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...
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Frustrations and Injustices: A Hard Word Lingered
Every life has frustrations and injustices. I have tried to live a consciously good life in my transportation and recreation choices. What seemed like clear benefits to me have been completely ignored by vast numbers of Americans, leading to more congested roadways, gigantic cars, aggressive driving habits, obesity and a whopping sense of entitlement. A massive consumer lifestyle has led to all the environmental, social and economic problems we face now.
Frustrated? You bet your ass. Frustrated by injustice? Who wouldn't be? Aren't you?
A person should be able to be a cyclist in addition to other aspects of life. Every rider shouldn't have to be a committed advocate and road warrior against the forces of motorization. Yet the frustrating unwillingness of this country to accept cycling completely into the transportation mix has led to what are basically battle lines.
That does make me editorialize quite a bit. Now go make sure your tires are fully inflated and lube your chain just the right amount, not too little, not too much. Always ride with traffic and use LOTS OF LIGHTS at night.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Advice
Buy a steel frame. Shift in friction. Use toe clips. Try a fixed gear. Ride conventionally-spoked wheels. Keep it simple.
Cafiend out.
Cafiend out.
I miss the simplicity of bike season
The skiing here is fine, but the local powers are addicted to intrigue and the self-proclaimed aristocracy yearn for the days when subservient grunts grubbed gratefully for a pittance. Why drive all this way just to look at immaculate grooming while trapped indoors instawaxing set after set of abused planks for people who only get it done because someone told them they should?
Honesty goes a long way with those customers, as long as you remember to bring it out instead of reflexively doing their bidding. Ironed-in wax on a beat-up, high-density or extruded no-wax touring base is a waste of their money and my precious life energy. Instead, buy this F4, smear it on everything and go have fun.
Unfortunately, the cheerfully codependent wax grunt has a long heritage in skiing. What instawax customers usually don't realize is what a hack wax job they're getting. In places where they do a lot of them, it's an assembly line to separate the gullible from a few bucks between the front door and the trails. We don't have a facility that lends itself to such mass-produced fleecing.
The bike repair shop presents a much more straightforward challenge and attracts far fewer people who just want to know what it's like to have servants. I actually get a measure of respect for what I know and can do for people there. And if I don't, I can always grab a big wrench to tap meaningfully into my palm as I listen to the whining.
Outside of work, bike season also presents more savory transportation options. Which bike should I ride on what route variation? What should I have for lunch/fuel? Sometimes I wish I had a magical short cut home, but I just keep turning the cranks until I get there. I set the schedule of effort and rest rather than having rest forced on me by sedentary transportation and the demands of work in a shop running on the most pared-down staff.
As winter stretches before us for more than two months, I can't let myself hibernate. The actual skiing is as wonderful as ever. It's just all the clutter I have to cut through or chuck aside that wears me down.
Honesty goes a long way with those customers, as long as you remember to bring it out instead of reflexively doing their bidding. Ironed-in wax on a beat-up, high-density or extruded no-wax touring base is a waste of their money and my precious life energy. Instead, buy this F4, smear it on everything and go have fun.
Unfortunately, the cheerfully codependent wax grunt has a long heritage in skiing. What instawax customers usually don't realize is what a hack wax job they're getting. In places where they do a lot of them, it's an assembly line to separate the gullible from a few bucks between the front door and the trails. We don't have a facility that lends itself to such mass-produced fleecing.
The bike repair shop presents a much more straightforward challenge and attracts far fewer people who just want to know what it's like to have servants. I actually get a measure of respect for what I know and can do for people there. And if I don't, I can always grab a big wrench to tap meaningfully into my palm as I listen to the whining.
Outside of work, bike season also presents more savory transportation options. Which bike should I ride on what route variation? What should I have for lunch/fuel? Sometimes I wish I had a magical short cut home, but I just keep turning the cranks until I get there. I set the schedule of effort and rest rather than having rest forced on me by sedentary transportation and the demands of work in a shop running on the most pared-down staff.
As winter stretches before us for more than two months, I can't let myself hibernate. The actual skiing is as wonderful as ever. It's just all the clutter I have to cut through or chuck aside that wears me down.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Huh?
During one of many busy days last week at the touring center, a guy I should recognize came up to the backshop entrance to say hello.
