way that unauthorized viewing is taking place. Yesterday I literally watched all sorts of web peer 2 peer feeds getting shut down one at a time. That nice Australian feed was fully happening then. Oh well, the internet will find a way. Or maybe I'll just get Comcast cable.... wait a minute, no I won't!!!

Anyway, I'm watching it "elsewhere" on the interwebs now. We'll see how long that lasts!

misc. things

2009-07-04T20:04:00.000-07:00

090704

Happy b-day USA! The usual din of bombs bursting in air is happening all over the city tonight. I saw a guy zip down my street in all black on a stealth black bike too and thought "don't catch a bottle rocket in the face buddy!" It's a bit scary out there, at least my dog certainly thinks so!

Here is an interesting op-ed a friend just sent along. It's a neat perspective on a situation that is usually viewed in a totally car-centric way. Namely, the desolation of the "Motor City."

TDF started today. I like watching the time trials even though, ostensibly it's one of the most boring parts of bike racing to watch. I guess it's just the understood tension and personal exertion that keeps me drawn in. It seems as if you can legitimately watch it on this Australian network's website, I thought they would somehow see your IP location and shut you down but it seems to be cool. Vive le tour! Fabian Cancellara, ouch!! Take that, mere mortals!

I'm officially "in training" for the Hotter Than Hell 100 in Wichita Falls, TX on August 28th now. I'm not sure what that's going to end up meaning, but I certainly think I need to be riding at least 120 miles per week from now on. I did bring my bike down to Houston for a trip home to visit family and did a nearly 40 mile ride with my old friend Ryan in some upper 90s heat. It was just fine, we actually literally rode abreast and talked the ENTIRE 38.5 miles. I guess that's some kind of cross-training!

I'm also going to take a trip up to Kettle Moraine Park in Wisconson tomorrow and do my first offroad biking since I was a little BMX-er back in 7th/8th grade! Going to rent a bike up there and see what it's all about. I will update you, faithful (3 or 4?) readers!

73 mph jet bike

2009-06-10T23:11:00.000-07:00

Not even sure how to feel about this Flash Gordon-esque contraption. Certainly removes the carbon savings from bike riding, but as a simulaneously futuristic/old-fashioned curiousity it's hard to beat:

from Wired magazine

critical mass almost reached / training wheels

2009-05-30T18:55:00.000-07:00

090530

I'm punning it up today. I'm killing me. But seriously folks....

I went by the start of the Critical Mass ride on Friday. I just so happened to have made other plans (as always seems to happen), right down the street, but I knew a few friends would be there, so I stopped by to say hello and feel the good vibrations. It was a fantastic day for it. Mebbe next month!

Andrew, you're famous! Actually, you are just in a blog that a very small amount of my friends read, sorry!

I did go check out the new modern wing at the Art Institute. It's free on Thursday and Friday evenings starting at 5:30 throughout the summer. Go check it out! The Cy Twombly "Peonys" paintings are pretty great and also, nice job Renzo Piano! It's a pretty great space that really just makes the city seem like a lot more compelling and dramatic place, in this writer's humble opinion.

Saturday morning, I did something I've been trying to get it together to do for several months, which is finally get up at the crack of dawn and go on this XXX Racing training ride. So I did, and on about 4.5 hours sleep, no less! Here is the skinny on it. It was really fun! There was a bit of an intimidating super spandex bike dude vibe, though not overwhelming and I would say I was made to feel somewhere between not unwelcome and welcome by the different people I met (there was also a good mix of gender out there). At any rate, officially, you are made to feel welcome. It was a huge group. About 30 to 40 people at Wicker Park at 7am and then probably that amount again up at Warren Park, which is the second meet up before riding on to Highland Park. They have a great route and riding at 7 to 9am in the morning on a Saturday, you can really get a taste of what an almost car-free world would be like. That world is very, very nice. The ride up to Highland Park is "no drop" so the group (we actually split into 2 groups due to the total amount of riders there, probably 70 to 80) stops for gaps at traffic lights, mechanical difficulties, etc. We cruised at an average speed of around 20 mph on the way up, which is a nice comfy pace, particularly if you were me and you got to draft behind an approximately 6'5", maybe 210 pound rider. Not super difficult, but it's DEFINITELY a workout! The ride was 2 abreast, about 20-ish riders long and we would often go a few miles at a time without having to stop due to the great route and time of day. Got a little rain close to Highland Park, which had me getting a nice road water spray down from the rear tire of the bike in front of me (Oh, so that's why so many people are wearing the tweaker bike shades on this cloudy morning!), but it ended pretty quickly. We went past some beautiful homes, the Ba'hai Temple, the entrance to Ravinia, all sorts of stuff I'd never seen before. I met some nice folks, did a little chatting about the Giro and took in some serious eye-candy with all the fancy bikes around. There was a dad and his perhaps 10 year old daughter on a tandem road bike, NICE!!!

We ended up at a pretty good coffee shop, Fresh Grounds (?) I think. Nice double espresso, long but very friendly bathroom line and some nice chit chat. After about 20 minutes of hanging around, there was an announcement about one offical ride back and then a bunch of other people go out in impromptu groups according to ability, etc. Unfortunately for me, I didn't end up in the official ride back, which I sort of thought I was, but I should have realized that it was only about a dozen or so people. So we got going and then eventually the tempo picked up to a pretty consistent 28-ish mph. I hung with this for about 4 to 5 miles and then I got dropped like a hot potato! Suddenly riding solo down Green Bay Road, I realized I didn't really have any great idea where I was. Fortunately in the post-iPhone world that I'm currently living in, I could have sorted it out, but I noticed a rider or two that had gotten dropped about a half mile before me and figured I'd wait and see what their deal was. They turned out to be a couple of guys who I'd noticed speaking Spanish to each other on the way up from Wicker Park and I they were in the same boat as me, though one of them had been on the ride before and seemed to have a vague idea about how to get back. I just jumped in with them and we rode a more reasonable 20-ish mph pace for a few miles until one of them flatted. I figured we were a team by then, so I stopped with them and we finally got to meet each other officially and chat. They were Christian and Alejandro and they were guys who met at NW doing their masters program together, from Mexico DF and Colombia respectively. Super nice guys and we had a really mellow and fun ride back down into the city. Nice job on the navigation Christian! Once we got down and popped out on Western, I said goodbye and hopped over onto Rockwell and headed south. That is a nice street to stay on if you have to head south near Western Ave. by the way. Goes for miles in a very mellow fashion. I eventually moved over to Francisco and on over to Addison and home. Made it back in just over 3.5 hours from when I left this morning and rode a total of right about 49 miles. I felt pretty great when I got home, but after eating a big brunch I crashed like a college student after an all night study bender. DOH! I guess naps are kind of the norm for this deal.

Thanks to XXX for creating such a fun event that is open to all and also to all the nice folks I met today, especially to my dropped buddies on the ride home. I think I shall try it again soon!

Here are a couple of quickly snapped iPhone pics from the Warren Park stop (guy standing there is giving everyone the skinny on splitting into 2 groups) and from the coffee shop in Highland Park.

Here is the route from mapmyride.

I also just got done talking with Andrew about what an awesome time he had at Critical Mass. Color me jealous!!! I am going next month!!!!

a word from the mechanic...

2009-05-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

090528

Here is a pretty neat interview with Pietro Piazzalunga, a pro tour mechanic for about 40 years. The thing that impressed me the most was the high gears these guys were riding. We're all wusses these days with our 53/39 by 12/25 (let alone compact cranks!). Thanks for my buddy Matt for finding this on the interwebs.

a forever bike?

2009-05-25T12:37:00.000-07:00

090525

I know to any of the very few people who read this blog I may seem like a deranged, addicted bike swapper, but really I'm just curious! I have probably moved through about 7 bikes in the last couple of years and I just enjoy building them up and learning about things. However, this trend has been veering dangerously into the lower echelons of expensive bike habit and I've just taken another little baby step in this direction. I sold off my Orbea last month. I was actually doing it in pursuit of a Serotta titanium bike that a guy was selling but he literally sold it off to someone else the day I made my sale (I am smart enough to sell first, buy later nowadays at this level of spendiness). So, I was casting about for another build candidate when this beautiful Look KG381i popped up.

Having built up a Look KG171 for my wife last year, I was really impressed by the weight and elegance of it and how much the missus enjoyed it immediately, so I figured I'd give this thing a try. I also decided it'd be fun to check out a Campy group to learn / ride on something new. I haggled around and came up with a price for the frame and fork and then put out a feeler on the Serotta forums (a great, great place to buy things from) for someone selling off Campy stuff and found a guy who had sold off an Eddy Merckx Leader frame and fork but still had the whole Campy Centaur group including wheels that was perhaps 3 years old and barely used. So this basically equaled a whole bike. Once I got everything in, I had to end up replacing the BB cups since the Merckx was Italian threading, but other than that, it was a pretty much complete bike in a few boxes.

Here are some pics of the build:

It came together pretty quick. I went over to Chicago's own Get A Grip cycles to have the cups put on (I later realized I already had the tool for them, they use the same style tool as Shimano external BB cups, a surprising moment of sanity in the non-interchangeable bike parts war), but it was good to have it done there as I got some needed instruction on putting the Ultra-Torque style cranks together. Thanks Get A Grip! They also have the greatest shop dog there who was the official greeter of the shop it seemed.

I rode the bike the following day and what a dreamboat!!! The Look frame is comfy but super responsive, and the Campy group was a strange but pretty neat departure from Shimano shifting. The "ergo power" (I believe it is) style shifters have the unique ability to shift across up to 3 gears in either direction (Shimano can only shift across multiples on the upstroke but releases one at a time). They have a real clunky feel compared to Shimano, but some find this a more perhaps "reassuring" shift. It was a blast to ride anyway, I just did a quick 12 miles over to the lake and back, but I just felt as if I could go 20 mph all day long on this thing and on a quiet section of Marine Drive, I even sprinted up to 30 a couple of times. NICE BIKE!!! I think I'll keep it!

The frame is a Laurent Jalabert signature model. More info on "Jaja" can be found here. His nickname is slang for a glass of wine in French, a beverage he apparently continued to enjoy regularly during his pro career. Less than a year older than myself, he retired as a pro in 2001 and began competing in triathlons placing very respectably in the 2007 Ironman competitions in both Switzerland and Hawaii. This frame was the team frame of Team CSC in 2003/2004 and it's really the first time I know what it feels like to ride a bike of ProTour quality. I'll say this, it doesn't make things harder!

My total investment was just a hair over $1600 for this gorgeous machine, a bike that would cost about $4000-$5000 to reproduce in current model/group pricing. Other peoples' castoffs rule (sorry to not be supporting the new product economy enough, but my dollars are circulating)!!

In other news, WAY TO GO Carlos Sastre! What a raging Stage 16 performance he put in today at the Giro. Methinks I'm pulling for him! The Giro is streaming online in the morning live and then (I just found out) is rebroadcast on one of the NBC sub-channels if you have a digital tuner (it's 5-3) for Chicago. Watch it!

Finally, I'd like to give another big shout out to my trusty Surly Pacer on which I rode approximately 250 miles in about 10 cities around the country and shipped 3 times. It's rather a beast at about 29 pounds with lock, frame pump, spares etc. strapped on, but it rides more like a gazelle and did not let me down on crappy pavement, 7% grade climbs, crushed gravel paths, light mud or steep descent. Thanks buddy!

beantown, back to NY and home sweet home

2009-05-25T12:12:00.000-07:00

090525

My last day of tour riding was a quick 12 mile trip around the Charles River in Boston on a gorgeously warm Wednesday morning. Another city that was good to have some iPhone/GPS capability in, I did have a pretty nice ride with minimal path sharing required. The riverside path here definitely seems to have some different vintages along it's length(s), some portions being a pretty nice mostly flat 5 foot wide modern macadam path and other points being more of an old sidewalk width cement path with a fading dashed line painted down it (it would take a rider with skinnier bars than my current 44cm width to observe these lines! Pretty gorgeous river to check out though for being in the middle of the city. Biked by Harvard, across a few nice bridges and just had a nice little workout.

Here are some pics and route map for this ride:

Here also is a pic of the graves of those shot in the Boston Massacre (Crispus Attucks et al) and statesman and (originally) failed brewer Samuel Adams:

After this, I packed up the bike in my trusty Polaris case and put it into the Fedex ground at the Kinko's right next to the Orpheum Theater. Convenient!

