Gut Check

Before: My bike was oh-so-sleek.

It seems my heavy hoisting ways have caught up with me, in the form of a pair of inguinal hernias. This has been far more disconcerting than painful, as I find the notion of torn muscle and rogue bits of intestine conceptually bothersome. Fortunately, said breaches are small as these things go, and I have managed to go about my business and ride my bike as usual for the most part without making things worse. In the wearier/achier moments, I've taken to sitting as bolt upright as possible, maintaining tenuous contact with the aft end of my handgrips with my fingertips. This is not the best arrangement, control-wise, so I purchased a stem raiser.

With a few minutes' labor, the part was installed and the bars had reached new heights of both altitude and dorkiness. The “Delta” brand name on the extension has a cool factor more in line with the eponymous bathroom faucets than jetliners or the home of Mississippi blues. The silver linings are: 1) the looping cable routing I had previously done to accommodate the Yuba's front rack meant the cables were plenty long as-is, and 2) said rack's vertical capacity just increased by a few more inches.

Tomorrow, I go under the knife, or laparoscope, more accurately. It's fairly routine, as surgeries go, and I should be just fine, if a bit sore for the first few days. I will be able to wrench on bikes sooner than I can resume riding them (reportedly in the 2-3 week range), so I hope to get caught up on a few project bikes, including something substantially lighter than the Yuba for my first days back in the saddle. I'm waiting on a few more parts for the oddest of these, which will combine elements of obsolete English utility with recumbent part oddity, old school BMX toughness and a dash of modern road bike. I'll fill you in on that soon enough. Read more!

Salvaging cartridge bearings in an orphan headset

For machines that have been essentially unchanged for the past several decades, bicycles suffer from a remarkable amount of planned obsolescence. Today's case in point: the threaded headset.

I've ranted about this in the past, the fact that most of the bikes I see in use on the street have threaded headsets, yet most bike shops don't even keep them in stock. The industry prefers that you buy a complete new bike with a 1 1/8 threadless headset and abandon your aging-but-otherwise-serviceable ride. If your headset has ball bearings and the bearing surfaces aren't damaged, you can renew a tired headset with a fresh set of balls and some grease. If your headset has cartridge bearings, you may not be so lucky, but there's still hope. Here's how I went about it:

My gently-used Breezer Venturi road bike, circa 1995, still had its original 1" threaded carbon fiber fork and Shimano 600 cartridge-bearing headset. I decided to retire the OE fork due to suspicious surface crazing and my general distrust toward carbon of advanced age and unknown provenance. While swapping on a replacement fork, I found the cartridge bearings were lacking a bit in the smooth department. Actually, the top bearing still felt pretty silky, while the bottom cartridge felt downright crusty-- not surprising given the added load and dirt the bottom end of a headset sees on a fender-less bicycle.

A few days of searching showed the bearings to be made of high-grade unobtainium, although there were a few complete new-old stock 600 headsets to be found. While I was chatting with the mechanics at the Bicycle Cellar, one of them suggested that I might be able to pry apart the cartridges and repack them. He was right!

Top left: complete cartridge. Everywhere else: races and retainer from disassembled cartridge.

I started by gingerly prying the assembly apart with an old, well-worn putty knife. This revealed within each cartridge 18 balls held in place by nylon retainers.



Removal of the bearings/retainers revealed very slight pitting (shiny spots, really) on the bearing surfaces-- and also cracked the retainers. I mitigated both problems by installing loose bearings without retainers. I learned this cheapskate trick from Sheldon Brown-- the lack of retainers means you can install more ball bearings and that they will no longer line up with the tiny dents in the old bearing cups. It's technically not quite like new, but I couldn't tell the difference once it was back together. Most 1" threaded headsets take 26 5/32" balls per cup. You want a little bit of play between the bearings.



In this case, the bearings were identical top-to-bottom. With both cartridges repacked, I reinstalled them in the opposite locations from whence they came, so the former road-dirt-eating bottom cartridge can enjoy its golden years in the sheltered luxury of the top cup. I figured this overhaul would be a stopgap measure until I found new bearings, but I'm thoroughly happy with the results and don't feel particularly motivated to change them again. For under $6 in grade 25 loose ball bearings, it feels great. Read more!

