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!

Starting 2010 late

So, I guess I'm done with my hiatus. I rode my bike to work yesterday and went mountain biking after work (and as long as they haven't changed, the conditions are awesome for riding a bike in the snow). Those are pretty run of the mill things for me, leading me to believe I'm inching back to normal. Some people seem to bounce right back from car altercations, but I suppose I'm emotionally fragile. The Surly, on other hand, isn't going to recover from the event. Johanna and I went to South Carolina between xmas and new years, which was nice because there are bike paths and beaches, for people like me who are temporarily terrified of riding on roads.


Last year around this time I wrote some reflective stuff about 2008 and what would happen in 2009. In terms of riding a bike, 2009 was pretty good. I met some new people to ride with: Dario, Salem & Peter and rode in interesting places. I seemed to also have become better at riding a bike, or at least faster in my amateur races. In the races I entered, I finished on the podium in all but three. D2R2 was a big a disappointment for me, but there always this year. I'm better aware of my shortcomings and ignorance, so hopefully I'll ingest some electrolytes this year.

Hartford 'Cross was a veritable success and I'm excited about putting it on again. There was good feedback on how to make it better, but also many people who were excited about it happening again in 2010.

One sad result of this year seems to be the I've alienated a lot of people who used to ride with me. Chiefly, Johanna has no desire to ride with me any more. So, resolution #1 is to stop being a jerk.

What's your plan for 2010?

Oh, and in political news, I like Merrick Alpert's walking style.

I walked here, not Merrick.

And further, I really hope that I can get the police report from Farmington. I don't want to be stuck in insurance hell.

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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.
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Happy New Year

Best wishes for many happy, healthy and safe miles for you and yours for 2010. Read more!

Out with the old, in with the older

I spent several days in the greater NYC metro area of my youth catching up with friends and family. I drove down since Megabus has eliminated their super convenient Hartford service. While I wasn't particularly in any mood to drive, this ended up being a good thing for a couple of reasons. As it worked out, driving the car enabled me to deliver some bulky items I've been meaning to get rid of, and ultimately bring home just as many bulky items. Oh well.

One of the first things I realized upon arrival at my Mom's house was that I had forgotten my own backpack when I loaded the carfull of stuff I carted down. Not willing to milk that many days out of the clothes on my back, I made a Christmas Eve trip to a couple of thrift stores to assemble a few days' worth of wardrobe on the cheap. I scored some more wool clothes to expand my wintertime outdoor clothing options, which was a bonus.

At the second store, a longtime thrift institution of sorts in Paterson, I found a rack full of rickety bikes between the men's clothing and housewares. Most of them were battered department store quality bikes that were not very good to begin with and were far worse for wear and neglect, but two of them caught my eye. One was a Tyler children's bike, only the second example of this Polish marque I have seen in person.

The other thrift store standout was a vintage Firestone single speed cruiser frame with an assortment of newer used parts affixed to it.


The front fender was mashed up from the store's ham-fisted display method of hanging the bikes over an angle iron frame. The frame had a pretty head tube badge, but was otherwise slathered in many chipped layers of poorly applied paint. I was sort of tempted to adopt it and save it from such an undignified fate, but then I saw the asking price of $79! I examined the tag carefully, but found no decimal point or other factor that would point to a more reasonable price. The moment a thrift store thinks something is "collectible" is akin to a precocious child realizing or thinking they are cute. The magic is lost.


It was good that the ratty cruiser bike was overpriced, as it wouldn't have left enough room in the car for the two bikes that two of my friends gave me during the remainder of my visit. The first is a hard-luck case, a sorely neglected urban beater of a mountain bike that a friend's roommate abandoned when she moved overseas. It was homely enough that it was able to sit unlocked and undisturbed outside of their Jersey City apartment building, which is saying something. I was hopelessly charmed by the combination of a lugged Bridgestone frame with a Biopace crankset, so I dragged the seatless bike flat tires and all on the Path train and the subway to my Brooklyn crash space.