A day back in NY followed and, walking around, I began to notice a trend that kept popping up of bikes with sometimes elaborate and sometimes utilitarian versions of the same thing. Namely, being covered in tape from BB to top tube. The ones that caught my eye at first were mostly covered in brightly colored electrical tape, but I began noticing some with different tinted transparent tapes and a few in just dirty looking old black electrical tape too. Also, there is this certain sort of flipped up rear fender style that seemed to be the calling card of food delivery riders. Funny trend. A quick search on the interwebs didn't turn up too much, but I did find one other blogger commenting on the same thing (a New Yorker himself) here.

Kind of a nice look to spruce up an unsightly bike, but how many rolls is that anyway?! Bar tape, eat your heart out.

i don't love NY

2009-05-19T15:44:00.000-07:00

090519

I wouldn't say I HATE it or anything either, but when it comes to being a reasonable place to ride a bike, you've still got a LONG way to go New York City!

After a brief one mile ride yesterday from the bus to the hotel. I went with the missus to rent her a bike today and go for a ride together. We went to a little joint on 9th Ave in midtown (where we are staying) called Liberty Cycles. It was (like so many NY businesses) stocked with the same sort of generic surly New Yorkers that you might think you'd find in an auto body shop or something, but they had reasonable rentals of okay bikes, so we rented a Schwinn road bike and went on our merry way!

We followed the Broadway bike lane down to Union Square, where it seemed to just finally end. Picked up a few more lanes here and there whilst heading over to Little Italy/East Village area, but it was not a great experience. Lots of cars parked in the bike lanes where they are just painted on the side of the road including all manner of delivery truck, private cars, numerous police cars (!?) and so on. On some of the parts of Broadway where there is a large median in some cases with planters and benches between the street and the bike lanes, it's pedestrians who've claimed all this new real estate, just walking willy nilly across and backwards down and to and fro all over what should have been some pretty primo safe and comfortable bicycle right of way. I would say bikes get significantly less respect here than in Chicago, and I almost didn't think that was possible. None of the other 10 cities I have biked in can claim the same thing! DC and Philly were perhaps similar, perhaps, but you really need to be on your toes here.

Here is a recent NYT article on cars in bike lanes.

There were intrepid bikers everywhere, but you really have to recalibrate what is comfortable conditions to ride in here. We later headed over to Central Park for a couple more miles of riding. But, even in Central Park on the nice road loop around the lower part of the park, joggers (for some weird reason as the park is full of nice sidewalks and smooth gravel paths for pedestrians only) seem to just LOVE jogging all over the area specifically marked as a bike lane. I mean thousands of them. It's kind of insane, there is far more chaos all over the place than you usually notice once you have the vantage point of a bike. Weird town.

The bright spot of the day was heading over to the bike path that follows the route of the West Side Highway. We took this terrific, two-way, unbroken, divided bike roadway for a good 4 or 5 miles. It was hard to leave, just an oasis where you can really look around and enjoy where you are. More like this one please!!

Going to Boston tomorrow (actually "tonight" at 3am).

Some pics:

On Broadway (to the tune of "On Broadway")

Our steeds at rest in Central Park

And this amusing proto-comfort bike we passed just warranted a shout out. Keepin' it real!!!

the ride of brotherly love

2009-05-16T16:55:00.000-07:00

090516

I just finished a glorious 22 mile ride from downtown Philly to "Walnut Lane" (or some other little markers said "NW Ave") a 5-ish mile crushed gravel road with no motorized traffic that follows some wonderful little river in a big wilderness area to the east of Manayunk.

I just sort of had a vague notion of riding down to Manayunk and back, so I headed out Kelly Drive, which follows the Schuykill River out of downtown. There was a big rowing competition just wrapping up so some chunks of the road were closed to through traffic, which made for some nice road riding for a couple of miles. Eventually I got onto a bike path and after one wacky detour that looked like it was going to put me onto some little mini freeway up against a cliff wall with nothing resembling a bike lane, I backtracked about 50 yards and found the trail again which ended up in this little woodsy paradise. I couldn't even hear traffic at all out there, just birds and the occasional plane overhead. There were lots of walkers, a few bikers, a few fishermen, quite a few dogs, waterfalls, old retaining walls, it was a really nice scene!

After going about 12 miles out, I turned back and made some pretty smoking time coming back. I got up to 26 mph or so on this gravel path in a few places. This "Walnut Lane" gravel road was as wide as a city road and was really pretty smooth and nice. Eventually, I got back to Kelly Drive, which was still closed down and I got to pretend I was on a solo breakaway on a grand tour stage or something, just blasting along at 22-ish mph on a closed 4 lane super smooth road. The street I came in and out of the city on, Spring Garden, also had a nice marked bike lane and deposited me back a block away from the venue, the super poopy and depressing Electric Factory.

Anyway, the ride definitely cleansed my palate from the rather depressing day I'd had going at the venue today. Electric Factory, get your shit together, sheesh!!

Here are some pics:

Here is my route from Map My Ride:

east side

2009-05-15T07:25:00.002-07:00

090515

We had a quick stop in Sandy Eggo (San Diego for the rest of you). I managed to leave the club and ride down to Ocean Beach. There are some decent bike paths around there, I was just sort of stumbling my way around with the help of my trusty iPhone, which certainly kept me from getting lost on this relatively short (4 miles each way) journey. There are lots of confusing overpasses and winding viaduct type roads around where I was riding.

The following day our whole entourage flew to Richmond, VA. There I reassembled my bike and got in a short ride to Cary Bicycle Works for a little chain lube and seatpost grease. All that rainy NW riding had taken a toll on my trusty steed. Pretty nice place Richmond. It had been some years since my last visit. Thanks to the nice folks at the shop for some free quickie maintenance.

Yesterday morning we arrived in our nation's capital. After a quick breakfast and shower, I went off for a morning ride to Rock Creek Park. This little wooded oasis is really one of the gems of Washington DC. You can really forget you are in a major metropolitan area when you are in the thick of this place. Just loads and loads of trees, rolling hills, a beautiful creek, lots of little rocky cliffs and whatnot. I ended up finding my way to the path with a little trial and error and rode north about 10 miles. It's about half not-that-great bike path and half lightly trafficked roadway. I read one web page that advised to stay off the roadway part of it, but I found that to be the most relaxing part of the ride. The cars that did come past were few and far between and did a pretty good job of courteously waiting until a nice open section to pass me wide in the other lane. The bike path on the other hand was not great. It wasn't totally awful, but it did have a lot of cracks that had swollen to big wrinkles and was pretty bone-jarring at times.

Overall, no big complaints though on a pretty great warm overcast morning in a gorgeous park. I ended up with a nice 20 mile ride before 11am. Here are a couple of shots of the park. The first is the bike path and the second is the portion on Beach Drive, which is the shared roadway on the north part of the trail.

Finally here is my route. The mapmyride application choked partways on the trip out, but tracked the trip back and gives a good sense of the whole thing.

On a final note, I also got a nice feeling riding around and thinking that the Obama administration was pretty much firmly running things all over this town. After so many years of coming through here during the Bush adminstration, where there seemed to me to be an almost physically palpable sense of how incongrous this city's heterogenous population was with the hostlie posturing of Bush and company towards large urban areas in general and particularly OVERWHELMINGLY Democratic populaces such as the District, there was a feeling of things being much more right around town. I saw a number of unsanctioned paintings of Obama on the alley sides of buildings that were already looking rather weathered and comfortable. One day they'll just be barely decipherable pieces of ephemera marking a time in the life of this city. I don't think there are any lovingly handpainted Bush portraits on the walls of DC buildings that will be making the same journey into the future.

the hollywood hills

2009-05-14T16:40:00.001-07:00

090514

Woke up in Hollywood after an overnight drive from Oakland and ended up heading up into the hills right behind the Best Western on Franklin Ave for a little sightseeing. I headed up Beachwood Drive and rode straight up to where it ended at "Sunset Ranch."

You may know this place from the film Mulholland Drive as the place where the creepy cowboy did a little speechifying:

Walked up a trail with my bike a few hundred yards to take in this spectacular view.

If the resolution was good enough, you'd be able to see downtown LA through all the smog, but you get the general idea.

Afterwards, I preceded to just ride up and down the crazy twisty and topsy turvy streets for about 45 minutes. It felt like I'd imagine riding through a little Spanish or Italian town, little old roads that look more like driveways in a lot of places. Lots of crazy houses. Some look like castles, some like little hobbit huts, there were some pretty crazy mid-century gems tucked away in there too.

Riding up on this fairly cracked me up:

I guess this is pretty legit real estate up in this posh zone! Just look next door to the "lot!"

Crazy stuff! I got my climbing legs on again today.

Tour of California!

2009-05-14T15:24:00.000-07:00

090513

Of sorts at least. I just spent a nice three days in California doing some pretty fun riding here and there. We finally left the great northwest after doing 2 shows in Portland. In spite of a late arrival in San Francisco, I was able to make a pretty nice day out of it. We pulled into town at about 2:30 and I just checked in, changed clothes and headed out towards the Golden Gate! Went up to Lombard Street and just headed in the general direction. Once I had the bridge in sight, I just sort of meandered around a bit (after almost committing to the highway!) until I saw cyclists and used the force a little bit to get over to the bay where there was a bike path heading toward the bridge followed by a steep and occasionally confusing climb (I am pretty slow). Here is the view from the approach:

Going over the bridge was pretty neat. It was a bit weird to think of all the people that have jumped off of it. It almost creates this sort of magnetism towards the water, just looking, looking, looking. Really beautiful up there though. Lots of people out on this sunny and windy Friday afternoon.

I got across and figured out how to go under the first exit off the 101 and get over to the marin headlands side.

I then did about 2.5 miles of pretty steep climbing, at least for a tourist riding a loaded, 31 pound (including lock and spares bag) steel bike with a 53/39 crank. According to my mapmyride phone application, I hit some 6% grade for a decent part of this ride. It felt like it too! I'm getting pretty obsessed with climbing, perhaps it because of the complete lack of anything resembling hills or mountains in Chicago, but anytime I go to Austin or anywhere else with hills, I just get drawn to them. Of course, the descent is always a big payoff too.

I ended up at a little peak with a spectacular view of all of San Fran, Oakland and Berkeley, Yerba Buena, Alcatraz, everything! It was some seriously beautiful stuff. Here is a sampling:

Don't know what to say about this car I saw on the way down from the headlands. Only in San Francisco! (?)

The descent was pretty fun though I didn't get much above 30 mph as there was relatively a lot of traffic. Once back on the south side of the bridge, I sent a text asking where all my peoples were and then I rode along the bay for awhile until finding out that they were at Hog Island Oyster Company over at the Embarcadero. With the help of the trusty iPhone, I got there in about 10 minutes and had some incredible local oysters and other delights. I ended up doing a 19 mile ride and climbing a good 600-ish feet over the course of the afternoon.

Here's my route:

More on a fun little ride in Hollywood to follow!

NW forever?

2009-05-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

090507

Seems like this tour hasn't even started, though we are doing the 5th show tonight. We have just been kicking around Oregon and Washington for days and days. This is good for biking though.

I did a 32 mile ride all by my lonesome today. Rode about 16 miles east on the Springwater Corridor in Portland. Ended up out with some sheep and horses and a really busy shooting range (?!). Sorry to the residents of Powell Butte Parkway! Sheesh, it sounds like (sub)urban warfare out there!

Anyhoo, that ended up being a beautiful ride. Almost all off-street, starting with the really nice downtown riverfront esplanade. See pic below. Once out of the trail, there were all sorts of beautiful Blue Jays and songbirds, ducks and geese. Once I got around to Powell Butte park, the bike path was closed for some work and I lost track of the detour. I went into the little suburban neighborhood there and climbed the not-inconsiderate hill it was built on. I think it was a maybe 300 foot climb in about 5 blocks, I dunno how to make that into a grade. I should learn! I averaged something like 12mph, but most of the trip out was pretty slow, with lots of stops for pics and ditching the rain pants, tinkering with my rear wheel, etc. Most of the way back I was moving at a pretty good 17mph clip. I still felt reasonable when I got back downtown. I think I could've done another 15 miles or so. Those hills are making me really long for a compact crankset though! 39-25 just ain't enough for my old man knees sometimes.

I was having some problems over the last few days with my rear derailleur popping up a gear when I pedaled hard, but I finally sorted it out with a quick adjustment. All seems pretty good now. Can't complain about the Surly Pacer. With all my crap on it (lock, seat bag, frame pump, spares, rear fender) it probably weighs in around 30 lbs, but it still feels really sprightly! I attribute most of that to low rolling resistance. I can't say much bad about Continental Gator Skins. They hold pressure for many, many days, they are so thick and hard that they shoot rocks out from under them like a gun and (knock wood) I haven't gotten a flat on these tires yet (in at least several hundred miles or riding them). Well worth the hundred-ish bucks.

