Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Reading between the lines

For the background, read this Daily Camera article.

Now for the rant.

Let's see:

- the Boulder police have a bunch of unclaimed bikes (these are mostly abandoned, but some of them are stolen and the original owner is never located).

- to keep from being trapped under the piles of rusted crap (remember, this is a college town), they auction of the more valuable bikes (if you've ever been to these auctions, they sell bikes for as little as $20 or so - so "valuable" is a relative term here) and presumably use the money for something worthwhile.

- after the auction, there is some atrocious, nonfunctional crap left over. It has to go somewhere, so rather than sticking it in the landfill, the police allow Community Cycles to come get it and try to make some of it functional and useful again.

- now somehow the police are worried that some bikes are *ending up outside Boulder*.

This whole situation is absurd. The police are *getting rid of what they consider garbage*. If Community Cycles wants to ship them to Africa, or give them to homeless people in Boulder, or heck, cut them up to make a steam organ, THAT'S THEIR BUSINESS. They are taking something otherwise useless and finding a use for it - how can it possibly matter where the bikes end up?

And for the record, nobody who wants to earn a bike there is ever turned away, to my knowledge. So thanks to CC, I think Boulder is adequately supplied with crappy but functional bikes.

The whole situation screams out "minor bureaucrat on a power trip." I'd love to hear the whole story, but at least now I know that those rascals at CC can't take our hard-earned trash bikes and ship them off for some godless communist in Libya to enjoy. Thank god!

More whining. Also, Minh's frame.

As everyone knows, I am a huge sissy and hate the cold.

Well, today I am doing a complete turnabout and denouncing the freakin' HEAT. Good lord! It's like 80 degrees! What happened to 65 and sunny?

Of course, come July, I'll be reminiscing about these 80 degree spring days while I roast to death in the shop in the 95 degree heat.

Rest assured, dear readers, I shall inform you of this, and any of the other many minor discomforts which plague my existence.

Here's Minh's frame, since I want to salvage some shred of interest in posting this. I forgot to get a shot of the fork with it, but it's a nice 430mm chainstay non-suspension 29er singlespeed. S-bends, sliders, the works. Good stuff.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Taylor Phinney isn't all that


4:16 for a 4k TT? Give me a couple more weeks at the track and I'm right there...as long as we shorten the distance by at least a kilometer, that is.

The kid is sick. Awesome.

Edit: James found a picture of me doing one of my casual Kilo efforts. Check out those legs! I look pretty damn fast - watch out, Taylor! And, uh, also Griz, or whoever it is Nick says is fast.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

How to woo a framebuilder, pt. 2

Got a polite email today from a fellow who had narrowed his choices to a few different framebuilders, and wanted to know why one of my bikes would be better than ____ or ____.

Folks, there's nothing really wrong with the question, but here's the thing (or the things):

-We all know each other, mostly. I would *never* say anything bad about a fellow framebuilder to get someone's business, and I am pretty sure the same goes for most other builders regarding me. Pretty much any builder who's been around for more than a few years is a reputable, responsible person who will do a great job for you or die trying. There are a few who aren't, but I'm not about to publicly badmouth them - that's just bad karma.

-You're not going to get me (or anyone else) into a bidding war. If Billybob cycles will do it cheaper, or faster, or both, great - but don't tell me this, because it's not going to get me to give you a cheaper price or a quicker turnaround time. Honestly, if you get someone who *is* willing to bargain like that, you probably want to run the other direction as fast as you can. Info on pricing and wait times is right there on my site - heck, you can even track how I'm doing in terms of when people paid deposits and when they get their bikes, if you're willing to watch the waitlist enough.

The best way to figure out who you want to build your new frame is to send some emails and make some phone calls, and try to get a sense of how the process will work and how well the builder understands your situation and desires. Lots of people can build you a great bike, so if you're even a little bit conscientious about doing your research, you're virtually guaranteed to be happy in the end.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Tuesday Night 10 second post

...no bicycle content...

So I'm watching Stargate SG-1 on Hulu whilst waiting for Sarah to call for a ride home (there's a foot of slush on the ground and she's on her road bike) - and I just watched an ad for Etrade (an online stock trading service) which featured... wait for it...

Talking babies.

