Cog blocked

 Blue is almost but not quite perfect. The gearing covers a little wider range than on my original Cross Check. As I’ve put more miles on, I noticed that the steps in the cassette could be a little more even. What’s on there is 13-15-17-19-21-24-28-32. 

On the green bike, I had added a 30 to a seven-speed block with the same gears that the blue bike has, only culminating in a 30 instead of a 32. So the intervals from the 13 to the 30 were 2-2-2-2-3-4-2. By subbing in a 27 for the 28, I made the intervals 2-2-2-2-3-3-3.

Large intervals and strange intervals mess with your cadence and power. On the 13-32, I wanted to Frankencog a 22 for the 21 and a 25 for the 24. That would make the intervals above the 19 go 3-3-3-4. At least three of my bikes have cogsets I assembled for them to suit my needs. I have a cog farm at home, and we have a deeper one at the shop.

A 12-25 used to be common on road bikes in the late 1990s. Some riders still ask for gearing that high. Surely a 25 lay in the big treasure chest at work. The 22 might be more challenging, but I remembered some combinations that had not interested me before that might contain one.

Nope. No 25, no 22. A search for new cassettes turned up one, described as a downhill mountain biking cassette, that had a 25. I’m not going to shell out for a whole cassette just to scrounge two cogs. The industry has cog-blocked me. Maybe a 25 will turn up eventually, but without the 22 it only creates a weird 4-3-4 sequence in the lowest three gears.

I should have bought up as many Miché cogs as I could get, back when they were available. I used some of those to make my “8 of 9 on 7” cassette for the Isaac/Trek.

If a particular part becomes too rare it negates a lot of the value as a reliable tool. True victory over the technofascist bike industry is won by using durable but also replaceable parts to rejuvenate a simple bike indefinitely.

Buttery smooth

 

Buttery smooth. Those words kept forming in my mind as I rode this bike on its shakedown, on the grueling and not altogether enjoyable Gilford run after dropping my car off for spring service. The route is tediously familiar, with its hills and its tight, narrow stretches shoulder to fender with drivers indifferent to your survival, but it's also peaceful and beautiful for quite long portions. And, being so familiar, it was a perfect proving ground to test out this bike.

I figured it would be great, because the frame is a version of  the Surly Cross Check. If I could only own one bike, it would be a Surly Cross Check. Agile on pavement, but sure-footed on dirt, built of reliable steel and configured so that it can be adapted to many options, it's not a bike to take out with the local hammerheads on a take-no-prisoners road ride, but it will definitely get you most places you want to go if there's a mapped public right of way to get there. I built my first one to make the dirt variations of my commuting route more pleasant. It has evolved into a practical beast, with generator lighting. In the process it became a little hefty. Surly bikes aren't for weight weenies anyway. Add a few pounds of practical accessories and the package bulks up even more. 

The Traveler's Check frame on which today's bike was built has S&S couplers so that the bike can be taken apart and fit into a checkable standard size piece of luggage. I bought it when I had delusions of traveling. The first build was kind of slapped together: hence that saddle. That thing came off the bike as soon as I got home. Blue Version 1 was a fixed gear, the simplest to take apart and reassemble in a train station or airline terminal for short hops around a destination city. But that never happened, and now it won't. So I had a frame ready to build up without some of the heavy add-ons that encumber my daily commuter, to recapture some of the comfortable nimbleness of the original 'Check.

Buttery smooth. The bike rode like an extension of my body. I shouldn't be surprised, since I had built it to the same dimensions as its older sibling, but I had set the bars a little higher by leaving the fork a little longer. I was looking ahead to its touring configuration, where I might want to sit up just a little more, to take in the scenery. Fortunately, it's not so high that it kills the handling. In fact, the stem attaches higher, but drops more than on the other bike, so the bar height nets out about the same.

The first thing I noticed was that the bike seemed twitchier. But twitchier soon settled down to "more responsive." The commuter has a heavy dynamo front wheel. The SRAM dyno hub wasn't the slickest on the market to begin with, and now it's probably pushing ten years old. If I could scrape up the coin for a Schmidt I would. A generator hub has some rolling resistance all the time from the magnets. This increases slightly when the lights are switched on. You get used to that, but notice the difference on a bike that doesn't have it. Hence the impression of twitchiness on the bike with the plain front hub.

