The season of cabbage and caffeine

As bike commuting mileage drops, and other activities don't seem to fill in like they used to, I shift from using brown rice under a lot of my slapped-together meals, to using sautéed shredded cabbage instead. Shred it fine, and cook it over medium-high heat in a little oil (your choice) with some onion and seasonings you think you'll like. In another pan I cook up whatever meat and vegetables I would have slapped onto -- or mixed with -- the rice. Separate pans work out best for the quantities I try to make, because I make enough to get a supper and two or three lunch-size portions of leftovers. A grab and go container for lunch helps speed me through my typical morning stumble toward the door.

As daylight drops, my energy drops with it. During full bike commute season, I limit my morning coffee to avoid having to stop en route to release excess fluid. I might or might not have a little jolt in the afternoon. Once we get well into October I feel like crawling into a burrow. I certainly don't feel like vaulting out of bed. I'll drain the morning pot of coffee and definitely seek it in the afternoon. Any of y'all who can get by on spring water and meditation have my admiration, but that's it. I'm sure it's great.

The growing season ends with New England's well-known psychedelic splurge as deciduous trees withdraw chlorophyll from the leaves they are about to shed.

At summer's end, we get a rush at work, of people who waited until summer was over so that they could avoid the rush. We also get people who were holding off as long as they could, to keep riding in the prime season. Thus cash flow drops precipitously, but wrench work and brain teasers actually intensify.

This recumbent had tire and drive train problems. Once I got it back together, I found it basically unrideable.

Everything was hooked up right. I just couldn't get it to balance well at all. It resisted that first pedal stroke to establish forward motion, and wanted to flop over immediately. This was true in any gear. It was super twitchy. It was actually a late summer arrival, but I never had time to include it in a blog entry.

Then came someone's swamp buggy.

We'd replaced the chain previously. It hadn't skipped on a test ride, but it did skip when the owner rode it in the swamp. He brought it straight back to have the cassette replaced.

The owner of this Trek Y bike from the 1990s had a hankering to try riding again. He's a classic Van Winkle. Van Winkles are the people who have been asleep for twenty years and awaken to find the world much different than the one they dozed off from.

It doesn't help that he bought the bike used from a shop owner who was a trendoid. The bike had all the cool shit from 1998, including the Rapid Rise rear derailleur. I did learn from Sheldon Brown's website that, prior to Campagnolo's invention of the parallelogram derailleur, all spring-loaded derailleurs were "low normal," meaning that they used the return spring to pull the chain toward the low (largest) rear cog rather than down toward the smallest cog. It should tell you something that Campy's introduction of the high normal parallelogram derailleur established the design that the entire industry followed until Suntour introduced the slant parallelogram derailleur in the 1960s. Even after that, the basic parallelogram remained more common until well into the 1970s. According to Sheldon Brown, other companies didn't jump on until the expiration of Suntour's original patent in 1984, but I know that Shimano was already making slant parallelogram derailleurs before that. But they've always been aggressive competitors, not above pushing the envelope of decency, not to mention legality. They got slapped for it in the 1990s when it became too egregious to ignore. Nice guys finish last.

A happy couple of tourists brought their matched Sevens in for examination and any necessary repairs. They do well with their regular home care, so the bikes needed little. I did change the bridge wires on the rear cantilever brakes, changing the stock ones that were too short for longer ones that provided a firmer lever feel.

Another tourist, coming out of a long layoff, brought his vintage 1980s Trek for a full overhaul and upgrades to prepare for a long haul continental wander, perhaps next summer. He has laid out a route that would keep him in a 72-degree average daytime temperature the whole way along a meandering route that works with both latitude and altitude to hit the desired temperature. We discussed all his options, from total replacement with a Long Haul Trucker to full restoration on the Trek. Because the Trek was an old friend, and some of us are sentimental that way, we went that way.

The bike had been fitted with new wheels. The crank had been replaced because the original one broke. The bike had been built for 27-inch wheels, and the shop he went to had replaced them with 700c. The crank was a TruVativ, and rather cheesy.

