Spring on Winter Road

Winter Road is a short connector that bypasses a nasty wall on Green Mountain Road. The problem with the steep climb is that a motor vehicle could come ripping up beside you on the narrow road as another one launches off the lip of the drop above you. That could get all kinds of ugly. So it's a great excuse to take a gentler grade beside a small stream in an attractive little ravine.

Coming the other way, I just launch off the drop. The trees are sparse enough for me to scope out the intersection with Winter Road at the bottom. I can also get a view down the road to see if anyone is coming who might turn in front of me. It's actually safer than trying to make the left turn onto Winter Road when someone might come barreling down Highwatch Road as you're trying to make a tight left over the ever-present patch of sand.

This seemed interesting

We've never gotten a box that said this. The bike inside was disappointingly ordinary.

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.

Thank you, engineers!

Led by the irrepressible pranksters at Shimano, proprietary shifting systems infected the bike industry starting in the 1980s and reached pandemic proportions in the 1990s after the introduction of the first Rapidfire shifters. That innovation has been responsible for more misery than anything, including the hard, narrow racing saddle.

Bike componentry has always invited some compatibility issues, with things like French thread, Italian bottom bracket shells, crank spindle lengths and whatnot. But the C word, Compatibility, took on a larger, more ominous meaning once shifters had to be perfectly coordinated with derailleurs and with the number of cogs in the whole system. The more gears you cram into the same space, the more precise everything needs to be.

To make matters worse, the Big S can't even keep its own products consistent from year to year.

A customer came in two days ago because the front derailleur on the Long Haul Trucker I'd built for him had ceased to function. It's a Tiagra 9-speed over a Deore LX two-piece crank. It had worked perfectly until the tiny tab that retains the return spring snapped off, sticking him in the large chain ring.

He stopped in on his way home from work. I had a Tiagra front derailleur in stock, so I told him I could slap it on in about ten minutes. It's true. I could. But Shi-no has changed the derailleur so it no longer swings out far enough to clear the chain in the highest gear.

An LX derailleur failed to work because Shi---!@#@!# road shifters aren't compatible with their own mountain derailleurs.

A two-piece crank can't be tweaked inward, only slightly outward. That won't help me here.

The plug-and-play turned into more than an hour of slogging before I sent him on his way with the chain stuck on one front chainring while I compile some parts to see if I can get this mess to work.

Shift in friction unless you're racing. Barcons are plenty convenient and won't give you ANY of these headaches.

SKRIT--!! UPDATE: 10:41 EDT

Looking at the bike I see two options. I was going to fashion eccentric shims to space the derailleur over, but I notice the BB has spacers I can stack in different (unsanctioned) configurations. Let's hope that doesn't spin up some worse problem. At least it's a place to start.

UPDATE II: 11:46 EDT -- Lesson 1: Look carefully at the complete assembly and all related structures. Lesson 2: Throw away the instructions.

Moving the shims seems to have worked. I've sent a test pilot who fits the bike better than I do and who is interested in purchasing one. He has not reported yet.

FINAL WORD: Test pilot reported full front derailleur function. Customer required one minor tweak. I should have caught the shim thing the first day, but I had put myself in a time crunch by offering to knock out what I thought would be a quick, simple fix. Those are the ones that always go out of control.

Just Another Day

It's been a quiet season so far.

Last year we had gasoline prices ratcheting upward, coupled with media coverage of global warming. The economy had been shaky and was about to crumble, so people were worried about money even if they weren't yet sure why. All that added up to a minor increase in bike sales and a major increase in repair and reconditioning. The repair shop hadn't been that busy since the late 1990s.

With fuel prices relatively low and stable, the economy in the toilet and global warming apparently an ignored fact of life, bicycles don't have the fashionable appeal they briefly enjoyed last year. Customers are buying in small numbers. No category dominates. Of course most people want the types we have in smaller quantities.

The bike manufacturers have cut back on their stock, so some styles are already unavailable for special order.

The big wave of repair work has not arrived yet. One summer camp has brought a small fleet of bikes to us for annual service, but other camps have yet to be heard from. All this can change in a day. On some days, customers arrive every ten minutes to add a bike or two to the repair queue. That's when triage becomes important.

Today is rainy. The repair docket was nearly empty when I left work yesterday. So far, a repair or two has arrived each time we've cleared the board this season. We just haven't had a swarm yet. The trees are flowering. Some leaves have come out. The black flies are here. The shop owners whinge about finances. The mechanics burn their brain cells trying to make modern, sophisticated bike componentry actually work.

It's just another day.