Manitoba Part I

I've missed the woods.
It's not that I haven't been there. I have ventured into the woods and trails many a time over the past couple of years, most often on the cargo bike in the course of a necessary or whim-based route change, but I hadn't set out to specifically go riding a bike in the woods for ages until this February.

The recent E2L1 was my first time in a long time that I used a mountain bike for something resembling mountain biking. The bike, in this case, is a 1998 Nishiki Manitoba I had bought off of Salem before he went traveling. It was never a particularly high-end machine, but I like the frame for a few reasons.

1) Weird pedigree: It's a Japanese-branded chromoly frame, named after a Canadian Province and made in the USA.
2) Weird geometry: The frame is labeled 18", though it measures 17.5" max to the top of the seat tube and 15.5" C-C. It has a longish top tube compared to that-- 21" or 22+", depending on how you measure it. It's well suited to my own short-legged, torso-rich geometry. Anyway, it's sturdy, it's handy, and I like it but for one minor quibble:

I kind of hated riding it.

Here's the thing. I had picked it up a couple of years ago and did nothing to it beyond a quick pedal around the driveway to determine that it was due for a major overhaul. I set it aside and it sat, untouched, until the morning of the aforementioned Eel ride. I fished it out of a pile and went through it just long enough for a perfunctory tire inflation (they held air), brake check (they showed significant potential to reduce speed) seat swap (the supplied post was too short to raise to my height) and chain check (thoroughly worn out).

I figured I would just run what I brung for the Eel and deal with sprucing up the bike some other day. That was a reasonable plan but for the constantly skipping chain, clunky shifts, barely adequate brakes and painful saddle that increasingly detracted from what was an otherwise enjoyable ride. That said, I did like the way it handled in the woods and see potential for a nice low-budget trail machine. I'm not going to ride it again in its current state, but I will ride it again. It's worthy of a makeover. More on that soon.

Read more!

Frankengoose

It was the bike nobody wanted. A barely-used Mongoose hardtail with a short-travel suspension fork and chunky tires that hummed loudly on the pavement. My upstairs neighbor gave it to me when I inquired about his much-nicer Nishiki mountain bike years ago. I found it too heavy for serious mountain biking and too redundant to use instead of my Trek 720. I gave it to a friend's teenage son. He wasn't interested, and it was too big for my friend or her daughters, so she gave it back to me. I offered it to another friend's teenage son, but he scored a sweet Giant on the cheap, so I was stuck with it once again. I disassembled the bike and installed a 700c rigid fork from a Trek, intending to make a sort of low-rent 96er winter beater. There wasn't much of a winter. It languished.

Enter friend #3. Her son was going to college and needed a city/commuter bike to get around. Did I have anything that might fit the bill? Yes I did, and this time I had an inspiration. At some point I had noticed that the rear stays were really long on this frame. It turned out there was enough room to fit a 700c x 32 rear tire with a fender. I got a used rear road wheel with a 7 speed freehub and a new front wheel for peanuts at a swap meet. I swapped a MTB axle and a 5mm spacer onto the rear wheel to make it 135mm and re-dished and trued it. I found a brand new Vittoria 700x32 tire on the curb in my neighborhood (?!) and found a matching one on sale at a local store. I had two front fenders left over from another project, so I mounted them front and rear, adding an orange strip of Scotchlite reflective vinyl for added visibility and snazziness.

The 'Goose originally had V-brakes front and rear. I mounted the original front brake on the Trek fork, installing a pair of the large original pads from my Yuba. Out back, the original canti posts were too distant from the 700c rim to use anything shy of a super-adjustable, super expensive Paul Components brake. I used a rear sidepull from an old 70's Nishiki road bike that is likely bound for single/fixiehood. By adjusting it wider than I usually would, I found that it worked quite well with the V-brake ratio lever. The slightly used original pads from the front brake fit nicely and made for perfect toe-in. The vestigial brake posts remain, which looks goofy, but I had no interest in grinding them off and repainting the frame, so they remain. I was pleasantly surprised with how well the bike stopped without squealing.

