Ruth doesn't want to quit

Ruth is 92 years old. Her husband and two of her sons are dead. She lives in a cottage her family built in the 1930s -- if not earlier -- on the shore of Lake Wentworth. She stacks her own firewood and shovels her own roof. All the way through her 70s, if you saw her from behind, walking down the sidewalk in her tennis dress, you'd take a minute to admire the view.

Great laugh seeing young strangers in town speed up a bit to pass her and see her face. She does not pretend to be young, beyond an excusable use of hair coloring. Wrinkles to the contrary, she has somehow managed to make that work.

At 92 she shows the miles now. She's fought off Lyme disease, cancer, and been treated for rabies after an animal bite. I joke that other people say, "oh no, I got an illness!" Illness says, "Oh no! I got Ruth!"

She's not one of those annoying sunshine-pumpers who are just so dang positive about everything that you need a nice salty shot of tequila after being around them. She just doesn't want to quit. She gets out and about. And, until some more medical challenges got in the way, she rode her bike nearly every day.

When she tried to resume riding, she discovered she could no longer lift her leg high enough to get over the dropped bar of her 1995 Univega step-through hybrid. She had had her bike rack modified several times as she had more and more difficulty lifting the bike onto it to drive to safe venues for an older rider, but now she couldn't get on the bike, even though she could still get the bike on the car.

She started getting depressed. She grumbled about her physical infirmities. We were used to hearing about her various mishaps, but now she talked of little else.

We hunted around for quite a while to find a new, deep step-through model that weighed no more than her old bike. Then we did, so she was ready to go again.

But she wasn't. The position on casual bikes these days is way more upright than on her old bike. We had to figure out one problem after another. Each time we though we had it nailed, she came back again looking sad.

With every setback she seemed more discouraged. She talked about how old she is and how many friends she's outlived and all the things that are wrong with her, not in a raspy, carping way, but in a weary litany of hopelessness.

We changed the stem to get the bars lower and closer to her. We cut the seat post so she could get the seat lower until she got used to things. Then the seat itself had such a wide and sudden flare that it shoved her forward of the pedals. I switched her old seat over to the new bike. And we had to modify her car rack some more to fit the new frame.

I forget the last rabbit I pulled out of the hat, but she came back from that test ride with a tentative smile. Twice more she went out to test further adjustments, each time returning with a bigger smile and more of the old Ruthie vigor.

The bicycle is a machine for rejuvenation. The change in her as she realized she could ride again was astonishing, even as it confirmed my belief. Old Bill, cancer stricken and knowing he was dying, had said, "whatever else happens that day, you get on the machine." No one knows how long Ruth will last. All we know is that the time has been made brighter by getting back on her bike.

An immaculately tailored tissue paper suit.

Based on my observation of the mechanical work that comes out of a shop in our region renowned for its bike fitting expertise, I'm starting to believe that the fit guys are like the body shop guys whose cars look stupendous, but run like crap.

Proper fit is important. Whether it is really the millimetric science that some of its practitioners would have us believe is debatable, but I certainly respect the technicians who have invested in equipment and training to be able to set up an athlete on a bicycle with enough precision and confidence to put that worry out of the athlete's mind. Make room for other concerns, like nutrition, training schedule and whether to start doping.

The thing about fitters is that they seem to care only about the position of the rider on the bike, not about the function of the bike itself. For instance, when one of them reconfigured a Surly Pacer I had set up for a customer who wanted a bad-weather version of her triathlon bike, he put a very steep-rise, short stem on it when converting it to the drop-bar road riding position from the aero-bar position I had set up to duplicate her tri bike exactly. I had even used the cast-off bar and stem from her tri bike. I'd made a finely-calculated effort to replicate her riding position and she had been pleased with the result. But then when she wanted to change the bike over to a different use she decided to use some shop credit at Fits R Us. I'm all about saving a buck, but damn. Fits R Us put on a stem that wrecks the handling of the bike. When I test rode it recently after some adjustments it was horribly squirrelly. It may put my friend in the perfect biomechanical position on a trainer, but it really stinks when actually riding.

I haven't told my friend because she doesn't mind it. But if I had been doing the fit I would have used a fork with a longer steerer so I could put the bars higher without using either a steep-rise stem or one of those ugly bolted-on stem risers.

At least the handling of this bike proves my theory about the effect of stem angle on bike handling. The connection points of rider to bike are not just points in space. The shape of the linkages matters.