Here's my route. Can I take a moment to plug the iPhone/MapMyRide combination. I finally took the full bourgeois plunge and got an iPhone last month. I didn't know how I felt about it until I went on this trip and found out how it can A: keep you from getting lost and B: map your ride! Super fun to see where you went and then it uploads to your MapMyRide account and you can keep them all around, with elevations and everything.

Here are some pics from today's ride:

Mercer Island, WA

2009-05-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

090502

More biking! Did a 10-ish mile ride a couple of days ago in Bellingham, WA. Just tooled around the bay around sundown with my pal Joe. Finished up with a nice dinner at Boundary Bay Brewing Co. Also, speaking of Bellingham, try Mallard's Ice Cream! I have been to this town maybe 7 or 8 times and never knew about this place. Serious gourmet ice cream. Flavors tried: Cardamom (yum!!!!!), Chocolate w/Cayenne (YUM!!!!), Avocado (pretty good, interesting at any rate). They've got it going on and I'm not even really an ice cream freak.

Today, Joe and I went on a 27-mile ride around Mercer Island in Seattle. We started by dropping by Elliott Bay Cycles for a new taillight as well as a little courtesy chain lube and tire pressure check. Thanks guys!

What a great, great ride! Many bikers out on this gorgeous little island (posh real estate only out there!). It has great little winding, hilly roads with very little auto traffic. After going counterclockwise around the island we stopped shortly before going back across the I-90 bridge at the Roanoke Tavern and had some delicious salmon burgers and a pitcher of local pale ale. We did not finish the pitcher as we had another pretty brutal 5-ish miles to finish, but it hit the spot. There was some good hill climbing going on all over this ride, you really get your exercise. I may go do it again on Tuesday.

Here are some pics. Highlights include the view from Seattle across the I-90 bridge, some rolling roads on the island, some pale ale, and our route.

on the road again...

2009-05-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

090501

I've been doing some super fun biking in Portland for the last 2 days. Flying your bike on Southwest airlines is still a pretty affordable affair for everyone's information. Go Southwest!

I got to Portland, put the Surly together and went out for an evening spin to visit some friends in the studio. I was told some route tips about staying off the big roads, but compared to Chicago, the "big roads" are equal to the most bike friendly streets Chicago has to offer.

The next day I did a morning ride to Mt. Tabor, a little mini mountain (big hill) in the middle of a lovely neighborhood. It was an incredibly gorgeous day and that place is a real urban oasis. The view of the city is pretty stunning.

Later that afternoon I went with a couple of local guides on a nice 12 mile loop around the Springwater Corridor which goes south from the east central side of town to Milwaukie, OR then follows the Willamette River back around to downtown Portland. We finished it off with a little loop around the river downtown. They've got a lot of great off-street paths going in Rip City. Nice stuff!!

Here are some pics:

bike curious tour 2 preview, horse trading

2009-04-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

090426

Have to link to this video I came across on the great "slow your roll" blog. He titles the post "speechless" and there's really nothing more to say:

How is that possible? It's like bicycle parcour.

What else? I'm doing some bike curious tour again. This time it's what I'm claiming (though many don't believe me) will be my last tour with The Shins (not just with them, but with anyone!). I have a new career to attend to now and I don't want to end up as the deaf crazy soundguy. But anyway, I'm taking my bike!! I got a nice used Polaris case and I'm putting that baby on Southwest Airlines and hoping for the best. I'll be in Portland, Seattle, Bellingham, the Bay Area and LA, so I'll have some pics coming soon.

Which reminds me, there have been some changes in my stable over the last few weeks. Here's what happened:

I decided to try and get a move on sending my Paramount off the the beauty shop in Waterford. I also decided that I'd rather have a winter rideable road bike than the Surly Steamroller I was rocking. That thing was a bit too small too. So, I (at least in my opinion) caught the ebay masses sleeping and got a REALLY nice used Surly Pacer 60cm frame for $150, just under $200 shipped. Put all the Paramount stuff on it and it's a fun ride. Probably a pound heavier than the Paramount (hell, maybe even a pound and a half, clocking in at 23.5), but it's a pretty nimble ride all the same. I found out I need to wait until the off-season to save $100 on my Paramount paint job though (and seeing as there's a little rust, etc. stuff that is probably going to add to the tally a little, I could use the savings). So I'll be on this thing for a while.

I also had a little fit of bike curiousity and decided to sell off the Orbea and have a new project. After listing it in a few spots for a couple weeks, I sold it to a suburban gentleman who was moving up from a 30 year old Nishiki. He seemed a bit shy in the height dept. for a 60, but who am I to decide!? He rode it around a bit. At any rate, I got my parts money back and I'm sure he can too if he comes to his senses, but maybe he's been on a too large bike forever. He did come with some measurements on a post-it note and a tape measure, so caveat emptor I reckon. It's a fine steed at any rate. I also sold off a couple funky project bikes out of the garage, so I've got a little scratch to play with.

Not sure what's coming down the pike. I was planning on flipping that cash right around for a 62cm Serotta Classique Ti bike, but the guy sold it THE DAY AFTER I SOLD THIS THING! We'd been corresponding for about 3 weeks on it and I told him I just had to sell this bike and it was a done deal, but I guess that's the dog eat dog world we are living in. Plus you can't compete with local pickup! It's just too easy. No hard feelings Andrew.

I've got my eye on a Look KG381i frame/fork. Waiting to see if my meager offer is accepted. I think I want to scour up some Campy stuff and see what all the fuss is about (will definitely have to bargain shop for that stuff!).

bike curious on tour y'all!

2009-04-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

090426

Last week was one of my very last rock and roll soundguy excursions to the 2009 Coachella Festival in Indio, CA. My old pals Superchunk were kind enough to bring me out for one single show. It's like a family reunion as I toured with these old friends for about 6 years (and we go back far, far beyond that). Anyway, the desert was a nice break from the maddening "spring" weather of Chicago (more like the worst Texas winter to me).

I hoped I would have time for a little bike riding and I poked around on the interwebs and found a local Palm Desert shop called Tri-A-Bike that had some smoking prices on bike rentals. $30/day for a pretty nice roadbike. Have you ever priced bike rentals? They are often not cheap! I'm talking $80-$150/day for a decent roadbike. So anyway, that was good stuff!

We were staying in this ridiculous luxury house rental on the "Big Horn Country Club" property, a crazy weird gated golf course "community." It was up a 4 mile steady sloped foothill at the base of some pretty big-assed mountain.

Jim from the band, who has been doing some pretty decent daily bike riding on his wife's mountain bike (Jim! Now you know...), was kind enough to come along and the guy at the bike shop told him he needed a road bike. He got a nice Giant and I got a Cannondale CAAD7 and off we went for a pretty great ride. I REALLY wish I had some hills to ride on, terrain that is not flat roads really adds some interest! We didn't do a terribly long ride, probably only 10 miles, but it was fun! Jim remarked that his bike "rides itself" and did not have a problem keeping up on about 5 miles of steady climbing. The Cannondale was nice, kind of a weird tick each crank turn, but maybe that's normal with the featherweight aluminum bikes? It was all Ultegra and Mavic Kyrisiums or something, pretty fancy for a grand total of $12!

The climb was followed by a nice mellow descent, steep enough to go 30-35, but not so steep you couldn't keep up a nice medium cadence in the big ring. About a half mile from the bottom of the hill we had our buzz killed by a coterie of emergency vehicles attending what turned out to be a fallen biker. A very guilty looking car was parked sheepishly in the entrance to some strip mall. I think the guy must have been reasonably not close to death since the whole thing broke up pretty quickly and did not end up with some crime scene tape or something.

Here are a few pics from the top of our ride (it turned into a straight up mountain where we got off. I saw a fit looking dude climbing well up the mountain on a red Time whilst driving up to the crest earlier in the morning. Was jealous, but the traffic up that mountain was pretty busy and fast and 2 lane).

Tri-A-Bike:

View from the top:

riding on the early spring streets of Chicago....priceless

2009-04-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

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I took the picture below some 2 months ago, but finally remembered to post it as I saw 4 guys who had blocked this entire street to the point I couldn't even get a bike by them taking their sweet time filling this baby up. I dont' know if the scale translates in the photo, but if your car tire went in this, you would have had the bottom of your car on the pavement and would not be going anywhere. It lived for a few months with nothing more than the top half of a traffic cone sticking out of it. I blew a tire clean out on my car last year in a similar hole. That one was there for several weeks.

SXSW 09 - Austin, TX

2009-04-01T19:22:00.000-07:00

090401

Also, a couple of weeks back, the missus and myself packed up and went down to SXSW. I hadn't been during that questionable event since 2000, and I thought my wife would get a kick out of it.

It has certainly continued to expand that fest. It is HUGE! It's all over the east side of town now too.

I neglected to take the bike pics I should have. On Friday in particular, it was a veritable biker's paradise downtown. There were just hilarious amounts of bikes locked to every conceivable object. They REALLY need a bike valet down there. That's one page that should be taken from the Chicago playbook (just one!....). Seems like Austin is also always putting in new little bike bits here and there. I was shown a new nice little bike/ped bridge over the river (Town Lake) near Barton Springs that I never knew was there, it's still got that new concrete smell.

My Felt 85 continued to have flatting problems. I had brought down a new tube and installed it on my rear wheel as soon as I got up in the morning after arrival, we then rode down to the east side and I had a flat by the time we got where we were going. At that point, I decided to just deal with the real problem, which was these old Continental tires on this thing. They really felt as soft as rubber gloves. I knew there must be at least one bike shop within a few blocks of where I was, so I went up to a local hipster unlocking his fixie and asked and he began looking back towards the west side and pondering. I was thinking, NO NO dude, there's got to be something over here. Suddenly a guy standing nearby about to get on his MOTORCYCLE, said to me "You're looking for a bike shop? There's one at the opposite corner of this block" and pointed to the building on the corner. Well, he was right (Thanks my 2-wheeled internal combustion cousin)! I rolled down the way and found East Side Pedal Pushers bike shop. They did not have a HUGE selection of tires, but they had a few pairs of nice ones and I ended up splurging and getting a set of Continental Gator Skins. They rock! I have the same ones at 700x28 on my Surly here, but I got the 700x23 ones for the Felt.

Here are some pics of East Side Pedal Pushers. They were having a busy day with many flats, etc. I just changed my own tires on their floor as it seemed like it would have taken some time to have it done, and I was already over my budget just buying them!

Here's a piece of work. I spotted these interesting bars downtown and snapped a pic:

And just for the hell of it here are a couple of bonus pics:

My good friend Jonathan Toubin on the wheels of steel at a very popular party we were lucky enough to be on the short list for:

and your humble writer at the janky midi keys with Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkeybirds

I built this!

2009-04-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

Lots of news to catch up on. Some weeks ago, I came across a listing in the Serotta forums classifieds for a UBER huge 66cm custom Serotta frame for sale at an incredible price. I had been talking with my 6'6" stepdad about building up a new bike for him for some months and I just knew this was not likely to happen again anytime soon. Serottas are expensive man! This thing was well below $500 for frame and fork (I would guess it cost whomever comissioned it around maybe $2k or more). I spoke with him about it and he told me to go for it. What a beauty! I got it in and then spent the next 2 weeks poking around for parts for it. I had a few choice items in house already and it all came together in a simply lovely fashion. I fixed it up with a mixture of Shimano Ultegra (hubs, rear derailleur, cassette, chain), Dura Ace (STI levers and front derailleur) with Tiagra brakes (sorry parts snobs! They work good though) parts along with a nice Truvativ compact crankset.

The test ride I took it on was really, really dreamy. I now officially lust for a steel Serotta! It was literally the smoothest and most comfy ride I've ever had, but it still blasted off when you stood up on the pedals. Maybe it was the size, but all was right in the world on this thing.

Here are some pics!

windy city indeed!

2009-04-01T18:52:00.000-07:00

This is not an April Fool's post (at least it's not a funny one if it is). I went on a nice ride today in honor of the temperatures in the 50s and no rain or snow. Left work at 2pm and rode downtown to the lake. It was windy as all get out! I had it to my back on the way downtown so everything seemed great. I was on my Orbea cruising down Grand Ave. at about 22 mph, feeling pretty cocky. I got down to the lakefont path and headed south into the wind and then realized I was about to work!