I use the lights in daylight in certain situations to enhance visibility in a few intersections where the sight lines make it worthwhile. Not having them felt like a bit of a loss. I had blinky lights for front and rear, but I like being able to pair those up with a full-size, solid beam headlight to present a more vehicular impression as I bomb into a crossroads or shoot a stretch of town traffic where drivers like to pop out of parking lot exits when they don't think anyone who can hurt them is coming. So maybe I get a more aggressive battery light for the handlebars of Blue 2.0.

I feel my age. I'm in some kind of pain most of the time. That made the performance of Blue 2.0 all the more impressive. I felt pretty crappy, but still peppy because the geometry and setup of the bike supported me so well.

The gearing is mostly the same between the two bikes. On the commuter -- code named Green now -- I have 30-36-48 for chainrings and a Frankencogged 8-speed cassette of 13-15-17-19-21-24-27-30. On Blue it's 28-36-48 in the front and a Frankencogged 8-speed cassette with the same cogs from 13 to 24, leading up to a 28 and a 32. I anticipated riding with a touring load, which could still happen. So the mid-range cruising gears were the same. Shift points didn't change, cadence wasn't thrown off. I might re-gear Green a little bit, though maybe not exactly the same. The great thing about friction shifting and separate cogs is that you can really customize your gearing to your specific physical and riding conditions. This adaptability has been largely eliminated by the industry. Many technolemmings have never experienced it.

The car is taking longer than planned. I'm living without it for a couple of days. That's not as casual an undertaking as it was, but you do what you have to do. I wish I still believed in pain relievers. Today's ride is Green, the fully lighted commuter, because -- hopefully -- I'll be heading out on the hell run to Gilford after work, and the sun could be setting by the time I get to the garage to retrieve my motor vehicle.

Dreams deferred

I was going to say my bike had been across the country more times than I had, but that's not true. However, it did make one transcontinental journey unaccompanied. And in its four crossings (two round trips) I was not propelling it. It traveled by airplane, bus and freight truck.

Back in 1979, my best buddy and I were planning our transcon bike tour. The idea was still fairly novel, only three years after Bikecentennial. Prior to 1976, modern bike boomers were already knocking off The Big One, but it was still considered a pretty cool thing.

By the summer of 1979 in Annapolis I was acquiring the bike, some of the parts and saving some money at a menial job that would be easy to leave. My friend, who lived in Alexandria, Virginia, was doing the same. We had found the frames for our bikes in the shop in Alexandria where we would both later work another menial job that would be easy to leave. We set our sights on the following summer.

Late in the fall my buddy developed a sudden, inconvenient interest in higher education. He had busted out of the school system in his early teens to pursue his wide-ranging curiosity in the real world. His temperament did not mesh well with institutions. But now he felt the powerful need to go back and finish up with some institutional credentials.

I had a bachelors degree and had been unimpressed with its performance as an income enhancer but I couldn't talk him out of it.

The girlfriend I stumbled into in January of 1980 was a bike tourist, but she was also still entangled in the university system. The best we could manage was a 700-mile jaunt from San Francisco to Eugene, Oregon in September that year. So my bike flew to the west coast and rode the bus back east from Eugene when we kinda sorta broke up a little. We'd had a good trip, but she needed to get through the rest of college unburdened by a serious relationship. We maintained the fiction of connection, and that led to my bike's second west coast visit in April 1981. I was going to go out for a little early season training and some lovey dovin'. I'd sent the bike by UPS and was about to purchase the ticket when I got The Call, late at night Eastern Standard Time, that our lovey dovin' was over.

"Send my bike when it arrives," I requested. Then I hopped in the tub to shave my legs. I would train on my old bike until the well-traveled Eisentraut returned.

My best buddy, meanwhile, was still battling with the demons of community college. I started planning for a solo trip. Then I developed knee trouble from misaligned cleats I'd been using on my cyclocross-configured spare bike, so there went 1981. I also wanted to save more money, so I got another menial job that would be easy to leave, and looked toward 1982.

Racing had been good training in 1980 for the west coast tour. The 1982 season started out particularly well, since I was feeling suicidally bold. Then I got seriously smashed up in July. There went 1982. And July would have been late to start anyway.

One rational, sensible decision at a time the window closed for youthful quests like a transcon bike tour. To do it right I would want to take no less than two months, preferably closer to three. Why ride it like a record attempt? Take some time, see some stuff. You can't have the fetters of responsible adulthood on you for that.