Yes. If you are the kind of person who is easily persuaded by babies with dubbed voices talking about the stock market, you should probably take all of your savings and put it into stocks, then trade them around. Great plan.

Sigh. They'll probably make a fortune off the morons.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Weekend recipe: Tres Leches Cake!

Sarah made this (not our recipe) for a student of hers. I ate about half of it before it left the house.

Cake:

5 eggs, separated (meaning, put the yolks in one bowl, and the whites in another)
1/3 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 c flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 c sugar

Syrup:

1 can evaporated milk
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 cup whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp dark rum

Do:
-Preheat oven to 350
-Beat yolks and 3/4c sugar until "light and fluffy", then beat in milk, vanilla, flour, and baking powder.
-Beat eggs whites until they're making peaks, beat a little more and add the cream of tartar.
-Mix in the remaining sugar, then mix the yolk and white mixtures together.
-Pour batter into a 13x9 pan (greased/buttered) and bake for 30 minutes, or until you can stick a chopstick in the middle and it comes out clean.

-Mix up all the syrup ingredients.
-Poke a ton of holes in the cake with a fork, then start dumping the syrup on it and brushing it around until it has all soaked in.
-Top with cocoa powder, or mango slices, or ice cream, or cinnamon, and consume!

-Beat

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Sad, sad, sad

Yes, it's been at least 5 years now since I sold off the EXC (and before that, the RM, the KDX, and all the others) but I hung onto these Sidis on the *off chance* I would once again someday ride dirtbikes.

Not gonna happen. I think it's safe to say that at this stage of my life, I just don't have the appetite for injury that really riding fast on dirtbikes entails ("fast" is a relative term here, I was a terrible hare scramble rider).

I had some great times with these boots, but now they're going on Craigslist as Sarah and I work to do a *major* cleanout of the house.

Interested in snatching them up before some lowlife CL lurker does? Give me $100 (shipping included in the US). They are size 44, I believe, though it's not marked on them anywhere. All the buckles work, basically in great (if dirty/banged up) shape.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Beating my head against the wall

...the 1:30 Kilo wall, that is. Apparently my 1:27 last month was actually *beginner's luck*. Scary. So long story short, I think Miguel and I officially established that we suck today. My dreams of a 1:20 Kilo with just some extra technique and practice are officially consigned to the dustbin - I will need to make some serious efforts to get faster to manage it.

And on the bike building front, I'm beating my head against the parts wall - seems everything is out of stock this time of year, as manufacturers rush to get bikes on the showroom floor for the spring season. Of course, I'm not in a position to buy 1000 sets of Ultegra, so I have to scramble around with 4 or 5 different suppliers to get what I need for customers - and right now, even that's not enough. Steve's frame has been done for almost 2 weeks, and I ordered most of his parts almost a month ago - but we're still at least 2 weeks out from having everything in the mail, because *everything* is taking forever to get.

Sigh. Whine. It's friday, go have some fun. We have a big wet dump of snow, so maybe I'll go suffer at the track again tomorrow. 1:25?

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Tony's bike, part 1

Tony wants a lot of interesting things for this frame, so I am doing a lot of (at least to me) fairly unusual fab work to make it happen. Here's a brief photo essay of the first step - building the seat tube and pivot assemblies. Keep in mind, part 2 won't be posted for a while, because I'm waiting for some head tube stock to finish the front triangle, and it may take a few weeks (I hope!)

I'll explain the head tube thing (it's pretty neat) in detail when I have the samples in hand from True Temper. Suffice to say it will be a big step forward for long travel bikes.

So, where to begin? In this case, at the bottom bracket shell. It's an 83mm jobbie (Tony will use Saint cranks - it's a long story but he needs a wide stance width/q factor, plus this will allow a Maxle rear end and proper chainline if one becomes available) from Paragon.

First I miter some hardware to hold the main pivot (4130, made on the lathe) and the BB shell. This stuff (the bracket) is provided by Sherwood at Ventana, and I don't usually use it, but it made sense in this case, with some modifications (shown above) to get the spacing I wanted. So here are the pieces I use to attach the main pivot.

Next up, start welding things together. Here are some pictures of the process of attaching the pivot to the shell. This has to be very precisely mitered and joined, because even a tiny bit of misalignment will make the rear end line up wrong.