"What do you think? Is everybody going to be using the new Campy Ergleblurgle next year?"
The what? I gathered it was something that must be getting a buzz in the cycling media, but I had no idea what he was talking about. Not only have I been trying to keep up with the Nordic ski industry's own Shimano-like ADD, it was Christmas Week and I had already gone about nine long days without a break.
Cross-country ski season used to be a relaxing break from the frantic pseudo-innovation of the mountain bike industry in the mid 1990s. Now Nordic has its own avalanches of poorly-thought-out equipment solutions to attitude problems. And more people come into a ski shop hacking and dripping snot than in a bike shop. Vacation weeks are hell. It's as if you earned your meager annual income by letting several motorcycle gangs and a couple of sketchy fraternities use your house and yard to party for ten days.
In a while I'll start to think about bikes again. If the weather turns warm it will be sooner. If the snow sticks around it will be later. Right now I have enough to do, starting with disinfecting the counter top where the last customer dripped on it.
"What do you think? Is everybody going to be using the new Campy Ergleblurgle next year?"
The what? I gathered it was something that must be getting a buzz in the cycling media, but I had no idea what he was talking about. Not only have I been trying to keep up with the Nordic ski industry's own Shimano-like ADD, it was Christmas Week and I had already gone about nine long days without a break.
Cross-country ski season used to be a relaxing break from the frantic pseudo-innovation of the mountain bike industry in the mid 1990s. Now Nordic has its own avalanches of poorly-thought-out equipment solutions to attitude problems. And more people come into a ski shop hacking and dripping snot than in a bike shop. Vacation weeks are hell. It's as if you earned your meager annual income by letting several motorcycle gangs and a couple of sketchy fraternities use your house and yard to party for ten days.
In a while I'll start to think about bikes again. If the weather turns warm it will be sooner. If the snow sticks around it will be later. Right now I have enough to do, starting with disinfecting the counter top where the last customer dripped on it.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
2008 Winds Down (or goes down the drain)
With the last storm, 2008 officially became the wettest year on record in New Hampshire. Three of the top five years occurred in the last four years. The record was formerly held by 2005, with 2006 in third place. Records go back to 1870 in Concord. The next two places are held by 1888 and 1897.
Last summer seemed like it never happened. Cloudy skies and chaotic storms dominated every week after the drought and fire danger of May ended as abruptly as it had followed the extraordinarily snowy winter. The air was warm and damp. Closets and drawers in the house grew rank with mildew.
Ugly weather discourages many people from playing outside. The early surge we got in the dry start tapered off to a steady flow of repairs and a light rhythm of sales.
As this winter gets underway it seems to take up where last winter left off. We've had early snow, but temperatures that have started to seesaw above and below freezing. Sure it's zero right now, but tomorrow we're looking at almost 40, with rain moving in. For the next week the forecast calls for mixed precipitation including snow at temperatures above freezing. There's a lot of water in snow like that. Sign of the times? Can we look forward to another non-summer after we crawl out of the snowbanks again?
One can never be sure, of course. We could slide just a few degrees farther to the warm side and get only rain for the rest of the winter. I don't wish it, certainly, but I've seen it before.
A snowless winter does not mean an early spring. It just means the local economy is further depressed because the businesses that depend on snow didn't get it. In this economy, how well are those businesses going to do anyway?
Nordic skiing is "the cheap skiing." That's a benefit if people feel they can afford to go skiing at all, but no help if people have no budget for recreation. Bicycling has transportation benefits, but only if people can and will take advantage of them.
Wet weather will discourage everyone somewhat, and some people completely, in any season. It's one factor we can't control on a day to day basis.
Last summer seemed like it never happened. Cloudy skies and chaotic storms dominated every week after the drought and fire danger of May ended as abruptly as it had followed the extraordinarily snowy winter. The air was warm and damp. Closets and drawers in the house grew rank with mildew.
Ugly weather discourages many people from playing outside. The early surge we got in the dry start tapered off to a steady flow of repairs and a light rhythm of sales.
As this winter gets underway it seems to take up where last winter left off. We've had early snow, but temperatures that have started to seesaw above and below freezing. Sure it's zero right now, but tomorrow we're looking at almost 40, with rain moving in. For the next week the forecast calls for mixed precipitation including snow at temperatures above freezing. There's a lot of water in snow like that. Sign of the times? Can we look forward to another non-summer after we crawl out of the snowbanks again?
