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...

The Inevitable Ride After Not Riding

Every year at some point, I end up traveling for work, not working out, and then getting sick. In February I went up to Maine to work at our HQ for a few weeks, then traveled to Houston and London. Because of the weather up in Maine, riding was out. I did get to build up my Xtracycle though. The build came all from the bin, except the FreeRadical itself and a new chainring:

• Trek Cruiser Classic aluminum frame 
• Nashbar Chromoly cyclocross fork 
• Xtracycle FreeRadical 
• 700c Touring wheel (front, not as pictured) 
• 26" MTB 7spd wheel (rear) 
• Linear pull rim brakes (front and rear) 
• Titec Jones H-Bar 
• Brooks B-17 saddle 
• 32t Surly chainring 
• 7speed 11-30 cassette 
• Shimano Exage Mountain rear derailleur (controlled with a Shimano friction thumb shifter) 
• 175mm cranks (2 different crank arms) 

After a trip to Bath Cycle and Ski for some small parts, I cobbled her together on Saturday afternoon. I still have some tweaking to do, like actually getting it it's own wheelset for disc brakes, but it's pedal-able right now. With the super long chain there's a fair bit of slack in the system, when I backpedal the chain drops down onto the chainstay before taking up the slack. I'm going to have to do something about that for sure, hopefully the derailleur pulleys just need to be lubricated. For the drivetrain, 32 teeth in front by 11-30 teeth in back will give me a very serviceable low end of 27.5 gear inches up to about 75 gear inches. That should be plenty in both directions for hauling a load. The long wheelbase definitely feels different when riding. I haven't done any real road riding yet, but turning feels very strange. I'm looking forward to giving it it's first real road test. The next thing I've got to figure out is how to modify my roof rack to carry the thing back down to Connecticut, alas it is still in Maine. Given it's parts make up, I have decided to call it: The Xtra-CycloTouringMountain69erCruiser 

Fast forward two months to now and I've just gotten over a nasty cold that has left me with a diminished lung capacity and set me back a ways in terms of general fitness. I've been running a few times, but I haven't put a leg over a bike since January other than test riding the The Xtra-CycloTouringMountain69erCruiser. Yesterday afternoon we closed up shop early so I hit the trails at the West Hartford Rez. There are still some very messy parts but the ridgeline is pretty sweet. After not riding for a couple months, of course my lungs were burning and my legs questioned the benefits of the initial climb up the ridge. By the time I got up to the top, I had a pretty good idea of just how much cardio fitness I've lost. It took a good break at the top to get some air back and then had a really nice ride along the ridge. I was surprised how many people were up there. I guess it's Spring fever for everyone.

So this ride was a good reality check, and now it's time to get those legs back. I think I'll stay out of the woods today since everybody and their brother is going to be out there, I haven't done much road riding down here yet, so I think I might go explore a loop that I can do some hill climbs on for another dose of suffering.