The problem may not be fitters in general, it may be Fits R Us in particular. I have worked on bikes fitted by other practitioners, but in many cases the riders fall into a size range that requires no radical component choices.

A fitter will adapt a rider's bike to the human form without questioning the materials used in its construction, just as a tailor could fit you to an immaculately fitted tissue paper suit. It would be an ephemeral piece of rubbish, but you would look great in it while it lasted. When it comes to stupid design elements like 4 mm shift housing and head-tube cable stops, the fitters have nothing to say about it. Brifters that choke on a broken shift cable are fine with them, too. They'll make sure that the hard, narrow seat with carbon shell, titanium rails and a covering of endangered condor hide ($589.95 and free freight) is at the perfect height and angle. The carbon-fiber bar and stem, the 17-speed electronic shift controls and hydraulic brake levers will sit in the exact position for ultimate performance.

When faced with anyone who has developed Position Neurosis I send them to a professional fitter. I just don't have the showmanship to sound thoroughly convincing to a rider who needs the perfect combination of medical science and psychobabble to be able to put their fear of bad bike fit behind them. I'm glad someone is willing to exploit this population for profit help these poor people. It saves me a lot of time.

Know Thyself

For some weird reason my seatpost managed to creep down incrementally over several rides. I had not loosened it, so I had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. I just started to notice that the seat felt low. After a couple of days off the bike I hopped on to ride the morning commute and the change was finally obvious. I hoped off again by the side of the road, pulled the multi-tool out of my seat pack and raised the seat.

In the course of fine-tuning -- not to say fiddling with -- my position, I had made at least a couple of height marks on the post. Friction in the frame had obscured these scratches, but I could discern a couple. I chose the one that put the seat highest, about three millimeters higher than the other mark I could find.

Right away the seat felt kind of high, and slightly crooked. I have a lot of trouble lining my seat up with the top tube. That's one reason I purposely avoid messing with it, making a mysteriously loose seat binder even more strange. I figured it was good enough to get to work on.

On the ride home that evening I really felt the height. I felt knee pain, crotch discomfort, loss of power, and foot alignment problems. When I lowered the seat three (3) millimeters, all that went away.

The "science" of bike fit is complicated by the fact that humans are flexible and elastic and we fidget around on our bikes. Fit is not so much a matter of exact position to the millimeter, but rather finding the range in which a particular rider can operate most efficiently for their style of riding. In almost any dimension, most riders have a centimeter or two of leeway. However, as soon as you go beyond that range, you feel as if you're off by a huge amount. Thus I did not notice as the seat crept down, even as it crept well below the optimum position. I only noticed after I'd been completely away from the bike for a couple of days. Then it was obvious. Then, when I raised the seat again, I went that tiny bit beyond my functional range and started to feel all kinds of symptoms that might drive a less experienced rider to question multiple systems on the bike: cleat alignment, saddle choice or angle, and padding in the shorts, just to name a few. Yet it all stemmed from three millimeters of seatpost height.

The tiny amount, three millimeters, might seem to give some credence to the micro-engineering bike fitters. I say avoid getting too neurotic. Once I was back in range I could sit farther back on the saddle, which returned me to my familiar contact points. I could go three millimeters lower and probably feel fine as well. I just have an inferiority complex about my long torso and short legs, so I hate to bury the seatpost any more than I have to. Hence my choice of the higher height mark in the first place when I discovered the seat was too low.

The tiny increment does give you something to think about if you're chasing down an elusive lack of comfort or power.

Once you do get a position dialed in, measure every possible dimension to help you recover that position if the bike is ever disassembled or to reproduce the fit when getting a new bike. Pick measurements that don't depend on other things being equal between your old bike and your new one. For instance, if you drop a plumb line from the nose of the saddle to see how far it falls behind the bottom bracket shell, make sure you're using the same saddle on both bikes or have compensated for any difference. A wider saddle will put you in a different position, probably farther forward, than a narrower one. Measure every wacky thing you can think of before you disrupt the position on a bike that fits you well.

Rational Cycles

How would one finance a company that offered simple platforms on the basic frame types and wheel sizes to knowledgeable shops where the technical staff could customize them for individual riders' needs?

Would it even be worth it?