Gearing-wise, this bike is a 1x7, with a Hyperdrive-C cassette swiped from my disassembled Skykomish, Gripshift from a mid-90's Trek and a derailleur from a Peugeot mountain bike frame I have. I had modified a welded triple crank to a 38 tooth single long ago with this bike in mind, but it made for an abysmal chainline, so I had to get creative. I started with a ubiquitous late 80's/early 90's 28/38/48 Shimano Biopace mountain triple. With 10 nylon spacers from the hardware store and the stock chainring bolts, I was able to space the lone 38T ring inboard. That combined with a deliberate flip of the asymmetrical bottom bracket spindle (from a Fuji folding mountain bike) made the chainline just about perfect.

The cut-down flat handlebar and Sakae stem used to live on my Trek, and both came from trash-picked bikes (I installed the grips after the pictures were taken). The frame, headset, bottom bracket cups, seatpost, saddle and front brake are all that remain of the original bike. I messed with so many major aspects of this bike that the geometry was a blind crap-shoot, but it turned out to be a nimble-handling bike without being twitchy. The high-riding bottom bracket gives it bonus cornering and curb clearance. It earned barrio approval, with a few shouts of "Nice bike!" as I test rode it on Park Street. I was pleased. Most importantly, I'm told the bike's new owner loves his new ride, and it's unlikely to come back again. Third time's the charm! Read more!

Sky Pilot

With my recent trip to Oregon came all the excitement and uncertainty of plunking myself down in a completely unfamiliar place. I knew I would surely want to do a lot of exploring. My natural inclination was to bring a bike along, but I was quickly discouraged by the steep asking prices from the airlines and parcel carriers. Even the 26" folding bike frame I own would have been considered "oversized" and subject to their steep penalties. Renting a bike for a three-week span of time would have also cost a small fortune.

My solution: find a cheap beater bike on Craigslist, ride it for the duration of my stay and unload it as I prepared to leave.

I started seriously surfing the Portland craigslist a few days before my departure. Several promising bikes were gone the day they were listed. It seemed that used bikes moved fast around there. I found an ad for a Skykomish Granite Point, a Pacific NW regional brand mountain bike with Shimano Deore components, a huge seat, a pair of clip-on fenders, and an asking price of $60. I called the number in the ad. The woman who answered still had the bike and was willing to hold it a couple of days and meet me somewhere after my flight arrived. We stayed in touch by phone and arranged a meetup.

Upon arrival at PDX Airport, I took the MAX light rail to a nearby stop and met the seller (and her father, a wise precaution for a rendezvous with some random stranger from across the country) in a nearby parking lot. The bike (and for that matter, the seller) did not disappoint in person. It was a solid machine that looked to be of an early 1990's vintage, with Tange Chromoly frame and forks, Shimano Deore components, and a paint job that was even more obnoxiously bright than in the photo. The only downsides I could see were excessively brake-worn rims, a clunky adjustable stem and the aforementioned huge seat, which proved as chafingly uncomfortable as I had imagined. It was easily worth $60 or more, especially given how cool and accommodating the seller had been.

I paid and thanked the young woman and hopped back on the MAX. Upon arriving in downtown Portland, I got off and quickly found an upscale bike shop. I bought a big Wald basket (under $20 new) and proceeded to crudely and quickly install it on my new Skykomish right on the sidewalk in front of the bike shop. I later refined and lowered my quickie basket install, bought and installed a nice used Zefal rear rack (in which my U-lock stowed snugly) added water bottle cages and swapped on a better used stem at the excellent Citybikes co-op (public workstands FTW!) I love it when a plan comes together! I took to my new ride immediately, and it took me all over Portland and beyond, on and off-road, with little complaint.

There was one problem. I was growing fond of this bike. Trips to bike shops and bike co-ops had allowed me to customize the fit and specs of the bike to my liking, as well as meet and chat with some cool people. I traded in the ginormous "comfort" seat for credit toward a new saddle that suited me better at Citybikes. The twice-weekly evening sessions at UBI (where students can work on their own bikes after class) had enabled me to get it functioning better than ever with a new 7-speed cassette and new bearings in both hubs and the bottom bracket. The rims were pretty wasted, so that was a strike against selling or donating it to someone who might keep riding it until a rim failed. I did not need another bike, certainly not another mountain-cum-commuter, as much as I approve of the genre. My rationalization powers (they can be formidable at times) kicked in and I decided to send the Granite Point back east.