In the fall of 1980, when my buddy and I were working in that bike shop in Alexandria, a family came in. Mom, Dad and lad had ridden from Oregon all together, taking the kid out of school for the year so they could have an unbeatable family bonding experience. That's one way to take the fetters with you. I forget what they'd done with their home base in Oregon, but they'd made arrangements. However, it took commitment by all of them. And with the best of intentions not everyone can make a commitment like that. Nor should they be scorned for a decision to forgo it.

Best buddy completed his education and started on a career of non-menial jobs he did not want to leave. Or when he did it was for another non-menial job. He married. They reproduced. They divorced. He followed various dreams and adventures, none of them pedal-powered.

A time or two since the early 1980s he has mentioned the transcon. I had one window in the mid 1990s when it could have gone well. I don't recall exactly where he was at the time, but I had no super incentive to chuck everything and go a-wandering by myself. I simply could have, with the right inducement. And then the window slid shut.

So here it is, the waning days of 2013 and best buddy sends me a message saying he's looking at 2014 to do the transcon. I inferred he would welcome my participation, but he did not say it directly. He has occasionally communicated to report things he was enjoying that I was obviously in no position to share, usually because I was hundreds of miles away. But assuming for the sake of argument that he was implicitly recruiting me, it has a piquant irony.

The cellist is a bike tourist, but her job and the commute to reach it preclude a lot of serious training. Also, her release and return dates from school bracket the touring season pretty tightly. So if I went I would be going separately. Do I really want to spend a couple of months away from home during the season she has the most time available? No.

The money. I have enough saved to do the trip in a style that would have been luxurious when I was in my 20s and was going to get on my bike at my doorstep on the east coast, ride to the west coast and probably ride back. When I was in my 20s I was nearly homeless already, although I could avoid seeming like a total vagrant by listing my parents' address as my home of record. I was also not above sleeping in a culvert or a cleft in a cliff. Nowadays I would pass on the culvert, although the cliff cleft is still a viable option. But I own a home, and it needs me when it needs me. As my colleague George -- a world traveler -- pointed out, whatever might be thinking about breaking will do so when you're a thousand miles away. He took his own major journeys when he and his wife were both unencumbered enough to take a motorcycle around Europe for a couple of months and other such getaways.

When you're getting away from it all you have to calculate how much "it all" you have and how far you want to get away from it. It's a whole lot easier when the answer to the first part is "not much" and to the second part is "it doesn't matter."

Initially intrigued by my buddy's idea, when I started putting practical logistics around the mid-trip fantasy scenarios it started getting unacceptably cumbersome.

When riding across the United States was going to be the first of many epic journeys it had practical aspects for all of its blatant impracticality. If I was really going to take wild trips and share them with a reading public, a transcon was a fine launching pad. But bad strategic decisions thwarted the vaguely-visualized plan to be such a traveler, aided in large part by the fact that I'm a wussy sociophobe who would have trouble asking for a tourniquet if I'd just severed an artery. At least I was. My imaginary cojones were always greater than my actual ones, as was my imaginary wit. After receiving a few gory gashes in public places I have learned to speak up quickly when first aid was slow or incompetent. But I still prefer to avoid people for the most part.

Actually, cojonically speaking, I do take risks. I even get back on the horse, so to speak, after a risk doesn't work out. Sometimes it takes longer than others. But it takes a lot to get me to talk to strangers outside of a known context like selling outdoor equipment or explaining myself to the arresting officer. And come to think of it, selling things and getting pulled over can both be uncomfortable contexts.

By the time I was 30 I could have traveled alone, and I've only gotten more comfortable alone since then. But by then it was too late. Or so it seemed, but belief makes it so. Everything has its price. This price needs to be fully calculated, not just approximated. What could possibly go wrong? And how would you feel if it did?

I do not say I'll get to it some day. I do not say I will never get to it. But I don't think 2014 is the year.

Mind you, best buddy has dangled the transcon carrot a time or two in the years  since the early 1980s and then tossed away, so I wait to see what transpires anyway. I've been putting together the kit to gear up the Traveler's Check for loaded touring already. I have only to accelerate the process a little. Initially I was going to transfer the multi-gear parts from the Cross Check, but now I think I would only transfer the dynamo front wheel. So the TC needs a front rack, a light set and that's about it. I have a crank, derailleurs and a rear brake and fenders. I need primary brake levers and I wouldn't mind getting a full set of Ortlieb paniers for front and rear. Odds and ends, really. Without the lights I could get it into a rideable configuration now. I might even have primary brake levers kicking around the bins somewhere.

