Friday, February 27, 2009

Thoughts on derailleur hangers

Mmm. I don't know if you guys can handle this much excitement on a Friday, if not, come back tomorrow for a recipe or something.

People ask me a lot about putting dropouts with a replaceable derailleur hanger on their bikes. I usually tell them something snide about how I wouldn't know, since I *only* ride rigid 29" singlespeeds with bullhorns and a pink chain to match my ironic 80's style American Apparel t-shirt. They're usually so humbled by my glory that they just give up at that point, but today I'm feeling generous, so here we go.

My feeling is this: I've built hundreds of steel frames, and I've had zero (nada, zip, zilch) come back for hanger repairs. Those hangers are burly - 1/4" plate steel doesn't bend easily. You'll shred that derailleur long before you do much to the hanger. And they're really easy to bend back with a $25 tool (Park DAG-1) if you do manage to bend them.

Replaceable hangers are a great idea for aluminum bikes, where the hanger is A) weaker to begin with, and B) can't be cut off and re-welded without spending a fortune re-heat treating the frame. But I don't build aluminum bikes, eh? I'm happy to do a replaceable hanger dropout (Paragon makes a nice one that I normally use when my logic-dropping fails to sway someone), but in my experience, they break all the time and have to be constantly replaced. Given that the replacement hangers are $15 or so, it's not a great investment IMO. Sure, you can carry a spare hanger around in your pack, which you can't do with a non-replaceable one, but honestly, it's not that hard to ghetto-singlespeedify your bike to get home anyway if you really need to.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Quick pic


Dave's new Quiring tandem (he tried to get me to do it, but tandems freak me out, and I'm not about to try building my first one and making the poor guy my guinea pig!) with WW thru-axle rigid fork. That's a beefy fork, right there. Cool paint job, too, though to be fair I had nothing to do with that part.

As an aside, I always thought tandems only used an EBB for the captain's crank. Shows what I know.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

A great day, plus Walt's screwup of the year

So the riding ruled. Miguel and I got out for 4 hours, up to Gold Hill, out to Switzerland, back down, and then up Poorman. Good stuff. Picture of my mud-spattered bike to follow in the morning.

So I was in a good mood, until I figured out later in the day that I made some dumb mistakes and left some minor stuff off of a frame and fork that I built for Peter a while back. He's been a real trooper about all of it, and I'm going to either A) change the stuff that needs to change, or B) sell the original frame/fork (as yet unridden) and build him a new one from scratch. Option B appeals to me because it saves the fine powdercoat having to be stripped and resprayed

This (a frame coming back) isn't something that happens much, so I'm kicking myself a bit tonight. In any case, if anyone is interested, you can have this fine frame AND rigid fork for a mere pittance - $900 (that's $420 off, if you're counting), shipping included anywhere in the US. It's designed for East coast woods riding, ready to build up (and yes, I'll sell you parts at my super-low prices)

Here are the relevant details:
26" wheels, 80mm suspension corrected.
71/73 angles for head/seat tubes
22.2" effective toptube, 12.4" BB height
415mm chainstays
Plenty of clearance for 2.4+ tires front and rear
V-brake specific
Great for riders up to 160# or so, standard lifetime warranty.

I'll get some pictures when it gets back here - drop me a line if interested.

I'm taking a page from Redcoat's book...


...and blowing off work to ride most of today. It's supposed to be 65 degrees!

Monday, February 23, 2009

Congratulations, Feldy!

From the famed creator of the famed "Nobody Cares That You Ride A 29er" t-shirt - a new addition to the fam!

From Feldman:

Optimus Destro Peabody, 11 lbs 6 oz!

Just kidding, he was a very average 7 lbs, 3 oz.

Born on Feb 21 at 10:02 AM.

Oh, yeah, and his real name is Asher Dov Peabody.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Lies, damned lies, and statistics


So as everyone knows, I'm a big geek, and I got upset about this article in the NY Times this morning.

This is a great example of not enough statistics to really tell the story. The article presents a graph which shows Japanese per-capita household income stayed relatively constant from about 1995 to 2005 (or even dropped a bit). Sounds horrible, right?

Here's the problem: there are a lot of ways to get a mean (or average), so it's not always a very useful number without some other figures to back it up.

