Kent's Bikes

My friend Aurilee and i both felt like a bike ride, even though it was getting late. Auri had borrowed Kent's cool little folding bike for her upcoming trip to San Diego and she needed to unfold it and test ride it. I'm happy to have my bike back, but i figured it only made sense to ride Kent's Octocog. So we did the Kent's Bikes ride!

We unfolded the Dahon on the sidewalk and the tires seemed low. Now there is a lot that is cool about this little folding bike, but the coolest thing is that the seat post has a built in pump! I got a funny look from a guy walking down the sidewalk as i was using the seat to pump up the rear tire!

The front tire didn't, however, behave as well. As much as we pumped, it wasn't inflating. It was time to change a flat. Now there's no doubt that cycling in the rain, in the cold and in the dark, is really quite enjoyable. Changing a flat, not so much. So we rolled the bike a block to my apartment for the repair.



I flipped the bike upside down and got out the tools.



Auri removed the wheel, no quick release on this folder!



And she took the tire off the rim to get at the tube...





and discovered a MESS! The valve had broken off and the tube was filled with slime. Slime is a green goo designed to fill a small cut or puncture so you don't get a flat. A big cut, or in this case, the valve base tearing, is something Slime doesn't fill. But it does leak out and get all over everything. It's pretty gross.



But my man Kent is always prepared. There were two 16 inch tubes in the seat bag. Auri quickly replaced the tube and put the tire back on the bike.



Once we had it pumped up (with a floor pump, not the seat post!) we were ready for our ride!

It didn't take Auri long to decide she liked this bike.



"This is FUN!!"

We did a nice circuit of the neighborhood, maybe three and a half miles.



"Weeeeeeeeeee".

The wee wheels really turn tight!



Kent's Bikes



The two of us with two of Kent's Bikes at Cal Anderson Park.

It was a very enjoyable ride!

The Correct Bottom Bracket

I'm not the best mechanic around -- i'm certainly getting better, The weekly volunteer repair parties have made a difference -- but i still don't have 'the touch' and i can get very frustrated.

The front derailleur is challenging for the best of them. I really struggle with it. Once i had the bike back together i was surprised how badly the front was shifting. I fought with it for quite a while, and then i rode it without shifting the front. All told i spent a good portion of three days fighting with it. I was very frustrated!

So i called my friend Dave, who can fix anything. He relished the challenge. We spent quite a while with it. He actually completely removed the derailleur and started over. We just couldn't get it to work. Then we took a look at the bottom bracket -- even took the cranks off.

And sure enough, the bottom bracket seemed to stick out 5 or 6 millimeters. That doesn't sound like much, but it was enough to prevent the front derailleur from ever working. We put the old crunchy bottom bracket back in and i rode to Bike Works. It shifted ok, not great, but a massive difference from the with the new bottom bracket.

The great guys at Bike Works suggested a 113 mm bottom bracket. I had originally bought a 118 mm bottom bracket because that is what the one i removed said on it. When i got the new one home i placed them next to each other and they are exactly the same - maybe 1 mm off, maybe not that much. Apparently, the old bottom bracket was labeled wrong!




I put it in, and almost like magic, the shifting worked! I struggled for days with that wrong size! But now it's working very nicely thank you very much! Thanks to Homer, Karl, Steve & Ryan at Bike Works who spent some time figuring out this weird problem!

Bike Works Auction

The Bike Works Auction was a great success. We worked hard and raised a lot of money. It was also kind of a coming out ceremony for my bike's new paint job. I got some nice comments.




When the auction was over, there was a group of us who had helped clean up who and we rode together. Auri and Davey and Joe and his friend Chris from Chicago all set out from south of downtown on a gorgeous chilly night, another great after rain ride. It was a Sunday night and the streets were pretty empty. We had a really lovely ride.




Joe & Aurilee at a stop light. Joe's a very animated, fun guy, but he looks so serious here.



Chris took a photo of the whole group -- the streets were so empty at 11pm on Sunday that we could stop and play.




That's me taking a picture. Notice the bunch of flowers on my back.




There were decorations left over from the Auction so we brought home some for our selves. Who says you can't carry things on a bike! Joe & i had flowers on our back, and Davey brought Balloons for his 1 year old daughter. The balloons were fun, blowing around, sometimes in the face of the rider behind him, sometimes up in front where he was!

assembled and riding

With not a little frustration the bike is no longer parts spread across my living room but is a bike again. It's not my beloved, perfectly dialed in bike, but that will come. The fenders rattle and both derailleurs need lots of adjustment. I've been riding it three days now each day i make a few more adjustments. It's a little frustrating, but i know i'll get there. The new wheels will be here in a week or two.