Checking the alignment here - if things aren't fitting tightly, I still have a little bit of wiggle room to remiter and straighten everything out. Note that I am using Tony's old rear triangle here, since it's in fine shape (if a bit dirty).

Here's the whole assembly welded up. Mitering the seat tube to this is a major pain (especially given that I'm using a weird 34.9mm seat tube) but it's easier than mitering the tiny pivot tower parts to the seat tube...

Now on to the upper pivot. The tower comes mitered for a 34.9mm seat tube, which is great, but I don't want to weld it directly to the .035" wall seat tube - it would not be strong enough. So I have to make a sleeve that the pivot tower fits *into* which will slide onto the seat tube with it. Here's a shot of that part (note that I ended up screwing this particular one up and had to make a new one, but you get the idea).

I weld in the pivot tower, with the sleeve and tower installed on the seat tube. The whole assembly is a tight slip fit, so I want everything in place before I do the welding - it would be extremely hard to relocate it after the welding distortion essentially locks it in place.

The seat tube assembly. I still need to braze in the sleeve at the top and bottom, as well as make the seatpost fitting. And of course, nothing is going to be finished until I have a head tube ready to go.


To make the 31.60 Joplin seatpost fit, I'm using some 4140 stock that I'll turn down to slip-fit (and be welded into) the .035" wall seat tube. More pictures of that next time. The Joplin is really neat, if heavy, and conveniently enough, 1.375"x.065" is a near-perfect fit, so I don't have to do any lathe work on the inside.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

One of the worst photos yet, and what's coming soon

First, for long-suffering Gary, here's a quick and godawful shot of your fluxy frame and fork about to be delivered to the powdercoater. This is a do-it-all 29er with fender/rack/rohloff/kitchen sink capabilities, which is why it's *covered* with brazeons, bosses, and flux. Must be half a pound of brazeons on that darn thing!

Anyway, the blog has sucked for the last week or so, but I have a couple of good excuses (one, that I was really sick, and two... well, you'll have to wait a bit to find out). But there is cool stuff coming, trust me - to whit:

-I'm starting work (and will do some fairly extensive documenting of it here) tomorrow on Tony's freeride-esque 29er. Big deal, you say... well, it'll have a 4" travel Joplin adjustable height seatpost, a tapering steerer fork/headset/headtube for ultra-stiffness (not to mention the 45mm downtube), an 83mm BB shell, and lots of other odd goodies. Should be a worthwhile project for you geeks to check out during the building process, as well as a great ride when it's done.

-I'll be doing a cool semi-lugged crown through axle rigid fork for Adrian (every time I type that, I want to half-close my eyes and shout "Adrian" in a thick Philly accent...) in New England, which should be pretty neat. I'll try to get photos of that up as well.

-I will attempt to break my smoking-fast 1:27 Kilo record. Probably on Friday when it starts snowing again and our dreams of riding singletrack in the next 2 months are crushed yet again under the jackboots of old man Winter.

-I'll probably post a recipe to make Carolynn happy and piss off every other reader of the blog. :P

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Andy's new ride

Not much to say - nice 4" travel all-rounder with direct mount FD (the bomb, now standard on pretty much everything I build unless you want a clamp-on for some reason) and all the trimmings. Thanks, Andy, for being so patient (there was a snafu when I ordered the wrong length shock and he waited an extra couple of weeks).

For the record, most of the trails here are still not dry. Andy claims to have ridden on dirt (not mud, not slush) to take this photo, I'm not sure I believe him, as I hiked Shanahan and the Mesa trail yesterday and it was a total slopfest.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

From Redcoat


Stole this picture from his blog as it pretty accurately depicts what conditions are like here - mud, slush, and more mud. For the last 3 months. Yuck! No wonder the track seems so fun...

Sarah has joined me on the sick list, so I'm taking care of her, trying to drink a lot of tea for my own sore throat, and doing a bit of work. Which is, long story short, just a list of excuses for why I'm working so slow this week.

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Boulder County Bike vs. Car Survey

Check it out here: Daily Camera.

The survey itself is pretty pathetic - misspelled words, fairly weird questions and odd multiple choice answers that often leave out obvious options. But whatever. Go fill it out if you live in Boulder.

Tapered steerer suspension forks... coming soon. Take the survey!