I remembered that Greyhound ships parcels station-to-station for short money. I don't live far from Union Station in Hartford, so this option was full of appeal. I spent the last evening work session at UBI disassembling the bike and the wheels (I kept the hubs and tossed the worn-out rims) I obtained a bike box from one of the local bike shops and packed it full of the Skykomish, my "Thesis wheels" from the wheelbuilding course, books, tools, and protective padding in the form of scrap cardboard, pipe insulation and generous amounts of dirty laundry. On the eve of my flight home, one of my UBI classmates drove me to the bus station in his veggie oil-powered Mercedes 240D (The sole time I rode in a car during my three week sojourn was still unmistakably Oregonesque). Price-wise, shipping came to about a dollar a pound.

My parcel arrived in Hartford, well-scuffed but intact, one week later. My transplanted bike has been unpacked and awaits future tinkering in the basement. This bike is not a huge priority, but I do have a plan for its enhanced city commuter makeover: New handlebars (North Roads or some swept-back equivalent) new cables, a more permanent pair of fenders and a new set of rims laced to the hubs. I'm leaning toward building my first set of 650B wheels for it, as the frame has plenty of clearance for them and they would better suit the smoother terrain where this bike was at its best. Also, I have difficulty leaving well enough alone, but you probably knew that already. One way or another, the mighty Skykomish will ride again, and you'll probably see it around when it does. With that paint job, it'll be hard to miss.
Read more!

Dad Trek III: The Search For Spokes

As you may or may not recall (or care) two of the most worn-out parts on the old Trek were the wheels. This bike originally came equipped with 36 spoke wheels front and rear, laced to single-wall Araya rims in a cross-3 pattern. Nothing special. What they lacked in lightness and refinement they recouped by being seriously overbuilt. They stayed reasonably true and completely free of spoke breakage (despite advanced spoke rust) through many years of potholes, drops, curb hops, and off-road adventures. The last few winters took their toll, however, and the added grit and abrasives of road salt and dirt had ground the braking surfaces to critically thin condition-putting them at risk of sudden failure. The original hubs were the only parts with any life left in them, so I planned on lacing new spokes and rims to overhauled original hubs.

The choice of a pair of Sun CR18s as my new rims was an easy one. They have a great reputation, can be found online for short money and they are approved for touring and tandems. Mine were found at a discount for cosmetic reasons- slightly flawed anodizing on the braking surface is barely noticeable and will disappear as I ride the bike anyway. These rims should be more than sturdy enough for my planned trip and all subsequent flogging.

The original hubs are nothing special. It would make more sense and be more cost-effective to toss the wheels altogether and find a decent replacement set on sale, but that wouldn't be in keeping with my original goals to save as much of Dad's original bike as I could and learn new skills through this project. A "Joytech 95D" loose-ball bearing hub up front and a Shimano Acera cassette hub out back have gotten the job done for over 15 years now. I've been pretty good about cleaning and repacking the ball bearings over the years, so a new set of bearings should make them once again good-as-new.

I took the old wheels apart. While cutting is a popular method to quickly and conveniently liberate a hub for reuse, I loosened and disassembled the wheels spoke-by-spoke so as to reverse-glean some understanding as to how a laced wheel is held together. This gradual reduction of tension (versus the sudden release of cutting) also reduces stress on a hub if you are planning to reuse it. I set aside a couple of spokes in case they were needed for length-matching purposes (they weren't), and a few more because used spokes have a host of other uses. I noticed that the spokes were a tad long on the front wheel, ending slightly proud of the outermost part of the nipples. Between that and the slightly smaller inner diameter of the new rims, I reasoned that the new spokes should probably be 2 or 3 mm shorter than the originals.

I planned on buying the spokes locally, figuring it would be a good way to glean some tips and expertise from more wheel-savvy mechanics. DT Swiss and Wheelsmith seemed like the best-loved and most widely available quality spoke choices, but I figured I'd just use whatever they used at a knowledgeable shop. I wound up at Central Wheel, where Dave was cool and helpful and served as translator/go-between for the wheel guy, who for some odd reason wouldn't address me directly from 10 ft away (that was kind of weird, actually...). The wheel guy simply went ahead and entered the measurements of my old hubs and new rims plus the lacing pattern (cross two) into some fancy spoke calculating thingie. The results were 72 spokes labeled for their front and rear positions plus a bag of nickel-plated brass nipples. All these elements will come together to form some wheels in the near future. I'll keep you posted. Read more!