I really missed my bike. My friend Kent was very kind to loan me a bike that kept me riding while the Bianchi was in parts, and that's a fun bike. But i missed my bike. This has happened to me before over the years, when i don't have access to my bike, MY BIKE, i tend to get depressed. I'm happy to have it back, even though it needs work.

And it looks GREAT. I've always kind of depended on NOT having the nicest bike locked in the bike rack. That might not be the case any more. On the first ride i took Adam down to Recycled Cycles in the University district and the clerks, one who i know, actually came outside to look at it. It looks great. Thanks to Seattle Powder Coat for doing a really good job.



Today i pulled up in front of Bike Works and started locking up my bike. There was a little girl, maybe six years old, who was kind of bored while her mom spoke to the mechanic (outside on the sidewalk). When i rode up she kind of hid behind her mom's legs, but was peaking out, staring at my bike.

Even though she was hiding from me and she clearly thought i didn't see her, that i would notice only the adults, she said something. I couldn't quite hear her what she said, so i ignored her mom and the mechanic and asked her what she said. She said again, "What color is that?" still hiding behind mom.

I said, "It's Sparkle Burgundy, do you like it?"

The little girl stepped out from behind her mom and almost shouted, "I LOVE IT!"

I told her that i like it too.

The assembly process

My frustration level is very high right now. I spent a couple of days working on putting my beloved bicycle back together. Well actually i spent a lot of it procrastinating because i was worried about my skills. Some of it was perfectionism, i'm sure, but most of it was a legitimate worry. I'm out of my depth. I've put a lot of effort in the last year into learning about bicycle repair -- and in fact i have learned a lot. However i'm a long way off on a lot of things.

The headset installation went very well, that was fun. My friend Steve loaned me a magnificent headset press and my friend Dave came over to play with it with me. Having the right tool for the job is amazing. The almost impossible process of shoving the headset cups into the top and bottom of the steerer tube exactly level was a snap with that wonderful tool. We had fun.

The next day i returned the headset press to Steve in the morning when we watched the England vs West Indies world cup cricket match. Later Kent came by and helped with the bottom bracket, placing the derailleurs and other miscellaneous things. It was a big help and a nice visit.

That left me with placing small accessories, and all the cables, housings, and drive train adjustments. I really struggled, but i finally got the cabling done in a workable way, in fact, mostly excellent, except where i ran out of housing and had to improvise. The brake adjustments were very, very frustrating and took a very long time. Not having the right tools hurt me here, but i also just don't have enough practice. And after a few hours of fighting with the derailleurs i gave up for the night in a torrent of shouted obscenities that i'm not proud of. And i haven't even started on the fenders or generator.

I'll give the derailleurs a go again tomorrow morning, and maybe if my 40 mile 'back on the bike' ride is canceled, i'll call in a friend for some help.

testing the weight of powder coat

Some friends suggested that powder coat would be significantly heavier than paint. I am not particularly concerned with weight, and other than the extra 12 pounds around my mid-section, i don't really believe that decreasing weight will make riding more efficient. There's good solid evidence for that from as noble an authority as John Schubert.

In any case, i figured i had the opportunity to do a little before and after test. So after i stripped my frame, but before i strapped it on my back to ride it to the powder coat shop, i weighed it. 4.6 pounds.

The expert at Seattle Powder Coat looked at the beaten up frame, covered with stickers and pointed out to me that Bianchi had not painted it, but had powder coated it. And he said it wasn't a very good job. The new powder coating, he said, would be more durable.

When i got it back, it looked fantastic. They really do a great job there and are very friendly. They are not cyclists, but understand bicycles and were very helpful. I will keep track of how durable the new coat of Sparkle Burgundy turns out to be.

I strapped it on my back with innnertubes, hopped on Kent's Octocog and rode it 5 miles up the hill home.

The first thing i did when i got it home was weigh it again.

4.6 pounds. No difference at all

The scale i used went to tenths of a pound, so that's a maximum error of about 1 and a half ounces on each weighing, so you figure, worst case, i could be off by as much as 3 oz on the combined calculation. Nevertheless the answer was quite clear. For me, for this bike. NO DIFFERENCE.

Sparkle Burgundy

I got my frame back from Seattle Powder Coat and it looks great. Better than i expected! I was worried that i would have to choose a second tier color. But when i actually brought the frame in, he worked with me a while and found Sparkle Burgundy, which is a really nice color, and matches the former color of the bike very well.

I like it a lot.

Now i just have to build up the bike again!

Getting back on the bike

I spent the last four or five days very sick, hardly able to move from the couch. It wasn't a lot of fun. I had no energy at all, i couldn't even pick up a cough drop wrapper. It came upon me quickly on Thursday afternoon. And then it went away just as quickly on Sunday evening. It was clear to me that my body went into defense mode, fighting off the virus, and then on Sunday, won. I could walk around, clean up the house; i wasn't very strong, but i was back to myself.