I know a few of my builder friends read this (and even if you're not a framebuilder, you can chime in if you'd like). Please take my short survey (or just read the accompanying links, which should be pretty exciting to big/aggro riders who like custom steel bikes):

Click here to take the survey.


For those who are unfamiliar, this is a new headset standard being built by Cane Creek that utilizes the existing Inset (44mm) cup size to allow 1 1/8" top and 1 1/2" lower bearings for tapered steerer tube forks (this is primarily going to be of interest to mountain bike folks).

We are in the process of having steel head tube stock made for this project, and would like to know what (of several) type of head tube potential users would prefer. If you are interested in this, please take the survey (there is plenty of background material linked to it if you want to read further).

Thanks!

Monday, March 08, 2010

Sick!

I have my usual post-minor-illness lung/chest infection, and Dr. Z is in Spain, so until I find a hookup for some Zmax, or go to urgent care and sit in the waiting room for 3 hours (just to try to convince them, as usual, that YES, I ALWAYS get this, and no, I'm not going to just get better without the antibiotics), I'm not going to be doing any significant work in the shop - it's freakin' cold out there, and I feel horrible.

Sorry to everyone who's waiting. On the plus side, Sarah had a great birthday party and I hardly noticed that I was sick when I had about half a gallon of sake in me.

Saturday, March 06, 2010

Calling all carpenters!

Sarah and I are looking for some bookshelves. Pretty simple, right? Well, not so much. We have some odd requirements:
-Made in the US, not out of wood chopped out of some rainforest.
-Modular enough that they can be disassembled and moved.
-Capable of holding quite a bit of crap (we have a lot of books - I'd say we want something in the range of 60-80 cubic feet, assuming the shelves are about 1 foot deep).
-Reasonably attractive.
-Durable enough to last for decades.

And yes, I have been barred from trying to build something like this out of metal and welding it together. Not exactly my area of expertise. If some type of machined metal bracket was needed, I could certainly help, though.

Think you can build something like this? Want to trade for a custom frame? Drop me a line.

For reference, here are some ideas that we thought were interesting:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/popsie/391788225/
http://homeinteriordesignthemes.com/2009/06/rubik-cube-style-dynamic-shelving/
http://www.smartfurniture.com/shop/images/catalog/newpics/mediastorage_0308f001_maple.jpg

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Random shot of Gary's fork crown, thoughts on Aliens

First off, I'll throw the bike geeks a bone: here's a picture of Gary's fork crown. Yeah, ok, not all that fascinating. But it's the only picture I took that came out decently, so at least it's something.

Second, Sarah and I (plus some friends) went to see Aliens at the IFS last night. I love the movie, but I never really thought of it as a campy comedy type thing - but people were shouting out the lines for the actors, booing Burke, laughing at Hicks, Hudson, and Vasquez, and generally behaving (minus the costumes) like they were at the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And I have to admit - the movie has been so influential of sci-fi action films, that many of the tropes that it invented now seem funny, cliched, and even campy.

Long story short, it was a great evening. But the combination of a minor cold and the late night (combined with several hoppy beers and not much water beforehand) have me feeling pretty crappy today - and it's 55 degrees. I should be riding my bike. Damn you, James Cameron, and damn you, Stone IPA.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

The best thing about a hybrid...

...is that *every* roadie tries to chase you when you pass them. 50 pound overweight dudes, 60 year old ladies, tri-geeks, Cat1 studs, it doesn't matter, it seems. If I pass them, their own pace/training plan gets immediately thrown out the window and I have to spend the next 5 minutes sprinting to get them off my wheel (I really dislike having people draft me who I don't know/am not intentionally riding with).

So long story short, my 2 hour "spin" yesterday turned into a sprint workout, because it was 55 degrees and everyone and their mother was out riding. C'est la vie, I suppose. I will either get in great shape or collapse.

Monday, March 01, 2010

Weekend recipe: Yeasty Waffles!

The only downside to these tasty waffles is that you have to do some minimal (the night before) planning ahead to make them.

Mix up the night before:
1c flour
1 tsp yeast
1 1/4c warm milk
2 tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar

Cover the mixture and leave it overnight. It'll rise and turn into a crazy foamy mess.

In the morning, mix in:
1 egg
1/4 tsp baking soda

Then cook in your waffle maker. Super awesome!