Postcard: A Great Day in Harlem,or Some Days The Bike Rides You

After all the hassle surrounding my attempt to purchase a headset locally, the one I ended up with still didn't fit (the fork crown race had a too-small inner diameter for my fork) so there was no chance I was going to have the Trek together in time for Saturday morning. By Friday evening, I was tired and disappointed. My plans for the day had pretty much fallen apart.

The Blessing of the Bikes was not only held on the first anniversary of Dad's passing but a mere three blocks south of St. Luke's Hospital, where he spent most of his last days. The coincidence of all these things was too great for me to pass up. Besides that, I needed a day away from home and the weather was supposed to be fantastic. I decided I was going to New York no matter what, and the bike was coming with me.

Time for a contingency plan. As it happened, Schleppi was bound for Newton, Mass on Saturday, so I walked over to her house with the Trek fork and a note for the good folks at Harris Cyclery. I relaxed, confident that this matter would now be in competent hands. I grabbed the day pack I use for backcountry snowboarding and attached the bare bike frame in seconds. It couldn't have worked much more smoothly-- or looked much more ridiculous.

I caught a pre-dawn lift to New Haven from friends en route to catch a morning flight to Guatemala. I took Metro North to the 125th St station. Harlem's main drag was still sleepy and quiet as I strolled westward through Morningside Park to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. A steady stream of bikes were arriving at 9 AM and being carried up the Cathedral's massive front stoop. A charmingly stubborn older woman refused my offer to help carry her ungainly vintage Triumph 3-speed up the stairs. Her friend rolled her eyes and chuckled. The overall mood was warm and good.

The ceremony was fairly short, the perfect blend of lighthearted and solemn. Words were said, holy water sprinkled, dead cyclists memorialized, bagpipes played, many pictures taken. The ceremony concluded with a procession around the enormous Gothic cathedral, with much lingering and milling about afterward, both inside and out. I chatted with a bunch of people as I made my way to a bench to enjoy a bagel and a coffee in the late-morning sun. There were at least two other unrideable and incomplete bikes in attendance, so the yoke of ridiculousness was shouldered by more than just me.

I wandered the area for the next few hours, walking around Columbia University, Morningside and Marcus Garvey Parks, and savoring the food, culture and architecture that abound across 110th St. The chromoly frame strapped to my back was virtually unnoticeable to me as I walked, though I was asked nicely to leave it in the coat check at the Studio Museum. I made my way back to Hartford by late afternoon, but not before getting a bike permit for the Metro North train. It's not needed for a bare frame or a folding bike, but I will need it to ride the train with a full-sized bike. I ponied up the $5 fee as both an incentive and a promise to be back again soon. Read more!

Deez Locknutz- A Rant

Tomorrow, April 10 is the Blessing of the Bikes in New York. It also happens to be the first anniversary of my father passing away. The overhaul of his old Trek had fallen by the wayside in the face of more prosaic things like house repairs, etc. and still sat scattered about the apartment as of yesterday. The coincidence of the two aforementioned events seemed too significant to pass up. I began a sudden fit of bike fixing with the goal having the Trek ready to ride by Saturday morning. I had accumulated most of the parts I needed to fix it up, but still needed a couple of thing to get the job done, the most important one being a new headset, as the original one was thoroughly done.

I called some area bike shops yesterday afternoon to see who had a new 1" threaded headset in stock. The first shop reacted as if I had called up looking for French-threaded tandem cranks. Threaded headsets are NOT THAT RARE, people! Sheesh! Strike two was more sympathetic, immediately offering to order me one. Finally, a shop said they had one, so I headed for their suburban location. The shop was busy. This is a good thing in the sense that many people are excited about riding bikes, but a bad thing in that customers were getting a bit backed up. None of the parts I came for were in the retail area, so I had to wait. Aaaaand wait. The owner apologized. Then I waited some more.

