Reviving the workshop and the blog

Hey look, a blog.  It's been a while, but I've been busy.  Liana and I moved home to Maine and I've basically been working on our house for a year in my spare time.  Oh, the bike times that have been had since my last post...  I finally have a garage again, this time with a dedicated bike maintenance bench.  The stable has grown to 16 bikes, thanks to some freebie junkers from the metal pile at the local junkyard, and I have a few frames sitting around waiting for the right project.  Since my last post, I've made a tall bike, built up a new fake John Deere single speed road bike, a chopper (which I subsequently chopped up for parts), and acquired and old cruiser with one of those 2 stroke motor kits.  Posts on those to follow.

I haven't really had very many good shop sessions lately with all the remodeling I've been at on our house.  Last night I had a really good one.  It was nice to get into something in the garage not involving drywall for once.  My bro-in-law wants to try bike commuting and his 20 year old mountain bike is just not up to the task.  It's an ambitious commute for a new commuter, 20 miles each way.  So to try it out, my Raleigh touring bike is getting called into duty.  I love this old bike.  It was my high school graduation present. A 1997 R-300, Shimano RSX STI shifting 21 speed, braze-ons everywhere, 32mm tires, canti brakes, fenders, etc.  I gave it a full wash, scrubbed out the drivetrain including every individual link by hand, relubed, tightened up the shifting, adjusted the brakes, and deglazed the pads.  For a finishing touch I rewrapped the bar tape where it had come a little loose due to a hasty job last time around.  It rides plush on the 32s, and shifts clean 'n' crisp.  This thing is ready to roll.    There is nothing like the late night smell of simple green, grease, and chain lube.  I'm almost a little wistful about letting it out of my sight for a month.  But if it can win over a new bike commuter, game on.

Smoothies and knobbies

Summer is hitting in a big way.  The kind of days where nothing beats an ice cold fruit smoothie after a solid bike ride.  In the last month I have pretty much finished up the XtraCycloMountainTouringCruiser it's now got a new 26" wheelset, an 8speed drivetrain with 11-34t cogs in back, a disc brake up front, fenders and the cargo bags attached and tested.  First mission was a 40 lb bag of dog food.  It's since been grocery shopping several times and has even transported a casserole dish of 7 layer bean dip safely to it's destination across town.  I love this bike, so much fun.  If we had rail service that was actually practical for getting between here and Maine, I could legitimately see getting rid of one of our cars.  This thing rocks the socks off a regular trip to the grocery store for a week's worth of groceries.


New to the stable is a tandem!  Liana and I have been married for a year and for our anniversary she suggested a tandem so she could keep up with me on rides.  I love this woman.  We found a basic townie style tandem with a swoopy cruiser style frame on Craigslist for a pretty good bargain of $140!  It's a Kent "Dual Drive" which sells new for around $300 at places like Amazon.com and other big box online stores, ours is only a year old, but looks like new thanks to a couple hours I spent cleaning it and tuning it up (and peeling off the ridiculous number of stickers it came with).  It only needed a longer seatpost for Liana since most tandems assume that the rear rider is shorter and Liana and I ride the same height seat.  I was pleasantly surprised to find Shimano components on the bike, it's decked out with Tourney derailleurs and Revo shifters, basic, but reliable.  21spd drivetrain, big cushy seats and a not terrible paint scheme.  The bike would be well worth the $300 price for new.  Adjusting to tandeming does not seem that difficult, we've been cruising around the neighborhood on it and are looking forward to actually putting some miles down with it soon.

Parts just arrived for my next project: Reincarnating my Bridgestone BB-1 as a moustache-barred, single speed 26" monstercross bike.  It's currently been stripped of parts again for various other builds.  Nashbar was having a sale on a bunch of random parts, how could I turn down $8 for a moustache bar?  I believe I have all the other parts kicking around for the build though I may actually upgrade its canti brakes and slap a fresh chainring on it.  I can picture it in my head and I think it's gonna look sweet.  Red frame, silver components, brown saddle, and cork tape...