One can never be sure, of course. We could slide just a few degrees farther to the warm side and get only rain for the rest of the winter. I don't wish it, certainly, but I've seen it before.
A snowless winter does not mean an early spring. It just means the local economy is further depressed because the businesses that depend on snow didn't get it. In this economy, how well are those businesses going to do anyway?
Nordic skiing is "the cheap skiing." That's a benefit if people feel they can afford to go skiing at all, but no help if people have no budget for recreation. Bicycling has transportation benefits, but only if people can and will take advantage of them.
Wet weather will discourage everyone somewhat, and some people completely, in any season. It's one factor we can't control on a day to day basis.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Bike Shop Economics with a Twist
Here in our little northern refuge, our shop started as a cross-country ski shop. Long before I arrived, the owners added bikes as a summer line to carry them through their off season. It was 1972 or '73, a particularly good time to have a few ten-speeds kicking around for sale.
The 1970s treated shops that sold bikes and Nordic skis pretty well. The Baby Boomers were young and strong. Moving into the 1980s, many of them were chasing and catching the Almighty Dollar or at least running up their credit on the hope that their success would catch up with their spending sooner than the bill collector did.
By the end of the 1980s, when the cracks in the exuberant economy began to show, mountain biking rose to take the torch of the bike industry from the drooping hand of the road bike market. People's finances took a hit in the recession that began in 1989, but Nordic skiing was "the cheap skiing" and mountain bikes used human power, not expensive fuel. It wasn't great, but it was good enough.
The 1990s began with some shabby winters around here. At the same time, economic changes in the neighboring state to the south that we love to hate meant that fewer people were coming north in herds to spend their disposable income on winter recreation. But with mountain biking huge and getting huger we changed from being a ski shop that sold bikes to being a bike shop that sold skis. We all studded up our tires and hit the frozen lake and snow machine trails to show that nothing would stop us from playing outside.
Nothing symbolizes the desolation of globally warming winters better than a wide-open blue lake that should be frozen several feet thick. It looks so wrong after you've gotten used to the gray and white expanse dotted with fishing shacks and parked cars year after year. Winter has become wildly unpredictable since then, and winter cycling never really threatened to become the next big thing.
The stars our wagon was hitched to have become two lame mules. A tired, irritable and fat public pays lip service to the joys and benefits of cycling, but fears the road and lacks the cash and the will to construct better infrastructure. It is cheaper and easier to bitch about how there's no place to go and nothing to do than it is to do something about it. On the winter side, Nordic skiing isn't really "as easy as walking." It also requires snow, which has become a luxury, apparently.
Good snow has become a luxury anyway. Packed and packable powder that allows both classical and skate skiing on plausible waxes seems to show up less and less. We may get lots of snow in an odd winter, like last year, but it's bulk-packed, cheap discount store crap. We got feet of wet glop last year. If you got out at precisely the right time on the right days you had a great time, but the majority of the time the surface was maddening. The soft snow never firmed up into a good skate platform. The warm temperatures made grip waxing insane. Snow stuck to everything unless you lathered on some sort of chemical slop to prevent it. It was a year for no-wax skis. I'm sorry. That's just not a quality season.
Commercially, most customers only see white, think snow and buy whatever they choose for winter toys. But last winter would have had to be phenomenally lucrative to make up for the staggering canyon the whole northeastern Nordic industry went into in 2005-'06. No winter since then has been able to make up the deficit.
There's no summer savior like mountain biking anymore. We survive mostly because our mechanical shop has a decent reputation. That can only bring in limited money because it requires the mechanics to spend the necessary time to do a quality repair, assuming the mechanic in question is capable of it. We're not pumping out dozens of happy hardtails to new enthusiasts and equipping them with full accessories day after day. Biking has broken into niches and most riders are afraid.
In our enclave of the unimaginably wealthy, money never dries up completely. One can study the trickle-down theory up close and personal when someone who could buy out your entire net worth with the loose change in his couch cushions is asking if you can knock a few percent off your price for no other reason than that he asked you to. And even if the deep pockets toss a few coins our way without chiseling us, their business is not enough to keep us afloat.