I did finally get the headset, a BMX-style Odyssey Dynatron. I liked that it had upgraded bearings and a nice rubber seal to protect the vulnerable bottom bearing race. I also liked that it sounded like an option on a 1950's Buick. While there, I got some brake cable housing and a couple of other parts that I needed asap. By the time I got out of there, I was in a rush, running late for my weekly farmers' market gig back in Hartford.

I made two annoying discoveries last night when I finally went to work on the bike. First, my cable housings were not in the bag from the store; second, the headset was missing a locknut, rendering it useless. Grrrr.

I returned to the bike shop this morning. The person who had sold me the parts yesterday recognized me immediately. "You forgot your cable housing!" he announced across the room. While I happen to think that it was not so much that I forgot it as much as he had failed to put it in the bag with the rest of my purchase, I nodded and thanked him for the housing. I then showed him the headset I had purchased yesterday sans locknut. He seemed puzzled at first, but then asked a mechanic to find one. The mechanic returned with a gouged used locknut that looked like it had been attacked by a wilding gang of angry Vise-Grips. I indicated that I wasn't happy with this and he went on another search, eventually returning with a shiny new one. At this point, I was again late and running out of patience, so I thanked him and left. I later looked closely at the new nut and saw that it was really cheaply made, had a built-in fake "spacer" and lacked the nice rubber seal that the Odyssey headset components featured. Unwilling to make another trip, I dug through my stash of derelict bikes and found a Trek 730 with a Tange headset that yielded a higher quality locknut. It's a little beat-up, but it will do the job.

This was a minor annoyance, but still kind of a stupid, unnecessary ordeal. While it's true that threaded headsets are not as common these days, there are still brand-new bikes ranging from big-box store crap to $2,000.00+ Rivendells that come equipped with them. Many of the bikes I see in daily use around Hartford are 10-30 years old and are likely to need replacement parts from time to time. Indeed, they are MORE likely to need such parts than a late-model bike with a modern threadless fork, yet everyone in the area has the threadless parts in stock. Finally, offering a customer mangled or substandard replacements for parts missing from a brand new item he has already purchased is really lousy customer service. Read more!

Crank Cull

Today, I present to you one of my least favorite bike components ever: The welded-together triple crankset.


I hate these for a couple of reasons: For one thing, they are heavy. For another, welding three chainrings permanently together prevents you from changing any individual chainring due to wear or personal preference. When one sprocket wears out, the whole assembly is effectively junk. The resulting junk is not easily recyclable in that it is mixed metal assembly, a hunk of steel-contaminated aluminum that is unwelcome at the scrap metal yard. I hate waste, and it bothers me that things are made to be so disposable, so I thought I'd see what I could do to repurpose and reuse one.

The subject of this experiment is a mid-90's Shimano Altus 38-32-24 from a Trek hybrid. It shows wear, but the 38-tooth sprocket still has some service life left. If only it could be freed from the albatrosses of its conjoined brethren, it would be a good fit for my current winter beater bike project.

I started by clamping the crank to a table. The fact that the pedal was still attached actually made it easier to secure it, so I'll pretend that I planned that. Next, I took a cutoff wheel to the 24-tooth sprocket, slicing it away close to its center.

I then tried to drill out the spot welds that held the 32-tooth sprocket to the biggest one, but didn't like how that was going. After accidentally drilling completely through the 38-tooth ring, I went back to the table and cut and ground it away with the cutoff wheel.

I ended up making five cuts and then breaking each fifth off with a big pair of pliers. An angle grinder would have been nice for the latter stages, but I didn't have one handy at the time. I made do with the cutoff wheel and cleaned up the sharp edges with a hand file.


I cleaned and sanded the remaining 38-tooth chainwheel, masked off the aluminum crank and primed and painted the freshly -exposed steel. I painted it blue because there was some blue Krylon handy. Whatever the color, a protective layer of paint was a must, given the corrosive salt bath it will endure on a cheap winter beater.


If I owned a drill press and had nice drill bits, I might have been tempted to drill a bunch of holes in it for some retro component-lightening flair, but I there is only so much time I'm willing to spend on this particular component. It's noticeably lighter as it is. This took about an hour from start to finish. I trial fit it to the bike, and it looks pretty good. Other than needing to swap the bottom bracket spindle for a narrower one (for a better chainline), I'm happy with the outcome of this experiment. The end result is that this part will be used again, which was the goal.


