Bikes Outside: Non-friction at the Library

This Monday's Bike Outside was in good company among a handful of rides locked up at the Hartford Public Library on Friday afternoon. While all bikes in attendance were of the fat 26" tire variety, this particular Mongoose had some key features to set it apart from the rest. You see, this bike is all about taking it up a notch. While some mountain bikes have front suspension, this one has dual suspension. While some bikes are a little beat-up, this one is really beat-up. While many Hartford bikes have one missing brake, this one is missing brakes front AND rear. There's something to be said for that kind of thoroughness, and that something is "Aaaaiiigh!!!! No Brakes!!!!"

I had to dodge a guy barreling down the sidewalk on a brakeless mountain bike as I was walking down Capitol Avenue a few weeks back. I'm pretty sure this is the one, as I recall a flash of white and a remnant of V-brake jutting out. The rest of the moment was obscured by my life flashing before my eyes and fighting an overwhelming urge to give chase and administer a vigorous dope slap. While fisticuffs might have satisfied a certain knee-jerk instinct of anger/self-preservation, It likely would have ultimately made things worse. Not being threatened with immediate bodily harm on Friday afforded me a clearer head with which to seek out a more positive solution.

While I was at the library, I procured a piece of scrap paper and some adhesive tape. I wrote a short note that I intended to tape to the bike, directing the bike's owner to a couple of inexpensive sources for some brakes. Alas, the Mongoose was gone when I returned to the bike rack. I tucked the note into my tool bag on the off-chance that I see the bike again soon.

If the owner of this bike happens to be reading this, I encourage, nay, urge you to go to the Urban League's bike shop at the corner of Woodland and Sargent. They are open from 4-7 PM Tuesday-Thursday. They have a box full of old brakes, some of which will fit your bike. I'll even pay for them if you don't have spare cash on hand (provided you come on a Tuesday). Also, get off the sidewalk. Thanks. Read more!

Bikes outside: excess

UPDATE! So, I came home and Johanna told me that this post was kind of mean. She's right, so I apologize to the owner of the gold Bianchi. Since my New Year's resolution to stop being a jerk, I hope he accepts my apology. Although, I won't rescind my comments on the upside down handlebars. Upside down handlebars aren't right!



I hope Chris doesn't get mad that I'm stealing his project, but I saw a bike outside today that I wanted to comment on briefly.

I had lunch today with Marisa at Ichiban. This Bianchi was chained out front. It had weird aero bars and upside down handlebars, something I never understand, and it had upside down brake levers. It also looked like it was prepared to ride across the continent. Inside, the owner looked like his was simply riding to lunch. Doesn't that strike you as slightly excessive? Does he bring eight changes of clothes to walk around the block? What does his car look like? How many bomb shelters does his house have?

Sorry.

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Woof woof

You may have noticed that it was nice today. So, when the whistle blew at work today, my Colnago and I headed down towards the Wethersfield meadows. Things were pretty typical, though I noticed that they "regraded" the roads. They don't use gravel, or smooth the dirt, it appears that they used chewed-up asphalt to resurface. It doesn't seem like a good idea, because the stuff is super-rough and the runoff from it can't be good for the River.



Anyway, I was riding along and up ahead of me was a Maxima with a large black lab next to it. I'm pretty sure at some point on this blog that I've complained about people who go to the Meadows and drive their dogs. It pisses me off, but there's nothing new about it. The weather gets nice and people drive around with their dogs next to there cars, sometimes the dogs are even leashed. I slowed a bit as I approached. The dog had run off the road ahead to the right, but just as I got close to the car, the dog ran in front of me and I hit the dog. Not hard at all, I braked to try and not hit the dog, but I hit the dog none the less and the dog didn't even seem to care. I'm not very good at imparting rage extemporaneously, so I said yelled at the driver something like, "Watch where you put your fucking dog!" and I don't think that really makes any sense. He stared at me totally baffled, perhaps because I yelled something that made no sense, or because he hates bikes or maybe because he realized he's a terrible dog owner.

But, what the fuck? I've got nothing against dogs, but this moron seems to, because if I was driving a car or riding faster or riding a motorcycle, I would have injured or killed the dog. When did we become so lazy that we need cars to walk a dog? It's disgusting! It's bad enough when people walk dogs unleashed in public spaces and they chase after you or try to bit you, etc. However, violating the sin of sloth must count double if you drive your dog instead of walking it.