My friend in Flatbush has an amazing knack for finding really cool stuff for cheap or free. Limited storage space means he regularly passes his unwanted finds along to friends on equal terms, so it's only a matter of time before he re-homes something really cool that he can no longer justify keeping around. The other morning, he offered me an old folding bike he had sitting in a relative's garage out in Queens. We met up there and dug it out as I was heading homeward. I have been on a folding bike kick for a while now, so any old folding bike would have made me happy. That said, I was pretty well blown away to discover that this was a 1940's BSA paratrooper bike! It had been "civilianized" with black paint and chrome rims and fenders at some point in the past, but a few minutes of fingernail-scratching revealed the remnants of the original olive-drab paint and a WWII-era serial number. It's in rough shape now and missing most of its original parts (including the sweet "BSA" chainwheel), but I'm really looking forward to restoring this bike when time and money allow it. I found a couple of websites with pictures and info, so I can gather some information (and parts, if I'm lucky) in the meantime.



Happy New Year, by the way!



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Do office chairs belong in bicycle racks?

Sometimes you don’t want to walk to the bar. Obviously (i hope) driving isn’t an option. I suppose for some reason you may choose not to ride. And, every once in a while, i am sure we all will ask a friend to push us to the bar in an office chair. It happens. Where should the chair be left? This and other hardhitting deep issues of Key West bicycle culture are being discussed and debated. Well, maybe not, but they sure make funny photos. I'm going to continue to post random postcards from this crazy little tropical island as well from roadtrips on the BBB every now and then, but mostly I will be writing and photographing for my new blog, Key West Velo.


Expect more of my same blurry photos and long winded stories but without any snow or ice...ever. Although, I must admit, the cooler weather down here lately has been great for riding. Mid 50's at night are chilly if you're sitting around, but feels great if speeding around on a bike. And we got lots of bicycles here of every type and rustitude. Here's a typical sight outside El Alamo when Scott, Dave and I are cruising around. There's thousands and thousands of bikes everywhere, I love it. Its truly the best way to get around.


Here's an unusual sight inside on Christmas night...IT SNOWED!!! Even though it was plasticky and not cold, people went nuts! BTW, this spot has $1 PBR's and $2 Yuenglings all day every day! mmmmm!

I will also be contributing to the Fixed Gears Bicycle Shop Blog and writing and photographing all the assorted road, time trial, cruiser, choppers and various crazy looking bikes that come through the shop. Its my new fulltime job; managing, organizing, learning and having a great time at Fixed Gears Bicycle Shop. The links between the two are hard to find, so here they both are. That was an awkward paragraph, my bad! But life is good, i encourage everyone to follow their hearts and manifest their dreams.

Fight the winter blues and live vicariously someplace warm through the blog, or plan a trip and come on down and visit! Hope to see y'all down here smiling and pedaling.

Ride on,

chillwill
Key West Velo

click read more for a naughty elf picture





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Hiatus

Hello, readers of the beat bike blog,

I'm going to take a break from this for a little while. I got hit by a car in Farmington last night on my way home from my parents' house. Someone took a left into me on Talcott Notch Road. It wasn't my fault. I'm ok, save for some cuts and bruises, but I need some time away from thinking about bikes. We've got lots of contributors, so I don't think you'll be missing much.

Have a good new year,
Brendan Read more!

Yule Ride

Note: You'll likely find less than a jewel of a post, but there is hidden lingual game to play; see how many puns on the word "yule" you'll find and win absolutely nothing.

Four so far.

My casual apologies for the puns...oh, five now.

Peter called me this early morning and eventually we met to ride single speeded cycles for a short spin. (Sorry no score for spotting alliteration.) We stuck to something of a habitual route in the East Hartford river valley, keeping to flats and gradual hills which were best for the bikes we bore. Actually, with the cool, damp air, I eventually confided in Peter, that while I was, as usual, happy to be out on my bike, it was not factually a glorious day for riding. Truly, the feeling was mutual, so we kept it short, as I will also keep this post, before there is any risudual pun damage on you, my virtual reader.

I count 16, maybe 17, should you care. Well, the new year of posts can only get better from here.

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An open letter to Gary Fisher (Trek)

So, I went to the basement last night and discovered the bizarrest thing! It was as if I owned some R-Sys wheels.