In the olden days, the early 1990s, bike companies already offered too many models, but the models they offered were all based on simple and similar configurations.  Road bikes received little attention, but in the mountain and the emerging hybrid category you got a lighter, more precisely made version of the same basic bike as you went up in price point.  A rider could buy in at their chosen price level and have the shop fine-tune the setup from there.  It did not provide instant gratification, but a good shop could make a lot of changes quickly if the rider so desired.

Mountain biking rode the crest of its popularity right then.  It was a bike for the people in an inclusive culture far removed from the perceived snootiness of road riders or the obsessiveness of tri-geeks.  The mountain bike's simplicity and durability made it appealing.

Racing's warlike qualities brought down the inclusive culture along with the simplicity and affordability as hyper-competitive cyclists and sponsors formed a military-industrial complex with the bike industry to push the frontiers of engineering far away from the happy doofuses riding their fat-tired steeds on streets and trails like carefree children.

The industry will argue that the cheap mountain bike of today has many more features than the pig iron of 1990-'92. I have to agree, progress has been made.  But not every sweeping change has been real progress.

I digress, as usual.

To introduce a line of rational bikes, a business would need more buying power than a single shop can muster.  I've tried using Surly frames and bikes, as well as used frames and bikes as a basis for customization with only limited success.  Even with access to wholesale pricing on product, I can't glean enough margin to make a bigger play. Real custom bike customers are looking for more impressive products, as a rule.  The people who could benefit from the gradual enticement of an upgradable bike often can't get their heads around the initial investment.  Surly and similar offerings seem affordable to those of us who have been involved a while, but we're already hooked.

In Resort Town, our year-round cycling community is too small to support much of a shop anyway.  We have our knowledge and tools, but don't generate enough revenue to support a lot of inventory.  Using cross-country skiing as a winter line is just masochistic, given the way the winters and the ski industry have been treating Nordic.  High-zoot Nordic shops get sucked into stone grinding, but how many Nordic skiers really want to pay to have their bases surgically removed and then expensively rewaxed?  Drugs are the best analogy to that kind of commitment to speed, but drugs are more available, less weather dependent and, on the whole, less labor intensive.  That explains the larger number of drug addicts than performance-obsessed Nordic skiers.

Nordic is actually another sport with the fun technologized out of it.  It seemed so timeless and simple in the 1980s...a little wider ski, a little more rugged boot might make my exploring experience more fun.  What's this skating stuff? Hmmm. Wish the trails were wider and more uniformly smooth.

The bike industry has been groping for years for a product that will excite consumer interest as much as the mountain bike did.  We have production versions of all the variations shops used to configure for their customers, as well as motor-driven cycles in various guises for those who don't really want to pedal.  Maybe the thing to do instead is reinvent the mountain bike in its appealing simplicity with only a few genuine improvements, like better brakes, and a return to top-mount shifters.  Maybe all you have to do to get lightning to strike twice is put up the right lightning rod.

My wife's got a nice-looking pair

Except for one or two details, the cellist's bikes on the Cross Check platform are complete. The red one is set up as a rainy-day fixed gear. The Traveler's Check has her multi-gear configuration. The Planet Bike Cascadia fenders will fit either bike in case we set up for a longer tour some time.

The fixed gear sports a 36-spoke rear wheel with flip-flop hub, awaiting a half link to set the chain so both sides are usable. I could have sworn I had a 3/32" half link in my stash. Can't find it now, though.

On the front is the 32-spoke wheel that came with her Cross Check Complete. I put the new 36-spoke front wheel I just built on the bike more likely to carry a load. I have to order some parts to make her a 36-spoke 9-speed rear. I couldn't believe QBP listed no 36-hole DT hubs. The only 36-hole rear hubs in any of three supplier catalogs I checked were Shimano. I'll have to choke down my objection to non-serviceable freehubs for the sake of a spokier wheel for loaded touring. What the hell is DT thinking? They had a 36 last year. I've put a Shi'no 105 on the list to order. I have a couple of days to search a little more.

Plug and Play

Here's the cellist on her very first fixed gear ride ever.

Because she rides a 54 cm Surly Cross Check and so do I, it was a quick and simple matter to change the stem on Blue for a shorter one and exchange her seat and post for mine. Voila! Instant fit.

I'm often frustrated when I try to ride with her in colder weather because I have to coordinate my rhythms on a fixed gear with hers on a multi-speed bike. Usually I just ride my Cross Check with multiple gears and put up with being cold and getting less of a workout. Since I have the Traveler's Check as a fixed gear, swapping parts to make it her bike took only minutes.

