weekend plan

It's been a great day so far. School was a breeze, did a little culinary judging at Southeast high school, picked up the new Lincoln Ve-Low and went for a nice urban fixed gear ride with Carl.

I ran into Carl at the downtown Oso and we headed to the Haymarket and then through the south of downtown residentials until we hit Cultiva Coffee Co. to have a shot of espresso. Jon has some good coffee going on and is setting the bar high for the Lincoln bean scene, check them out. Expect silky smooth shots with crema, latte art and microfoam. . .just warning you.

Tonight I'm going to be headed to Magnolia again with the missus and then to the Ross for a movie.

Tomorrow I'm going to be working at Chez Hay, so no serious riding. But I'm really liking my job there so far, so I'm not bumming about it.

And on Sunday comes the Lincoln Cross race. I asked a little bit about it at Monkey Wrench today and then checked out the folks from linoln blog to see some great pictures from last years race. It should be an excellent time.

I want one of these.

Rivendell is releasing a new bike. I believe ones that are reserved will be out in the spring/summer of '08. $3k for the complete build. I know Grant is a legend, but I'm not convinced with the 650B yet. Anyone have any opinions about them?

new project

A couple of months ago my Dad found an old 3-speed crusier on a garage sale for five bones. He called me when he was checking it out and asked if he should pick it up. . .hell yeah! I'm not too excited about riding cruisers or having a classic bike, but for only $5 invested I figured why not.

I don't know exactly how far I'm going to dig into this project. I'm thinking about just cleaning it up, making the essential repairs and adding a beer basket (hipster points). I don't want to invest a lot of money, because it's probably rarely going to be ridden, only for fun rides downtown or to open harvest. Rough looking classic cruisers always look better than ones with glossy new powder coats.

I'm kind of stumped on what type of bike it is. I haven't found any serial numbes or logos. I've noticed a re-occuring "s" stamp on the drop-outs and also on the stem clamp bolt. I took it to Recycled, but Scott was gone, and Jon (John) wasn't quite sure what I had. We did piece together that it has French rims (26" x 1 3/8"), an English kickstand and what he thought was a Shimano internally geared up ( because of Shimano shifters).

If any one has any info about this bike I'd like to know. Or some old bits and pieces laying around that I could use that'd be cool too.





Those are the "S" stamps I mentioned. The bars are north road styled and those will be one of the things I think may be essential to replace, I don't think the rust will clean up.




I'm going to have to replace some spokes. Unless I can find someone who would lend me a trueing stand and some tools I'll probably have that done proffessionaly.

I also came across a mid 80's Schwinn Traveler, that I was tossing around buying and fixing up for the first couple tours. Does anyone have any suggestions? It is new enough to have 700cc wheels and it has a 6 speed gear cluster. I'd have to atleast buy a new rear wheel or rim, becuase the current one is tacoed. I really want to buy a new Surly LHT. . .but this bike is only $70. Could I put a 7,8 or 9 speed cluster on the back?

lesson(s) learned

Since my last post I've learned a couple valuable lessons about preparing for a ride.

A couple weeks ago Brandon, MIke and I went out for a brisk early morning ride at Wilderness. The scenery was frosty and beautiful, the single track was nice and fast. Consiering the cold weather we were clipping along at a good pace and feeling great once we all got warmed up.

We made it through the first half of the trail and on our way back towards the Jamaica I blew a tube. I've been reluctant to carry a pack and have been gambling the while riding the trail. Needless to say I was not at all prepared. No tube, no patch kit, no pump and no 15mm wrench to get my bolt on wheel off. Damn. . .so we started walking. A few minutes into the walk a couple nice guys on some totally BOSS crossbikes stopped to help, on of the guys works at Cycleworks. He dug through his whole pack trying to find a 15mm to pull my wheel off, but no luck. He had switched from a 15mm to some other fancy bits. . .to match his sparkling Phil hubs,sexy.

Whle he sorted through his pack I made a mental note off how much stuff he was carrying, even for a quick jaunt through Wilderness, and I realized that I did not want to be the guy trying to bum a tool and a tube. I would much rather be somewhat in control of what the trail may throw my way.

We all walked back to the Jamaica. Mike and Brandon where very cool about hoofing it with me. Brandon had to jet once we hit the trail, but Mike and I walked to Yankee HIll Rd where Justine picked us up in the mini-van.

Obvious moral of lesson one. . .carry some tools. A pack may be somewhat cumbersome, but well worth it.

Lesson two.

Sunday morning Mike, Jake, Brandon and I headed out to Branched Oak. Jake and I have been trying to coordinate a ride for the last couple months and it finally worked out, so I was psyched. It had also been awhile since we hit Branched Oak, and the season is slipping away, so we wanted to take it in while we could. I love the trail out there. The tight twists and turns, longs climbs and some of the washed out and sandy descents are a blast. Especially at the level I ride at. . . a nice rush, but not too crazy.

I was feeling a little out of it because I forgot my helmet. . .and I don't feel right on the single track if my dome is not covered, but I rode on anyway, trying to play it a little bit conservative. We made it to our regular stopping point on the ridge that is over the highway. We were catching our breath, hydrating and chatting a littlle bit. My front brake was rubbing just a little, so I though I should try and adjust my skewer to fix the problem. I was telling Brandon about Justine and my experience at Magnolia the night before (great food by the way. . .check it out) because Brandon's former sous chef is now their executive chef.