Hello there,
A few years ago I bought a second hand Tassajara. I think it was probably a 2005 model. I haven't used the bike in a bit, but I put some studded Nokians on the wheelset to use for winter riding on a different bike. It's not the greatest wheelset: Bontrager Camino rims, Deore hubs and no name black-painted spokes. Winter time has returned to Connecticut and I was about to put the studded wheels on my bike last night and I noticed that many of the spokes had popped, like 1/2 of them on each wheel. I was totally confused, it appeared as if someone had cut them of the wheels had been run over or something, but my basement is pretty safe. I went to bend one of the broke spokes and it just broke, no flex at all. Apparently it was totally corroded, although you couldn't tell because of the black paint. The corroded spokes were popping because of the spoke tension. Has this even happened before? I thought most spokes were stainless. If I ride on salted roads, I do clean the bike off, because I guess you can't clean under the paint on the spokes.

Regards and happy holidays,
Brendan

Anyway, merry xmas and such from the beat bike blog!

This might be my last post for awhile unless I bring a laptop on my minivacation. Although, I might have some interesting beach cruiser tales upon my return. Read more!

Staring at maps

View points south in a larger map

I've always stared at maps a lot. When I was little, I used to go on a lot of long car trips with my parents, so there were plenty of maps for reading material. My dad had a relief map of CT that I was awesome and it's still up somewhere in my parents house. Since maps have migrated to computers, I play with google maps at least once a day. I look at faraway places and create elaborate, multi-thousand mile routes around North America. If I go on a slight complicated bike ride, I'm generally on gmaps pedometer afterwards.

I also like to look at things close to me and see if there's some undiscovered woods that I've never been in. The map above is an example of woods I don't know much about. I've been on a lot of the paved roads in the area, including the strange road the goes passed the DMV in Plainville. Crankfire says that you can ride Bradley Mountain and I've been on the Newington Bike road rides out to that reservoir. Now that we've turned the daylight corner, I can start planning this stuff, I guess. Read more!

Here We Go A-Barreling

I was introduced to the frightful joy of downhill snow biking in the mid- 90's by my friend Bald Matt in Queens. He had two old mountain bikes with BMX handlebars which we brought to the local "Suicide Hill" sledding spot. This particular hill had one or two decent-sized berms running its width. Bald Matt pedaled furiously downhill for each descent, barreling like mad, catching sizable air with each spectacular berm-hit. My runs consisted of more coasting than pedaling, but that made for enough speed to keep me entertained and fearing for the safety of myself and everyone else on the crowded hill. I haven't done any downhill-bike specific day trips since then, but have thoroughly relished every snowy hill that I've happened upon while riding since then.

Late Saturday night, we finally got our first proper snow. I know it has snowed before this winter, but this was the first nice, dry, fluffy proper snow. At no point in the overnight storm was there any rain or "wintry mix" garbage. That was snow as it should be. El Prez sent out his virtual Bat Signal for a Sunday afternoon trip to Riverside Park for sledding. I don't own a sled, but I did have a hankering for some snow biking. Kerri was among those intrigued by the idea, and in a photographing mood, so she offered me her commuting bike for snow flogging, on the condition that I would fix anything that I broke. That seemed fair. We made our way through Constitution Plaza toward the Riverfront Recapture area. The elevator by the outdoor amphitheater was not working, despite it being within the posted hours of operation. The next logical choice was to ride down the slopes of the amphitheater itself, which was fun and more than a little bit dicey.

A half dozen people answered the call and met up at the top of the dike at the northwestern corner of the park. We took turns flying down the steep, fast slope on the lone snow tube.

I only did a couple of runs on the bike, as the climb back up proved a difficult mix of heavy bike and low traction. It was a total hoot though!

We wrapped up the afternoon with a ride over to the railroad bridge to watch and listen to the ice on the river drift and collide.




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Climate change

When you ride a bike in the woods, you're acutely aware of temperature, precipitation and ground hardness- even if you're a crappy mountain biker like me. Well, even if you spend a lot of time outside, you become more aware of the weather. To that end, wearing heavy overclothes, I often say things like: "Last Wednesday, I did this ride in a t-shirt!" or "Good thing we can ride across this pond now." Actually, the latter I would never say, because I'm scared of falling through ice and think that I'm fat. Though, on Friday when Dario, Salem and I were doing some walking across ice, finding cell phones in snow banks and rubbing Manchester the wrong way. I was none too pleased about the walking across ice.