If we have 10 Japanese people - Akira and his nine friends, we can get an average of $10,000 income in several ways:

A-Everyone makes exactly $10k.
B-Akira makes $91k, each friend makes $1k
C-Akira makes $1k, each friend makes $11k
etc, etc.

In other words, the average doesn't tell us much about whether or not *most* Japanese people are better off today than they were 10 years ago - it could be that really rich people are less rich, but everyone else is better off, or it could be that most people are really doing worse.

So if we want to know what actually happend to the typical Japanese household, we'd generally be better off looking at the median - which is the income level at which exactly half of our subjects fall above and half below the number in question. In combination with the mean (average), it will tell a much more useful story. Yet for some reason this basic information never makes it into this kind of reporting - even in a prestigious paper like the Times.

As an aside, some of the "problems" they report are hilarious:
-People re-using bath water to do laundry. Oh horrors!
-Whiskey sales down 80% - Noooo!
-Fewer people wanting to buy cars. Um, how is this bad again? Sounds like a big win for public transportation and bicycles to me...
-And best of all - the family that _watches a non-flatscreen TV_. That's pretty much like living in a cave and eating gruel with bugs in it, or so you might think based on the breathless description in the Times.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Jealousy


So Redcoat is stuck in southern Spain doing "research" in a national park with, like, hundreds of klicks of mountain bike trails. Here's a picture of him "commuting"...

Friday, February 20, 2009

Eat your heart out, Lance!


We don't need no stinkin' _indoor_ wind tunnel. Not when we've got the Coalton/High Plains trail and 40 mph headwinds.

Check the sweet TT position.

Thursday, February 19, 2009


This is going to be the world's shortest post. Here's Willem's cool new headbadge!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Seat lug/sleeve part two

I'm sure you're all about to wet yourselves with excitement - here's the conclusion.

First up, a shot of the lug/sleeve (let's just say "slug") installed on the seat tube and cleaned up. Mmm. Pointy.


Next up, I go ahead and tack the toptube in place, after positioning the slug where I want it. Note that I don't braze the slug in beforehand, as the flux and goop makes welding difficult and unpleasant, if not impossible (another lesson from the school of hard knocks, that). Here's a shot of the slug with the toptube tacked to it.


Finally, I weld up the frame as normal, then go back and flow a little 56% silver into the top and bottom of the slug, simply to keep any air pockets between the slug and the seat tube from messing up the powdercoat. The slug doesn't need this for structural reasons - the toptube and seatstay welds hold it in place just fine.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Belated Weekend Recipe

Ok, this is a two-parter. But it's not very hard, and it will make your friends think you're an absolute badass at cooking Indian food. It's super good, especially if you're not into super-spicy stuff (or cooking for someone who can't handle the heat) - this dish is extremely mild, but has a ton of flavor. Best of all, it's very easy to make. And it doesn't use any of that heart-attack-in-a-can ghee.

First off, the Naan. This is a lot easier than you think it is. Really.

Walt's Ultra-Garlic No-Ghee Naan

Mix up:
2 cups flour
1 tsp yeast
1 small potato, cooked and mashed (leave the skin!)
10 cloves of garlic, minced or crushed through a press (you can cut this back if you want - in fact I recommend cutting it back to 1 or 2 cloves if you don't like garlic or spiciness)
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
1 tsp salt
1 c warm H20
1 tbsp vegetable oil

Mix/Knead until you have a smooth dough (about 5 minutes), then cover and let rise for 20 minutes. Divide the dough into 6 portions, roll out as thin as you can, and cook on a HOT griddle (with a little bit of butter if you want them a little greasy) until they're lightly browned (they should also puff up) on each side.

Now, you need something to put on the Naan (actually, you should probably cook this while the Naan is rising):

Carmelized Onion Biryani

Simmer the following for 15 minutes, or until the broth is all absorbed:
1 c basmati rice
1/3 c lentils
6 cardamom pods, smashed (optional)
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 cinnamon stick, broken in half
1/2# cauliflower, in pieces
1 large carrot, diced
1 c frozen peas
1/3c raisins
2 1/2 c vegetable stock

Carmelize (meaning, cook with some butter and sugar in a frying pan until light brown) one chopped onion. Add to the rice and veggies. Mix. Serve over Naan.