I started one of those rides last night where you realize you just shouldn't be on a bike, except it's too late and you're already fully committed.  The weather was far too nice to let the day pass without riding so I headed to the Rez for a ride after work.  For the first ¼ of the way around I felt pretty good.  I even felt pretty good on the 1½ mile slow burner up the ridge.  As I got up to the higher ground, then I started feeling funny.  About that same time, I caught up to the rider I had seen ahead on the climb.  We chatted and decided to ride together, but as we started going, I found that I wasn't clearing any of the usual features, my balance was off, my legs and arms started feeling really sluggish, and I wasn't able to respond to the trail.  I was dehydrated, my nemesis had returned.  Twice I had to stop and sit down.  The second time was rather urgent, it was a "sit down before you fall down" kind of moment.  Al (the other rider) hung with me, saying he was feeling slow too, but I'm pretty sure he just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to pass out.  This brings me to the point.  A camaraderie exists in mountain biking that is largely absent from the road biking side of things.  Two bikers in the woods are far more likely to just randomly chat, join up, and then finish a ride together and even take on a little responsibility for the safety of a stranger.  Mountain bikers will offer tools, spare parts, and general help quite freely.  I didn't need anything more than just to just chill for a few minutes while sucking down a bunch of water, but if I had been in more dire straits, there would have been someone there, and that's really awesome.

After I got my legs under me again, I started feeling much better.  As we rode on, my balance solidified and I felt generally stronger.  Turns out Al is a hell of a rider and also knew a bunch of little side trails I'd never noticed with some fairly ridiculous features.  He rolled one of the biggest drops I've ever seen another rider land in person (he was on a full-sus DH bike).  We also know some of the same people through Crankfire which is always fun to learn. After getting over that trouble at the top of the ridge, I felt great and finished the last ½ of the ride fairly strong.

Jon Watts - Two Wheel Tour

Tuesday night I had the privilege of hosting Jon Watts as he passed through Hartford on his tour.  Jon is a Quaker spoken word/lyrical hip-hop musician and now also a long distance cyclotouriste.  He left Richmond, VA in March and has been riding up the coast with his Xtracycle Radish, playing shows in the big cities as he goes.  He carries all the gear he needs with him, including his guitar, amp, laptop, and banner, in addition to all the camping gear he needs to be self supporting.  In short, he's not doing this halfway.  Icing on the cake is that he was not an experienced cyclotouriste, he just decided to do this and made it happen in a relatively brief time.  Well he's got some experience now.

I encountered him a while back on the Roots Radicals email list, a resource list for Xtracycle riders mostly.  We chatted a little about a route through Connecticut for him to take and it looked like he'd be passing right through here so I offered up some hot meals, a shower, and a bed.  Luckily for me he was coming into town on the later end of the day, so I was able to ride out to greet him and then ride in the last 10 miles together.  I was impressed.  Piled high with gear, 8 speeds, and platform pedals, and he still knocked out a really solid pace, with enough lungs to chat.  We unloaded his gear, pointed him to a hot bath followed by dinner and some more conversation.  Once he had recovered from the day, we took a look at his bike, since he mentioned a few mechanical complaints, despite having just paid for a complete tune-up 2 days previously in Brooklyn.  Shifting was all out of whack, kickstand was ready to fall off, and his rear disc brake pads had worn down enough to actually not work at all!  So we:

• Gave the frame a good wipedown
• Cleaned & lubed chain and cogs
• Cleaned & lubed derailleur
• Adjusted front and rear brake cables, deglazed pads, and snugged up the calipers
• Tuned the derailleur
• Tightened crank and chainring bolts
• Adjusted saddle position
• Adjusted lever and shifter positions for better ergonomics
• Aired up tires

In short, it was an awesome shop session.  When we finished around midnight, he said, "This is a happy bike!"  After plotting out the rest of his route to Boston it was definitely time to turn in.  In the morning, he was excited for the last 100 miles to go, so we saw him off, well fueled with pancakes and tea.  I was very much wishing I could trade in my day of work for a day of touring.

Here he is, about to depart for the last two days of riding:

It was really a blast to get to know him a bit.  Hopefully our paths will cross again.  This has thoroughly given me the itch for a tour again.