I also realized then that something weird had happened with my STI levers / rear derailleur, i.e. the cable slipped or something and I could not shift down below 3rd gear on the cassette. This got progressively worse so that a few miles later, I could not get below about 6th gear (on a 10-speed). I ended up having to spend the rest of the ride dropping in between the middle and the small ring up front and using 6th and 7th in the back with the blasting wind. It's always something!

I ended up riding all the way to the end of the path (for the first time no less). It ends in a very non-dramatic fashion right around 70th Street or so. I rode a few more blocks in that neighborhood, but I got in some weird vortex where the wind was LITERALLY almost blowing over. Like it looked like someone had puppet strings tied to me jerking me sideways, so I bailed at that point and headed back.

I began to feel a cracking coming on around mile 27 and by mile 28 I had to stop and take a breather (more like a gasper really). I rested about 5 minutes and then just sort of limped home straight into the wind (felt like something between 6 and 12 mph the whole way home). I ended up having a 36 mile ride in, 40 if I count going to work in the morning. Sorted out (hopefully) my derailleur issue once I got home. Still don't know if the cable just slipped or what, nothing else looked amiss.

Supposed to rain and/or snow all day tomorrow, so that was a nice way to spend an afternoon.

Hey suburbs, way to NOT dissappoint low expectations!

2009-02-19T09:06:00.000-08:00

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Bump to this for the unlikely possibility that I have any Barrington Hills readers. Get to your city council! Dang!

http://bryanmcvey.blogspot.com/2009/02/share-road.html

I'm sure it's okay to take a full lane if you are in a car going 20 in a 30 (grandmas of the world, take note, it's okay!), but heaven forbid anyone as fragile as a bicyclist on a bike should get in the way of automobile traffic. They have important places to be dammit!

coupla new builds

2009-02-16T14:19:00.000-08:00

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Well, I've finished off a couple of new builds for friends in the last week. The first is a red Schwinn Sprint frame I built up for my friend Ted. It's sort of a half MTB/half road bike hybrid. It has flat bars, SRAM MTB brake levers and cyclocross tires on a road frame. 700c wheels on a frame made for 27" allows plenty of clearance for fenders. I had to get some new Tektro long-reach brakes to make that work, but dang, they sure work good! Mixture of parts on the drive train: Shimano 200-something cranks (can't remember that number, but from the Bio-Pace era), Shimano 600 FD, Suntour VX RD and Suntour stem mount shifters. Kind of a fun, weird one for me. The picture isn't great, I only remembered to take as I was about to hand it off, but it's on the road now and getting good reviews!

The next one is for my pal Amy. It turned out to be what I would describe as the classic Chicago hipster bike (no value judgements intended!). It was literally one bad day from the scrap heap though, so I'm pretty proud it got saved! This was a Schwinn Traveler frame that I bought from a kid down in Pilsen while I was there to buy something else (wheels?) and he threw it in for $25. It had been spray and hand painted a number of times from the look of it. I didn't know what I'd do with it, so I threw it up in the garage rafters and didn't think about it until my friend Lee (who has gone perhaps even more bike building mad than I) told me he had a good deal on getting a bunch of frames blasted and powder coated. I got it down, extracted the decrepit bottom bracket from it and sent it off. What a difference! It came back looking so pristine that it was hard to touch it as I was always leaving a nasty grease smudge on the bright yellow finish. I built it up single-speed (freewheel!!!!) with some Velocity wheels I was sort of using but didn't really need to be using (i.e. needed to thin the herd). Some one trying to make a crazy fixie bike or something had, in a fit of idiocy, shaved off the brake cable hangars, so I had to acquire these pretty classy old-school clamp on ones, which I must say, do look really nice. She already liked the cut off drop bar style deal from her last bike, so we went with that and I came up with some Sugino 170mm cranks, a 46T chainring, some older sidepull brakes with new pads, some NOS Specialized road tires from a guy on craigslist (nice tires!), and a really nice Terry Butterfly saddle and Voila!

How about that duotone color scheme, eh? Pretttttttyyyyyyyyy prettttttyyyy gooooooooood.

In other news, I'm addicted to watching the Tour Of California. They are having some serious technical difficulties with all the inclement weather, but when it's on, it's really fun. You can watch the video right on the website with this sort of flash page "control panel" style window. It has video, commentary, GPS tracking, etc. etc.

Good stage today. Must give it up for Levi Leipheimer, and good going Tom Peterson!

Spring is faking us out

2009-02-09T20:07:00.000-08:00

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I KNOW it's not going to last, but the last 3 days we've had temperatures starting in the 30s and going up. We hit something in the low 50s today and there is talk of 60s tomorrow. IT'S GREAT!!!!! I did have a moment of realization this morning that I'm sure I'll still shovel a few hundred pounds of snow before we're done this winter, but I'll take this now.

I rode about 20 miles on Saturday, none on Sunday (played indoor soccer though!), and about 20 more miles today (Monday). I'm going to try and get at least 20 miles per day in for as long as this lasts. I'm back on my Paramount and it's so fun to zip around at 18-22mph. I can pass cars in afternoon traffic for a good part of my ride. Wheeee!

On a random note, check out this craigslist gem from a week or so ago!

It's a Schwinn Paramount Tandem!!! There's something you don't see every day! It's all Campy Record too!
Here's a link to the full ad. It might still be available!

In other upcoming news, I'm going to try and take a trip to the Northbrook Velodrome sometime soon. It's on my radar now. Stay tuned.

no new tales to tell

2009-01-26T14:55:00.000-08:00

090126

Well, not entirely true. Just not a whole lot of riding going on in these frozen months I'm currently living in the midst of.

I did have a couple of cool things happen though.

1) I did a volunteer shift at Working Bikes a few days before the new year. I've been meaning to do this for quite some time, but have managed to procrastinate and procrastinate. It was pretty fun. If you want to see a whole, whole lot of bikes in need of repair, go in and do a shift there. I took a crack at a couple of pretty jacked up bikes. The first one had a bent frame, so I just stripped it, trued the one good wheel as best I could (pretty rusty!) and moved on. The second one was somewhat work-on-able, so I got it partways stripped down and labeled it for myself (or someone else) to come back to. Met Aaron and Jonathan there. Nice guys. I've had a hard time finding time on Wednesdays to go down there again since. I keep having work I can't scoot around on Weds. Hopefully not next week but the one after, I can go back over there. They probably think I bagged it forever by now. I'm out here guys! I'll be back!

2) My wife and I went to Austin from January 8th to the 13th. What a dream! Texas winters are NICE! I'd almost forgotten. The first full day we were there, the high was about 72. There were a couple of "cold" days after that, like highs in the high 40s and low 50s, but the last day was back to a high of 65. Overnight lows were in the low 40s/high 30s. We rode around all over town on 2 of the days, about 15 miles each day and one day I also went off and took a solo speedy power ride out west of town a bit, about a 15 mile circuit with some heavy hills in there too. Got the Felt 85 up to a personal record of 40mph. KIND OF SCARY! It was just starting to shudder a bit and then I had to brake quickly for a sharp turn at the bottom of this hill at the end of Far West Blvd. Austin isn't the most bike-friendly city, but it seems like it's getting there pretty fast and my brother lives in a part of town (NW side near Burnet and Koenig), that has easy access to Shoal Creek Blvd. which is a cyclists paradise and leads on to a nice mostly off-street trail system that can get you clear to the south side of downtown with very little auto interaction.

The only downside of the trip was coming home. For the few days after I got back, it was highs around 0 to 5 degrees (F) in Chicago. Wind chills in the -20 to -30 zone. Not very fun. I'm virtually defeated right now. I've only ridden once since getting back (twice if you count riding to work today, I'm not home yet!), and when I did, my hands felt as if they had been pounded with hammers by the time I got home. I know what it must feel like to be the Hulk or An American Werewolf in London or any other sort of shape shifting creature. When my hands were thawing out, I felt as if claws were going to pop out of the middle of each digit or something. It was like giving hand birth (I'd imagine), I couldn't even talk for a few minutes. Just moaning. I've realized I have to pre-heat my gloves considerably to be out in the below 15 degree weather. And that's about all we've got right now.

What else?... My highly touted Pearl Izumi shoe covers are sort of falling apart already, so I might have to take back a little of the praise I was heaping on those a few months ago. As far as alternatives, Bob, my biz partner, go the fancy LG winter boot things and said those are already having some sort of unraveling around the zipper area, so I guess they just don't really make much of anything like they used to (at least so to speak as I guess they didn't really "used to" make a lot of this stuff).

I'm building up a couple of new projects for friends. More on those soon.

Be safe out there! Only about 10 more weeks until it's not soul-crushingly cold almost all the time!

frosty rides in Madison

2008-12-27T18:18:00.000-08:00

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Just home from a x-mas visit to Madison. I FINALLY received these Nokian tires I'd been waiting for and managed to mount them on my Velocity deep V wheels the night before we left for Madison. They looked great out of the box. Very rideable and not at all over the top tread or stud-wise.

We set off with the bike and a station wagon full of gifts and whatnot to Madison on Wednesday. Thursday morning we were all meant to go across town to my brother-in-law's house for a big brunch and I decided I'd give it a try on the bike. The trip is about 9 miles and the temperature outside was supposedly going to get up to 20 degrees but as I left around 10 am, it was actually 0, wind chill of something like -10. So needless to say, the snow and ice was bone dry. As soon as I hit the road, I could tell what a MASSIVELY different feeling it was riding on these things. They just made the back streets (which were plowed but had been unplowed for some days, so there was a good layer of ice and packed snow, it was just more or less flat) feel like more or less normal riding conditions. I could also blast through the little pile ups where one plow went by later and made a sort of "curb" of snow and ice where streets crossed. It was really a fun feeling, very liberating to feel as if you could just ride normally in these conditions.

When I reached the top of the city's bike trail I was really happy to find that, on Christmas day, the trail was very nicely and completely plowed. Mind you, these are off street trails, so there is a whole little separate job to go and plow these miles and miles and miles of trails. NICE JOB MADISON! If it wasn't so freezing, I'd consider moving there!

The only downside of this ride was that my gloves are not at all fit for such temps. I did, however, discover and new ad hoc hand warming method whereby I stop and take off my gloves and stick them under my armpits (outside all my layers) and take my hands (with glove liners still on) and stick them down my pants where it is plenty warm. I did this twice on the way over to brunch, about every three miles. I received the Craft Siberian gloves I ordered to remedy this problem a few days before but was chagrined to discover that they were a bit too small, so hopefully this won't be something I'll have to get very good at, as they are enroute for an exchange now.

The other downside later in the day is that it never got past 10 degrees and by the time I rode home, there wasn't even the direct sun to help me out and the ride back is composed of a lot of very slight uphill inclines that you don't really notice on the way down them, but after bruch in the 10 degree weather with freezing hands, you start to notice!

But, hey, at least I was biking! Nokian A-10 tires: A+++++ (as the say in the land of ebay!)

Here are a couple of pics, one is me in the window of Monona terrace stopping for hand warming. Lake Monona is in the background. The next is the mighty Steamroller with the new invincible tires on.

The next day, I rode about another 15 miles or so (my computer was on the fritz). The temp was up into the 20s/30s on this day, so everything was melting! Slush everywhere. Tires still worked quite well, but there was a bit more slip/sliding around in the thick melting slush. Went by a couple of area bike shops just to have somewhere to stop and warm up. I was the only person on a bike at both of them though, so much for the hardy Wisconson biker! I did see about three other bikes over the course of the day altogether. They actually had the gloves I'm waiting for at Machinery Row Bicycles at a good price, but only in sizes XS through M. Doh! I found out that my footwear scenario (Cheapo Specialized cycling shoes with 2 pairs of socks and some Pearl Izumi neoprene shoe covers) cannot stay all that dry when you are riding through slush all day. I ended up stopping at a local Laotian restaurant for lunch and slipping out of my shoes and tucking my freezing toes one foot at a time under my legs under the table to thaw. A pot of hot tea and a plate of squash curry later, I was ready to finish it off. Same uphill slog, kind of harder with the half-melt, but I made it and got some pretty fearsome exercise. At least for this time of year.

Here is a picture of the exemplary bike trail conditions I found most of the day:

Kudos again to the city of Madison for taking cycling seriously and putting their money where it counts!

I now feel ready to face whatever Chicago has to dish out. Bring it!!!!