I've put 700c wheels on bikes designed around 27-inch, but only with caliper brakes. You just get a longer brake if the one that's on there does not have sufficient range to lower the pads to the smaller rim diameter. I hoped that we could replace his old brakes with something more accommodating.

The mountain bike era began using brakes like these Dia Compes. Technology advanced rapidly with higher demand, leading to brake arms that allowed for pad height adjustment as well as every other angle in alignment. But you're limited by the immovable placement of the post itself. If it's low enough, you can use a modern brake to get the pad in range with good alignment to the rim. You can see here that the mechanic who made the wheel swap years ago just angled the pads down because that was all he could do. He didn't built the guy a decent 27-inch wheel, even though there were rims available. Do it cheap, don't do it right. Right?

I ordered some linear pull brakes and the drop bar levers designed to go with them, hoping that the range of vertical adjustment would make it work. I also built the guy some 36-spoke wheels with wider rims to replace these 32s with Mavic MA2s. The MA2 was a nice enough rim in its day, but narrow for a wider touring tire. I've been getting good service out of Sun CR18s. Not only does the wider rim support the tire better, it moves the braking surface closer to the brake arm. I hoped that the combination of factors would allow the use of 700c wheels.

I could have gotten 27-inch rims for the new wheels, but the selection of rubber in 27-inch isn't as good. It's a crap shoot these days. When I geared up for touring around 1980, and when this guy did just a few years later, 27-inch seemed like the better choice for touring in North America, because 700c had not taken over. Performance clinchers themselves were fairly new technology. We figured that you could probably find a 27X1 1/4  just about anywhere at that time. Now, though, you're more likely to find a dedicated bike shop in the hinterlands, and 700c has become the road/hybrid/gravel norm. You can't plan for every contingency.

I also dug up an old mountain bike crank for the bike, with nice forged arms and 5-bolt chainrings. Things were coming together. But the brakes weren't going to work. Those mounting posts were just too high. With the pads all the way down, they still had to be angled down to get anywhere near the rim. And it wasn't near enough.

After consultation, the customer decided to go with a Surly Long Haul Trucker frame, onto which I would put all of the upgrade and restoration parts. The crank I found for him is the same model I have been using since 1992, when it started out on my Stumpjumper, then moved to the Gary Fisher frame with which I replaced the Specialized, and later went onto the Surly Cross Check I've been riding since 2000. It's one of the few accidentally durable things made by Shimano. It probably helps that I'm not much of a sprinter. Even chasing a truck draft I seldom get out of the saddle.

Into this whole lineup of touring bikes came a near-neighbor of mine (less than 4 miles apart is right next door in rural areas) with his 1970s Raleigh Competition. He's another person who "used to work in a bike shop" and is still enjoying the swag.

It's all Campagnolo Gran Sport, with the less-common three-bolt crank.

The handlebars, a solid 40+ years old, are bent down slightly on one side. That's a bad sign, considering that the handlebar industry recommends replacement every three years. We all know that expiration dates are mainly designed to get you to buy more stuff, but I have seen older handlebars snap off next to the stem after two or three decades. When they outright droop it's a good hint that you might want to renew that particular critical piece. Other than that, the job is just a straightforward  overhaul and some tires from this century.

Into the midst of all this archaeology come the day-to-day weird jobs like this John Deere pedal car with the cranks falling out.

Hell has nine circles. So does this thing.

The pulling threads on the right side are twice as deep as normal, for no discernible reason. But the fun doesn't end there. The threads were also buggered in a way that made it impossible to get the crank puller to thread in at all. This is after I had to remove absolutely every piece of shrouding from the fully enclosed drive train to undo every nut and bolt to take tension off the chain.

I removed the left crank arm and slid the BB out through the right side, since it was falling out that side already. Then I braced the right crank arm in the vise so I could gently and precisely persuade the  axle to drop out of the crank arm, using a drift and a small sledgehammer.

The BB is mounted to a bolted-on bracket that was attached backwards to the frame, so that the BB cartridge couldn't be installed the right way around. Normal use would unscrew it from the frame. I unbolted the mounting bracket and reinstalled it the right way around. The people who assembled this thing clearly did not understand its bike-derived components at all. And I don't know how they ever got the chain on it, because I had to add a half-link just to get it onto the sprockets.