Take note, my wealthy friends: I will happily continue to keep your bikes in fine working order if you want to put me on a retainer. Since the middle class is dying, the poor schmucks who used to subsidize your mechanical lackeys have mostly gone away. See that? The wealthy DO need the middle class.
For a starting salary of, say 50 grand a year plus a housing allowance, I'll travel with you as your personal mechanic.
We saw a little surge of interest and business last summer as fuel prices soared, the economy sputtered and coughed, and the scientific community assured us that we needed to lower our CO2 output as much as our cholesterol intake. But all the problems of cycling, combined with dreary weather, soon put that to rest.
We cyclists know that if major numbers of people started cycling, conditions would improve instantly. They really would. Each cyclist would be one less occupant of a car. Each bike would be one less car to park. Small vehicles powered by humans would flow more easily than ungainly steel boxes in the streets. Some steel boxes would remain, but we would outnumber and surround them.
We cyclists must admit that during the transition period, cycling accidents could increase as less skilled riders tried to use their bikes. There's a crossover point where increased bike ridership crowds the space with those still in their steel boxes. Carelessness and anger would generate conflicts and collisions. If it looked bad enough for long enough (perhaps not long at all), the new cyclists would shrink back, leaving only the memory of the bloodbath to make future adopters even more wary.
This is not a reason to give up. It's just something to prepare for. Can anyone in a bike shop anywhere tell me they haven't heard a customer say they're afraid out there? I've been doing this for decades, and I'm afraid out there.
No other sport is played in traffic. Any time you ride for any reason except a practical one, you're playing in traffic. Traffic is sometimes understandably resentful. Then we have to get into how many motor vehicle trips are frivolous and unnecessary to compare the score card between cyclists and motorists.
All this seems like a digression from the question of economics and cycling, but economics are a political force and a symptom of social structure. If people really wanted to bike they would bike, just as they did in the crazy 1990s, when times were tough but we couldn't keep enough mountain bikes in stock.
We cyclists know that cycling is great and affordable, good for the environment, good for health and fitness and peace of mind, but only if you make it out and back in one piece. Make cycling's built-in appeal obvious enough and the business side will take care of itself.
A word to the industry: If you engage in the kind of elbow-throwing, criterium-style competition you did in the mountain bike boom you will screw it up again as badly as you did then. Bad enough when you hook each other into parking meters and litter barrels along the course, but you ended up crashing on top of bystanders and lower-category riders just warming up. If the money starts flowing again, be cool this time and see if we can keep it going for a long, long time. Biking is a lifetime sport, even though hard-core competitive cycling emphatically is not.
The 1970s treated shops that sold bikes and Nordic skis pretty well. The Baby Boomers were young and strong. Moving into the 1980s, many of them were chasing and catching the Almighty Dollar or at least running up their credit on the hope that their success would catch up with their spending sooner than the bill collector did.
By the end of the 1980s, when the cracks in the exuberant economy began to show, mountain biking rose to take the torch of the bike industry from the drooping hand of the road bike market. People's finances took a hit in the recession that began in 1989, but Nordic skiing was "the cheap skiing" and mountain bikes used human power, not expensive fuel. It wasn't great, but it was good enough.
The 1990s began with some shabby winters around here. At the same time, economic changes in the neighboring state to the south that we love to hate meant that fewer people were coming north in herds to spend their disposable income on winter recreation. But with mountain biking huge and getting huger we changed from being a ski shop that sold bikes to being a bike shop that sold skis. We all studded up our tires and hit the frozen lake and snow machine trails to show that nothing would stop us from playing outside.
Nothing symbolizes the desolation of globally warming winters better than a wide-open blue lake that should be frozen several feet thick. It looks so wrong after you've gotten used to the gray and white expanse dotted with fishing shacks and parked cars year after year. Winter has become wildly unpredictable since then, and winter cycling never really threatened to become the next big thing.
The stars our wagon was hitched to have become two lame mules. A tired, irritable and fat public pays lip service to the joys and benefits of cycling, but fears the road and lacks the cash and the will to construct better infrastructure. It is cheaper and easier to bitch about how there's no place to go and nothing to do than it is to do something about it. On the winter side, Nordic skiing isn't really "as easy as walking." It also requires snow, which has become a luxury, apparently.