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Bikes Outside: Schweet Home Chicago

This week's Bike Outside is no less than an American icon. The "Electro-forged" Chicago Schwinn is the bicycle equivalent of a slant six Dodge: Ubiquitous in its day, by no means the fastest or the lightest of its kind out there, but sturdy as hell. It's overbuilt and under-appreciated. When a post-apocalyptic mutant runs out of gasoline to power its 1970 Dart, it can pull an intact 1970 Schwinn from the nearest bomb crater and pedal onward.


I found this bike chained to a railing on Farmington Ave in Asylum Hill. Judging from the extended paintless area on the frame of this bike, it has been chained thusly thousands of times. This and the rest of the paint layer surface strata make this beater a patina powerhouse. It wears the scars of a lifetime of hard usage without fanfare or apology. If terms like unassuming and badass can coexist in a single place, they can do so on this bike. It's also old-school all the way. I like the cloverleaf chainwheel, the alloy quill stem and the stem shifter. The upright handlebars and skinny chain guard make it look more like an old 3-Speed at a distance until you spot the derailleur out back. The "mattress" style saddle has seen better days, making this a short-trip bike for all but those with the hardiest posteriors. A front caliper has gone AWOL, leaving a lonely left brake lever behind and continuing the widespread Hartford tradition of one missing/malfunctioning brake.

This was another instance where a bike's owner came out as I was photographing it. The fender-equipped Schwinn has served as his foul-weather beater for the past few decades while his nicer Fuji comes out when the weather is nice. We had a good time talking bikes and such until I remembered that I had already been running late before I stopped to bike bond. I've forgotten his name (I'm terrible at remembering names) but I'll probably catch up with him at his store one of these days when I have more time. Nice guy.

The basic idea of this bike has been recreated in Schwinn's current retro lineup as the "Willy" with some welcome updates to the gearing (twist-grip 7-speed vs. stem shifted 5-speed) and brakes (which now stop the bike when applied). Schleppi's Jenny is its femme counterpart.

These Chicago-made bikes rode the final wave of the American bicycle industry before it crashed on the shores of the Malaise Era and retreated overseas. An affordable, decent domestic bike for everyday people became the stuff of tag sales and flea markets after that. Luckily, bikes like this will be around for decades to come. They will outlast us all. This Schwinn is just plain solid.

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Places with no snow

So, I guess Hartford isn't the only place that suffers from a lack of snow.

I was reading Jill Homer's blog, where she's giving some play by play on the Alaska Ultrasport (Iditarod for bikes), and she's describing the lack of snow in a section of this year's race. While global warming is obvious a hoax (just kidding!), that image gives a skeptic pause.

It's also weird to read that a lack of snow makes the race even more difficult (See Feb. 27).

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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!

Bikes Outside: 400 Club

This Monday's Bike Outside features an old school Trek that was found locked to one of the several improvisational bike racks surrounding La Paloma Sabanera on Capitol Ave. The corner of Capitol and Babcock has long been a cool bike-spotting place. I routinely see bikes dating from the 1960's to today locked up outside while their owners nosh and caffeinate.

The lugged frame of this Trek 400 has an early 80's look and feel to me. A very quick glance at the Vintage Trek website seemed to point to 1984. The Sugino crankset and quill stem could certainly pass for that era, but the remainder of the components have been modernized. That said, the modern 9-speed cassette and derailleur, v-rims and such don't look particularly out of place on this bike. The 400 was by no means Trek's flagship model, so people can feel free to modify them without fear of compromising a potential museum piece. They have great potential for the building of solid daily riders with bonus vintage flair.

I'm partial to Treks. One of my cousins in Brooklyn was an early adopter, riding a Trek in the late 70's and early 80's before replacing it with a gorgeous red Eddy Merckx. A far more prosaic Trek was my Father's last bike, so the marque has sentimental value for me. This bike sports a similar early logo and head badge style to my cousin's long-ago mount, so the nostalgia is strong with this one. The paint and graphics are in nice, original shape. It really is a good looking bike.


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The Holy Grail

This past Sunday morning, with an inadequate night's sleep behind me and a pair of cargo bikes crowding the bed of a borrowed pickup (thanks Prez!) I made my way toward Dudley Mass at the crack of still-freaking-dark-out. As tired as I was, it was definitely a morning well spent. I sold very little, bought a bit more, and generally had a good time checking out cool old bikes and chatting it up with other bike people. I saw several people I have met over the years in the New England vintage scooter and motorcycle scene. Two wheels good!

