Cold Day!

I can’t say that I’ve ever ridden in truly cold weather, but it was 27 F this morning… The picture came from my cell phone, but I guess it came out OK…

Ice Bike

The *BIG* Bike is Almost Done!

It’s been about more than six months, but I finally got the BIG bike on the road!  I’ve been very busy and it took me a long time to get around to ordering the parts, and even longer to hand polish every little component that was staying on the bike!

Before:

From the Craigslist Posting that I Responded To

After:

After First Ride To Work

Cockpit With the Bell

Cockpit

SideViewWithoutBags

I still have some work to do…  I want to order a nice bottle cage, probably this one:  http://www.velo-orange.com/vomoststwabo.html and will probably substite a brass bell for the chrome one that I have installed in the picture above. It also came with a front rack, but I haven’t finished polishing it, so it’s not installed yet.

It’s a joy to ride and rides VERY smoothly, and even better it FITS!
It’s an ‘82 Schwinn Voyageur SP and I upgraded the wheels to 700C with cartridge bearing hubs shod with 32C Panaracer Pasela TourGuard tires, 7 speed rear derailer, Suntour barend shifters, Planet Bike Cascadia fenders (without the ugly purple logo that’s on the new ones),  Brooks B17 leather sadle, and Nashbar Moustache handlebars wrapped with yellow cotton tape with 4 coats of amber Shellac and twine trim.
I want to ride it in the upcoming Wildflower Century, but will probably swap out the inner chainring for a 26 tooth or so for those hills.

Remembering Why I LOVE Cycling!

Bicycle Near the River

I went for a ride during lunch on my old Schwinn World Tourist.  I’ve had this bike for almost a decade now, but it’s seldom ridden because it’s neither fast nor efficient.  Lately I’ve been leaving it at the office to ride at lunch during this beautiful weather that we’ve had lately — it’s great for those casual 7-10 MPH rides with no particular destination in mind.  I ride 6 or 7 miles; down to the river, wander around a bit watching the birds and other wildlife while eating my lunch, then ride back to the office.

It turns out that this picture was almost much more interesting… just as I was about to push the shutter something huge jumped out of the water and splashed back down, but I missed it because I was watching through the small screen of my camera-phone.   You can see the rings from the landing zone just in front of the front reflector of the bike just left of where the cables intersect the water.

On Flickr

Bicycle Lights

I got home and left the headlight (35W halogen, metal housing) running for a while.  When I reached across the front of the bike to get my stuff out of the front pannier on the other side I brushed across the light housing for just an instant!  I felt a sharp searing pain that felt like I was being poked with something very sharp — instead I was being branded!  OUCH!

Free Professional Assembly

Sometimes I am asked what is wrong with department store bikes.  I give a whole list of reasons, but I just came across a great illustration of the problem…

http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2401233

In case the picture is gone, I’ve included it here…    of course this bike is mail-order (assemble it yourself), but I often see assembly work just like this at departments stores that offer “free professional assembly.”

Quickly off the top of my head:

• Fork installed backwards! (Yikes!)
• Handlebars not flipped up correctly.
• Cables all tangled, not of proper length
• Nose of saddle pointing up too much (ouch!)
• Reflectors not properly aligned (won’t provide proper visibility)
• Plastic piece meant to keep the axle from poking through the box not removed
• Sold as a “26 inch frame”, trust me, it’s NOT a 26″ frame… it’s a one-size-fits-few frame

And that’s just what I can see!  Were the bearings properly adjusted? Were the wheels properly tensioned?  Is the stem binder properly torqued?  Is the saddle binding bolt tight? Are the shifters adjusted correctly?  I doubt it.

A *BIG* bike!

I’ve been looking for a bike that fits me for some time… and I think I’ve found it…

A 68 cm, 1982 Schwinn Voyageur S/P!!  It needs a bit of work before I can ride it:

• new stem (en route)
• headset adjustment
• overhaul all bearings
• re-tension and true the wheels
• clean and touch up paint some rust spots
• polish the aluminum
• put wider handlebars on it (I dislike the older narrow bars) and put on some barend shifters that I have sitting in my parts box.  The downtube shifters would be fine, if they weren’t so far away!!

The picture is the picture that the seller put on Craigslist…

Car vs. Bicycle? Bicycle wins!

One of my current projects is removing a good portion of the back lawn in preparation for a raised bed planter for vegetables.  I had done a good portion of the work resizing the patio (which is also getting smaller) and needed to rent a brick saw to finish the bricks along the edges.