More Surly love b/w A brief reprieve from the cold

2008-12-13T13:30:00.000-08:00

081213

Went out today and rode about 9 miles, doing some x-mas shopping. I am in love with my Surly Steamroller now. What a dream. It was already set up with almost everything I needed. The fenders are great! I rode around in melting snow and slush and it was actually lightly raining on me during the 4-ish mile ride home and without rainpants, I'm still clean and dry enough to just come in my house and not need to change clothes. The gearing is really nice. It's not ridiculously high for riding in windy conditions, etc, yet I can still get going up to about 25mph with a slight tailwind without spinning out. Solid!

I cannot wait to tackle the next spell of crap weather with these new studded tires (see below), but I decided today I am going to keep this wheelset (I was thinking on selling it off to help ameliorate the costs of this bike) and put the ice tires on the set of Velocity wheels I was riding this spring before I converted my Paramount to geared. I hear the Nokians are kind of a pain to change out and I think I shall be riding this bike a lot for a long time, so having ice and non-ice wheels seems like a good move in the long run.

The temp got up to a balmy 35-ish today. Thanks weather gods! All the ice is melting off, so we can start from scratch next week I reckon. Here is a great picture from the "winter gear" discussion over at the chicago fixed gear forum:

My sentiments exactly! What kindred spirits sculpted this monumental piece of sculpture?!

In other news of warmer weather adventures, I had my mind somewhat blown by this guy's quest from a couple years back. This is hardcore!

The wife and I are mulling over playing a little winter hooky and heading down to Austin on some frequent flier miles in a few weeks. She has off from school for an unexpected 4+ weeks, so wethinks we are going to take in some 60 to 70 degree Texas relaxation. I can bike in shorts most likely! Huzzah, huzzah!!!

First ride on the Surly

2008-12-11T13:43:00.000-08:00

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Well, I wiped out about a 1/2 mile from my house going down a snowy (and as it turned out, ICY) street. Jammed my thumb pretty good. Not so terrific to jam my left thumb when I dislocated my right pinky only 4 days ago. Come on Nokian tires, I need you!

Otherwise, though, it was real nice to be rolling on 2 wheels again. I've goofed up the rear brake cable path with that wreck somehow, but I was planning on changing out these bars and levers anyway, so I'll just have to get right to it.

(Later that same evening)

I did it. Here are some current pics. I have fenders, huzzah!!

sexy bike pics / winter continued

2008-12-11T08:23:00.000-08:00

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Well, winter is really ON here now. My street out front is covered in a good 1/2" of ice and packed snow and it's pretty much between 10 and 30 degrees. This, of course, isn't OFFICIALLY winter yet, it's technically "late Fall" which means that we've got a very long way to go.

I had a sexy photo shoot of my "stable" a few days ago on a lark after my wife had been shooting some pictures. Below are pics of the finished Orbea Euskaltel team bike, my trusty Paramount, the Look 171 I have had sitting around for a few months which I pilfered the Dura Ace on the Paramount from (it is now resurrected with a nice mixed Shimano 600/105 setup), and finally, the finished Trek 400 from a few posts ago that I fixed up for my friend Jeremy.

Here we go:

Nice right?! My basement is getting a little cozy though. I did get the Trek out of there and I'm getting ready to hand over this Centurion, which was my (for lack of a better term) "beater" bike. This, however, presented a little problem since, with the crappy weather, it leaves me without a less-than-quite-nice bike to ride in these slippery, falling down, salted road months. It also wasn't super ideal due to the lack of clearance for anything larger than a 700 x 25 tire (700 x 28 MIGHT have fit, but not by much). So I started hunting around for some kind of cross bike, commuter bike etc. with more ample tire clearance.

After about 3 days of posting, searching and e-mailing, I ended up finding a pretty decent deal on a Surly Steamroller. It's got the so-called "fatties fit fine" chainstay/seatstay as well as plenty of clearance at the front fork as well. As a winter riding experiment, I have also ordered a pair of these:

They are carbide-studded snow/ice tires. It may be overkill, but my neighborhood as well as the long street I work on are often not plowed at all. In addition, I commute down the hike/bike path in Humboldt Park, which is also un- or underpaved regularly. These tires are supposedly they best choice for mostly plowed roads with some icy patches and offer the least rolling resistance, so I'm gonna give them a go on the Surly. I'll keep everyone posted.

Here is the bike in it's original incarnation on craigslist:

Speaking of which, I'm out the door now to give this thing a test ride to work (no ice tires yet, but at least it's not super awful out right now.

Bike on!

winter blues (and trying to beat them)

2008-11-26T21:59:00.000-08:00

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I am a southerner by birth and though my 9 years in Chicago have been VERY rewarding, I get a little bit more down with the onset of every winter here.

This winter is going to be my first of biking all the way through (at least the great majority of the time). In the past, I'd bike until it got down into the lower half of the 30s, but I've gone ahead and put together a significant winter "kit" for myself this year. Last year my business partner and friend Bob, who is a longtime winter biker, got my some nice gloves and a balaclava to try and get me going on some cold weather riding, but this year, I also procured a wool jersey, a nice light rain jacket/outer shell, some rainpants and some wool socks. After a week of riding in the first major cold snap we had last week (low 20s to mid 30s), I added a heavier full-face balaclava as well as a pair of neoprene shoe covers. The shoe covers are nice!! Toasty! I still have to figure something out for my hands, the gloves I have are nice and are good down to about 35 degrees or so, but when I went out in the lower 30s and 20s, they just can't quite cut the mustard. I'm hoping I can get some thin glove liners to go inside. More on that later.

Also, in an effort to beat back the blues and stay occupied, I have moved my little bike shop setup into my basement studio space. It has required the repurposing of a piano that hasn't seen a lot of use lately, I guess I could always stop and play a brief sonata! See picture:

I'm currently just finishing rebuilding a Trek 400 for a friend. It came with some nice old Campy stuff on it, which was quite a surprise as I bought it from a guy on craigslist who came by my work with it one evening after dark. I just sort of verified that the frame did not seem dented and that all the parts seemed more or less present. It was pretty dirty with some rust on numerous scrapes, but I stripped it down to the frame, cleaned it up, touched up the paint, rebuilt the wheels, BB and headset and have it all setup now. Here are some pics of that project:

I've been riding the Paramount quite a bit since I returned from tour. It is really fun. I have given up on riding a bike with a rack. I had one on this Centurion Accordo I've also been riding (mostly in wet weather), but it just felt like a Cadillac with that thing on it. It's weird, I know it's not that much weight (though I have this JandD rack, which is probably the heaviest rack around), but I guess 2-ish lbs. is an additional 10-ish percent, so that is pretty significant. I've just resigned myself to wearing a backpack almost all the time. Sometimes I know I'm going to straight to work and back home, then I can just ride sans anything else, but mostly it's backpack. Somehow, that doesn't feel as clunky. I guess it's like the apocryphal (though photographically speaking, apparently untrue) legend of 1960s French Tour rider Jacques Antequil always moving his bidon from it's holder to his jersey pocket when he started climbing, reasoning that the weight of the bike was more important than the weight of the rider. Untrue or otherwise, it feels true to me. I still feel quite zippy and free with a backpack of decent weight, but even with JUST the rack on, the bike feels like some kind of station wagon to me.

I'm actually going to unload this Centurion I've been riding part time. I have a friend in need and I am getting to the point where I am having a hard time riding "lesser" bikes (please note the quotation marks, it's a fine bike, I'm just going through changes!). I'm turning into a lightweight bike snob!! Crap! I am addicted to leaning on ergo levers, I am addicted to good brakes. I am turning into a bush league weight weenie.

Anyway, between the Trek and the Centurion I'm going to be selling, I am turning around and pouring that money into my latest and greatest project. I have been cruising Road Bike Review classifieds over the last few months and I came across a tantalizing used frame that I finally had to go for. It's this:

An Orbea aluminum frame made of some SHOCKINGLY light Columbus "Zonal" tubing. I have to do some research into this stuff, but it's insane! I have the Felt 85, which is also aluminum, but it feels/sounds more or less like steel in terms of being thick aluminum tubing. When you tap this Orbea, it literally sounds almost like a pop can. It's so thin I feel like I could bend it with my hands. I presume I could not actually do that, but we'll see! It seems as if it's going to weigh about 16-17 lbs, when finished. It is finished in the striking orange/yellow finish of the Spanish Basque region's Euskatel cycling team. This also happens to be the color (along with gray) of my studio/business (i.e. the decor/logo are all decked out in orange and gray), so I'm getting some gray tires and it's going to be the first TEAM CMS bike! Next up, the Grand Tour circuit!

It came with a handful of parts already (Campy Centaur brakes and seatpost, FSA carbon fork and Cane Creek headset, Selle Italia saddle), but I'm finishing it out from another RBR classified from a guy selling basically everything that wasn't already there. This includes Ultegra 10 speed/triple STI shifter/brake levers, rear and front derailleurs, cassette and chain. I also have a set of Ultegra 6600 crazy 14-spoke wheels to finish it off. I will be able to get the whole bike together for about probably $950 total, so it's not super cheap, but for what it is, it's cheap! I'm hoping to take it to some places I can do some serious climbing with the Triple crank. More on this bike soon.

Also, one silver lining of the economic downturn I've been noticing is that it's definitely becoming more of a buyer's market for late model high-ish end road bikes and parts. If you've got a little cash to spare and want to make some upgrades, now's the time!

Omaha!

2008-11-08T09:23:00.000-08:00

081108

So, whilst traveling on tour with Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, I ended up in Omaha with a day off before election day and a show there on election day. I wasn't crazy about missing election day in Chicago, what with it likely to be "an historic event" and all (That phrase has really been flying around this last couple of weeks, I can't help but put it in quotation marks. English teachers must be excited as I reckon there aren't a lot of good everyday examples of the "h" exception to usage of "and."). However, I decided to make the best of it and see if I could find a bike and get some exercise. We were staying just north of the downtown "Old Market" area, right near this big Qwest Arena thing. Lots of new construction, warehouse conversions, etc. up here. I looked up area bike shops and found Olympic Cycles and gave them a call about renting a bike. At first the guy seemed like it wasn't going to happen, I was asking about a road bike and he said they only had 2 bikes to rent, a mountain bike and a sort of cruiser bike and one of them was already out. I was getting ready to blow it off when I heard him listening to someone off phone and then he said "Actually we have one old road bike to rent." I told him I was tall and he said that it was about 25 inches. I told him I'd be right over!

So, I got a ride over there from my fellow crew member Mark who along with his wife Julie, who grew up in Omaha, were out looking at places to live and preparing to move there. The shop was a nice funky old storefront affair. It said "since 1973" on the door, and I thought "this is the place for me!" Turned out the bike was a great old Raleigh Competition GS touring bike, Reynolds 531 tubing, full Campy 10-speed setup. It was one of the owner, Larry's personal bikes he'd brought in for another random tall guy rental request he'd had the week before. I rode it around the block and then got setup with a bike map and I was on my way.

I basically descended from the shop all the way back down to the riverfront where we were staying. The Raleigh was really fast! It was so fun and incredible to be riding in a strange town on a strange bike. I went back to the hotel and just got changed and looked at the map. Julie had mentioned how Omaha had their own new "bridge to nowhere" (so to speak), a hike and bike bridge over the river to Council Bluffs, Iowa. On the map I could see a lot of riverfront bike paths, so I headed over there.

Well, the Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge is definitely a bridge to somewhere to me (and I imagine to many others who might want to stay fit, or actually even get to work by bike or on foot over the river without having to brave one of the numerous auto bridges full of freeway speed traffic. It's funny how controversial it is to spend money on a bridge that can't have cars driving over it. No price is too high, it seems, to support automobile mobility, while Amtrak funding, public transit funding and any sort of really comprehensive system of paths for bikes, peds, etc. is considered some sort of socialist handout. GROAN!!!!

Anyway, there were several miles of great paved bike paths around the river here. I rode about 12 miles that late afternoon until dusk fell. Took a couple of crappy phone pics below on the aforementioned bridge. It has a great view of the city and in spite of just opening (I believe) several days before, it already had a good amount of both foot and bike traffic on it.

The next day, election day, I went out again and rode for about 20 more miles or so before bringing the bike back to Olympic and getting to work. Our night at the Slowdown turned out to be a great night anyway, the venue was really nice and they had the election situation pretty well sorted out with a large projector TV setup and plenty of good internet access, etc. I watched the scene in Grant Park back home, looking for my wife and friends on the TV. Anyway, a big shout out to Olympic Cycles for hooking me up!

Loose ends

2008-11-03T22:14:00.000-08:00

081103

Figured I'd clear out some long neglected cycling odds and ends while I'm sitting here.