I run a gear most fixie fashionistas consider laughably low. The joke's on them, of course, when it comes to practical riding, because my 63-inch low and 73.5-inch high gear cover such a range of terrain and traffic conditions. When I did ride in an urban environment, I ran the 63 for winter and a 67 for summer. It's easier to do a track stand and bolt away from intersections in a lower gear. With a well developed spin a rider can take the 63 from zero to 25 mph for short sprints, 30 for short descents and cruise at 18-20 with city traffic all day.

Because of the low gear, the cellist had no trouble getting on it and staying on it. She instantly discovered how to control speed through the pedals. Aside from the time trial bars and the continuous drive, the bike was hers in all respects. She did not have to get used to twitchy handling.

Taking advantage of Effingham's excellent terrain, we could put together a ride of 12 miles with no hills. With a bit more time we could have stretched it to 15 or 20. Bending the loop differently, a rider can do everything from a total wall to a mixed bag of medium-sized grades in a range of distances from four to 20 miles. Today we kept her on the level so she could concentrate on developing basic fixed gear skills. She did a great job and was intrigued. Because the conversion is so easy, she can try it again any time she wants without significant inconvenience. I guess I should say I could reclaim Blue any time I want, because I'm going to leave it set up for her and ride the silver bike for a while.

Thanks, Surly!

Remember long stems?

Back in the early days of mountain biking, or perhaps the Middle Ages, as frame geometry tightened, but designers were still working out optimum proportions, many riders chose the smallest frame they could justify, and put on stems 130, 135, even 150 millimeters long.

The owner of this stem is at least 6'8". He had it on a Specialized. When that frame broke he transferred the parts to an old Sterling frame, including this 220 millimeter monster.

Visiting Lecturer

I got roped into doing a presentation on bike fit and comfort last night at the local hospital. The shop management dumped it on me, but I didn't mind. The occasional show-and-tell can be fun.

As we understood it, the audience would consist of the typical older local rider, so I geared the visual aids to a comfort bike and hybrid clientèle.

Management told me they had arranged for me to do my 15-minute segment first, at 6:30, so I could get on home. Even so, I planned to hitch a lift with my wife, so we could get home and get some food into us and maybe get to bed at a reasonable hour for a change.

When I got to the venue, I found a very small crowd of young, fit adults. Someone had their racy-looking Tomac hardtail leaned against the wall. I looked at the wooden crate full of mattress saddles and basic clothing under my arm and wondered what I could tell these riders that they didn't already know.

First off, the organizer asked if I could take the last slot as previously scheduled, especially when I told him that I was planning to do the whole thing as question and answer, rather than burying people under a comprehensive lecture that none of them would remember anyway. Still expecting the soft-body crowd, I felt that they would get more value by asking me specific questions, perhaps prompted by a small amount of blather. We were all supposed to keep it short, right? I could hold out for 45 minutes.

Ha. Forty-five minutes was just the warm up. By then I'd committed to that last slot, so I tried to pay attention while the doctor, the nutritionist and the physical therapist, athletes all, held forth on their favorite subjects.

The nutritionist mentioned that most people don't get enough sleep. I chuckled at that, since she was shortening my forty winks with every paragraph she uttered, accompanied by projected slides. Tick tick tick went the evening.

As a cyclist for more than 30 years in a room with people who were infants and toddlers when I first tightened a toestrap, I noted many points to amend, contest or clarify in each presentation that preceded me. But I also wanted to get over the target, drop my payload and head for the home field, as the hour advanced.

The group was just as surprised and disappointed as I was that the congregation only included the faithful, but cyclists like to get together and chat/compete anyway.

In the end, I ran through the high points of fat saddles versus narrow, proper clothing, and the unconsidered nuances of bike fit, with the idea that these therapists might want to tell their clients about these concepts. In the process, if any of them learned something they hadn't realized yet, they could pick it up without showing weakness to the rest of the peloton.

I crawled out of there after 8:45 and still had to go back to the shop to drop off the props. Nice eleven and a half hour day. I can use the hours to build up the fund to complete the Traveler's Check project.

Now I'm late for work. So it goes. Memorial Day weekend lumbers down on us, and that means an extra work day as well. Not only that, we have to box about 11 bikes for a family moving to Colorado. My dislike for packing bikes battles fiercely with my friendship for these people. It doesn't help that they're all due by Monday, with a full repair docket to boot.

