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!).
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.
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!
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!
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.
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).
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!....)