Speaking of not understanding bike parts, this has been the year for people putting the pedals in the wrong crank arms. When it won't go in straight and it's binding up like a bastard, why do you keep graunching on it? But they do. Then I get to extract the pedals -- if they haven't fallen out of the stripped-out holes already -- and either re-tap or replace the crank arms. One of those cases came in just last week. It's one of those repairs where you can't really give an estimate without trying to fix it first, to see if there's enough metal left to tap.

Still in the crank and pedal department, one of the local riders is a lad -- now an adult -- who spends hours a day riding all over town on whatever mountain bike he is putting to the test at the moment. He isn't an official product tester, but he definitely puts them all through the wringer of long, continuous use. He's not a jumper or a sprinter. He just goes. And goes. And goes. When he finally brings a bike in because the gears skip or the shifting is funky, we'll discover something like the bottom bracket shell completely broken loose from the seat tube. Worn-out chains are just par for the course. It's the special touches that elevate it from the mundane. This time, his chain had fallen off the front, and neither he nor his father could get it back on. Something was jammed up. Well I guess so.

He was "just riding along." The crank arm bolts are tight. Something inside ain't right.

And there it is:

The axle is snapped right off. At least it's a simple fix. We plugged in a new BB cartridge and off he went again.

Trainee David wanted to adjust the bearings in his XT pedals before an upcoming 'cross race. I helped him figure out how to get in there.

Modern bike componentry comes in two forms: stuff you can't take apart, and stuff you can take apart that will make you wish you hadn't. This is the latter. Of course you can find chirpy forum posts about how easy and fun it is, from people who claim to do it every one month/six months/year, but it's seldom more obvious that no manufacturer actually wants you to fix anything than when you try. The left pedal has some irreducible slop in it, either from a worn (not readily available) bushing or from the loss of an equally unavailable rubber seal. The rubber seal shouldn't be structural. None of the forum chirpers refer to it as load bearing. But David's has vanished somewhere in the vastness of the New England cyclocross circuit, and now the pedal clicks and wiggles no matter how tight the adjustable bearings are. The metal bushing is present, and looks about the same as the one in the right pedal. The pedal shaft itself is a bit worn, possibly from riding too long with a loose bearing. But the right pedal bearings were equally loose before we adjusted them, and that pedal is tight and smooth now. The only obvious difference is the lack of the rubber seal in the left one. And you can spend hours poking around on the Internet to see if anyone really knows, without ever finding out for sure.

The Campy Gran Sport pedals on the old Raleigh are classic cup and cone bearings. Campagnolo Record pedals were so securely closed that they would run smoothly for years. On that level of Campy, pedals and bottom brackets had a reverse threaded section that expelled dirt as you rode. They didn't do it on the lower models, but you're still not dealing with microscopic bearings sitting in an almost imaginary race. Step-in pedals have higher cornering clearance and other added values for the competitive rider. We've all been trained to beat things up and wear them out rather than keep them going through years of appreciative, moderate use. Repair attempts these days are usually just a preamble to justify replacement. You keep it up as long as you can afford it.

These are the darkest nights, even though they are not the longest. The trees have not entirely gone bare, so the forest shadows are dense black. These are the spookiest nights as well. Half naked trees raise bony arms against what you can see of the sky. Any wind makes the branches creak and rattle like a marching skeletal army, while dry leaves skitter like rats on the forest floor you can barely discern even with a good light. The sight of another person sparks a moment of misgiving rather than sociability. What's anyone doing out here now? Only a weirdo would be out in the woods in the dark. You guzzle some caffeinated courage before heading out on the lonely ride toward home.

Time sneaks by

From 1989 to 1999, bikes evolved rapidly, but stuff from the 1970s and '80s wasn't impossibly obsolete. Some frame dimensions had changed, but a steel frame from the early '80s could be cold set to the new rear hub width fairly easily. A rider could make a few upgrades without having to invest completely in a new bike. Mountain bikes -- being a newer category -- were evolving more dramatically, but a rider could still keep a bike going for quite a few years with decent care and a few spot improvements.