First up, here's a pretty awesome bike cozy I saw outside Feed restaurant in Chicago a couple of weeks back. Check out that tricky knitting action at the headtube!! Nice work!

Next up, I had the funny experience the last Friday in September past of being caught in traffic as a Critical Mass ride rode right past me in the opposite direction. Ironically, I was going to pick up my wife who'd gotten a flat on her bike!

It looked REAL fun. I was jealous. The riders were generally all in a really festive mood and shouting out greetings to the drivers that weren't really any kind of snarky stuff, just "happy Friday" and that sort of thing. That didn't stop some drivers from eventually going nearly postal over the perhaps 10-minute delay, trying to jump the sidewalk and get to the nearest turnoff street. There are some psycho people out there in cars man. Where are they going, to their mother's heart surgery?! Somehow I doubt it, but the shouting and cursing and honking persist nonetheless. C'est la vie (la guerre?).

Here are some pics of that:

There were probably 300+ riders in my poor math, it took a good 10 minutes of fairly constant flow for them all to get past. Nice one people!

Paramount update

2008-11-03T20:29:00.000-08:00

081103

I have finally managed to get the Paramount together! Here is the rest of the saga, as it were:

Whilst in the middle of putting the pieces together for this Paramount conversion underway in my last post, I stumbled across a guy on craigslist (who happened to live right in my neighborhood) was selling a mid-90s Look 171 road bike. There was this picture of it:

but the part of the post that caught my attention was about it having a full Dura-Ace group on it and it was going for $250!!! I snapped it up! The seller was at first saying in the ad (per picture above) "I'll try and find the wheels" or something to that effect. He did indeed find the quite nice Mavic/Shimano Dura-Ace wheels as well, so this ended up being a complete bike in need of a little light TLC. The Look frame is a carbon frame with aluminum lugs. The whole bike weighed something like 16.5 lbs. Unfortunately, it was a 56cm frame, so it wasn't going to be a complete bike for me, but I put all the Dura-Ace stuff on the Paramount! It's a 7700 group, for those keeping score, really nice stuff worth significantly more than the entire bike's cost. Hooray for craigslist (again)! I am now going to build this frame back up with my mix of Shimano 600 and 105 parts. It will still be a really nice ride. I'm going to either try and have the missus check out riding it as a more serious road bike ride, or if she's not terribly into it, I can just resell it this spring.

There was an irritating learning curve during this parts raid though. I installed and used the STI levers, but without a front derailleur as I was waiting on a braze-on derailleur clamp to come in to mount the DA derailleur. I took the bike up to Madison and rode it as an 8 speed for the weekend a few weeks back. It was really nice and fun. The DA brakes are really like a whole new experience in stopping. I even manually shifted the front ring once! It's not that bad for those trying to simplify their setups. Anyway, when this clamp came in, I put the derailleur on and was futzing around with setting it up when I just f-ed up the front ring shifter. DOH!!! I didn't realize that the derailleur had a sticky spot from sitting around for so long and was trying to shift it when it was already shifted and, long story short, I bent this little sort of cable stop part of the casting in the lever and it was ruined! I ended up having to poke around for a couple of weeks on ebay before finding a reasonable price on a similar vintage. Apparently they were a little later and I must have not been the first person to do this as the one I bought had a totally different, reinforced construction at the same spot I bent. I finally just got this thing on, lubed up the derailleur and got it all sorted out. It's really nice!!! I had been riding this Centurion I picked up a couple of months back (I haven't even written about that one!), and I would think "this is a pretty nice ride" but I got back on the Paramount and it was like being on a cloud comparatively!

I did this last tweaking on a little 2 day furlough from the tour I am on right now (live sound engineer), and I spent my full day off just riding all over the city running errands, etc. Went about 23 miles maybe altogether, nice fall riding day. However, at the VERY end of the day while turning onto my own street, I caught a pedal on the pavement and just threw myself for a big wipeout! CRAP!!! Quelle embarrasing! I was alright more or less. I poked some ugly little holes in my shorts where my keys ended up between my thigh and the ground in my pocket, bruised my leg there, kind of shocked my wrist and got a few little scuffs. The bike was more or less fine, it took a little hole in the seat, a nice newish $10 Fuji I got off a guy on CL as well. I'll have to doublecheck it when I get back.

Anway, that's the saga! I can't wait to get back home for hopefully a handful more of nice days before things go full winter. It's incredible right now, high 60s, early 70s. I'm in Omaha, NE today on the tour and next I'll tell the story of my nice day off in Omaha that I'm in the midst of.

It's nice to post right now. Something to do besides obsess about the election!! I need it!

I'm not a good blogger...

2008-10-14T21:31:00.000-07:00

081014

...because you need to probably post more than once every 5 or 6 weeks really if you expect anyone to stay even sort of interested. Perhaps I'll get back on a streak.

Many bike-y things have happened. I've been doing loads of work on my Paramount changing it over to a pretty nice road bike setup. The process went something like this:

I got a pair of Shimano 105 STI shifters for it and tried for a while to get some different used wheel sets that would work for this conversion. After learning a few hard lessons about Shimano compatibility and vintage (though I was able to find homes for the wheels that did not work fortunately), I just got a new set of Mavic CXP21 wheels with Ultegra 6600 hubs on a sort of end-of-summer sale. Nice wheels! I got a second (small) chainring for the Shimano 600 cranks that the bike already had on it and started setting it up. I got this setup more or less happening sans front derailleur as the 600 derailleur I swapped out from the Trek 660 I had a while back stripped at the cable clamp bolt upon installation. So I just fastened that cable under the bottle cage boss on the seattube and went on my merry way for the time being. Other bits include a set of Easton ergo drop bars and a nice Fuji saddle ($10 on craigslist!) Went on a pretty fun ride with the bike in this stage one Sunday afternoon. It went like this:

-3200 W Belmont to the lakefront by way of Diversey.
-Lakeshore path to the top, brief rest and the photo below at the turnaround
-Lakeshore path south to Grand Ave
-Grand to Milwaukee back up to Wicker Park

Here I met my friend Matt for a light lunch and beers before heading back home. It was a nice 20-ish mile ride and I loved the new bike setup.

Here's a pic:

The saga continues though. More soon...

shooz

2008-09-20T23:04:00.000-07:00

080920

I have taken the plunge and gotten a pair of clipless cycling shoes. My biz partner has been a full-time bike shoes guy for some years now and after a while his and a few other friends' dedication to wearing them got my interest piqued.

After poking around in a couple of bike shops and then doing a couple hours of web reading, I settled on these shoes:

They had them in stock at the Kozy's bike shop over on Milwaukee Avenue by me here for a good price, so I was able to go over and give them a tryout. I settled on these because they were allegedly pretty flexible and had a recessed cleat. They seem to be positioned as an "indoor/spinning" cycle shoe, but they seem pretty terrific.

Oh, I forgot about the other thing that made it easy to take the plunge. It was that my bike had already come with these Shimano pedals that are quite functional for normal riding, but made it pretty easy to make the switch:

The great thing about these pedals is that I can still ride with normal shoes quite comfortably.

I have to say that I'm loving being clipped in (clipless, clipped in, the terminology gets kind of confusing). I rode toe clips for a little while recently and though I got the same good feeling of being able to do a full rotation with some sort of power. However, with toe clips I also had a handful of ridiculous incidents of my shoe lace across the face of my shoe hanging up on some little protrusion on the cleat and pulling up to a stop only to comically slowly fall over on the ground. So, the shoes are definitely better in terms of being easy to unclip (unlock?) yourself from them. If you set them up a bit loose, it's a piece of cake.

I think it feels easier on my old man right knee, which would mostly feel pretty stiff when I first started riding in the morning. Now I don't really feel any discomfort in the morning or any other time for that matter.

Bike Porn

2008-09-05T15:23:00.000-07:00

080905

Here is the site of Ray Dobbins, a serious bike tweaker/restorer with some of the nicest "fashion photography" of bicycles I've seen. His concentration is on 70s and 80s Italian bikes, but he's also got a gorgeous 50th Anniversary Paramount in there. It's overwhelming! Nice stuff Ray.

He also has a nice primer on aluminum polishing that is making me start looking for a bench buffer! Additionally, there are good tips on paint touch-up and other minutiae for the restorer.

grab bag

2008-09-04T16:57:00.001-07:00

080904

Here are a few funny cycling loose ends:

A quality ride my wife spotted yesterday downtown. Keepin' it real! (Now she wants one like this!)

Also, here is a guy juggling machetes downtown on a 10' tall unicycle. Go man, go!

Adios to yet another Trek!

2008-09-03T21:56:00.001-07:00

080903

I sold off the Trek 660 I had a brief dalliance with. I decided I couldn't afford another bike that wouldn't take a rack, so I fixed this thing up a bit and let it go.

Here's what was done to it:
-removed weird "Grip Shift" shifter and returned it to normal Shimano indexed downtube shifter
-trued and rewrapped the wheels (they were blowing tubes due to mangled rim tape)
-replaced the Shimano 600 "tricolor" derailleurs with another set of 600 SIS derailleurs I procured as I was coveting the ones it came with for my impending Paramount re-conversion (back to a road bike from single speed). Got the shifting humming along well with the replacement stuff
-rewrapped the bars
-gave a vigorous cleaning

It ended up being a quite nice looking bike and I think it will make someone happy for a long time to come!

Here's the more or less original setup (I actually changed the seat right off and had some temporary wheels on there):

And here's how it left:

Austin vay-kay

2008-09-03T21:41:00.000-07:00

080902

I almost plum forgot to write a little bit about my newest addition to the family. When I got to Austin for the vacation we took in early August, I had shipped down the Takara from a few posts ago to use and keep with my brother down there. Well, I rode that for a couple of days, but then I noticed a CL ad for a bike I had actually been trying to get my brother to buy was still hanging around. It was for a Felt 85 and was a sort of "must sell!" type deal and seemed pretty cheap already. I think he was asking $400 for it. It's an aluminum road bike, circa mid-90s maybe? Well, I wrote the guy telling him that I wasn't really in the market per se, but perhaps I could cough up $360. He went for it. Why it was so hard to sell that bike, I have no idea! It's terrific! It has a Shimano Sora group on it, which is a pretty low end group for them, but it's still just a super nice zippy light racing bike. My first aluminum road bike. I only got to ride it for about 4 days, but it was SO fun. I actually thought about shipping in back to Chicago to continue with the fun, but decided it'd be nice to not have to procure another bike for my time in Austin. I ended up being able to sell the Takara to a good old friend of mine currently living in Paris, but who comes back to Austin pretty regular and wanted a bike to keep there as well.

I took this bike on one good solo 10 mile ride. Heading west on a bike trail over the MoPac expressway onto Far West Blvd. a well-to-do-ish hilly thoroughfare, I got my first experience with the Shimano STI levers or "brifters" (brake shifters) as, I believe, Sheldon Brown tagged them. This is really an efficient way to ride a bike! It's like you are just joined to it, with all controls immediately in your hands at all times. I reached about the 4.5 mile mark at a steep downhill grade that leads on out of town and got up to about 35 mph according to the computer. What a rush! However, about half a mile down the hill, I realized I'd have to make it all the way back up and needed to be ready for an evening out in about an hour, so I turned back. I had to go all the way to the granniest of granny gears with this 24-speed drivetrain to crawl back up at around 7mph. I got my exercise though!

I'm looking forward to taking some long, hilly rides on this bike for sometime to come. I think I will have to go to some sort of shoe/cleat setup pretty soon though, as I got stuck in the rather awkward toe clips on this bike a couple of times throughout the 4 days of riding it, leading to comical slow-motion flop-overs at a couple of stops!

Overall the trip to Austin was quite enjoyable sans car. We rode an average of about 15 miles per day in temperatures at or near 100 degrees. It was a good workout even with pretty leisurely paces. Austin is definitely ramping up on some off-street bike trails, though it still falls far short of places like Madison, WI, in which off-street bike travel is really a quite feasible way to get around all over town. Chicago still has a long way to go before we'll see anything more significant than painted bike lanes which also serve as expressways for the occasional psychotic car driver and parking lanes for service vehicles.

Here is a picture of the Felt:

Also, here's my Austin friend Adam's really nice Surly Long Haul Trucker. He's setup with a sort of urban/randonneur style. This was the first time I've seen the "Midge" bar, which is kind of a cross between a drop bar and a moustache bar, or really a drop bar with the drops flared out at a 45 degree angle rather than straight down. He's set up with cross levers in their intended "interrupter" fashion, as secondary brake levers (these are very much in favor today as primary brake levers for all manner of city bike/fixie, etc. conversions. Nice bar-end shifting too.

