Ride Lugged

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so this guy was stamped out august 1991, and I have retired him today.

it seems that I have actually worn this poor saddle out. a near fatal collision with a incorrectly labeled drive-thru canopy in North Carolina left it a bit worse for the wear almost 9 years ago, but it was still going strong. but it seems the last 510km loaded ride to Vienna was the downfall.

I never really thought my pointy sit bones could pierce a saddle shell. About 360km into the ride on some rough dirtroads, I noticed that it seemed that the padding directly under my sit bones had been quickly ground down and I was riding directly on the plastic/fiber reinforced shell.

when I made it back home this morning, I decided to put the flite out of his misery. in the interest of curiosity, I choose to break the saddle down to its base elements. the perforated leather cover came off without too much trouble, and the glue holding the foam on gave little resistance as well.

I was surprised to find the culprit of the sudden loss of padding.

it seems that my ass actually cracked the shell with my sit bones, at which point the padding in that small area was ground away fairly quickly.

I don’t recall any major impact, but there were so many repetitive jarrings that day, I am not surprised.
anyway I am saddle shopping now. I may look at a racy brooks, maybe a nice fizik (the misses seems to enjoy her two), i might stick with the flite. if I do stay with the flite, it looks like I will have some modding ahead, to fix the new and unnecessary spaceship styling.

ok, off like a prom dress!
-c

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Mel has been riding some sugino xd 500s for a while now, but for some reason, no matter what, they get chain suck. not every ride, not every shift, but sometimes it happens. And its not her fault. I rode it and the same thing sporatically happens to me. What gives? Changed the rings, changed the chain… She knows how to shift… Anyway, I have been planning on getting rich and buying her either the white industries road double or a pair of TA cranks, set up as a wide range double. That would be minimum 200 bucks though, 200 bucks I dont have. Unless my couch is holding out on me.

Anyway, digging and shooting shit at freeze thaw the other day, and ran across some SR apex cranks. Never heard of them. Minor interweb research led me to believe they were introduced around 1980-1981, had a short market life, and the world moved onto the soon to be standard 11o BCD we all know and sort of love.

here they are, prior to some time with some polish and steel wool, and they still have all 3 rings

118 BCD, came stock with 48/46/28 rings, looked to have a low Q, used standard bolts, standard crank puller, SR made them so they were probally cold forged… nice finish and low wear despite the years in a dust pile. I traded a salsa stem for them, made them a wide range 46/28 double, and slapped them on Mel’s Atlantis.

they look sharp I think. more elegant than the sugino cranks. lighter, lower q.

Ahh lower Q factor. Mel doesnt really know or care about Q factor. But we went for a ride yesterday, and she said something like “why does my bike feel so fast?” also, perhaps more bizarre: “why do i feel more stretched out?” well, didnt know Q did that…. But check out the tread photo:

if this were the 1990s, and it was a basketball game and not a bike part set up thing, and you had made a basket from say, 3 yards beyond the 3 point line, you would say booyah.

OK what else?

Sorry, this post will just go on and on and on and on.

Mel hasnt been on a mtn bike for a while. Last summer. Like me. I suck, I bet she does too. Logs? Ahhhh! Ok so we took a cue from Rob’s Christine course. And set up some obstacles.

start with a rock garden. rock and brick garden that is. you cant not hit some rocks, its a good thing.

log. not big, not small, just right.

log pile with easy finish. for now.

really annoying square edged stutter bumps. ratchet pedal. ratchet!

tiny north shore thing. for balance and confidence building. ends in a drop off.

said drop off. note quality construction.

ends with a teeter totter. easy, but fun. to come: bigger logs, more rocks, a jump. Mel likes jumping.

What else?

Our power went out a while ago, and I decided to try to make an olive oil lamp. I used a tiny glass jar, a rag for a wick, olive oil, and a coat hanger. It worked pretty well, for a while. Then I dont think the kink in my hanger was tight enough. The flame just kept creeping closer to the olive oil.

would cino cinelli hate on me?

I’ve been working on yard salads: using mostly stuff from the yard to put in wraps, have for dinner, etc. I have added dandilion greens now, but this is what i generally use.