Shifting systems and full suspension brought an end to this. Shifter compatibility was already making life difficult from the first introduction of Shimano's Rapidfire and road STI products. Competing companies each had different standards, all vying for market control. The retro-grouch mechanic can only do so much to throw a wrench into the bike industry's plans. And the emergence of full suspension really put the pressure on everyone's wallets trying to keep up with the state of the art.

As the 21st Century dawned, riders who had dropped out for various reasons would return, from school, or military service, or family commitments, or busy work schedules, looking to get back into some of the fun they remembered.  I call these people Van Winkles, after the Washington Irving character who slept for 20 years. They are always astounded by how much technology has changed and prices have gone up since the last time they looked at a bike. A few of them embrace the new and shell out for the new stuff. A good percentage of them just junk the bike and find something else to do for fun. Or they buy lower-quality stuff because it's "new," so it must be better than fixing something old.

This season has already brought several Van Winkles out of the forest. It's interesting to look at the old equipment and compare it to what it evolved into.

This 1995-ish Rockshox Quadra fork was made during the transition from forks that could be fully disassembled to forks with one-piece crown and stanchions and one-piece lower tube assemblies. The crown and stanchions on this generation of Rockshox are bonded, but the lower legs are not only removable, but interchangeable right and left, so you didn't have to keep track of that during service. The innards are identical in both sides.

Because the legs are interchangeable, the fork ends have dual "lawyer's lips" to retain the wheel if the quick release skewer falls open. Not only that, the inner set will help retain the wheel if a skewer outright fails. You could view this as an evolutionary step toward the through-axle.

Another Van Winkle brought in a Cannondale F900 with a Lefty fork, from the early 21st Century. The fork appears to be functioning okay, but it has a brake problem.

The early disc brake era was marked by the same kind of experimentation as the early suspension era. And Cannondale was notorious for trying to design their own shit from the ground up. Anyone remember their motorcycle? Don't feel bad if you don't. The unfortunate experiment was very brief. According to what I've read, it wasn't brief enough. So this fairly okay hard tail mountain bike with its weird, one-legged fork and the proprietary hub that goes with it has CODA disc brakes. I think you can actually find pads for them, but not much else. They made a huge secret of their brake fluid formulation (mineral oil). Their literature at the time said it was "designed by NASA!"

The front brake on this F900 has lost its will to live. We should be able to find a brake that will mount to the tabs on the fork, but Cannondale decided to use a 171mm rotor. What the hell kind of size is that? The rear is 151. And they mount with four bolts. So changing out the front brake will mean changing out the front wheel. You can get 6-bolt Lefty hubs. You can get carbon fiber Lefty forks that get great reviews. So this machine can be recovered...for a price.

Here's where my Van Winkleism comes into play. Once we stopped selling Cannondale, I stopped paying attention to all their weird bullshit. I worked a little with the early CODA brakes and Lefty forks. But when we dropped the line I was happy not to have to explain and apologize for a lot of their spec choices. The Headshok design was very smooth, but too limited in its travel to appeal to the emerging class of rider that would settle for nothing less than 100mm of travel, preferably 120. The Lefty was a way to move the mechanism out of the head tube, where it could stretch its legs -- er, leg -- a bit more.

Even though the Lefty is still in production, forget the 26-inch wheels. Looks like the hubs you can get and that stub axle are still compatible, though. I can build this guy a wheel on a six-bolt hub. It all comes down to money. Does he want to do the rear wheel at the same time, to get ahead of the inevitable failure down the road? That has a 151mm rotor, also mounted with four bolts, so it would require another wheel replacement. Or maybe we can get someone to machine some 160 rotors to fit that four-bolt mounting. That sounds practical, doesn't it?

The rider fits the classic profile of a person who invested in something state of the art, intending to enjoy it for a long time, and then got diverted by life and never got to use it much. The bike has storage dust on it, but no trail dirt. The rear cassette is shiny and clean. So he wants to get something out of his investment now. It will be the usual treasure hunt. I'll gather information and lay out his options.