24 hours of Old Pube'

From Nick (sorry, as of yet, no pictures):

WW/FD team has it's first win of the year!

Nick was 4th onto the bike after the 1mile Le Mans run and Yuki was 5th.

A pack of about 15 fast men soon formed on the Bitches rollers with Ryan Trebon riding away quite easily

As the first lap continued riders dropped off the group one by one from the high pace.

At one checkpoint we saw Ryan Trebon with the first aiders and a cholla sticking out of his shoulder.

As for the rest of the race, It was close. After heading into the night with a 25 minute lead we suffered some issues (involving me running fir over 2 miles to get a new wheel, and blowing up running out of food are 2.30 am).

We came out of the night just over 30 minutes down on first place with just over 5 hours left to race.

The team decided to go for the win a lap by lap we ate into their lead. I was last man out with a 4 minute deficit. I passed team Bitty Bitty rider with 1mile of the climb left. There was then a 1mile descent with was impossible to pass on. (this is why Yuki was 4th on first lap not 3rd since Alders and I dropped Tinker Jarez on it and Yuki was stuck behind him. 5th was over a minute behind our 4 man group riding at pro norba xc pace)

Anyhow, I digress. I pulled out the lead to finish 1minute 21seconds ahead of team Bitty Bitty for the second year in a row.

Yuki and co were 4people in a 5person category and won by a lap/over an hour.
He wore Ww kit all race with ergon jersey first lap and was on his '08 WW. 29er the whole race

I rode the Ww actiontec bike first and last Lap, and the dually for the others.

Not sure how Eric and Natalie did. Saw a glimps of them occasionaly but didn't get to talk.

Looking for a new goal now.

Nowork

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Weekend reading + early Old Pueblo race report!

Early word from the Old Pueblo course is that as of lap 1, Nick and Yuki are 2nd and 3rd, respectively, on their Waltworks 29ers!

More updates as I get them from Erik...

A few links I found interesting on a cold, snowy Saturday morning:

Shane Battier is a lot more interesting than you thought. I *think* this will be interesting even if you're not into basketball.

Watch Daniel Woods make V12 look like 5.7. Daniel climbs at the Spot (my climbing hangout) a lot. He's very impressive. And it's neat to see all the crazy stuff that's going on in Bishop these days. Probably not very interesting if you're not a climber, though.

If you're really stuck inside today, you can watch free opera performances from the Met. I'm kind of excited about Doctor Atomic - since it's about Oppenheimer and other Los Alamos (where I grew up) scientists.

Eating raw food only? Seems crazy to me, but it's an interesting article.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Beer Review: Upslope Pale Ale, AKA Looking Gift Horses in the Mouth


That's right, it's a beer review. No bike content today. Tune in on Monday for the end of the seat sleeve excitement - if you dare!

So in exchange for helping him assemble his new 5" travel "watch the Brit die spectacularly" 29er, Redcoat brought me over a bottle of wine (as yet unopened) and a sixer of the pale ale from Boulder's newest Brewery - Upslope.

So last night I drank a couple of them, whilst watching "Lost" with some folks from Sarah's lab.

And it's terrible. I feel kinda bad saying that - I like local breweries, I want these dudes to succeed, I love having more beer options, but, it's awful.

It reminds me most of someone pouring half a bottle of Avery IPA (one of my personal favorites) and half a bottle of Icehouse into the same glass. A little bit hoppy, a lot cheap and funky tasting. The fact that it's in a can, to me, doesn't help, but pouring it into a glass didn't make any difference.

To be fair, I'm a hoppy beer guy, and this beer is very low on the hoppiness scale (at least for a Pale Ale). Upslope also makes an IPA which might be better. But given that Avery is about 1/2 mile from my front door, I think I'll stick with the reigning champion of Boulder breweries for now.

As a side note, I have a Thomson 31.6mm x 330 Masterpiece seatpost that was accidentally shipped to me for sale. $85, shipping included. Drop me a line if interested.

Making sleeves pt. 1

There have been a lot of questions on the MTBR framebuilder's forum about this, so I thought I'd do a little pictorial.

I use a 2.5" holesaw to cut an offset cut in my sleeve/lug material, set up so that the saw is right at the edge (a quick tip: use duct tape to mark your mill table, if you have one, to tell where you need to line things up without spending lots of time with an edge finder every time).