Good snow has become a luxury anyway. Packed and packable powder that allows both classical and skate skiing on plausible waxes seems to show up less and less. We may get lots of snow in an odd winter, like last year, but it's bulk-packed, cheap discount store crap. We got feet of wet glop last year. If you got out at precisely the right time on the right days you had a great time, but the majority of the time the surface was maddening. The soft snow never firmed up into a good skate platform. The warm temperatures made grip waxing insane. Snow stuck to everything unless you lathered on some sort of chemical slop to prevent it. It was a year for no-wax skis. I'm sorry. That's just not a quality season.
Commercially, most customers only see white, think snow and buy whatever they choose for winter toys. But last winter would have had to be phenomenally lucrative to make up for the staggering canyon the whole northeastern Nordic industry went into in 2005-'06. No winter since then has been able to make up the deficit.
There's no summer savior like mountain biking anymore. We survive mostly because our mechanical shop has a decent reputation. That can only bring in limited money because it requires the mechanics to spend the necessary time to do a quality repair, assuming the mechanic in question is capable of it. We're not pumping out dozens of happy hardtails to new enthusiasts and equipping them with full accessories day after day. Biking has broken into niches and most riders are afraid.
In our enclave of the unimaginably wealthy, money never dries up completely. One can study the trickle-down theory up close and personal when someone who could buy out your entire net worth with the loose change in his couch cushions is asking if you can knock a few percent off your price for no other reason than that he asked you to. And even if the deep pockets toss a few coins our way without chiseling us, their business is not enough to keep us afloat.
Take note, my wealthy friends: I will happily continue to keep your bikes in fine working order if you want to put me on a retainer. Since the middle class is dying, the poor schmucks who used to subsidize your mechanical lackeys have mostly gone away. See that? The wealthy DO need the middle class.
For a starting salary of, say 50 grand a year plus a housing allowance, I'll travel with you as your personal mechanic.
We saw a little surge of interest and business last summer as fuel prices soared, the economy sputtered and coughed, and the scientific community assured us that we needed to lower our CO2 output as much as our cholesterol intake. But all the problems of cycling, combined with dreary weather, soon put that to rest.
We cyclists know that if major numbers of people started cycling, conditions would improve instantly. They really would. Each cyclist would be one less occupant of a car. Each bike would be one less car to park. Small vehicles powered by humans would flow more easily than ungainly steel boxes in the streets. Some steel boxes would remain, but we would outnumber and surround them.
We cyclists must admit that during the transition period, cycling accidents could increase as less skilled riders tried to use their bikes. There's a crossover point where increased bike ridership crowds the space with those still in their steel boxes. Carelessness and anger would generate conflicts and collisions. If it looked bad enough for long enough (perhaps not long at all), the new cyclists would shrink back, leaving only the memory of the bloodbath to make future adopters even more wary.
This is not a reason to give up. It's just something to prepare for. Can anyone in a bike shop anywhere tell me they haven't heard a customer say they're afraid out there? I've been doing this for decades, and I'm afraid out there.
No other sport is played in traffic. Any time you ride for any reason except a practical one, you're playing in traffic. Traffic is sometimes understandably resentful. Then we have to get into how many motor vehicle trips are frivolous and unnecessary to compare the score card between cyclists and motorists.
All this seems like a digression from the question of economics and cycling, but economics are a political force and a symptom of social structure. If people really wanted to bike they would bike, just as they did in the crazy 1990s, when times were tough but we couldn't keep enough mountain bikes in stock.
We cyclists know that cycling is great and affordable, good for the environment, good for health and fitness and peace of mind, but only if you make it out and back in one piece. Make cycling's built-in appeal obvious enough and the business side will take care of itself.
A word to the industry: If you engage in the kind of elbow-throwing, criterium-style competition you did in the mountain bike boom you will screw it up again as badly as you did then. Bad enough when you hook each other into parking meters and litter barrels along the course, but you ended up crashing on top of bystanders and lower-category riders just warming up. If the money starts flowing again, be cool this time and see if we can keep it going for a long, long time. Biking is a lifetime sport, even though hard-core competitive cycling emphatically is not.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
I always find your posts interesting. That said, the title of your blog promises advice, yet most of what you write is just whining about the frustrations and injustices of your chosen life. What gives?