So… Saturday morning comes and I drive my Subaru Outback wagon over to United Rentals to pick up the saw that I’d reserved.  After paying and getting out to the rental yard I see that it’s much bigger than I’d anticipated, and won’t fit into the car!!!  It’s too tall!  Being almost 80 kg, it was also too heavy to lift in and out by myself!  There’s no way to safely keep the back end of it hanging out of the back of the car, so they suggest a trailer rental — problem is, I don’t have a hitch!  I briefly consider putting this off for a week so that I can go get a receiver hitch (since this isn’t the first time I’ve had such a problem), when I realize that I’ve got a trailer!!!  I told them to wait a bit and I’d be back.

So, I go home and quickly get the bicycle trailer ready.  You shoulda seen their faces when I rode up.  I’d realized that the saw had its own wheels so I didn’t have to support the entire weight on the bike trailer, but merely had to strap the front of it to the trailer.  Cinched the front of it down with the webbing straps from my kayak, left the back wheels on the road, and it was good to go! The guy working there who was in charge of helping people load their rentals kept saying “I’ve never seen anything like this!” over and over.

I rode the hilly 1.8 kilometers home (about 50 meters of descending, and 60 meters of climbing) without incident, though I did ride quite slowly both downhill (for safety) and uphill (just because!) — I probably averaged about 8 kph!

In the picture you see the way that I tied it on for my trip home.  This didn’t work quite as well as I’d like because it put too much weight on the tongue.  On the trip back I was a bit smarter and put the front legs over the axle of the trailer, which put very little weight on the tonque and it handled MUCH better, I could have ridden MUCH further! I also took a different route that was longer (about 2.5 km), but had far less climbing.   When I returned there was a different set of people working there… one guy says “Gas prices have really changed this place!” haha

I think that I need a trailer from these guys!

Sometimes there are some real turkeys out there during the commute…

The Egret

Riding home today I spotted a beautiful white egret in the creek in the park. I stopped on the bridge to watch and was inspired to write this poem…

The Egret

Stoic stalker of piscine prey
standing solo amongst the fray
of mallards mocking and swallows swift
standing staunchly against the drift
Strike! A frog? A fish? I cannot say…
The egret feasts another day.

Customer Abuse @ Performance of Fair Oaks, CA

I know that you don’t go to Performance Bike for their great customer service, you go for the low prices and convenient hours. That said, you also don’t go with the expectation of being mistreated!!

My negative outlook on Performance started about six months ago when I went there with a friend to help choose a road bike. A specific Fuji bike was in the right price range and appealed on many levels. We had the bike out on the floor and she was looking at I was evaluating the fit. I held the wheel between my knees and the handlebars and had her sit on the bike while I evaluated the fit. While we were doing this a manager comes up and decides to take over. Without warning he forces himself between me and bike, nearly causing her to fall off! This upset me, but I continued anyhow. Later, when we were discussing the reach and the possibility of a handlebar swap he started moving the saddle forward. I told him that’s not how you adjust reach, but he got angry and said “just wait, I’ll show you!” I finally settled on the 47cm frame even though he was suggesting the 44. Interestingly, Fuji’s site suggests either the 47 or 50 for her height! Idiots…

So… last night I’m there with a neighbor. Everything is going fine at first. I pull out some bikes just to look them over with little concern about their size at first. My neighbor, being excited, is sitting on all of them, but I ignore it since that’s not what I’m looking at anyhow. We’re down to the last bike before we decide which one we should have him test ride when the manager (a different manager) comes over and says that the bike is too big (duh, thanks). I start to pull out the next smaller size when he immediately takes over and doesn’t allow me to see how that size fits. Deciding to avoid a confrontation I went away and started browsing the rest of the store while he gave his advice. Later, my neighbor calls me over to show me what they’d settled on. When I got there he said that this was the right size frame. I nearly laughed. It had a traditional geometry (horizontal top tube) so you’d go with a larger seat tube length than with a compact geometry frame. That said, he’d put my almost 6′ neighbor on a 54cm frame! I said something about the bike being far too small, that he was sitting nearly upright, far too cramped in the top tube, and besides the saddle was far too low. He said “no, the seat is in the ideal position! See how his top leg is horizontal, that’s ideal!” Top leg? Who looks at that? Then he went on about how the bike had a relaxed top tube geometry (huh? Relaxed head angle, relaxed seat angle, etc, but top tube?). I said no, that the saddle was at least 4cm too low! He started getting angry and barked “Fine, the bike is too small!” and stomped off. At the desk I could see him telling the other people something or other while staring at us.

There was more, but that’s the general gist of the experience. Amazing. I’m seriously considering contacting their corporate number, though I expect that they won’t have much concern.

For now, I’m done with Performance.