I don't plan to go nowhere. I just don't know where.

Exotic cross-breeds and lovable mutts

When I started paying closer attention to bicycles in 1975 a bicycle was a means of personal expression. At least it seemed that way to me, because of the people around me when I got into it.

My older brother built his touring bike from a frame with the help of Diane, who lived in the neighborhood and went to the same high school I did. She had grown up in the family machine shop, so no piece of machinery was untouchable. In high school she could build a bike from all its separate components. In less than ten years after that she could build a bike starting with unconnected tubes and lugs.

Componentry came from an international buffet of enticing offerings, limited only by your budget and whatever nationalistic threading on your frame could not be changed. In the hands of Diane, even the paint job could acquire many custom details. She specialized for a while in painting frames to match the rider's favorite beer cans. When a proud mechanic at Dade Cycle got a Strawberry she dug out an old junker and painted it up as a Blueberry.

The notion of a bicycle as a collection of parts has stuck with me forever. Ideally the total will be greater than the sum of the parts, but everything was open to tweaking, regardless of your budget. A complete-gruppo bike looked boring. Okay, all Campy Record was nice, but we're talking the old days of Record, Nuovo Record and Super Record. Their stuff is nice now, but the exotic shifting systems and carbon fiber have added extra technological headaches to what used to be a simple process of buying something beautiful for the one you love.

It's hard to find that kind of individualistic quirkiness in a lot of commercial bike shops. The industry has invested a lot in making the machinery mysterious and astounding. Thirty speeds! Frame made out of resin-impregnated hummingbird eyelashes!

With boring regularity someone will look at a price tag and say, "for that kind of money, I want a MOTOR! Haw haw haw!"

Sadly, the product that intrigues consumers the most HAS a motor, as electric bicycles are hailed as the next big thing. That's right: the smokeless moped is luring some customers back to cycling after they'd given it up, or convincing them to try it for the first time because now you don't have to face the world alone. Your helpful electron friends are waiting to lend their power so you can zip along the bike path or lane without panting, sweating or a license.

Batteries weigh the same amount charged or flat. How about rocket-assist bikes? Oh wait, it's been done. But we haven't seen a production version yet. That will keep the drivers off your ass.

I've really digressed here. I started thinking about what I value about bikes and bicycling because I think a lot about what I would have in a shop of my own. Into this mix went the newest Surly offering, the 29-er Krampus. I thought about all the bikes I own and all the bikes I could own if I had the funds. And then with a sound like a needle being snatched off a record, which to my generation signifies the abrupt end of a thought or action, my minimalist side kicks in. Skrrrrrit! Hold it!

I know what bike I would have if I had one bike. I'd keep the Traveler's Check, built up with my commuting/light touring parts. But the human engine can be fitted to many vehicles. Each one of my bikes fills a niche. Each can be modified easily to conform to changing needs within that niche.  I have given up ultra-light weight and exotic materials with no regrets at all for the sake of appropriate weight and versatility. That's what I would sell. Rather than chase the fashions and ride the breaking wave of changing technology, I offer lasting value.

Hardly a recipe for riches. Perhaps not even a recipe for much business at all. We'll see if it ever gets tested. But the other day someone drove from Albany, NY, to buy a Surly Long Haul Trucker from me. No one has ever driven a distance like that to buy any other brand of bike. Maybe we just don't carry trendy enough shit. But I'll put my money on reliable bikes for practical riders. And I'll put practical riders on reliable bikes as long as I can get them to come here. Or to wherever I happen to be operating.

Insoluble Conflict

Israelis and Palestinians will live together in perfect harmony long before motorists and bicyclists figure out how to coexist to their mutual satisfaction.

Road sharing is often a classic example of ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.  When one user group feels it has to give up more than another, resentment builds to the point of an explosion.

Daily the cycling blogosphere and cyclists on social networks share anecdotes and news stories about motorist aggression toward cyclists.  The rants run their course.  Everyone goes about their business until the next one.

Some riding areas are better than others.  Some riders seem to have better luck.  Occasionally, the riding climate improves in an area formerly more hostile.  Then word comes in from a cyclist dealing with daily abuse that would make half of us quit and the other half buy firearms.

People are resilient.  I'm impressed by the riders who cope with abuse by turning the other cheek or giving soft answers.  I always wish I had a flame thrower or a grenade launcher when some pathetic coward in a motor vehicle acts aggressively.