For an 1 1/8" OD tube, you'll want 1.25" x .058" material for the sleeve (you can turn it down on the lathe to save a gram or two, but I don't generally bother). If you want to slap a sleeve on an externally butted tube, a 1.2 or 1.3mm wall external butt will work with 1.25"x.035" material, and a 1.0mm wall tube will take a 1.25"x.049" pretty well. In between, you'll need to ream out the inside of the .049", which isn't fun for anyone.

In any case, here's a picture of the sleeve/lug after cutting on the mill. You can see that I hit the edge pretty well!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

A purple heart for Snickers


A little run-in with a ragged edge of a PVC pipe right at ear height...

Snickers will never manage to be a competent shop dog, I'm afraid.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Is it weird...

...that at our friend Cynthia's bike-geek party last night (BTW, great chili, C) Sarah and I were the only two people who rode our bikes?

It was 45 degrees, too. Not like, bitter cold, or raining, or anything. I figure riding around town is free training, personally. Plus I don't get stuck in traffic.

The WW/Fuentes team did a good job representing at the Mountain Sun, though - we had like 15 people at the table drinking stout, of whom at least 12 rode their bikes. I wish I'd had a camera to take a picture of the bike rack in front of the bar - a huge pile of our townies locked to one another completely randomly.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

BRAIN Gibberish

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, BRAIN is Bicycle Retail And Industry News. It's a magazine that I get at random intervals (without requesting it or, thank god, paying for it) which contains mainly poorly-written articles about new bike shops opening and ideas about how to sell bicycles to people.

In short, if you had a choice, you'd probably pick Ranger Rick or McCall's to read while sitting on the can. Or a Count Chocula box. Anything but BRAIN. It's awful.

But, because I have some kind of mental problem, I always read it anyway, or at least skim it. And the latest issue has what might be my favorite piece of unintentionally stupid writing ever. I can't find it online, but I've reproduced most of the best bits here.

Entitled "Bicycle Industry Positioned Well for New Era of Frugality" (by the esteemed Gregg Bagni, who is apparently the president of a "business strategy firm focused on the enthusiast mindset"), this fine piece of literature is ostensibly intended to provide timely tips for running a healthy bike business during bad economic times, while adding some cheerful pep talk into the mix to get all our chins up. Unfortunately, it quickly goes off the rails:

-The tips for cutting costs include such gems as "Turn lights off, turn down the heat, use energy efficient transportation. You get the idea!" (note: these are *all* of the cost-saving ideas presented.)

Er. What? Are there lots of bicycle businesses out there who leave the lights on all night and the heat turned up to 85? This sounds like a great way to save a buck or two on your home utility bills (actually, come to think of it, maybe Gregg read about it in McCall's himself) but not really a strategy for running a profitable business.

-The "Cash" section is equally hilarious. I quote:
"Cash means muscling through hard times or buying a weak and annoying competitor - cheap...today, high debt means you're screwed." (say the "muscling through" and "weak and annoying" parts like professional wrestling promoter Vince McMahon for extra emphasis!)

Well, that's insightful. Wait, being in debt is bad? Having lots of money is good? Crap! I've been going about this all wrong! Watch out, my annoying and weak competitors (I'm looking at you, Rody and Steve)!

Section summary: "To run a good business, you should buy up bad businesses. But you should conserve your money and not go into debt, too." Sounds like a good recipe for turning lots of money into much less to me.

-Next up is "Creativity" (my personal favorite).

"Now is the time to go overboard with creative, well thought-out approaches."

This one steals a page from the old Simpsons joke about self-help tapes - "Get Confident, Stupid!" Unfortunately, "creative, well-thought out" things are in high demand at *all* times - if you're weren't doing them before, it's pretty unlikely that you'll start now.

"Do six things for customers at 120 percent efficiency instead of 12 at 60 percent!"

Mathematics: fail. Stupid motivational speaker boilerplate: fail. Good business advice: fail.

"Eschew borg-like consolidation; focus on individualism."


Star Trek: The Next Generation: fail. Everyone knows that the borg DID become individuals after the "I, Borg" episode. Jeez.

Section summary: "I picked most of this stuff up from my JV basketball coach."