Things had gotten pretty slow by noon and we started to pack up. With everything loaded, I wandered back in for a farewell lap through the Do-Right flea market to have one more look at the items for sale and their modern indoor plumbing. There were still a few bike vendors lingering into the early afternoon as well. Toward the back of the huge building, there was a room full of classic bikes that I think had been up for auction. Most of them were swoopy American balloon tire bikes, with a few British 3-speeds and a few earlier antique bikes thrown in for good measure. The old bikes lined up on the freshly refinished battered 19th century factory floor made for an especially pleasing scene. I could dwell happily in a space like that.

I spotted the remains of a Pope-built Columbia headtube badge and zoomed in for some macro shots of a Hartford hometown favorite. It wasn't until I backed away that I realized that this rusty old bike was none other than my grail, the pinnacle of my dream bike wantyness, an unrestored genuine Hartford-built Columbia Chainless! I hunkered down and leaned in for an extra-close look, taking care not to further corrode it with drool enzymes. It was in rough shape to be sure: rusted all over, tires rotting off of deformed wooden rims, and a pair of latter-day cottered cranks and pedals looking decidedly out of place. The wood and metal framework was all that remained of the seat, but it was there, which was good. The drive side was facing the wall, so I didn't get as detailed a look at the bevel-geared drive shaft as I would have liked, but it was still pretty damned cool. Nobody was around the bike, and the roll of raffle tickets on the handlebar offered no clues about its story. I pulled myself away from the stately machine and made my way home. I like to think I will have a chance to see it again someday.


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Fenderella

WAY BEFORE:
No fenders on the everyday bike. Quite often, back of coat or backpack coated in mud. Not unheard of to get some dirt on face, specifically, in mouth. Once, got bits of mud on ivory-color dress while riding to art opening because there was a puddle that wanted to be ridden through. Except for the dress incident, perceived this all as an exercise in building character.

IMMEDIATELY BEFORE: Functional SKS fenders that were plain black and boring. At least they weren't navy blue.


AFTER:

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Bikes Outside: Snow Goose

This morning's Bikes Outside features a Mongoose MGX locked up in front of an apartment building across the street from the Broad Street Community Garden. It was just accumulating snow last Tuesday, but the owner could have been having all sorts of fun riding around a snowy park instead. I have a hardtail Mongoose mountain bike frame that I started making into a ghetto 96er snow bike for that very purpose, but it has been a low priority. That has already been named Snowgoose, but mine is an open nomenclature and I'm willing to share.

Mongoose is a brand that lost their way the past decade or two. There was something solid and straightforward about them back in the day, but more recent models seem to be all about flash and hype. There seems to be a lot of stuff written on this bounce bike's frame--perhaps a bit more than the world needs to know. It's like the bike equivalent of tuner-style cars with Eibach, Toyo,"powered by Honda," et cetera plastered all over. Part of me wants to replace the "Powered by SRAM" decal with "Powered by legs" or some other admittedly prosaic but more accurate slogan. With tubing this large, I suppose designers felt compelled to fill up some of the space, but they could have gone in more interesting directions. How about a series of photos? Perhaps Haiku...

I spent the first half of yesterday at the Dudley bike swap meet sharing a table with Erik. The booth next to us specialized in vintage BMX bikes, so in among the Hutches, GTs and Thrusters were a few of the looptail Mongoose frames I would have liked to own as a kid (not as much as I wanted a "Tri-Power" Thruster, mind you, but neat bikes just the same)

Here's my brilliant marketing idea for the day: I think that if Mongoose, or any of the 1980's BMX superpowers started selling reasonably well-made 26" bikes that were essentially scaled-up vintage 20" BMX bikes, they would sell like hotcakes. The nostalgic force is strong with the thirtysomething demographic, and people have done far more ridiculous things to harken to their youth. A 130% sized BMX bike sounds ridiculous, because, well, it is, but I still kind of want one now.


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Not quite Italian

I've been noticing a trend in Craigslist classified ads to declare any bike with name ending in "i" or "enze" Italian, which in most cases is akin to calling a Pontiac Lemans French. What's in a name? Well, in this vein, I finally built up the Bianchi frame that began hanging around my basement this summer. While Japanese made and therefore not as authentic as Brendan's Colon-ago, it does rate over those Craigslist beauties by actually coming from an Italian company, for what that's worth.