I understand why bicyclists interfere with motorists so much.   We're the wrong size, the wrong speed, even if we're acting like vehicles.  We require motorists to be patient much more than they require it of us. Think of it: unless a motorist is being a jerk, we don't have to accommodate them nearly as much as they accommodate us.  They have to watch how they open doors when they're parallel parked.  They have to slow down, swing wide, wait to pass.  Yes, they have massive horsepower at their disposal, but that just makes it harder.  It's tricky to maneuver the average highway hawg at slow speeds among small, sometimes wobbly other vehicles.

A skilled, strong cyclist can flow pretty well with a lot of urban traffic.  I can bolt out of a track stand at a stoplight faster than most motorists can get out of the hole.  But I'm getting older and my track stand isn't bombproof.  A cyclist with a foot down often doesn't take off as easily as a motorcyclist with a foot down.

All this is made worse by the modern human love of black-and-white conflicts fueled by catchy slogans and intractable philosophies.  The decades since the 1970s have only seen the sides grow more polarized, the rhetoric more inflammatory.  In the 1970s we mostly believed, naively, that the general public would see the fun and logic of what we were doing and join in.  Almost 40 years later, we have at least as many drivers as ever making war on the cyclists they see.

We have to make the case over and over: why should motorists share the road?  Forget what's "right."  People all over the world have to fight ridiculously bloody battles to get to do what should be theirs by right.  Our goal is to make our case without one more ridiculously bloody war.

It's a time-honored human tradition to try to make an adversary pay for his point of view with his blood.  It's supposed to test the depth of your commitment.  The problem is that we don't threaten the motorists.  Unless we start an armed bicyclist insurgency, we just have to take it and take it and take it.  Like passive resisters everywhere, we prove our resolve by our willingness to take casualties until the other side stops out of sheer guilt.  Believe what you will about Gandhi and the American civil rights movement, those tactics only get you so far.  Throw down a black person in front of a mob of white supremacists today or tomorrow and you will not see a twitch of conscience from among them.  They are only prevented from heinous programs of ethnic cleansing by the threat of force against them.  The negatives of human nature are as deeply - or more deeply - entrenched than the learned behaviors of fairness and ethics. Civilization is maintained as much by threat of force and appeals to self interest as it is by any attempt at moral education.

Motorists generally have nothing to fear from cyclists.  That includes any consequences for injuring us.  It's a credit to the general motorist conscience and perhaps to a mistaken perception that they might get into trouble that more of them don't just rub us out.

A general sense of fairness probably encourages cooperative motorists, even if they are not cyclists themselves.  Willingness to accommodate can be eroded by other stressors.  The more solid benefits we can show the non-cyclist to support their willingness to live and let live, the more likely cyclists are to live.

If no replacement for fossil fuel comes along, cycling will rise by default.  If renewable, affordable energy keeps some sort of motor vehicle within reach of the general public, cyclists will continue to battle hostility and indifference from the vast majority who feel they have better ways to expend their energy. Cars get you there faster, much of the time. You don't arrive all sweaty or covered with precipitation.  You can thoughtlessly throw your junk in the car and drive to your destination, sitting in a comfy chair with an entertainment system.  It takes less thought, less planning, less effort.  Only a few weirdos want to do things the hard way.

While we try to win more motorists over to the notion of muscle-powered transportation and recreation, we have to show them why it's a better idea to put up with us than try to get rid of us.

It takes so long to get anywhere...

We had to stop along Route 25

For these

Before riding on to Route 153 by Ossipee River to get a pint of raspberries.

Back on 25, the cellist started laughing at a lighted warning sign that said "Crack Fill, Next Six Miles. Expect Minor Delays." Unfortunately, it was surprisingly hard to photograph in the bright summer afternoon.

Keep your shorts snugged up and your jersey pulled down.

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.

Good Design is Intuitive

I was completely sold on those top-mount brake levers on the Cross Check in the first ten seconds this morning.

Going down my eroded dirt and gravel driveway, I wanted to slow down to check for approaching traffic before pulling out. Intuitively, I used the iterrupter lever on the front brake, as if I'd always had it. Perfect.

Later, in town, I rode in the multi-variable environment on Main Street with my hands on the top levers. I could see better than when I'm more extended on the hoods and I could stop instantly for darting pedestrians or other sudden intrusions.

Out on the road I could tell the levers were there, but never felt they interfered with any of my favorite cruising positions.