-"Confusion" (the most aptly named section, and one which I produce here in it's entirety for your edification and entertainment)

"Markets are a planetary paradox. What seemed safe is now risky; what was once risky now seems safe. Data and evidence don't fit any model. But the upside of chaos could spawn a revolution in thinking. Don't be afraid to be ahead of the curve. Stay agile, be alert and foster a sense of urgency."

I don't think I'd leave Gregg in charge of anything more difficult than coaching a peewee soccer team or feeding my cat while I'm out of town (and I'm unable to explain how he is the president of an actual company). How does something like this get published?

They should have run a counterpoint editorial (anyone know who said this?):
"I’ll keep it short and sweet - Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business."

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Weekend recipe: Same-Day Pizza Dough


I spent *years* trying to find a good recipe for pizza dough. Especially one that could be made the same day. With no luck.

Well, I've modified a recipe from my "Bread" book (the geekiest baking book of all time) and I think I've got it. They say you have to do a lot of complicated crap and let things rise overnight. Not so - the key is a little sugar to boost the yeast at the start (sort of like "turbo charging your ride" with ceramic bearings!)

Walt's same-day super-good pizza dough

Starter:
1/4c flour
1 tsp yeast
1 tsp sugar
1/3c warm water

Mix the yeast, water, and sugar in a small bowl, and let it sit somewhere warm for 10 minutes or so - you should have a runny, bubbly batter. Now mix in the flour, cover the bowl up, and leave in that same warm spot for 30 minutes. You should end up with a bubbly, goopy mess. But never fear, that's what you want.

Main dough:
3 1/2c flour
1 1/4c warm water
1 tsp yeast
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
starter

If you have a stand mixer, throw in every ingredient *except* the olive oil and mix on the lowest speed with a dough hook for 3 minutes. Then add the olive oil and mix for another 6 minutes.

If you don't have a stand mixer, mix everything in a large bowl (including the oil) and knead enthusiastically for 8 minutes. Yes, 8 whole minutes. Yes, enthusiastically. Suddenly that Kitchenaid isn't looking like such a stupid purchase, eh? There's a reason bakers (at least back in the day) had forearms like Popeye...

Cover the bowl with the dough and put it in it's happy warm spot. Leave it for 2 hours or so, then punch it down and leave it for another 30 minutes or so to rest (and let the gluten relax so you can shape/stretch it).

Boom! You're done. Practice your pizza dough throwing technique and put some cornmeal down on the baking sheet, then go to town.

Final tip: I've found that baking the dough (once you've got it stretched/flattened out on the baking sheet) for 5 minutes or so before adding sauce and toppings works out best.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Hill climb musings

So as many of you know, I am an idiot and am trying to break a very fast record time at the Winter Park Hillclimb.

I have 4.5 months left to get in shape (I've been "training") since the start of January, and I'm still working on figuring out some good benchmarks to estimate how much faster I need to get.

I found this simple hillclimb calculator and I've been playing around with it this morning.

Recall that my time on this 5.3 mile, 2062 foot climb last year was 33:24. I also know that I weighed about 155 pounds and that my bike was roughly 18 pounds (a singlespeed with cyclocross tires).

Punching in all those numbers means that I put out about 340 watts (making the assumption that rolling and air resistance accounted for 100w) for the climb last year. Not too shabby at all, I think. I guess I don't know that much about wattage, though.

One way to get faster is to lose weight. The bike can't lose much - maybe a pound or so. So let's say I go from an 18 pound bike to a 17 pound one. Result: an 11 second improvement. That's not going to be enough.

But I can lose weight (and in fact I'm down to around 148 pounds now). So if we assume I put out the same power, ride a 17 pound bike, and weigh 148: Now I'm down to 32:02 (recall that the record is 31:14). That's encouraging! In fact, it's so encouraging that I'm putting this picture of Mike Rasmussen up on the wall in the shop as encouragement!

Erm. No. That's disgusting. Sarah would kill me, assuming I hadn't already died of malnutrition. Sheesh.

I think I can lose a few more pounds without sacrificing muscle or overall health. So let's say I'm 145 on race day: the new predicted time is 31:27 - pretty much at record pace.

