Serving the duty of filling my time, documenting my anticlimactic cycling ventures and broadcasting my hardly-there sense of humor to the world. Mainly the last one.
You're probably wondering how a human could possibly ride that bike. However, with some image rotation courtesy of EuroJosh over at Tarckbike, it becomes clear that this bike was made for some serious climbing.
This was an impromptu 20 minute ride on the bmx with the bmx. Dropped the tire pressure to get some tractions. The only thing bothering me was the falling snow because I didn't wear any eye protection. That became very obvious when I 'bombed' (coasted down, ended up almost losing speed) and could barely see. The rest of the ride was fun. Ended up getting called a 'retard' by some super cool middle schoolers in a church parking lot. I had a couple of come backs in mind but decided to take the high road and ignore them and continue on my way.
I would recommend this. Especially if you can do it within sight of others.
Back in November, I got a Road ID Elite for my birthday. It came with the o.i.r.s.o.s.s.t.t.(online identity response system or something similar to that) for first responders if you ever crash. I got the green band. It's adjustable to any wrist size, but be careful with cutting it, once you cut it, it's that length. It looks good and is high quality, almost like cycling chic (something like that). Can't speak of how well the o.i.r.s.o.s.s.t.t. works, but that's definitely a good thing.
Went on an Mtb ride tonight with pops. did part of denmans and hill side. First time testing out the 'stache bars, and home brew ss set up. Both worked great. The 'stache bars weren't too wide for the trees and no chain drop. There were a couple of two wheel powerslides so it's probably good practice for Jingle Cross. Going to Iowa City saturday to watch, racing ss on sunday. After doing nothing but gravel for a couple of weeks and riding a day before I leave for the race, it seems like riding 10 miles the day before RAGBRAI and calling it training, but anyway, hope to see you there.
Tuesday, there was an intense(to me) indoor training sessions. I did it on rollers... before that, I rode rollers for about half an hour, an that's ever. Don't follow my lead on that. Riding the rollers while doing intervals was so sketchy it was almost embarrassing. I'm just glad, there was no one next to me.
Throughout the week, there was random bmx rides. They don't amount to much, pretty much just me jumping very small gaps and pussying out on a bunch of easy stuff.
Friday night at 10, there was a gravel ride. When we set off, it was super foggy even with mega-watt lights, you still couldn't see more than a quarter mile ahead of you. The ride was a lesson in mycguyver multi-tool road side bike work. The list of mechanical malfunctions is as follows:
Flat front tire (twice-ish)
rear straddle carrier came undone
front straddle cable came loose from brakes
chain dropped (twice)
chain broke (took that opportunity to shorten chain and fix drop)
After all that, I still managed to keep my cool and stop myself from getting it airborne. The irony of the whole situation is that I was the only one singlespeeding of the whole group...
Lastly, Cranksgiving. Of course I did it on the bmx bike, but alas, no 20" disc wheel. I managed to get descent leg extension, but not near enough to be comfortable. With that going on, I was standing up on up hills, and for the most part, on the flats too. This is not good when there's rain on the road. Overall, it was good. feel like I should've done the trackstand contest, there's always next year; and done the leg wrestling contest, there's always next year; and I wish I would've had some beer, next year for that too. A note for next year, 20" bmx category.
Also this. A race organizer in Minnesota apparantly had a bad time with someone.
This is pretty much just gonna be about the Iditabike. I called it 'Ididntabike' because it's something I won't be participating in. Despite not having interest in ever doing it, it is incredibly bad ass and something that makes Trans Iowa seem like a walk in the park.
The iditabike race is a bicycle race through alaska that follows part of the Iditarod trail. It started in 1987. The race is now 1,100 miles long, but there are shorter distances for those who are slightly less crazy as those doing the full distance.
Enough with the knowledge dropping, on to the cool stuff
That's the Moots Rigormootis. The front fork is spaced the same as the rear at 165mm to have an extra set of gears waiting in the wings should something happen to the set being used on the back. The frame and fork are filled with white gas for camping, which explains the funny looking thing in the last picture.
Here is that bike in action:
That is Mike Curiak riding it. He's one the race twice. The picture is 2007 where he did the race completely self-sufficient. He started out with his trailor weighing 90lbs carrying everything he would need for 20 days in the snow.
If you have 24 minutes to spare, there's 'Bicycles on Snow,' a documetary made about the '88 iditabike. Back when mountain bikes had cantilever brakes.
I had the awesome idea of riding my 20" BMX in Cranksgiving this year. After I decided that was a good idea, I though it'd be good to get some disc wheel action going on, but alas, no $$ and it's a safe bet that a 20" disc wheel doesn't even exist, feel free to prove me wrong. Since it's an alley can, why not spoke cards. Unfortunately my spoke card collection is lacking. So if anyone has unused spoke cards, bring them to Cranksgiving on the 22nd at Mars Cafe for some fun and to see a ghetto-mod 20" disc wheel. I'll be on a tan Brew bmx bike, mostly black parts and camo rims. and hit me up with any that you have.
Saturday of the Iowa State Cross Race was going to be a really good day. The original plan was to ride out to the race from Norwalk, watch/cheer/heckle riders and drink a couple of beers. For the ride there, I had the directions and everything necessary for the weather and riding.The start of the ride was good. I knew where i was going, wore just enough stuff to keep warm and the Masi was running as it should. I came to a red light in the east village and when it turned green and I got going again, my fucking chain snapped. After I coasted across the street, the inevitable happened, the bike went airborne. When the bike landed, the first thing i noticed was the scraped up bar tape and flat front tire. Turns out it was much worse than that. There was a hole in the sidewall of the front tire (2 and a half sets of cross tires at home, so no big deal) and this:
Looks like it's new bar time.