Yesterday, Salem and I did some mountain biking at Grayville. I did that NEMBA ride there a couple of months ago and thought that I'd never return, because it's pretty far from my house and the trail network is moderately confusing. Going back was great, because there are some awesome trails there.


The much ballyhooed snow fell (that guy has a Land Rover, what's his complaint about snow?), precluding mountain biking today. So, I went for a walk.

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How I helped Lance Armstrong win the 2010 Tour de France

I rode down to my local Radio Shack yesterday for a resistor to repair my new old car's speedometer. Philosophically, this was an unpleasant task. For one, I am working on a car again after a rather blissful year of not owning one, although it was my choice to buy one for some travel, so I have no right to complain. But secondly, I not a big fan of Radio Shack; they repackage low grade parts and sell them for five times the price of quality parts you can get from an electronics distributor, but ever since Hatchery's closed in Hartford years back, they are the only game if you need parts today. At least I did have the solace of getting to run an errand on my bike.

Being a cyclist who cavorts with a variety of other cyclists, I am aware to some degree of the realm of professional bike racing, but I will say this knowledge isn't foremost in my thoughts. So, while I walked around the Radio Shack store with my bike helmet on my head, somewhere within that styrofoam I knew that company is sponsoring Lance Armstrong, but I wasn't really conscious of the fact. The first clue to not jog my memory was when I noticed the Livestrong bands in the box next to the register and on every clerk's wrist. Hmmm. Then, on purchasing my $1.05 worth of resistors, I was asked if I wanted to add a dollar to support the Livestrong fund. Call me what you will, I did not. Still, the memory didn't click.

I'm getting old I suppose, so it didn't dawn on me until this morning when the sun rose, "Oh, right, Lance Armstrong, new Radio Shack cycling team." So, if Armstrong wins the Tour de France this year, a small portion of my purchase will go to that effort. Maybe he'll blow a quarter nostril of snot just for me!

Be strong. Go ride your bike.

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Homeless

When you ride a bike, you often find yourself off the beaten path. And, if you ride in a more urban environment, that often involves being under bridges, semi (or fully) abandoned roads, organic paths, etc.


As winter has been setting it, there's been a lot of discussion about the homeless in and around downtown Hartford- mostly regarding a no-freeze shelter near Stone Field Sculpture or not near it. As you can imagine, homelessness increases when the economy becomes crappy. Conversely, the money available for organizations who help the homeless when the economy becomes crappy, so there's a lot of scrambling to secure services for a larger customer base. There State also seems to have an intense desire to cut mental health services.


Now, I don't claim to have any more than a cursory understanding of homelessness and its trends, but, without a doubt, there have been a lot more people living and hanging out under bridges or other less traveled places this year than I've ever seen- not just a couple, but a rather profound increase.


It hasn't been super cold yet this year, but sleeping under a bridge with a burning trash can probably isn't sufficient if the temperature drops below 20. Do the service providers know how to reach these fellows? Most temporary encampments are within two miles of the no-freeze shelter on Lafayette, so it's not that hard to get there.


So, I guess the Eel 4 route is something of a depressing tour of economic collapse. Although, I'm really trying not to be some poverty tourist. But, even being a weirdo riding by on a bike makes you feel privileged. I suppose the best I can do is say hello and treat people like people.

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Hot dog!

I had this really serious post planned about something, but that can wait until tomorrow I suppose...

Because, I just got a press release from the people who produce the Man v. Food show on the Travel Channel. Tomorrow's episode takes place in Hartford (elsewhere in CT, too, but they're calling it the Hartford show, which is good). The Hartford dining involves Woody's, an institution. It's on tomorrow (Wednesday) at 10pm. You should watch it. Maybe not emulate it, because I understand that the host, Adam, loses to food often.

I guess Hartford is finally hitting the big time, first Ghost Hunters at the Mark Twin House and now this. Ghost Hunters is also returning to go to the Old State House and it seems they once went to the Hartford Conservatory.

Speaking of spookythings, I rode through Wintergreen Woods this evening, where they found that body. It wasn't really that spooky, but slightly weird.

Photo credit to BillNJ on the virtualtourist site.

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