I decided I should probably pay attention to what I was doing and began to say "I can't do two things at once. . ." and spun my wheel to check the alignment. One problem, my left hand was still very close to the skewer, especially my middle finger which was actually in the path of my disc brake. In a split second my fingernail had been broken in half.

Luckily, Jake had packed a little first aid kit. I have never carried a first aid kit and neither had Mike or Brandon, so I had some seriously good luck. I don't do too well with blood and especially with fingernails breaking or bleeding in anyway. I'll be honest. . .I got pretty faint and felt pretty crappy for a few minutes. Jake wrapped it up like a pro and after a few minutes I was feeling alright. Except for that throbbing finger. For the second ride out of three I was walking my ass back to the mini van.

Lesson two, carry a first aid kit. Evevn a little gauze and some bandage tape can serve as temporary fix for wounds. Thanks again Jake for being prepared.

They guys proceeded to make another lap as I sat it out in the car, listening to crappy radio. Once we got back to my place Jake, Mike and I ate some Big Sal's and drank some beers. Three cheers for the Tommyknocker brewery. After a few my finger was feeling just fine. It hasn't been too much of a hastle at work and school, which was my major concern. It does look rather gnarly though. . .

Carl gets fixed gear fever

Well, I've getting a lot of calls and e-mails lately from fans of my blog. Everyone has been asking when will the next post be? Are you still out there. . .under the shade of some tree. . .wrenching on some bike?

The answer is "yes."
Since my first post I've done very little with my bikes. I had EP at MonkeyWrench put on some Road BB7's on my 29er. I would have loved to do the work myself, but I had no experience with them and after getting into trail riding I've realized how important a reliable brake set-up really is.

My friend Carl did contact me with a little bit of a project though. He scored an old Bianchi and had aspirations of fixed geardom. We e-mailed back and forth for a week or so about what needed to be done, and when we could do it.

We ended up getting together a couple weeks ago, to begin tear-down, in the "shop/studio/laundryroom/basement of my house" with some french press Ethiopian Sidamo from Coffee Emergency. It all went pretty well, except we (mostly I) almost messed up the threads on Carl's fork. Whoever the last owner was thought it would be a good idea to put locktite on the threads and nuts. . .hmmm. We had to go to Cycleworks to pick up the rear wheel and some parts anyway, so we just took the bike there to get some assistance from a proffessional, thanks Damon. When I was tapping the lockring loose it jumped a thread or two and we were a couple of grunts with the wrench away from disaster.



The rest of the tear down when pretty smoothly. I took the frame back to my parents to utilize my Dad's abundance of powertools to grind off the old cable-stays and chop the drop bars.

Today Carl got up early, bright eyed and bushy tailed to finish the conversion. There where no major set backs. The guys at MWC had to hook Carl up with another interior nut for the quill stem and he had to make a second trip back to his house for the chain. Overall everything went very smoothly and he was off and spinning by noon. The bike isn't completely finished. . .but when is a bike really finished? I'm going to shellac some cork bar tape for him this weekend and he is seeing a honeybrown B17 in his future.


oh so close.


Damn these Surly cogs and lockrings are so classy. . .just when I was feeling content with my bike too. Oh bike lust.

The finished product. Way to go Carl. Carl asked for my help, but really did almost everything himself and proved me wrong more than a couple times. If you see him cruising around downtown give him a thumbs up or way to be

I don't about all of you, but everytime I go into the local bike shops I've been envious of the ease with which the wrenches suspend almost any bike on their heavy duty repair stands. Within a few seconds they are torquein' away,even the heavy crusiers are completely stable.

When I started tinkering on bikes I realized how important a repair stand is. I tried using two of those scew-in utility hooks and some insulatd wire to hang my bike from the rafters, and it worked. . .well not really, but I got by. I researched repair-stands on-line, but i read some reviews and if you don't spend more than $150-$200 you are basically buying a nice hunk of scrap metal. So I began to look into building one myself. There are some plans on the Instructables website to make bench mounted repair stands out of PVC. Those look alright, but I don't have much bench space, and some of the cutting looked a little difficult without having a table saw.

After a little searching I did find a decent looking plan for a floor stand, that seemed easy to assemble and fairly sturdy. It consists of a 60"-1" black pipe, 18"-3/4" black pipe, floor flange, 90 degree reducer elbow, 4-bolts, 4 fender washers, a pony clamp, some scrap wood, and of course JB WELD. All I had on hand was the scrap wood, and I only spent about $40 on the whole thing. The pony clamp was by far the most expensive item at about $14 at Home Depot, on one thread I saw that someone found a cheaper-imported one for something like 5 bones.

So far I'm extremely happy with the stand. As you can see it holds my 2-9er with ease. The real test will be when I try and put the Lady's pre-1953 Hawthorne Cruiser, or maybe Brent's LHT with racks and all on it. It is kind of a trick to hold the bike up with one hand and screw in the pony clamp with the other, but since I'm not putting bikes up and down on it all day it'll work just fine. Let me know if you have any questions, or want any pointers on building one. You can even come over and give it a test run for a couple PBR's.

Here are some pics.