I would not slap them on any bike, but they're perfect for this one. Setting them wide the way I did leaves room for light and handlebar-bag brackets whenever I might add them. If I transfer the multi-gear setup to the Traveler's Check for a trip that might call for it everything will work just as well.

Variations on a Theme

My Blue, the commuting/traveling fixed gear, and the cellist's Blue, with her regular touring and exploring setup.

Getting the drop on Blue

After trying two arrangements with the time trial bars I really missed having the positions a drop bar offers. I had a set of 46 cm Salsa Bell Lap cyclocross bars left over from a project based on a Cross Check complete bike. The drops flare to a whopping 50 centimeters, which feels pretty weird, but the other proportions of the bar feel pretty good. The weird, wide drops aren't that bad. They actually ease some shoulder strain I get from holding my hands in perfect alignment with my more normal drop bars.

Open-face stems allow for experiments like this. The brake lever clamp is hinged. The whole change took minutes

One drawback to the drop bar: on every other drop bar bike I own I have regular road levers. In any urgent situation I reach automatically for the front brake. With the TT bar the whole setup was strange so I had no automatic response to a crisis. With the drop bar, but no road brake lever, I have been reaching to where the brake lever isn't. One way or another I will get trained out of that.

Two for the Road

The Traveler's Check

And an exploring bike for a friend

Knock Down, Drag Out

The cellist's Traveler's Check is finished. I need to get a picture of it for the records and to post here. So that's one knocked down.

A triathlete who trusts me to do her race prep has picked up her bike and paid for it. Two down.

The MTB I'm putting together for the Conservation Commission chairman is still on the stand. I hoped to deliver it after last night's meeting, but it is dragging out an extra day. That's because the previous two jobs also dragged out.

I need a BB and to build a wheel to get the cellist's fixed gear ready enough for her to use. She will have to swap the seat and post, and front wheel, from her TC to use the fixed gear built on her old Cross Check frame.

If I get wicked motivated I might build up the front wheel for her fixie, too. I brought home a couple of salvageable 36-hole used hubs. If one of them comes out feeling smooth enough after the overhaul, I can nab a fistful of spokes and throw it all together.

Once she picks a new saddle she'll have two complete bikes.

I just need to quit fooling around on the computer and get back to work.

Compulsive Wrenching?

Today I figured I would jump on the task of transferring the multi-gear setup from the cellist's old Cross Check to her new Traveler's Check. It should be simple, and it mostly is, but these things always seem to spawn complications.

A second work stand would come in very handy. Because the frames are functionally identical, if I could have both of them on a stand I could swing from one to the other almost as fast as I could turn.

I'm not sure the downtube shifter bosses on the newer frame are an improvement. The old split stops permit you to slip the housing out for easy cable cleaning. How many people are really going to install downtube shifters? Still, I support the retro rider. If someone might want downtube shifters, they'll need a place to put them.

Somehow in any of these projects I find myself pushing on into the night, greasy and faintly queasy, pushing to get the bike or bikes functional as quickly as possible. It will all be good when it's finished, but in the meantime the patient is all cut open on life support.

Heck with it. I need to knock off for tonight and put in a big day tomorrow.

Shared Pleasure

While I grabbed another quick outing on skate skis during a break at work, my only wife and one of my bikes were having a lovely fixed gear ride here around the home turf.

The cellist went for 16.5 miles on Blue. I haven't had a chance even to begin assembling her own Traveler's Check. Fortunately we left mine configured for her late last fall when we rode together. All she had to do was dust it off, inflate the tires and go.

She glowed with the energy she got from a beautiful ride on a beautiful day. It really does make life better.

Moving Forward

The cellist's Traveler's Check frame arrived along with its FSA Orbit UF headset. I wasn't going to build it up right away, but she mentioned that she thought I was going to convert her old 'Check into a fixed gear for her spring training. That moves the project up the list. Fan that flame of interest!

Hmm. She has the leg length to handle a 175 crank. I have several of those kicking around, no use to me. That'll save a little money. I need a BB, stem, bars, pedals, wheels...

To build or not to build? That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler to swap out the axle in a pre-built fixie wheel from the local parts house or take wrench against a pile of spokes... The production wheel is probably cheaper than the hub and rim I would order. But it's my beloved wife.

Last year, the Blue project cost more than I intended. It ate my little cushion of shop credit used to purchase consumables like tubes and chains. I don't want to end up there again. But the biggest chunk after the frame itself was the traveling bag.