It's always something.

Interesting Positions through History

This picture is from Bicycle Quarterly.


Check out the rider position on this fixed gear winter training bike from 1950, built by Rene Herse. Very often one sees this small amount of seat post showing on older bikes. Frame proportions led to this appearance even on the bikes of racers, if you look at period photographs.

Riding position is the most important thing. Standover clearance is only relevant when you're standing over. At stops on the road, or riding rough terrain on a mountain bike, clearance matters. A smaller frame also seems more controllable on rough terrain. But a rider cruising on the open road only cares about relative positions of saddle, pedals and handlebars.

Note how level everything is from the saddle to the tops of the bars. Even the drops parallel the tops.

Saddle is slightly nose up. Most of the bike pictures I sampled on the Bicycle Quarterly site reflect this. That's what keeps you on the rear part of the saddle. Drop the nose and you will slide there.

You see it on each of these as well. Top and bottom bikes are randonnee bikes intended for long events. The middle picture shows a 1957 Cinelli road racing bike. Things didn't look too different by the time I got seriously interested in 1975. In the early 1980s evolution really took off. Cycling had been in the forefront of industrial development from the last couple of decades of the 19th Century into the first ten or fifteen years of the 20th. Then interest in automobiles and aviation pulled the majority of technological innovation away. Cycling was left to artists and artisans. Sure, things evolved, but because speed and horsepower would always be limited, industrial interest waned. The bike was a toy in developed nations and a symbol of the backwardness of undeveloped ones. Cycle sport might draw enthusiastic crowds, and various bike booms might bring surges of interest in touring and fitness, but when the big horn blows on the 12-cylinder chariot of industrial power, get that bicycle the hell off the road.

At this point in history, all things in cycling exist. Some people find and restore gems from as far back as the boneshaker era of the 1880s, while present industry leaders tout the advantages of their carbon fiber marvels. Artist and artisan builders produce modern versions of the bikes of any era. It's incredibly cool.

Sadly, the many small component makers of the early and mid 20th Century have been run into the ground by huge, voracious corporate competitors, so you can't find as much funky componentry as you could even in the late 1970s, but perhaps that will change as well. Indexed and integrated shifting systems present the biggest roadblock to that. But you can find headsets, hubs and some brakes with which to express your individuality.

The Big Three component makers have even allowed some cranksets to mesh with their exclusive, proprietary spacing. Just be alert for chain problems, like riding on top of the chain teeth of the small ring or falling in between and wedging the rings apart. That can even occur on brand-name matchups because the spacing is so critical with skinny-skinny chains.

Patient, a male in his early 40s, presented with numbness in the toes of the left foot, knotted muscles in the upper left quadrant of the back, and related stiffness in the neck. Patient also reported constant urge to push back on the bike saddle. He now questioned his entire position on his bike.

Since he showed an initial interest in a new saddle, we began there. I'd already asked whether he was aware of any alignment problems because of the way the symptoms built in the course of 20 to 30 miles. He said he did not feel any unbalanced tension. His symptoms said otherwise.

His old saddle, an old version of the Flite Trans Am, turned out to have a crack in the shell reinforcement in the back. The padding in the center was broken down, so he would tend to sag into that divide while riding. It looked level, but it would ride as if it were nose down. In addition, the edges of the cutout are narrow enough to increase pressure on the nerves down the inside of the leg instead of relieve it.

The new saddle has wider margins around the central cutout and firmer shell and padding. With the saddle placed in exactly the same position as the old one the rider reported significant improvement in all symptoms.

I'm joking around with the pseudo-medical lingo, but the problem and the solution are real. We're not finished yet, but the major issue seems to have been the saddle. Neck pain and foot numbness stemmed from the minor misalignment caused by the deficiencies of the old, worn-out seat.

Older riders will be more vulnerable to position problems a younger rider might not even notice. Look at the whole picture before zeroing in on specific changes directed at each affected area.

One cm over the line sweet Jesus, one cm over the line

Most beginning cyclists and recreational riders who don't even think of themselves as cyclists consider standover height to be the most critical dimension. Don't want to imperil the tender parts. And insecure cyclists want to be sure they can put the landing gear down instantly in an emergency.