Alternately, how much power would I have to add at my current weight? If I'm 148 pounds, and I put out 345 watts: 31:22.

145#, 345W: 30:48!
140#, 340W: 30:28!
140#, 345W: 29:51 (ok, now we're getting silly)

So basically, for every extra watt of power (at about 145 pounds weight) I save about 8 seconds. For every pound of weight lost (off bike or rider) at 340 watts, I save 12 seconds.

I'd like to both lose a few more pounds and add power (though since I don't have a powertap, that's hard to measure). And since the Winter Park climb is currently snowed under, I need some local goals that I can compare to. More on that in a week or two - there are several local climbs that might suffice as comparisons.

The grand scheme


Ok, this is a rant about ceramic bearings on bicycles. First off, keep in mind that I think ceramic bearings are actually a pretty great idea for bikes. I just don't think they're great for the same reasons as the people trying to sell them. More on that in a minute.

Here's some typically gushy prose from the bicycle press:

"Made from pure Silicon Nitride material with extreme high density from uniform compaction (3.25 g/cm3), the micro-structural development of this material during manufacture is second to none. These high precision Grade 5, SI3N4 pure ceramic balls are 5/1,000,000" from exactly round in sphericity. 60% lighter weight, and 7 times harder than steel, friction is reduced to near zero. Resistance to heat is 8 times greater than that of steel while there is simply no comparison for corrosion resistance."

Ok, step by step:

-"Exactly round in sphericity"? Ok, so they're _exactly_ round in roundness. Nice. Just a quibble, really, but is the word "sphericity" (if it's even a word) really needed here?

-"60% lighter weight". This is a penny wise/pound foolish kind of statement. Sure the actual BALLS weigh 40 or 50% less (according to Wikipedia, anyway) than steel ones. But how much do all the actual balls in the bearings, in, say, your bottom bracket weigh? After all, the whole assembly (bearings, seals, races, cups, etc) is well under 100 grams for an external bearing setup. Giving the benefit of the doubt to the bearings themselves (since I don't want to pull apart my bottom bracket today to find out) I'd say that, at most, they comprise 50% of the weight of the BB. Most likely it's a lot less, but for the sake of argument, let's say it's 50g of bearings. Subtract 40% from that and you have a mighty 20g of weight savings, and you've paid $100-150 for it. If you're the type of person who goes out and buys titanium bolt kits and shaves knobs off their tires with a knife at night while your friends are out drinking beer, then more power to you. For the rest of us, 20g isn't worth $150, methinks. Heck, you could hire a coach for a month or two for that price - I'm pretty sure that would make you a lot faster.

-"Friction is reduced to near zero." Well, I hate to tell you this, but conventional steel bearings ALSO reduce friction to "near zero". Even a *crappy* steel ball bearing set will give you efficiency well in excess of 99.8%, and it's safe to say that with any kind of decent bearings at all (ie, what you'd find on any quality bicycle) you're wasting no more than a tenth of a percent or so of your effort on bearing resistance.

If .001 of your total effort going to waste really chaps your hide, I'd suggest improving your fitness by the same tiny fraction might be a better use of your time than spending a ton of money on bearings. But what do I know?

-"Resistance to heat is 8 times greater than that of steel". When was the last time you were riding 120mph and fried your hub bearings? Don't you *hate* it when that happens?

I'm sure if I was running a 150,000 rpm centrifuge or something, this heat resistance would be great. On a bike, not so much a big deal. And before you say "Repack", let me remind you that those guys were riding BEACH CRUISERS. Not a great counterexample.

-"there is simply no comparison for corrosion resistance". NOW you're going somewhere. This is actually worthwhile - steel bearings *do* corrode and have trouble in wet (enough) conditions. This is a benefit worth having on a bike!

But here's the thing - I *only* want ceramic bearings for corrosion resistance. Lower grade, lower "sphericity" bearings would be *just fine*, as long as they weren't any worse than steel bearings. I'd be happy to pay, say, an extra $10 for ceramic headset bearings that wouldn't corrode. Ditto for everywhere else on the bike. What I don't want, though, is to spend $800 to get a bunch of minute (in fact, with a rider onboard, probably not even measurable) performance benefits from aerospace-grade bearings.

