I have no idea how suspension forks work

I have this bike that I don't talk about very much. It is a Kona Kula Deluxe from 2006. I bought it in like 2009 (2010?) and I rode it for awhile, but after this race in Massachusetts that had a section with 3' of standing water, it didn't work well for awhile. I've finally fixed most of it. For some reason, I decided to replace the suspension fork. I don't know that much about those things, but I decided to upgrade the Fox Vanilla R to an F32 Float 120 or some such thing. I bought it on ebay and it said it had 100mm of travel, but it's got way more than that. It's actually pretty awesome once set up correctly for going fast downhill. However, it raised the front end and I seem to have no braking power on loose terrain. The raised front end makes it hard to climb steep stuff (keep popping wheelies) and the lack of braking makes it hard to stop. I also go downhill a lot faster with the suspension fork thingy, so I'd hope for more stopping power, not less. Lower my bars? Is that all I need to do? Fox makes a shorter travel-ma-jiggy, but it costs money. What advice do you have? Read more!

More reasons not to write

I wrote a post about how I don't write enough and then promptly wrote nothing for a few days. I am truly a hypocrite. I did some stuff, though, and it was mostly pretty great. It was also rough on my bikes.

Last Friday, I figured how to remove a crown race with a pocket knife and reinstall it with a vacuum cleaner tube. Take that Sheldon Brown! Drunk on my mechanical prowess, I replaced my chain because it was bent in several places (a problem I didn't know could happen to chains). So, I put my bike in the trunk, stopped at Central Wheel for a new chain and watered my parents' plants on my way to Nassahegon. Of course, replacing the chain does great things like inform you that your cassette is so worn out that you can't pedal up any inclines. I wasn't going to let this ruin my day. So, I rooted around in my parents' garage looking for some old shoes, because I had only worn cycling shoes. I found a pair of New Balances from my youth that had no holes in the bottom, but left my right big toe rather exposed.

I went over to the Avon Land Trust's trail on Nod Road. I found an illegal tree stand, which I took down. I followed this deer trail for awhile and then ended up climbing this rather exposed cliff. It was probably kind of stupid for me to do that. Eventually, I found this big black snake. I texted Johanna a picture of it and she got mad at me.

On Saturday, I went to the CTNEMBA trail school thing. It had good sandwiches. I also learned how to deal with grade vs. the fall line and grade reversal so that your trail doesn't become an eroded mess. I learned that like no trails around here are properly built. After the classroom portion, we went to Huntington State Park and did some benching. When done, I thought we were going to go for a bike ride. Apparently, no one wanted to go for a ride besides me. So, armed with the map provided at the gate (the fancy state parks in Fairfield County have maps!) and advice from Mark I rode around for about 45 minutes before smacking my derailleur on a rock and bending the hanger. I bent it out of the spokes and limped out of the woods. They got a lot of rocks there.

I also have come to possess a Schwinn Le Tour with a strange fork crown that was in the dump for awhile and then in Peter's basement for awhile. Johanna even approves of it. Also, I realized on its maiden ride that the Schrader tube I had with me was incompatible with the pump (no reversible chuck). Living on the edge! Read more!

Old guy

Every year I have a birthday and yesterday was it. So, Tony, Dario and I rode out into the wilds of Burlington, canton and new hartford. It afforded me the opportunity to prove that there are cool dirt roads in that direction, too. We also rode on some trails of my youth and passed my high school (the non-artsy one. I live less than a mile from the artsy one.). It made me feel nostalgic and inert. Is it a depressing thing that I can cover all the environs of my youth on a six hour bike ride?

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Documents

Most cyclists like to keep track of many statistics associated with their riding. I don't have a cyclocomputer, SRM or GPS. I have a GPS in my phone, but if I ride further than 15 miles, it seems to kill the battery. I'm not really interested in speed or wattage, but I am interested in how far I rode. So, I use mapmyride and gmap-pedometer. You've probably noticed that I'll link to those sites periodically. Recently, due to twitter, I signed up for dailymile. Pursuant to its name, I attempted to post every bit of distance. After a couple of months, I started to feel enslaved, so I've decided to stop using it. Sometimes, that's how I feel about this blog. There's no reason to write about what I do on bike. Maybe I should get better at photography or something. Read more!

Bike size and ground hogs

I am a pretty terrible mechanic, but one thing I have figured out how to do is adjust the parts of the bike that involve how I fit on the bike. I also kind of understand now that if I'm not comfortable on my bike, there are a bunch thing I could try adjusting. I'm not expert and Salem thinks all my bikes fit me wrong, but I can sit on my bike for eight hours and it doesn't hurt too bad.

I'm also a big advocate of used bikes. While I think bike companies are fine, there many bikes out there with many miles left that don't belong in the dump. So, when people ask me about buying a bike, much like buying a car, I tell them to go used. The problem of course being that while standover height of a bike is really easy to figure out, more picayune things like fore/aft saddle adjustment or saddle tilt aren't. So, people buy a bike for that for all intents and purpose fits, but is just uncomfortable enough that s/he won't want to ride for longer than 45 minutes.

Anyway, I bring this up because two friends of mine bought used bikes lately that were just slightly off. Once fixed, the bikes were comfortable and nice again. I'm not sure where I'm going with this diatribe, other than to say that your bike is probably not as messed up as you think it is. Five minutes of loosening a few bolts, adjusting and retightening can go along and even the inept like me can do it. Move the saddle forward 2cm can go a very long way.

Also, you may recall that I ran over a groundhog a few years ago. Interestingly, on Tuesday I saw a man with a bmw wagon stopped on the side of the road down by the meadows releasing a groundhog. I'm not sure how he caught the groundhog and what the groundhog was doing that caused him to take it to the meadow, but I like to think it was a positive thing.

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No particular place to go

We've been having weird weather lately. All of my typically visited spots are wet and gross, because in Hartford we're in some kind of doughnut hole (unrelated to Medicare Part D). There was an article about the lack of snow in Hartford, but the ring of heavy snow around us in the Courant, but I'm unable to find it. The article called it a snow doughnut hole. I wasn't creative enough to mint the term.

Anyway, the weird weather makes me not want to ride for very long, because rain in the 30s gets you sick. Actually, I was already sick last week, so I guess I didn't want to get worse. So, I've just been pedaling around neighborhoods trying not to get rained on. On Friday, I rode down to Wethersfield and then all this sleet started to fall on me. While it was intense and cool looking, it made me want to go home.

On Saturday, I went to the bank, but via the Cigna/Met Life campus. It was reminded of high school, because I spent a lot hanging out in office complexes. Tobacco fields, too. I prefer office complexes because I find corporate architecture pretty.


On Sunday, I attempted to ride at the Reservoir, but even my newly beloved Racing Ralphs can't ride through six inch deep wet snow (35mm is too wide to cut down to traction and far to narrow to float on top). Although, slogging through that crap was formidable exercise, even if other trail users think you're a moron.



In closing, I hope Spring comes for real soon and firms up the earth, because if my side yard is any indication, the world continues to be impassable on a bike. Read more!