A lot of mountain bike riders around here had not been cyclists before the mountain bike craze, and a large percentage of them did not become the kind of addicts that the industry mistakenly identifies as its best bet for high-volume sales. Did the heads of the bike companies want to shrink it back to aficionados with whom they could identify, and chase the rabble out? Or did they really believe that their expensive and excruciatingly sophisticated products were so beguiling that the briefest exposure would trigger an irresistible craving?

Civilians believe that they will find expertise in the shops, and that a high price always indicates a worthwhile investment. Through the 1980s, especially in road bikes, that was largely true. I have a couple of frames, and a lot of componentry, that dates from later than the '80s, but it's all pretty retro stuff. My current road bike frame was built in the 1980s. This is the perception that most non-cyclists have of bicycles: simple, lovable machines that they can own for years and keep in shape with minimal maintenance. Even riders who bought into the mountain bike boom in the 1990s didn't think about how all of those moving parts and sub-assemblies in the suspension, and the fidgety-widgety disc brakes brought with them perishable substances like shock oil, brake fluid, and elastomers. They didn't spend enough time with the bike industry to realize how they were being herded and fleeced.

In defense of the bike industry, they're only partly soulless bean counters. They're also smitten with their technology, and love to solve the problems that the most obsessed and hard-driving riders are encountering. I remember an article in either a consumer publication or Bicycle Retailer back in the mid '90s, complaining that the industry was focusing too hard on racers and not enough on the people who were just out for a good time on a mix of technical trails and milder paths and roads. Riders wanted to be able to mix it up. Early mountain bikes would do that a lot better than the technical marvels of today. Nowadays, if you want a go-anywhere off-road bike you have to know that you're probably looking for a "bikepacking" model rather than the catch-all "mountain bike" that no longer exists. And your bikepacker model will have more piercings than a goth teen with a big allowance. They're keeping the braze-on industry in business.

In another archaeological moment, El Queso Grande dug up this publication from 1990, laying out the perilous predicament of mountain biking in the USA (mostly the western USA) as a result of rude and reckless riding by those hooligans on fat tires.

Because I was on the East Coast and completely out of touch with the industry from 1981 to 1989, I knew very little about how mountain biking was evolving. I had a racing bike, a touring bike, and a commuter fixed gear. I knew mountain bikes existed, but I hadn't been close to many of them.

The fixed gear was my path and trail bike, to the extent that I found anything like that in Annapolis, Maryland. One of my commute options bushwhacked from a dead-end street onto the grounds of some Navy housing, but it wasn't as much fun as threading the corners on the regular streets, and not much shorter, either. I didn't look for trails as such until the cyclocross series started around 1986, and we all built ourselves some form of 'cross bike. Even then I could take it or leave it. Only moving to actual mountains made an actual mountain bike interesting.

Here in New Hampshire, there was a little bit of friction from a few landowners, but we had no shortage of places to ride. Event promoters ran into snags when they tried to direct large numbers of participants onto a course and discovered who actually owned what, and how they felt about a thundering herd rather than a trickle of riders. The same thing happened when riders would try to produce a guidebook for their area. Other than that, the problems were generally limited to riders trying to use designated wilderness areas in the National Forest, and the first few unsanctioned singletrack builders here and there. I was interested to see how early mountain bikers managed to offend existing trail users the way the invasive fat bikers have been riding over the toes of cross-country skiers in a microcosm of the first wave of mountain biking many decades ago. Everything is smaller than it used to be, except for the bikes themselves.

The answer for three-season off-road riders has been to acquire land or use rights, and build their own closed courses. Fat bikers are following suit, either by using existing connections to the three-season rider category or by developing their own landowner relations. Before you can have a trail, you need a place to put it. That's why you can't really afford to piss anyone off. A strong arm only gets you as far as your arm will reach, for as long as your strength lasts. The promoters today are stressing the economic benefits of attracting people who have already been willing to shell out at least a thousand bucks for their ride, and are eager to find places to use it. And a thousand bucks is the ante. The real players are plunking down twice that much, and more. Lots of people have that kind of coin, right?

Fewer and fewer every year. But don't believe the dying canary on the floor of the mine. It just has a negative attitude.