I think this is a pretty bicycle

Well, it seems after attempting to get the trains running on time, shouting tora, tora, tora, and generally being bombed into submission, the old Axis powers finally teamed up to produce a very nice bike. Made of a Bianchi spec'd Tange tubeset, this light blue lady sports a stretched-out, relaxed-geometry wheelbase and just plain rides nicely. After my dissatisfaction with the ill fitting Shogun, I am once again very much at peace with the world old older bikes that can be obtained on the cheap. In this case, $30 for frame, fork, headset, seatpost, and some other bits I didn't use.

Of course, for $450, I could have had a Firenze GL5000?
(Actually, I did at one point; it was rescued from a dumpster but it never stopped being complete rubbish.)

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Cool stuff surrounds my place of work.

This blog is not really an arbiter of cool stuff, because, well, we're not that cool. All the fixed gear bikes or cyclocross (or whatever else is cool in cycling) in the world won't help. However, I like to think that I know cool stuff when I see it. As a public service to those of you in and around downtown Hartford, I'm writing to inform you of two cool things within walking distance of each other tomorrow night.

1) 6pm-8pm Dawn Holder and her cool sculptures at the main branch of the library (500 Main Street) Dawn's art is awesome. And, to make it bike related, she rides a bike pretty well.

2) 8pm Andrew WK (along with Ninjasonik & The Rizzla) at the Wadsworth (600 Main Street).

Remember, don't stop living in the red.

Oh yeah, this is all free! Read more!

If this bike is wrong, I don't want to be right.

I've been reading and responding to the forum at Velocipede lately, largely so I can reasonably make use of their classified section with out being a complete douchebag, which I suppose makes me something of a douchebag. Well, someone posting there asked about putting a 130mm axle rear wheel in an old winter beater bike spaced at 126mm. A frame builder and others replied with comments regarding frame alignment, H-tools, and maybe something about a duck (I'm not sure), but this douchebag jumped in with the following point: "winter beater."

Bikes can be detailed, precise machines, but another of their graces is that they don't have to be. If you eyeball the valve lash on an internal combustion engine it will produce awful noises--for a only very short while--but I've enjoyed fantastic shifting for years on bikes with eyeball-straightened rear derailleur hangers. So much can be awful and wrong with a bike and it will still serve the purpose of propelling you faster than you can walk, maybe even in greater comfort.

Case in point: my commuter, errand, rack, general transportation bike. It was rescued some years back from the metal heap at a town dump. Flat tires, seized chainring bolts, missing cables, and all, it made the five mile trip home along side me while I pedaled my other bike and held on to the orphan's stem. Sure, it needed some work, but with mostly salvaged parts I had a nifty new bike with a stiff made in the USA frame that didn't flex much even with a heavily loaded rack.

10,000+ miles of wear

The years passed, and so did the miles. Things wear, and wear, and then wear some more, but it is a bike and still faster than walking. With likely over 10,000 miles on the drivetrain, I decided to finally put on some less worn parts, not so much because it no longer worked, but more because I have a pile of scrap aluminum that the spiky chainring needed to join. Along with the ring, the brake pads, chain, and cogset (although, I was able to reuse the 11 cog on account of my 140 pound weakling status) were finally put to rest. I took particular amusement from the chain with its loose rollers and generous lateral play.

Take careful note of the chain's orientation

So, let's hear it again for the bicycle, a wonderful, and wonderfully tolerant machine.

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My submission to velospace?

I realized last week that I'm not sufficiently zen. I was once, when I did a book report on The Cat Who Went to Heaven. I made this board game called "Nirvana or Hell" or something like that. You rolled a stone, drew cards and strove towards asceticism. The more you slept on an uncomfortable bed, divorced yourself from worldly trappings and wondered down the eight fold path, the closer you went towards winning the game. Although, you couldn't really win, because there's nothing zen about board game competition.


Anyway, I bought this old Colnago 'cross frame (with Reynolds 531!) off eBay awhile ago. I have no idea why. I already have one old and weird 'cross bike, but for some reason I felt that a second was needed, especially because it would be shipped from the Netherlands if I won. It arrived packed in newspapers I couldn't understand, lots of bubble wrap and milk cartons. It was actually quite a pretty looking frame and some other parts came along with it. I acquired a couple Nuovo Record parts off of eBay and then it just sat. Unsure of what to do and feeling paralyzed by the presence of this strange fancy bike, I ended up posting it on craigslist. Of course, the only responses I got were from TJ and Salem. Salem just wanted to buy the Mafac brakes.