I really needed to get on the bike. My White Fox (Bianchi Volpe) is of course disassembled right now. (It would've been very nice if it could have been at the paint shop while i was sick. Oh well.) My friend Kent has very generously lent me his Octocog.  This is a very strange bike. It looks huge -- it IS huge, i have trouble getting it in and out of the house for example. The 29er wheels have super wide tires on them, they can roll over anything. I find that i actually AIM for potholes on this bike, instead of avoiding them.

So i called my friend Auri, as usual she was up for a ride.We went for a short double loop ride around Capitol Hill. It was only 7 miles, that was all i could manage. I really enjoyed it, but it felt like 40 miles to me. I started off rough, got warmed up, got a second wind, and then wore out. The last 10 blocks were all downhill, which was good, i don't think i could've made it otherwise.

I really bundled up - it wasn't really a cold evening, but being sick, i bundled up as if it were a blizzard. It was a glorious night for riding, chilly and clear, very beautiful. I love night rides like that. And it was a great ride. It's nice to use the bicycle to stay familiar with our own neighborhood. Poking through the nooks and crannies as well as the famous and spectacular. And except for two short stretches of Pine street, we avoided car traffic entirely.




We rode around the cemetery, stopped at Louisa Boren Lookout for a gorgeous view at the twinkling lights of Kirkland across the lake. Did a loop around Volunteer Park past the Black Sun, a favorite piece of public art, then rode down to Pine & Melrose for some street vendor food, and looped back around along the top of the hill.

It wore me out. I am strongly in favor of exercise when sick. Of course not when i have a fever! Fever is the body shutting down and heating up to burn out the illness. It's useful but dangerous. But once the fever is gone, once that fight is over, i think exercise is not only very good for the mental health, but speeds the healing process. The most obvious thing i noticed was that my nose didn't run at all. We were out for 90 minutes. At home in front of the computer i was blowing my nose every 4 minutes.

It felt good and i'm sure it helped me sleep. Now i'm going to ride down to Fremont to take my frame to get powder coated.... and to keep my nose from running.

Bicycle Advocacy Made Simple

I've been told i should write a book about Bicycling and Bicycle Advocacy and i may just do that. I have a lot to say. But the more i think about it all, the simpler it becomes. In fact, i find the same basic kernel at the heart of each and every argument about minutia.

A few years ago on a very long ride i realized that i could put everything that is important for cycling on a T-shirt. It would include the distilled message that fully explains what Cyclists need to know and follow, as well as what Motorists need to know and follow.

On the back, for Motorists it would say:
ADULTS CAN WAIT THEIR TURN. And on the front, for Cyclists, it would say... exactly the same thing.

disassembly

Well my bike is now in pieces. This is exciting but very scary.


Tuesday, with some great help from Kent i took all the components off my bike, leaving just the frame, which will be taken to Seattle Powder Coat to be painted.

The bike was filthy -- riding in the rain on streets with heavy car traffic leaves a coating of black crap on everything. I do wash my bike fairly regularly, but it had gotten very bad. Wednesday i carefully washed each component and determined that the bottom bracket needed to be replaced but everything else was ok.

How Steep is Finn Hill?

In the bike shop the other day, my friend Ryan and i were chatting about Finn Hill just north of Kirkland along Juanita Dr NE. (For 15 years i called it Juanita Hill thinking for some weird reason that Finn Hill was further east.)

Finn Hill, is a feature on many bike routes. It is one of the only ways to connect downtown Bellevue to the Burke Gillman trail north of the lake on an around-Lake-Washington ride. It's a fairly serious climb on what can usually be a relatively flat ride. I had climbed it south to north on an around-the-lake half century ride a few days before.

Some people curse it, others add it to their ride for the challenge. For me, i ride it to get from here to there. Holmes Point Dr, which drops down to the lake from the south part of the climb and then back up to the summit is one of the steepest streets in the region and is often used by cyclists for training.



I almost always ride it from south to north. Ryan and i started discussing the attributes of the two different directions. I usually am known for having a pretty good ability to estimate distance and climb. Ryan said that he found the southbound climb to be frustrating because it was steeper. I insisted that the northbound climb was steeper. I've ridden that hill dozens of times over a couple of decades and it's always been clear to me that the northbound climb was steeper.

So when i got home i fired up the Topo(tm) software, as i often do after riding.

Here's what i learned:

From the south it's about 3.5 miles to the top, 3% average grade, with a brief max at 8% grade.



and from the north it's about 1.5 miles to the top, 5% average grade, also with a brief max grade at about 8%.


Ryan was right. I was wrong,

I don't know why i always felt like the south way was shorter and steeper. I usually ride from the south, maybe that descent just seemed very long. The last couple of times i have climbed it at sunset and descended in the rain in the dark, which was pretty hairy.