Since bike snobs are constantly replacing perfectly good bikes with this year's latest thing anyway, I'm guessing the manufacturers aren't too worried about longer-lasting bearings, though, and they see the potential to profit from people who don't understand that the performance benefits they're touting are a couple orders of magnitude away from being even perceptible.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Some days it's good to live in Boulder...


Check out the old man bike in action...

In other news, does anyone need any of the following stuff?
-100mm WCS stem, lightly used (not scratched up or anything, just ridden a few times). $50.
-Avid BB-5 disc brakes (front and rear). Brand new, but no rotors - $50 for the set.
-Thomson 25.4mmx330mm seatpost. Brand new. Great for older bikes with weird seat tube sizes (you can just get a shim from 26.2 or whatever to 25.4). Or great for a BMX. $40.

Wow. That's gotta be the least entertaining post in a while...

Monday, February 02, 2009

Waste not, want not

People often ask me "Mr. Cippolini - which is the greater joy: making love to a beautiful supermodel, or winning a stage of the Tour de France?"

I mean, they ask me "do you have any scrap tubing I can have?"

I get asked that first one too, though. Sometimes.

Anyway, with the exception of tiny little cutoff bits, I really don't usually have scrap tubes laying around - because I re-use almost everything.

Here's a picture of the reject tube bucket. There are 3 things that go into "Homer" here:

-Tubes I cut too short, or that I mitered wrong, or that I bent wrong, or did who knows what to mess up. These will (mostly) live to see another day on a smaller frame. I take a magic marker and write the part number and what's wrong, then try to remember to root through when I'm building a bike for which the tube might work well.
-Tubes I ordered that I decided I didn't like or want. This usually has to do with some kind of miscalculation on my part, but sometimes someone will change their mind mid-stream and decide, for example, that they want a compact road bike instead of a, say, tandem Penny Farthing (just kidding, I'd never build a compact road bike). I usually don't charge anyone for the tubes unless they've made me order something *really* weird, because I figure I'll use everything sooner or later.
-Orphans. Orphan tubes, that is. This isn't the kind of shop in Dickens, after all. Usually things like 1" steerers (I like to keep a couple around to make sure I can do a 1" fork quickly if needed) and other parts that would get easily lost if thrown in with other stuff, but aren't numerous or important enough for their own box on the shelf.

My favorite re-use trick: Cut off the top of the steerer (which is .049x1.125" OX platinum) and use the pieces to make fork crowns. Great stuff, and especially nice since the steerers come 15" long stock (a bunch of that's gonna get cut off and thrown away unless I use it for something). Also saves me a buck or two on each fork, since I don't have to buy 4130 by the foot to use to make crowns. In some cases, of course, this won't work (for CX forks, for example, I use 1" stock for the crowns) but I'm easily able to use all the extra steerer material I have.

In any case, I only make a trip to the recycling center about once every 6 months, which is something I'm pretty proud of. Reusing stuff beats recycling it any day, and the amount of effort we put into making things out of refined metals, to then throw them away astounds me.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

A bad few weeks for Boulder bicyclists


So, to recap:

2 weeks ago, some fellow riding without lights or a helmet (at least according to the BPD, though I've also heard that he had both) gets run over from behind on 30th, lands in a coma. For some reason the Daily Camera has pulled this story from their website - weird.

Next, last Thursday, some genius with his helmet on his handlebars hits a pedestrian (or is obstructed by him, or something) and crashes and fractures his skull/vomits blood/nearly dies.

Then, on Friday, some lady ran over John Breaux while high as a kite (at least it looks that way) on prescription meds.

Now, this is just the stuff that made the paper. I'm sure there were a bunch of other minor accidents with minor or no injuries in the same time period. Some of those unreported accidents were even dumber, probably.

If you're riding with no lights at night, or decide that putting your helmet on your handlebars on the bike path is a cool way to roll, or think that taking mind-altering drugs and driving your PT cruiser off the road is ok, well, then I think you're an idiot. And apparently there's plenty of idiocy to go around in Boulder these days, on both sides of the white line. Heck, I saw multiple people out riding yesterday on highway 36 in a strong, gusty crosswind with, you guessed it, no helmets. And I saw people talking on phones, texting, and one lady putting on makeup while driving on this same road.

This is why I ride mountain bikes - at least if I wreck it'll be my own fault.