For the second Traveler's Check I was going to buy the hard case. That way our family arsenal would have both types. Cha-ching! I might have to let that slide in favor of the working parts of the bike.

Time to start shopping...

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!

Hittin' the Town

First ride to work on Blue. Niiiiice.

It just feels right

Building a responsive bike for the urban criterium calls for a careful balance of factors.

Riding traffic, a rider wants to sit up enough to look ahead and keep track of a complex situation without straining. An explosive sprint can come in handy, but the position for a good sprint requires low handlebars and a grip nearly even with the steering axis of the bike. Frame geometry helps make a bike stable under hard acceleration as well, but even a good tight frame will feel waggly if your bars are too high, your hands too widely set and your grip too far forward.

Drop bars have the drop position back by the head tube. That way, sprint force goes straight down the steering axis behind the contact patch. Sprinting from a high forward position sends your force back down the stem to get to the steering axis. While the bars hang just as far forward of the stem no matter where you grab them, your weight stays more centered between the wheels when you're on the drops. You're also able to pull up against the stem with more leverage and more centering counter-force than when you sit up or pull on bar extensions that are high and forward.

I left the fork on Blue long enough to set the bars higher than on any of my other road-oriented bikes. It feels really mellow when I'm sitting down sitting up. If I stand to sprint I have to remember to keep myself back and only stand for a couple of pedal strokes. The bike is light and accelerates readily, so I can spin it up pretty quickly. But it robs me of the fight-or-flight burst I can use on the other bikes.

Trying different options, I dropped the bars a centimeter. Suddenly it felt more capable. When I compared, I found that this exactly matched the bar height on my other bikes. I'm so accustomed to it that I could feel the difference without knowing what it was.

Different doesn't mean wrong. I wanted to be able to sit up more, even if I didn't have the bike set that way all the time. I left the bars in the lower position for now, but left the steerer long enough to move them up again when I want that.

Maybe I'll ride to town with no brakes tomorrow and scrounge some brake levers that fit my bars. Blue is very fun to ride.

Blue before brakes

Here is Blue, version 1. I will probably switch to an eighth-inch chain so I can use a half link to tighten up the rear wheel position. The dropouts are long enough to get both gears, but a half link would let me keep both positions further forward.

The brake will have to wait because the clamp on my brake lever of choice is too small. I hope we have the 26-millimeter ones in stock at the shop. The ones I got turned out to be 24 mm.
Check out the blue stuff I'd accumulated.

Violent thunderstorms came in like a napalm run this afternoon. It's still pretty wet out there this evening. Maybe I'll get to take a test ride tomorrow.

Blue

The mechanic's bike always needs work.

Last night I finally got time to rebuild the rear wheels on the Cross Check and my road bike. Tonight, in a burst of overconfidence, I thought I might make some progress on Blue, the Traveler's Check fixed gear. I had all the parts, right? I'd built the rear wheel weeks ago, before I discovered the rim failures on my other bikes.

Here's how it stood when I got home.

The blue theme developed gradually. The frame is blue. The Sachs crank Frothingham gave me ten years ago is blue. The rear tire is blue. So is one bar plug.

The biggest job on a bike this simple is facing the head tube. The BB threads look pretty clean and cartridge bottom brackets don't demand perfect facing, but the head tube needs to be right. Before I dug into that, though, I wanted to hang that blue crank to confirm the BB axle length.

110 was wrong. It was also the shortest thing I had. And all I had for crank bolts were some 15 mm Campys that didn't fit comfortably in the crank arms. I figured I would just shove the right one on there to check the chain line.

That Sachs crank is going to take a very short BB. The 110 had it hanging way off the chain stay. So I dug out an old Dura Ace I'd scavenged. It looked great, but it's a 175. #^%$^$! I pulled out a 600 and it was a 175 too. @#%^$%&#! Then I remembered one on a frame in the crawl space. It had a 110 bolt circle, which meant I could use the 49-tooth ring I was going to put on the Sachs, but the arms were 165! &^$%*&^%#&#!

I hope I can dig up a BB short enough to make the Sachs work, because I was really liking the blue, and I have that 49 ring. The only thing I know for sure is that I will have to carry a bunch of parts back and forth until I get it figured out. But building bikes has ALWAYS been like this. 20-30 years ago it would have been some nationalistic thread pitch or oddball seat post size.

At least the Cross Check and the road bike are back up to par.