Read more!

Bikes Outside: Mixte Up (against a fence)

I often stop to gawk at bikes locked to the bike racks and fences of Hartford and beyond. When talking bikes with friends, it's common for one of us to say, "I saw a cool old blahdiddyblah road bike outside of the library the other day, I've always liked those..." so I thought I would make a series out of documenting some of the street seen velocipedes in Hartford. Barring my coming up with a more clever name, I'm calling the series "Bikes Outside."

I'm shamelessly borrowing this concept from Jalopnik's Down on the Street series, where street-parked classic cars are documented. The rules will be similar. The bikes have to be seen out and about. This is all about bicycles being used for their more utilitarian intended purposes. Bikes on display for sale in front of a shop or at a flea market don't count (I can still post them if they are awesome, they just won't be eligible for this series). Maybe your own bike will be spotted sometime.

Our first entry was spotted in the Northeast neighborhood near the Windsor line. It has two features from the list of things that make me like a bike, in that it has a lugged frame and it is a mixte. I'm not familiar with the Cambridge brand (my search engine attempts all led to a [presumably unrelated] bike shop in Cambridge, MA), but it has an entry level bike boom-era look to it. The center-pull brakes are Cambridge-branded, but look identical to some late 70's Dia Compe's I have. The fancy head tube badge and proper-sounding name show its upscale aspirations. Someday I want to join two steel mixte frames of this caliber and make a Sheldon Brown-style D.I.Y. tandem. I would avoid using Peugeots or Motobecanes (as much as I do like them) because modifying frames and piecing together a tandem drivetrain would be difficult enough without having to find French-threaded parts. A couple of beaters like this Cambridge or some neglected Panasonic or Univega mixte frames would be nice donors for such a project. I acquired an old Bridgestone mixte a while back, but the frame isn't steel and it's far too nice to part out or modify. I kind of want to hang it over the mantel and just look at it for a while.

The limp brake lever and slack rear brake cable mean that this Cambridge has only one functioning brake, a disturbingly common affliction among street-parked (and ridden) bikes in Hartford. I have wondered about what to do about this. Maybe I could make some cards or tags to leave on brake-impaired bikes directing them somewhere for cheap or free repairs. Perhaps a pool of functional unwanted brake parts could be established. I'm guessing this brake-impairment is usually due to lack of money or repair know-how on the part of the bike owner, and I'd hate to see someone get in an accident for want of a few simple parts or adjustments.


Read more!

Dad's Trek: the series

This is the kick-off post for my overhaul of one battered Trek 720. I see a lot of bikes of this vintage around town, and many, if not most, of them are in poor condition. I've lost track of how many times I have seen neglected 80's and 90's bikes with one cantilever brake missing or dangling loose (occasionally both!). I cringe when I hear the clacking of rusty chains and dry bearings on one of the aging Peugeots or Univegas in my neighborhood that have gone from bike-boom glory to hard-luck mount. I also see a lot of cheap big-box-store type bikes around here, and I think people would do better to fix up decent-quality older bikes than to keep buying really crappy new ones. I have had conversations with people who have spent many hundreds of dollars getting bikes like these extensively fixed up. I hope this series will prove useful for those who have put off needed repairs or maintenance for fear of racking up big repair bills when money is tight. If you are loaded and flush with cash, by all means show some love for our area bike shops. We like having them around.

Here are my basic goals for this series and this project:

• Make the bike as good as new mechanically, upgrading components as needed.
  
• Reusing parts when possible without compromising safety or durability. This will be as much for the sake of reducing waste as for the sentimental goal of saving what can be saved of the original bike.
• Getting the bike ready for one loaded tour and for many more years of daily service.
• Learning some new skills, strengthening some existing knowledge, and sharing this learning process on the Beat Bike Blog.
  
  

Since this is a tribute of sorts, and since this will always be "Dad's bike" to me, his legacy will inevitably guide my choices through the course of this project. He was a child of the depression, so I will try to be frugal in my expenditures (mostly). He was an engineer, so form will follow function (albeit closely). He took pride and care in his workmanship when he worked with his hands, so the work should be done with care. I inherited his tendency to overbuild and over-engineer things, so sweating the details will be both appropriate and involuntary. He was very safety-conscious, so brakes, cables, tires and the like have to be in top notch working order. He enjoyed the outdoors all of his life, so this bike must be ridden! On that last point, I'll probably exempt it from snow rides, at least when road salt is present. I have a winter beater in the works for that purpose.