More experienced cyclists, especially riding hard and racing, realize that the length of the bike from seat to handlebars is more critical than the height of the top tube above the ground.

Workable cockpit length can vary over about two centimeters. Because humans are made of squishy and elastic materials, they will fidget and shift anyway, making the idea of some millimetrically precise perfect length laughable. However, go one centimeter beyond the range either way and you'll suddenly feel all the distance from the middle of it. The bike won't just feel a hair short or long.

Bike fit is made up of numerous factors. Ideal fit will be different depending on the use of the bike. This is obvious to most experienced riders, but not to casual cyclists, even if they feel its effects. A good fitter will figure out how to set up a bike without requiring the rider to know much about it. The more serious a rider plans to be, the more the fitter will need them to participate. It's not an exact science, but it is a developed art.

I just put a shorter stem back on my fixed gear. The cockpit had felt a little short, but when I went the extra centimeter it felt way too long except when I rode with my hands on the bar tops. I kept it that way because I commute a long distance on open roads by myself, so I spend a lot of time on the center of the bar tops compared to more urban commuting with traffic.

Only having one brake, I don't have the extended riding position on top of the lever hoods, as I do on the 'cross bike and the road bike. With the long stem, the turn of the bars on the fixed gear fell close to the hood position on my freewheel bikes. But the long stem made the drops too far away. When I went down and forward I lost power because I got pulled too far forward of the cranks. My back hurt because I kept trying to grow an extra vertebra to make up the difference.

I could put an aero lever on for the one brake and a dummy hood on the other side, but I like the clean look without it. My brake lever is a vintage Campy Record with the cable coming out the top. It's attached to a drilled out "Weinmagnolo" my machinist friend doctored up for me in 1975. The stiff Campy lever gives the modest old Weinmann center-pull a little more authority than it got from the Weinmann lever I had on there originally.

We just need to get this snow out of here. I'll start riding anyway, but it seems more abusive when it looks like February.

Here's a Weird One

I was just working on a 63-centimeter Raleigh Grand Prix from the late 1970s. That's a 25-inch frame. I have to stand on the balls of my feet to keep certain similarly-titled organs from being painfully crushed by the top tube. Surprisingly on such a tall bike, the top tube measures exactly the same horizontal length as the one on my 53-centimeter Super Course frame from the same period. It's close to the same length as the top tube of my 55-centimeter Trek road frame.

On lower-priced production models, did Raleigh produce only one top tube length, figuring anyone buying at that level would not notice?

I certainly didn't at the time. But I had observed that my Super Course was amazingly long for a bike of its size. I'd never compared it to another Raleigh from the period.

Another utterly unimportant mystery to ponder.

Back 'n' Up

Night riding on mixed surfaces has made me notice a few things about riding position.

I like to sprawl on top of my road bike, with a long cockpit and a low back. My eyeballs practically migrate up my forehead by the end of the season.

I know a more upright position works better off-road. When I ride the Cross Check on rougher trails I wish I’d set things up that way. But most of the time I’m commuting on faster terrain, in daylight.

Darkness adds a new element. For the night commutes I just put on a slightly higher-rise, shorter reach stem, to bring me back and up.

In daylight, peripheral vision around the entire eye, top and bottom as well as side, provides a lot of information you might take for granted. Night cuts that off, as vision is restricted to the patch of light thrown by the headlights. I find I want to bring the center of my visual field closer to the outer end of the light patch, especially on the unpaved bike path. That means I keep pushing myself back, trying to sit up more. Average speed is lower in the dark, so a more upright position does not have as much impact on aerodynamics.

Two-bolt bar clamps make stem changes easy enough to become a routine part of seasonal adjustment. The bike doesn’t feel that different on the road, so I may just leave it that way.

Saddle pain

If your bike seat hurts you, the best thing to put on it so you feel no pain is someone else's ass. The next best thing to put on it is more hours of riding to get your own posterior used to the normal wear and tear. Make sure the bike is set up properly first.

High Maintenance Woman

Laurie's tricky to fit. Sitting next to each other, we're the same height. Then she stands up and unfolds a yard and a half of leg.

Building her a Cross-Check took some custom fitting.

Her favorite bike is her old Schwinn. She rode it in the CAM tour (Cycle Across Maryland) and on other adventures and exploits. Even though it has poor geometry for carrying a load, the cockpit is dialed in for her.