I’ve been reworking some images into quadtone images. Here is a sample image, in quadtone and a link to the flickr gallery where more live.

i was talking to a local rider and friend, and fellow penn state art program guy eric roman the other day. yesterday actually. and we were sitting at the table cory designed, and talking about people we knew, and found that we both knew a number of philly folks, and meg, so there meg, eric says hey. he held up his fingers, pressed them together and said “the east coast scene is still this big”, or something like that. imagine a fellow 11 years older than me but 40 lbs lighter, who only rides a singlespeed, and still races in the pro class, and has lots of tattoos, and you sort of get an idea of what he looks like. we were looking at my witcomb (was meg’s) and it has the new sachs new success cranks on it, which are sharp looking by anyone’s gauge. he told me they were made by campy using record (or was it chorus) molds, and just branded sachs, which made them sort of under the radar cool. really though, they are the most polished thing on the bike, so they arnt that under the radar. this makes me wonder though: should i be using a campy taper bottom bracket, because i am not, and have logged at least 200 miles on them, and they seem fine, stiff smooth low Q, and silver. eric said: they arnt light but butter never is, or something like that but more clever and off the cuff.

all of those thoughts stem out of me sitting here, next to mel (well she got up for something, oh a shot of slivovice, which stinks like medice, thanks cory, medice from 1932, in its original bottle. she’s back now, and reading the newest reader, with her tea and shot of czech booze. and i am looking at those cranks, which, sharp looking as they are, manage to look clunky next to my lyotard Berthet pedals. made of stamped steel, these pedals are somehow bigger, more comfortable, curvy, and lighter than any quill pedal out there, and their hollow stamped windows and swoopy lines remind me of a late 1930s roadster more than any other pedal i can think of. they look like they were drawn using a set of french curves, by a designer who only looked at war time alfa romeros. only alfa romeros didnt look that swoopy when the berthet pedal was invented in 1923ish. they make the otherwise super elegant sachs cranks look like overkill, huge cold forged arms, fat low pro spider. of course even these look lighter and more svelt than new campy stuff. outboard bearings never did anything positive to a bike’s aesthetic, which, i like to think is at least partially why sean goes through all that trouble to hide them. those ridges on the outside of the bearing shells (for external bbs not the vertigo ones) are cool like those sun shade visor things you see on the back windows of 85 iroc-Zs and mustangs. FLASH: they are called sun louvers, which makes them even more lame sauce in clown town, to combine a sean-ism and dave-ism. FLASH: mel just turned off the celtic music. thank god.

I recently picked up a cycling magazine that wasnt the reader, to prove that i keep up with the contemporary world madness of our times. in it found such treasure like 1.5 inch headsets for road bikes (ok they really didnt need to move beyond 1 inch, ok threadless if you are that guy, but 1.5 inch? functional advantages: now you and your bike can look like you dope. claimed advantages: stiffer front end for more positive cornering. now, i have to provide a disclaimer here: i’ve never ridden at 60+ down a huge mountain on a more or less perfectly smooth road on a course that has been precleared for obstacles. but i have descended down sketchy dirt roads at over 45 mph with a one inch threaded headset, a nitto stem with tons of quill showing, and 39cm wide bars that are over 40 years old, with centerpull brakes, and never once, not once, was i aware of, or concerned for front end deflection. and i am fatter than those racy dudes, and carry at least 10lbs in my handle bar bag. if anyone should feel it, it’s me. so it is at this point that i officially say: stop it. just stop it. stop it, please stop it. its gone beyond making me mad, it actually makes me tear up. i’m not planning on having kids, but this is the madness that future children will be born into. a culture that thinks of threaded steerers like you and i think about bushing chains: little if at all.

i was out riding today, just before dinner, a 12ish mile loop that takes me up some steep hills so i can get my singlespeed legs back on. i was riding my witcomb, traditional sized tubing, 1980s race geometry, 40cm bars, cloth tape, wheels that cory had on the second worst bike in the world, one speed. i was having an ok ride, not moving as fast as i was last night, when i saw the holy grail: two cyclists up ahead, roadies, climbing out of the saddle. catch them. that’s what to try to do. lately, my shape has been such that that would have been a pipe dream. but i sprinted, hard, and caught them, and blew past them, nicely, with a comment about the nasty headwind but the nice temps, and then tried to hold my lead. i had to beat them up the next climb (as soon as i passed them, they started after me, pride is a wonderful motivator) and down a series of steep, swooping descents, and then up a series of stepped climbs. I held my lead, my single speed being perfectly geared for out of the saddle mashing on this particular grade. i out descended them too, and perhaps by now they had given up. but no, right around the bend, there they were, sprinting out of the saddle on a flat. you don’t do that with gears unless you A. ‘ know how to ride or B. are trying to catch someone. Miraculously though, i had found the spin zone, and just sat and spun my tits off, as they say. held the lead for 6 miles. then i broke. my stomach developed a cramp you could sell to the CIA for interrogation purposes. my legs turned to mush. i almost fell off the bike from the cramp it was so bad. it was like getting shot with a .22 at close range but without the click bang. it was like having a guy inside of you crash his 4 inch buick lesabre into your colon. it hurt. i wobbled on my bike. i paid for my lead. i came home and did unspeakable things to the bathroom. i’m getting ready to race.