A pretty sweet ride, all in all:

Stolen bikes

2008-09-01T12:16:00.000-07:00

080901

Long time no posts! I've been remodeling my kitchen and it hasn't left a whole lot of time for anything besides (kind of) keeping up with work.

I've begun helping out with moderation duties at the Chicago Stolen Bike Registry over the last couple of weeks. It's a community maintained site for reporting stolen bikes which offers a pretty coherent set of questions and information one must fill out and then posts it in a standardized fashion.

One thing it makes you realize is that there are A LOT of bikes stolen in Chicago! I mean A LOT! I would assume that perhaps no more than maybe 10-ish percent of stolen bikes end up on this list, and there are so far maybe 30 or so posts per week, so do the math.

Another quick thing you'll notice if you look through it is that using a cable lock is the very easiest way to have your bike stolen. These things can be cut through in about 5 to 10 seconds with a big, honking pair of cable cutters. Use at least a U-lock. Bikes are still stolen with U-locks, but it is almost always a situation where the bike was left unattended for at least some hours.

Be careful out there, there ain't a lot of civilized behavior going on out on the streets of Chicago!

funny!

2008-08-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

080812

Here's another gem from Craigslist. I know the text is pretty small to read, so here it is in all it's glory:

Ultra Hip Hipster Bar for Your Fixie - steel is real!

Make your already hip hipster ride hipper with these ultra hip short bars. 13.5cm across which is enough room for a babies (sic) hand or a little less than half an Oury grip (and please see my picture of the shortest bar I've ever seen here, which is actually exactly this described setup! Hee hee!). Steel Bar. 110mm, 1" threadless, 10 degree rise stem.

This made the best-of-craigslist.

You never really leave high school...

2008-08-12T08:43:00.001-07:00

080812

It just carries on in all sorts of ways, except that sometimes the school bullies end up carrying a badge and a gun. Thanks goodness for video cameras or this would have just been another case of "his word vs. mine." Also, please read about the report this officer filed regarding this incident.

Another day, another bike

2008-08-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

080806

I thought I had done a post about this particular ride, but I just poked around and realized not. Here's the story of my Takara frankenbike. I got this thing for $100, pretty out of tune, but basically sound. I think it's from 1976, pretty heavy steel tubing, large frame (maybe 63cm?) but kind of a classy ride, Suntour bar end shifters, sexy styling, pretty good geometry (a concept which I feel like I'm starting to get a bit of a grip on finally). Here's a before pic:

I ended up just doing a big cleanup on it to start. Plenty of old gunk/tar/hard grease around to remove. Next I needed to lose some weight, so I did the following:
-swapped the wheels (some old Arayas with pretty heavy hubs) for a pair of 27" Rigida rims on Maillard hubs from a Trek 500. This made a big difference, aesthetically as well as weight-wise. I also removed the front derailleur, deciding that a 5 speed would be just fine for city riding. I left the front small chainring on, just removing the chainguard, so I can still do a manual "shift" up front if I suddenly need to climb a little mountain or something. I put a new upright stem on it. Not much to choose from here, I happened to have a stem from Harris Cyclery for the older 13/16" size around, it's not really very light, but probably a bit lighter than what was on there. I put on some nice Nitto drop bullhorn bars and some DiaCompe brake levers I had around. Also swapped out a nice lightweight saddle that I had picked up on the cheap a couple months back. It turned out pretty darned nice. Still probably weighs about 28 lbs., but I probably got it down to that from 32 originally. It's a remarkably fast ride for the weight. Pretty fun.

I shipped it down to Austin for the (then upcoming, now current) vacation I'm on. UPS ground for a bike in a bike box is about $45. I weighed this against what I've found for road bike rentals, coming in a circa $60/$100 day and decided that a $180 investment plus $45 in shipping was a pretty good deal. I can leave it at my brother's place down here and it'll just keep on paying off!

However, I must confess that I'm already thinking of selling it and moving on. I'm starting to feel like the person who finds the squirrel with a broken leg, mends it and then sets the little gal free. Or else like a catch and release fisherman. It's fun to get something all spiffed up and ride it around, but I always need a new project or experience shortly thereafter. Not terribly profitable, the used bike market (at least not for me!), but I feel like I more or less keep spending the same few hundred dollars over and over. More to follow, to be sure!

D'oh!

2008-08-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

080805

Well, I had worse than a flat as it turned out. I actually bent my "bombproof" Velocity deep V rim. Crappy. I think I was able to more or less fix it by using a crescent closed down to just the rim wall thickness and gently, slowly bending it back out. It wasn't terrible, and I got it pretty straight and lightly sanded out the little bite marks from the wrench. I figure at least I'll ride it until I screw it up again and then perhaps I'll get a new one. Such is life in the city I reckon.

I did get another bike at the beginning of the weekend. It's an '89 Trek 660. Pretty nice bike. It was kind of hodge-podged by the previous owner. Was supposed to have an all Shimano 600/Ultegra group, but a lot of it is Shimano 105 now. It's also got a weird "gripshift" rear derailleur shifter thing mounted on the end of the drop bars, kind of looks like a little mini beer koozy stuck on there. I have been riding it around for the last 4 days. I think I'll probably just ride it for a while and then sell it again after making it prettier/tuned up (it came with flats and kind of ratty bar tape and misaligned front derailleur). I have decided to turn my Paramount back into a normal road bike and then use my single speed wheels on an as-yet-unknown frame that can take a rack and fenders. It's a nice ride though.

I actually had a funny first ride on this bike. I had to literally get home from buying it, throw an unproven set of wheels on it (it came with flats and I had another set I had picked up on the cheap sometime earlier) and head downtown due to my previous day's rim bend on the Paramount.

I was screwing along down Milwaukee Ave. making good time and after a couple of miles, I noticed that the front tire had a curious bulge/bend thing going on. The tire was deforming and I was thinking "this is not going to get me downtown!" Right past Division (going SE), I noticed a window with a bunch of bikes in it. I stopped and walked the bike back down the sidewalk to the front of Ride bike shop. The proprietor, Ron, walked out and took a look at me and my front tire blew up right at that moment with a big "bang!" Pretty good timing. Anyway, he sorted me out with a used front tire for a few bucks and I was back on my way in about 10 minutes. Thanks Ron and Ride!

What I have now is a pretty janky looking bike, but I left for vacation yesterday to Austin, so I'll not be worrying about that for several days. Hooray for vacay!

a day in the life...

2008-07-31T19:54:00.000-07:00

080731

Here's a really funny craigslist posting. I concur...

Where are all those freewheels and derailleurs going anyway? I'd love to have them. If I see another ad for a "sick ride" or a "hipster urban commuter bike" or what have you, I think I will throw up in my mouth a little bit. At least I'll yawn. I guess they must be selling. Don't get me wrong, I have a single speed bike, but I don't think you need to defile every bike you can get your hands on. Some people still like having gears. They can decide.

In other news, I got an instant pinch flat today on a wonderful official City Of Chicago (Richard M. Daley, Mayor) pothole today. I was going westbound on Grand Ave under Michigan Ave where it gets all dark (especially with sunglasses!) at around 25 mph when I just went completely over a big-assed pothole that made a "bang" sound on my back wheel which had me expecting it to have a busted spoke or something (score one for Deep V rims!). I had to walk my bike about 4 blocks to the CTA and train it home. So sad.

I rebuilt (by which I mean removing the rust covered spokes a couple at a time, sanding them down, lubing the spoke nipple, replacing a half dozen missing spokes and trueing) an old, but not too old, kind of nice double wall Weinmann rim. I'm trying to resurrect these old wheels to put on a 50cm Diamondback/Centurion road bike I bought for $75 a while back. I used the wheels off of it for another project, so I'm trying to return it to working order now. It's really a Zen paradise just tinkering away with some music spilling out of the poopy jambox (today: The Smiths "Strangeways Here We Come and the newer Clinic album "Do It" or something along those lines). Pics coming soon!

Sexy bikes (of the lack thereof)

2008-07-26T22:06:00.001-07:00

080726

Chicago has them in droves. I just completed a trip recently to Toronto, Montreal and NYC and I have to say that Chicago seems to have about 100x the truly sexy gorgeous bikes of any of these places. I just take it for granted that I'll see maybe 5 to 20 really nice bikes on any given ride in the city, but I could barely find bikes worth photographing in these cities. Here's a 3 or 4 pics that about sum up the nice bikes I saw. Pretty sad for 4 days. I could just go down to one corner in Chicago and find more than this.

A decently setup city bike (I think this was a Miyata?). Though it looks like someone is on too small of a frame (judging by the seatpost height and my own experiences).

I like the astroturf pad on this guy

Here's one of the only really nice bikes I saw (parked) in NY (I did see a really sweet ride, but the guy was screaming down 2nd Ave on it. Couldn't catch him).

I did see quite a lot of trashed bikes around NY. So sad

the critics

2008-07-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

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I'm finally a good way through aforementioned blog (I had no time to read between my last out of town trip last week and the one I just started now). It's getting me interested in the Tour de France more generally. I really didn't know much of anything about it. There's a pretty good wikipedia entry on the Tour that gives (what seems like) a decent overview of it. Rob's blog is pretty fun to read too. Makes me want to go on some much longer than normal city commute rides. It also makes one aware (if you venture into the "comments" portion of it) how much pretty extreme bike snobbery there is out there. There are lots of people chiding him for "buying his way into cycling" or some such sentiments though he makes it abundantly clear that he is simply running up an illogical amount of debt on this quixotic adventure. I think people just read what they want to read, particularly on the internet. Everyone's an expert and a smaller plurality are just plain assholes! I myself am an unrepentant cheapskate (at least where my own expenses are concerned) and yet somehow I am able to enjoy this tale without having to get into the self-righteous postures that every 10th commenter (and there are a lot of them) seems unable to resist. Maybe I'm just missing something?! It's one guy's blog, maybe all these quick-witted people could use their verbal kung-fu for good instead of shooting this voluntary fish in a barrel. Can we perhaps concentrate on obscene consumption of some bona fide multi-millionaires and leave the dude who put a $3500 bike on his credit card alone? Geezus!

some blog

2008-07-26T21:43:00.001-07:00

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Here is a neat blog at nytimes.com that I'm just getting into. It's written by Rob Mackey, my friend's sister's 41-year old journalist husband and is about his self-proclaimed early mid-life crisis endeavor to ride this mountainous leg of the Tour de France. I guess before the tour proper, there is an "amateur hour" (so to speak) for non-professionals to try their hands (feet?) at this soul-crushing leg of extreme mountain riding.

I'm not so up on modern road-biking and it's accoutrements, but it's interesting (though well out of my price range) and as an almost 40-year old, I'm inspired by his stamina. I have a somewhat bum right knee which probably isn't going to get any better, but I hope I still have quite a few good years of riding in me.

The Climb

To fix or not to fix? (and then some)

2008-07-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

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What gives with the fixed gear obsession?It seems (to me) to be part of a multi-front attempts to make something that is already dangerous enough (city riding) even more so. I sort of think of it as the stiletto heels of biking. I tried to ride my friend's "fixie" for a block last year and nearly killed myself immediately. I KNOW, I KNOW, you just have to learn how to do it and get used to it, etc. etc. But WHY?! Why would I want to make sure I could never stop pedaling, even in an emergency, or going around a sharp corner or over multiple potholes or any other normal city riding situation. Then, to top it off, NO BRAKES! Yowza, great idea, sign me up. What if car drivers decided brakes were unnecessary and just counted on downshifting to come to a stop. I bet that would go over well, you just have to get used to it and become experienced, you can always ditch into a building if you can't stop in time! It also seems as if a lot of people who have not biked in a very long time are getting back into it with a fixed gear bike. I bet they didn't remember it was so difficult riding a bike! My friend got a freewheel cog put on after riding around with me and watching me enjoy a good coast every so often.

Then there are also the small bars, like barely wide enough for grips. Surprise, I don't get this either! Maybe pretty soon there could just be a knob in the middle of the fork. This type of dangerous stuff plus a good dose of anti-car self-righteousness is, I think, just the perfect recipe for some very unnecessary injuries/deaths.

Here are some pics of what I'm talking 'bout, including what I think are the shortest bars ever.

In the second pic above, I think only about half that grip even has handlebars under it, hence the really unorthodox brake lever placement.

HOWEVER, for unorthodox, nothing I've seen beats this specimen. Spied recently on the streets of NYC, I do have to give props for sheer hilariousness. I think the bars are off of a tricycle! Seriously! Can you see where the single lever is mounted? It's on the stem! What the?!!? Press in case of emergency.