Why an LBS can rock your socks

I treated myself to some new SPD pedals for the Monocog 29er using some coupons online.  In removing the old cleats and attaching the new cleats that came with them, the threaded plate that the cleats screw into had corroded and the threaded section popped right off.  Major bummer, I really did not want to ride with my flats tonight.  I called Central Wheel, over in Farmington, to see if they had the part and they did.  20 minutes later I was back in the basement screwing my cleats into new plates, which they didn't even bother charging me for!  That kind of local, immediate service is something you can never ever get from the national chain catalogs, not to mention the occasional free nut or bolt.  So major thanks to Central Wheel, they saved my ride today.

I did it to myself, really

Tonight I went for a ride out on the Reservoir.  Feeling invincible after receiving my 5 pack of 29er tubes in the mail yesterday, I was going to be prepared when the inevitable flat were to eventually happen.  I got a late message that there was a group going out in the Rez, so if I was going to catch them I'd need to ride fast.  I tore into the trails like I meant it.  Eventually, around ¾ of the way around I caught up with them.  Except they had decided to ride counterclockwise and were actually headed the way I'd just come.  I was quite well warmed up and feeling good so I turned around and rode with them back the way I'd come, never having down the loop counterclockwise.  It was a neat ride, I like that way and I'm likely to hit it up again that way to mix things up a bit.  After clearing a rock ledge climb that's usually a drop, I heard the SSSSS that means your ride just got less fun.  But I was prepared!  I had my tube!  With no way to inflate it...  My pump had been stashed safely in my road bike bag and apparently my CO2 inflator had discharged in my bag at some point.  Even though I didn't know it, I definitely caused this flat, simply by not having my pump in my bag.  This is where the benefits of actually riding with people come in.  2 borrowed cartridges later, rolling away.  Much thanks to Bill.  Overall, it was a great ride for me about 1.5 times around the Rez since I doubled back, I'm feeling my lungs come back a bit and my legs have more to give than they did last week.  Looking forward to riding with the Black Sheep (and my pump) again tomorrow night

There may be hope for roadies yet

Figuring that the Reservoir could stand people taking it easy on the trails yesterday but knowing that they wouldn't, I went out for a road ride.  This was actually the first time I've gone for a road ride here, I've basically been mountain biking most of the time.  I figured I could make a nice loop by taking a route around the Reservoir.  After wrapping fresh bar tape (oh baby, nothing like fresh tape), I headed out.  I took roads I was generally familiar with going clockwise around the loop to start, but about half the ride would be pure exploration, and should have been around 12 quick miles.  About ¼ of the way around, I came to an intersection at the top of a brutal little hill where I really didn't know which way I should go, so I stopped for a moment to get my bearings.  While I was orienting myself, another cyclist came up the hill and slowed to say hi, which is the first unusual bit.  We started chatting and I asked which way I should got for a loop around the reservoir and he said that he was actually rising the same loop but he took different roads cause the loop I was intending to do ends up being not a good set of roads for riding.  Then he offered to show me around!  Never once in riding a road bike, have I actually met another cyclist who stopped to chat, then offered to ride together without having any sense of my pace.  I hate to say it, but roadies tend to come off as elitist jerks.  It's typically the mountain biking world where people are known for being more social and open to interacting with strangers while riding.

So as we set off together, I tried to make it clear that I didn't want to slow him down, since I had ridden hard on Friday afternoon, and was generally out of form, and he seemed to take that.  It ended up being a gorgeous ride.  I saw a bunch of places I haven't been yet like a little airfield for RC planes, a river that may be paddlable, and the parking areas for Penwood state forest, which I haven't been mountain biking in yet but want too.  I hung on as best I could, he was definitely a quicker rider than me but I was mostly able to hang with him till the base of a spanker of a hill that goes up and over the same ridge running through the Rez.  He actually took a break to let me catch up near the top, which was really nice, since I still had no clue where I was.  Eventually, we diverged to head home in different directions, all in all it was a sweet ride.  A few more miles than I was looking for and I'm a little tight today (Happy Easter!), but it was good to push it a little and it was really nice to have someone show me around.