So I just noticed this on the BBC today…
Cycling Jacket wins design award

Which seems really like the idea that Swiss Miss came up with not that long ago.

So which came first?
I kinda like her design idea better…
no need to remove hands from bars at night for risking a hand signal that wouldn’t probably be seen.
Just thought I’d put this out there for ya’ll.
Rob

So you may have seen a post last year about some training obstacles I set up in my backyard to help Christine improve her bike handling skills. This year I added another rock/log pile for her to crawl over and she tried it out today. Here’s the shots…

The course overall…over one pile, around the tree, and over another pile…(while dodging the bushes and clothesline)

Upclose of the older pile…

Christine on the approach…

Up and over…

This little training course in our backyard is an excellent lunch break escape…it’s really improving her bike handling skills and more importantly, her confidence.
Thanks to Casey for the bike on loan.
Please don’t let the fork comments outweigh the cheers of encouragement for Christine’s riding.
Rob

So Hutch ventured around on the wooden velociped today. This was the first time he actually spent more than thirty seconds on it. He pittered around the yard and driveway for like a half an hour! He even tackled the obstacle course I set up for Christine’s mountain bike training in the backyard (I’ll reveal those pics in another post). He went all over the place and I was almost more amazed by watching how the thing teaches balance than I was by what he was doing on it.
Here’s some shots….trying to be artsy…

The velociped power…

Finding his stationary balance point…

Posing on his bike…

Motoring around the yard…

Flashing the look…

Tackling the obstacle course…

I’ve got some video footage of him rolling around too. I’ll post the link to it in the comments section once I get it up on my YouTube channel. He definitely makes us proud.
MOTIVATOR!
Rob

OSOBIKE.com, Road bike and cruiser mix, Pictures

I guess this is for people who want the clean look of a fixed gear but don’t want to rely on sheer leg power to skid their way to a stop. Or it’s for those who just like to coast. Granted you don’t get that “connected” feel that you do with a fixed gear or a big wheel and you can’t pedal backwards and do cool fixie tricks, but I think the coaster brake has enough nostalgia points for me to make this post.

So recently I’ve been looking at handlebar bags like the Sunlite Bartender 4 and thinking about how useful these can be. Albeit generic looking and not at all unique, which is something someone like me is often concerned with when deciding on bits and parts that will have no overall cohesiveness nor rhyme or reason in how it matches the bike. I got thinking about wacky ideas for handlebar bags and instantly the vision of a clunky metal lunch box found itself in my minds’ eye. So I started looking on eBay for rad lunch boxes and found all sorts of cool ones…eh, cool to me. Stuff like “The A Team” or “The Dukes of Hazzard” were obvious choices, but not cost wise. I found a repro KISS lunch box that rocked! Then came the thought of drilling holes into them…or drinking from a 1983 thermos…YUCK!

So I reconsidered and settled for a compromise of space and functionality over pure aesthetic. Which as you can see is definitely not an issue here. An Einstein Bagels lunch box with handle removed.

Then I got working on a high-tech mounting system that will securely hold my lunch box and it’s payload while riding over bumpy terrain and not be clanky and loud…

Now the fun part….drilling holes with precision and exactitude…

I then secured the lunch box to the mounting system with superior stainless hardware for easy removal at rest stops and so noone steals it while I’m inside a liquor store shoplifting…

So now I can carry my three PB&J sandwiches and a can of Mountain Dew safely and within easy grasp while I’m riding. Plus, I can tape the queue sheet to the inside of the top of the lunch box for easy reading at busy intersections. I’m also going to trick it out with bottle cage mounts on either side for a couple cans of Sparks.
Here’s the finished product!

There’s just enough room for my hands to comfortably grab my dialed BMX brake lever in case of emergency. So there you have it. Seven dollars worth of hardware and a one dollar lunch box from a consignment shop…and I’m rollin’ deep. I tested it (with four innertubes in boxes) around the backyard and it rattles like crazy and clanks and jiggles….perfect.
Rob

How To Properly Walk A Goat

I can only assume this is how Cory and Veronica train while out in the Republic. When they race goatless it’s like a 50lb. goat has been lifted off of their shoulders.

That pretty much sums it up. We rode at Patapsco today and Gary rode his surly as a fixed gear with no brakes. This is the second time I’ve seen him ride fixed cross country, the first was at the 24 hours of Seven Springs and Nick convinced him to use a front brake. All in all it was a good ride, weird weather, started out with a little sleet / snow but the sun came out for a bit which warmed things up and Gary didn’t die.