Soon, I'll finish disassembling the bike and see exactly what needs to be done. I have already accumulated and set aside some new and used parts for it over the past several months, so I need to dig those out and remember what I have. Next, I'm going to strip it down to the frame and get that into shape for reassembly. In my next installment, we can see what I find. I'll get back to you soon. Read more!

My Favorite Bike

I have owned dozens of bicycles, and I have pined for and fantasy-built hundreds more. If someone asks me which is my favorite however, the answer is easy. It is this beat-up mid 1990's Trek 720. It's a 700c wheel hybrid that gradually acquired fenders, smooth tires and cut-down straight handlebar during its evolution toward daily beater/ city bike status. It is not particularly cool or aesthetically pleasing. Nobody looks at it and says, "Hey, nice bike!" A couple of years back, I was walking out of the annual Warren Miller film at The Bushnell with a small group of friends. One of the group, an avid cyclist from the suburbs asked with concern if I was under a constant threat of bike theft. I told her that I felt my bike was pretty safe. She was unconvinced until we reached the Trek locked to a signpost. "Oh, I see what you mean." she said.

In popular cycling lore, hybrids vie with "comfort bikes" as the dorkiest thing this side of a recumbent. I don't care who scoffs at it, I like it. This is my favorite bike because it has proven sturdy and reliable through hard, year-round usage in all kinds of weather. Finally, most significantly, this bike is an emotional favorite. Its sentimental value is off the charts.
This was my father's last bike.

My parents introduced me to cycling as a passenger around the age of two (the same year they first put me on skis) Around the age of 5, I got my own bike, a hand-me-down moss green Ross banana seat bike of a late 60's vintage. I grew up riding the streets and county park pathways with Mom and Dad, listening to the reassuring Sturmey Archer song tick-tick-ticking away on their matching brown his and hers early 70's Raleigh Sports 3 speeds (if his had not been sold at a family garage sale unbeknownst to me, it would be hands-down my favorite bike). When my Dad was approaching 70, he wanted more gearing choices for his aging knees, so he and my Mom bought a pair of 21-speed Trek 720 hybrids. By his late 70's his knees didn't feel up to bike riding anymore and he handed the well-preserved 720 off to me. I proceeded to give away the old Shogun road bike that had been my previous commuter and began riding the Trek full-time.

My father passed away this past April several days after turning 83. He was active to the end (mad props: he continued skiing through the age of 81), felled by a massive heart attack in Manhattan as he spent a night on the town with Mom for his birthday. We miss him terribly, but take great comfort and great example from a life well-lived. We should all do so well.

By this past spring, Dad's old Trek was a bit tired. Years of rain and road salt and hard usage had worn out two drivetrains and left two pairs of rims with gouged sides and rusted spokes. It seriously needed an overhaul, and as I began collecting new parts for it, I had an idea. My father was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts and lived his last decades in Glen Rock, NJ, with a quarter century or so spent in Brooklyn in the middle. I decided it would be both a fitting tribute and generally therapeutic for me to ride Dad's old bike from Glen Rock to New Bedford (via Brooklyn, of course) staying with friends and relatives or camping out along the way. This past Memorial Day was to be the original start date (apropos for honoring a WWII veteran) of my trip, but an employment opportunity arose that would have been foolish to pass up (I was unemployed at the time--2009 was not my favorite year in several ways). I began to disassemble the bike and got no further.

So now the bike sits in pieces, and I admit I've hit something of a mental block. I have a daunting surplus of goals stacked up for 2010 but I'm going to deem making this bike function again one of my first short-term resolutions. In addition to getting my cherished beater back on the road, I think this could be a fine opportunity to write some step-by-step how-to articles for the Beat Bike Blog. I think I will start with the wheels. I recently got a good deal on a new pair of Sun CR18 36 hole rims and have already spoken to a local shop with a solid inventory of spokes and knowledge. I plan on paying them a visit soon, and I'll surely keep you posted.
Read more!