I'm not a person who bikes around in fear of cars, but there are plenty of good reasons to be. I do realize that it's (not likely but) possible that any number of mishaps could cripple or kill me, and I very much value whatever measures of control I can get from an option to coast, 2 good solid brakes and some decent sized handlebars. You should too (in my most humble opinion, of course). Hardcore fixed gear/short handlebars peeps, FLAME AWAY!

Raleigh refurbs

2008-07-15T22:50:00.000-07:00

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Long time, no posts. I have a lot of respect for people who can manage to post in a blog virtually daily or anything like it. I'm just too busy. I reckon that perhaps in the winter I can wax verbose a few times a week during the 17 hours of darkness we enjoy here in Chicago.

I've been fixing up a couple of bikes over the last few weeks. I got them as a pair from a guy over in Humboldt Park who had a 5 or 6 bike cache he was getting rid of. Both are circa late 70s/early 80s Raleighs. A green 56cm Grand Prix and a white mixte around 50cm. They were both in semi-functional shape.

The Green Raleigh was being fixed up for a friend of a friend who had his bike stolen. My friend JBI is in a graduate program with this gentleman and all the people in his program are chipping in to get him another bike to ride. Pretty nice gesture! So, I got this thing home, took off all cables, levers and brakes and cleaned the frame up. It had a bunch of tar splatters on the underside and the chainstays. I removed this and a bunch of other crud with some lighter fluid. Steel wooled the wheels back to a nice shine, disassembled the hubs, cleaned and repacked the bearings, trued them and put in new tires/tubes. I left the headset as it was, as it seemed fine. Put all new cable housings and mostly new cables. Actually replaced the shifter levers as the ones on it were these super cheapy plastic ones with a sort of half-sheath of metal and felt like they were going to break if you went to full derailleur excursion. I chopped off the "suicide" (nee safety) lever part of the brake levers and rewrapped the bars. I was going to leave the cottered cranks alone, but on a test ride, there was some sort of play in them, so I dug in. After removing one of the pins, I found that it was sort of crimped in the middle and this is what was giving the drive side crank some play. I went ahead at that point and cleaned and repacked the bottom bracket and took the almost-finished bike down to Boulevard Bikes to have the pins pressed back in with their pin press. It turned out to be a pretty nice ride. Total investment, around $180 ($120 for the bike, $30 for tires/tubes, $10 for cables and $20 for new pins/installation). Here are some pics of the finished bike (I never remember to take before pics!):

Here is also a great set of pics of the bike's new owner showing off his new ride. I got a warm, fuzzy feeling from these.

The next bike, which I finished the evening before leaving for a road trip yesterday, was a white Raleigh mixte for my friend Anny. She has an old tank of a cruiser which must weigh 50lbs and is getting pretty long in the tooth. So I got this bike for $80 and went to work. I stripped this one all the way down, save for the notorious cottered cranks which seemed fine. I did a sort of partial repaint of it, taping off the old decals which were still looking decent and did some spot sanding of places with scrapes, etc. White makes it pretty easy to match paint. I steel wooled the heck out of the wheels, tightened spokes and trued them, cleaned and repacked the hubs and put on new tires. They turned out pretty terrific. I then repacked the headset, put on some new cruiser type bars from Velo-Orange which were only $20 (good deal!), black cork grips, a new black cushy seat I got off craigslist, cleaned up the brakes, used some vintage dia-compe brake levers I bought off another CL guy, put on a few new cables and all new cable housings. I rode this thing around in the alley for a few minutes and aside from being HILARIOUSLY too small for me, it was really fun to ride! Overall cost was $175 ($80 for bike, $35 for bars/grips, $20 for seat, $25 for tires, $15 for levers and cables). Here are a few pics:

I also have thinned the herd a bit over the last few weeks. I sold off both mountain bikes that myself and my wife were riding. Respectively, those were an older Trek mountain bike I got and rode last year as a hand-me-down from my father-in-law (Thanks Terry!) and a Specialized Rockhopper which I cannot believe someone once sold me to ride, it is about 12+ cm smaller than anything I should be on. After I got the Trek I changed out the bars and seat and my 5'9" wife rode it. If you ever read stuff on the Rivendell bikes website about frame sizing, he writes about how bike stores always tend to sell you frames that are too small. SO true! At least the big superstores full of under-qualified salespeople.

I also sold off the pretty gorgeous Trek 360 that I tried having S ride. I did some pretty nicely matched touch up painting, put on some new cables and rewrapped the bars and it turned into a real pretty bike. Sold it to a woman who seemed real excited about it. I hope it's out there plying the streets of Chicago for a long time to come. (BTW, sorry for the crazy contrast pics, it was a sunny day and I didn't scrutinize my results well enough.)

My next project to finish is some mods to another Raleigh Gran Prix for my friend Matt. I'm putting on some on/offroad tires, a rack and switching him over to bar end shifters.

Viva bikes!

projects...

2008-06-25T21:38:00.000-07:00

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I've been real addicted to craigslist bikes listings now. Some ebay too, but it's not as fun, there's always some dipsh*t out there willing to pay retarded amounts of money for everything on ebay almost all the time. If you act fast, you can still get a great deal on CL. I have to confess, I've been buying some things on craigslist. I got a new Fuji Royale II for the missus (pics coming soon of this), A big old Raleigh Marathon I'm going to clean up for a friend, and before all those I got a circa '84 Schwinn Traveler and a couple of Schwinn Continentals for $80. The traveler was 4130 lugged CroMoly, in not-terrible shape, the 2 Continentals were both '70s fillet brazed pretty heavy models. Choosing my battles, I decided to drop the 2 Continentals with Working Bikes and see what I could do with the Traveler. Sadly, I did not take pics of the "during" phase. I ended up sanding the frame down to metal, re-primed and painted it. Cleaned up all the parts, disassembled and rebuilt the wheels, changed out the bars, new cables, bar tape, tires and tubes. It turned out so pretty that I'm somewhat sad to see it go. However, it's leaving for a life as a friend's new bike.

Here are some pics. I left the very nice paint on the headtube, which helped my spray paint job look a heck of a lot nicer. I really like the aesthetics of the old diacompe center pull brakes. Even the old seat/seatpost combo looks pretty good! I think I ended up with about another $60/$80 in parts on it. Pretty good end result!

I'm currently looking for a second bike for myself that I can put a rack on (I could probably bootleg a rack on to the Paramount though it doesn't have any braze-ons at the droputs, but I can't quite bring myself to do it). I'm hoping to find a large frame similar to this one (an old Schwinn, Panasonic, Miyata or something along those lines) that I can fix up for this purpose, I have most of the parts sitting around, including some really sexy mystery rims that I just finished finding some semi-matching hubs for. Here are the rims:

They are some light double walled aluminum with brass eyelets, real thin, if anyone (Norm?) knows anything about them, let me know! I just bought them (of course) on craigslist. I got some NOS folding skinny 27" Avocet tires for them from Harris Cyclery I'll post more pics after I build them up. I'll have to recruit some help to figure out the spoke sizes, since I can't just consult the charts on an unknown rim. But once I get that sorted out, they are going to be some real nice wheels I think.

Here is a picture of my (bootleg) shop and also Marge the dog, my faithful yard companion when I'm out tinkering.

my new 'mount

2008-06-19T22:31:00.000-07:00

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After a couple of weeks of VERY obsessive craigslist trolling, I came across a 60mm Schwinn Paramount for sale about an hour after it posted. This was in the 3rd week of May and after watching CL for some weeks, I was starting to notice a definite trend towards higher prices and faster snatching up of bikes that weren't higher priced. This bike was $450 and was already setup as a single-speed. I had just been getting hip to Paramounts a couple weeks before and this price seemed crazy cheap. It seemed like I had seen frames selling for less money than that.

I spoke to this gentleman on the phone on a Wednesday and found out the he was actually in Racine, WI but after talking for a couple of minutes, he volunteered that he'd come meet me halfway, up in the deepest outlying suburbs near the state line. After consulting with my better half about whether this was totally irresponsible madness, she let me off the hook and I made a deal to go Friday morning and pick it up.

I drove up there the next morning for an 11 am meeting at the Bass Pro Shop (!?!). He seemed to feel like that was a pretty easy landmark. I was flying by the seat of my pants, but with a coupe of well-timed cell phone calls I made it there.

I got to ride the bike around in the GIGANTIC parking lot of this mall that was like a proving ground at that time of morning. What a difference it makes to sit on a bike that fits you right (at least it's as close as I've come, more to come on sizing later)! Epiphany #2. I only had to ride it for about 30 seconds to figure it was a keeper. Had some nice Weinmann wheels with both a fixed and free hub on the back. The gearing was pretty short, like 45/18, but I figured I'd change out the wheels and chainring off of the Tempo. It also had Shimano 600 brakes, cranks and headset and some pretty nifty bigger bullhorn bars with nice bar end levers.

Here is how it came:

I gleefully drove this thing back home and changed out the wheels and chainring. We were going to Madison for some family time that afternoon, so I hurriedly got it ready so we could have some nice rides for the weekend. Here's how it came out:

This bike is really fun to ride! Yippee! It weighs in at 21.5 pounds, which (apparently) isn't that light, but is the lightest bike I've ever had. It's just got really comfy geometry.

Can I go on a bit more about it? It's an '86 "Paramount Standard" made in Waterford, WI. It's made of Columbus SP double butted tubing, which apparently is
a bit thicker than the SLX tubing used to make the smaller frames. This is Schwinn's flagship bike, when this bike was built, they made about 900 to 1000 of them per year.

You can get a whole lot of history and discussion on these fine bicycles through the Waterford Precision Cycles site. The factory where these bikes were made for Schwinn is since 1981 continued on after Schwinn was sold off in the 90s. It is still run by Marc Muller and Richard Schwinn, who were responsible for Schwinn's "Paramount Design Group" since it was moved to Waterford in the beginning of the 80s.

Yay, Paramount!

new ride for the missus

2008-06-19T16:10:00.000-07:00

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After I started riding this bike, I wanted my dearest wife to have an improved bike experience as well, so I started trying to scope out some appropriately sized roadbikes for her. I found a nice Trek 360 from circa 1988 or so a few days later for $100 and we snatched it up. The 360 is a sort of entry-level road bike, 4130 tubing, nice Dia-compe brakes and shifters (indexed shifting on the downtube). S is not a big fan of road bike-y handlebars so the first order of business was sorting out something a bit more cruiser style there. We found some bars by Nitto that I think go under the name of promenade. Here is one place you can find them:

Nitto Promenade Handlebars

We put some "Oury" grips and some Tektro cross levers on it for the rest of that setup. I was able to re-use the cabling by just cutting the ends cleanly and working slowly to restring them. We also swapped out the seat for a sort of modern fairly cushy guy, can't remember that name right now.

Next up was wheels. This thing had some 36-spoke steel rims with Malliard hubs. A pretty heavy wheel overall. I wanted to try and take a stab at wheel building, so I figured this might be a good time to give it a try. I enlisted my pal Chris, who built my wheels to help me again. He took the old ones apart and figured out the right spokes to mate to some new silver Velocity Deep-Vs. I went into the shop after hours one evening and we built the wheels up side by side. He did the rear wheel to make sure the dishing was right, etc. but I did a pretty decent job on the front wheel. Finished these new beauties off with some Zaffiro Pro tires in blue.

I think I actually managed to not have any pics of this bike. Really a shame, because it was a real looker. S rode it for a few weeks but then decided it was too small, which it indeed was. Once you put on handlebars that push the grip position back about 4 inches, it became really apparent.

On the Trek tip, there is a lot of GREAT info if you are trying to hook up with an older Trek road bike and need more info at the wonderful vintage trek website. They have a nice timeline with lots of good info about what tubing got used on what when and that sort of thing along with a pretty full selection of brochures covering a couple of decades.

I am currently converting this bike back to sellable condition. I got a Fuji Royale 2 for her next try last week. It's a full 1"+ bigger, so it seems like a good fit. It came with 27" wheels, but putting the 700c wheels from the Trek on it worked out just fine. Putting the 27" wheels from the Fuji on the Trek wasn't such a snap though, as the 360 came with 700c wheels original. So, I'm going to have to wait until some profoundly back-ordered spokes I ordered come in to rebuild a set of pretty okay aluminum 700c rims to stick on this thing and make it back into a (nicer than when I got it) sellable bike. I'll post some pics when I have it nice and pretty.