The old Cannondale I picked up for her didn't turn either of us on. But the Cross-Check is really long on top. That works for me, because I need the reach. How could I make it work for her when she said the Cannondale felt long? Cannondales tend to run short.

It's a Surly. We'll make it work.

Turns out the top tube on the 54 centimeter Cross-Check is barely longer than the top tube on her 58 cm Schwinn. That's a good start.

She wanted a red one, so that meant it had to be a 54, because there were no red ones left in 56 or 58. And that cockpit length is the critical dimension.

The top of the seat collar extends above the top tube by about 3 cm, putting it barely a centimeter lower than the top of the seat tube on her Schwinn.

Because she has a short torso, riding a frame with a lot of standover height doesn't put her out over the front end too much, as it did when tall people tried to ride short mountain bikes for maximum clearance before the frame designers caught on and started lengthening the frames to move the steering axis forward.

This can lead to problems if you find yourself too far behind the steering axis, especially in technical terrain. You have to crawl forward, hop the front end over, then slide back to fetch the rear wheel. But that doesn't apply here.

Her long femurs could have made a problem by shoving her back over the rear wheel, but she was used to riding her tight-assed Schwinn with her seat way back. Surly uses the same chain stay length from 50 cm all the way to 62, just changing the seat tube angle. The stays are longer than on her Schwinn, so the rear axle is a touch further back already, with more than half the dropout to go.

The trouble with Surlies is that one is never enough. If she really wanted to load up and go live on the road we'd have to get her a Long Haul Trucker. But that's just too much of a swingset for a daily ride. That and it has VD. I just don't care for vertical dropouts.

Starting with the production complete bike, I knew I had to replace the fork, so now she has a black fork. The other trim on the bike is black and white, so it only looks a little weird. But before we cut the steerer we had to fit her very carefully. Because of the industry's change to threadless headsets, solving another nonexistent problem, you can't adjust height by putting the stem higher or lower in the steerer tube. You have to cut the steerer itself at the right height to accommodate the stem you have chosen.

Going triple in the front led to another bit of fiddling. The bike comes with a derailleur for two chain rings. Ralph had gone triple with his and reported he had to change the derailleur, even though the bike doesn't use STI. Your life is a lot easier without STI, but some things you can't help. The triple crank needs that deeper front derailleur cage. But could I get my old DX to shift a 9-speed chain?

Turns out I could. It didn't seem to work at first, but between a positive mental attitude and a little sheet-metal work with water pump pliers it shifts fine.

It looks just the tiniest teensiest touch like a circus act if you really scrutinize it. She's a tall, tall woman. But she said it felt really good, and she confidently rode it straight into the dirt when I asked her to try it. She's tall enough to make any 700c wheel look like a 650. As long as the bike handles right, it is right.

Shimano has this mental block about gearing. Even a long-cage road rear derailleur won't handle anything larger than a 27. Of course I bet you can shove a 30 in there if you take advantage of the long dropout and pull the wheel back. I shifted a 28 with a Campy Nuovo Record doing that, and those have to chew pretty hard just to manage a 26. So to give her a good usable range with what I had on hand I replaced the stock 36-48 front rings with 34 and 46, and put a 24 on the unoccupied threads of the triple-ready crank.

A 70 mm stem combined with 38 cm Salsa Estrada bars gave her a comfortable reach to the brake hoods and realistically shallow drops. We might even be able to drop the front end a hair when she gets used to it, but nothing rash. Remember, with stupid threadless forks, going down is a one-way trip unless you want the stub of the steerer tube up your nose because you dropped the stem below a spacer or two.

Some 700x28 tires complete the commuting package for her. She can't use it to commute too often, even though her cello case has wheels. Fifty pounds of music books adds too much bulk for rapid transit.

Bike Fit Basic

Never shove your saddle forward if you only want to adjust the reach to your handlebars.

Set saddle position correctly relative to your pedals and adjust stem length and height afterwards.

If you feel like your bars are too far away, check saddle position first. It may need to be further forward. But always check first.

Do not go back to a shop if they shove your saddle forward without checking its position to see if they can. A saddle too far forward can put harmful stress on your knees.

Set your saddle far enough forward to keep the wide part of your butt on the wide part of the seat when you are in proper pedaling position.

Raise the nose of the saddle slightly to level out the part you want to sit on. It seems like it should make pressure worse, but it actually relieves it by tipping your hips back, keeping you where you want to sit.