Then, like in a lot of religions, I had an epiphany: I should make this into a fixed gear! It had sliding (and elegant) Campy dropouts and would be suitably absurd. So, I plunked down $120 on some CR18s laced to Formula hubs and built it up.



Admittedly, 38:17 is a little low of a gear for riding on the road, but it's very comfortable off road. I'd really like to have a 40t chainring, which would put me at 63 gear inches, right now I'm at 60 1/2". But, the bike performed quite well as a silly fixed gear 'cross bike on the yesterday's factory tour.

A lot of the parts aren't period correct, especially the Bontrager seat post of my mid 2000s Gary Fisher. I actually have a 27.2mm NR seat post, but I got so fed up with the stupid position of the second bolt, that I gave up and threw the single bolted one one.

Also, I have no plans to take the brakes off. They're very pretty as is. Read more!

Snow Tracks

Above: pigeon, dog, shoe and bike tracks this afternoon in Bushnell Park. I took a short ride today at lunchtime, passing through the park twice. The snow of the uncleared areas made for much cleaner (and prettier) riding than the slushy streets. I had a great ride yesterday afternoon in the greater Newington metro area with El Prez, Brendan, Salem, Erik, and Ken. The curb-found Diamond Back was still filthy from the muddier portions of that ride, so I figured the snow might help clean it some. I saw one young sledder and a few people with their dogs in the otherwise quiet park. I stopped to play with a friendly brown Newfie that may have outweighed me. He had a really giant head.


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Bikes Outside: Going for Gold

I was hoping to find something that could tie in to the winter Olympics, Presidents Day or Valentines Day for this Monday's Bikes Outside, but the best I could find this past week was a bike that didn't cost a lot of dead presidents locked up outside the Gold Building downtown.

Huffys don't tend to get a lot of love. Few will do anything but scoff at how awful and cheap they are, yet they have been best-selling bike brand in the US for decades. They are kind of ubiquitous. A friend of mine who recycles dumpster and curbside bikes has found more Huffys than any other brand. It's America's most popular disposable bike.

George P. Huffman was a comparative latecomer to the 19th century bike boom when he is said to have overseen his first bikes being made in 1892, but the Huffy lineage (Davis, Dayton, Huffman-Dayton, and finally Huffy) has some parallels to Hartford's own Columbia brand. Both were originally made in sewing machine factories; Columbias at the Weed Sewing Machine Company on Capitol Ave (Weed is still quite popular in the area) and Huffman's bikes and parts at the Davis Sewing Machine Company bicycle in Dayton, Ohio. Both brands were churning out cheap high-volume bikes by the 1960's, with heavy tubing, ugly welds and clunky components. They were still kind of charming in their own way (my mid-60's Columbia has lousy build quality, but I'm still fond of it) but things got aggressively tacky from the 1970's onward.

My web searches for Huffy history turned up a wide variety of non-matching timelines that all seem to agree on only one thing: Huffman is credited with inventing and introducing removable training wheels on the 1949 Huffy Convertible children's bike, also the beginning of the "Huffy" nameplate. If you learned to ride with training wheels, you owe the man a little credit.

I've seen some very cool older balloon-tire era Huffys, my favorite being the Radio Bike, but like many US manufacturers, they were phasing out awesome for cheap in the twilight of the 1950's. There were some latter-day exceptions, like the Nottingham-sourced "Huffiegh" Sportsman 3-speeds and some recent higher-end BMX frames, but their bread-and-butter these days is cheap Chinese-made bikes that are spec'd to a very low price point.

Anyway, back to Pearl Street for a parting glance at this week's street-parked workhorse. Ashtabula cranks, hi-ten steel tubing, and everything else that makes a bike heavy and slow are in effect here, but this mountain-style bike is obviously getting the job done for somebody. I'm pretty sure I have seen this bike in this spot before, so it seems to be on commuter duty. I didn't see any Rivendells downtown on this February afternoon, so Team Huffy gets the win. It takes more patience, physical effort and heart to daily ride a heavy bike so they get this week's nod for keepin' it real.

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