After all that happened, I called and got someone to bring me a chain and ended up getting a ride the rest of the way to Lions park in Altoona. Once I got there, the ss/junior race was just getting over. I got there in time to see this in action:
Coaster brake action with sweet wide bars. It was also cool to see another Brew frame, I have a Brew bmx bike. The SSCXWC Raleigh ss cross bike was awesome too. It had the only acceptable use of a colored chain that I've seen so far, and I've seen plenty of bikes with colored chains. Watched the women's and 1/2 race from the finish line and ate some of the free food and drank a beer. It was very good.
For the 3 race, i headed to heckler's corner. Started with a couple of people climbing up top of the shelter , then it became beer can alley with a couple of beer cans containing dollar bills. The quantity of beer cans increased through out the race, as did the rider participation and volume. Overall, it was a very fun race, even though I didn't even race and I'm gonna need new bars. At least I have one ride able bike...a 20" bmx bike.
The 'stache bars are bent and i don't trust bent aluminum because I do some pretty gnarly curb hops so I'm not messing around. The bars pictured in one of the previous post are up for trade. I either want to trade for some mustache bars, dirt drops, mary bars, bullhorns or some other odd ball bar. clamp size doesn't matter.
Let me know what you got, either through comments (anyone can post one)
The day wasn't quite interesting enough to broadcast it to the internet so here goes.
Started out good, my earliest class on tuesdays and thursdays got over so I slept in. On the way to my new first class, the car hiccuped a little bit leaving norwalk, but I didn't think anything of it. Turns out it was a sign that I pushed how far I could drive on a tank of gas too far. Finally ran out when I on the interstate and a cop eventually came to the rescue. Only time in my life when I was happy to see flashing red and blue light roll up on me. He gave me a ride to a gas station and got the whole situation figured out. Made it to the first class about 45 minutes late...my stubbornness to not fuel up finally bit me in the ass.
Fast forward to 6:00, it was my first DMOS training session. Good god you sweat a lot when you pedal in place, intervals no less.
I'm readying my road bike for some intense trainer riding this winter, masi is for gravel/snow/mtb/general winter duty, and it came time to get the bars ready. I have a few questions on where to place the sti levers on my bars. here's a couple of pics. I know no one is following, but feel free to comment if you have anything to offer.
While I'm at it, here's the progress on the Torelli. Hopefully it'll be ready for tuesday DMOS training.
An updated pic of the Masi too. It just looks right. Not sure how the 'stache bars are going to be on single track, but the 35mm cross tires weren't designed for single track either.
Since Cross racing is over, the Tiagra gruppo now has to do it's thing on my torelli road bike for crit racing. I wanted gears where I could do a gravel or road ride, as well as an mtb singletrack ride on the masi, so I did the following. Using the freehub, I set it up with a 19t and a 14t cog on the back and spaced it so it'd be a decent chain line for both. The tensioning is done by a derailer. To switch cogs, I just adjust adjust the limiters and swap the chain over to the other gear and I'm ready to go. Now that I've put you to sleep with all that, I wish I had a picture to share, but of course I don't and white garage doors are clash with the colors of the bike, the picture will have to wait another day(or week)
Didn't go quite as a I planned. My plan was to make it an hour early for the 4 race to get an idea of the course and to get some warm up laps in, kick ass in the 4 race, and enjoy the rest of the races. What actually happened was that I got there at 1:15 as the 4 race was starting. I got to enjoy the 4 and womens race and for whatever reason decided to sign up for the 1/2/3 race, very very fun(?) idea. Still not sure what to think of my decision.
In the race, I got dropped from the start and from there it was an exploration into the pain cave. This time, the cave was very muddy and had lots of climbing. By the time it was over, I had collected a PayDay candy bar from a hand up from the announcer, a dollar bill on heckler hill and lots of mud and an overwhelming sense of regret. The regret is long gone, as is the mud thanks to an hour and a half of my time, 5 rags and a garden hose. I still have the dollar to show for my efforts though.
now for a pic of the bike:
Day 2 wasn't too noteworthy besides the fact that I got there in got lapped at with 2 laps left by only 1 person, as apposed to getting lapped on lap 3 of day 1 in the 1/2/3 race.
So does anyone know who's bike that is? I'm lookin for wider tires for when the masi cross goes ss. Since he is local I was hoping to be able test fit to see if the tires would fit on the masi.
Any help would be appreciated. I want moar tire for snow/mtb this winter.
...That I should give up on keeping my bike clean. Saturday, it got muddy from Cattle Cross. Monday from some denmonds(?) and Hillside. It was mudddy (not a problem) but it was covered with leaves most of the time (problem) so there were more 2 wheel power slides than I was used to, but the feeling of being out of control felt good. That feeling was good at ~10 mph, haven't had such a feeling at speeds of 15+ so I'll post results if that happens.
Anyway, tonight was the last Renegade Cyclocross. It was at Good Park again. It proved that Good Park is good once again. Good hills and really appreciated not having back to back sand pits, though still had the uphill barriers.
I need that lighted shit on my bike naow! There's no way in hell you're going to get me to ride down the side of a fucking building. Still not sure if that's real or not.
This was by far my best race, ended up 4th of the 4's.
The course was really fun, lots of mud. I really dug the long mud pit and the switchbacks on the second half of the course. Going in the barn was fun to because of the change in terrain from dirt to sand.
As for the race, I smarted up and started on the first row. when I got to the long mud pit on the second lap or so, I was 4th, but a handlebar x cattle gate colabo brought me down to 7th or so. I was eventually able to make it back up to 4th after a couple of laps of hard work. I battled with a few people along the way, but i made it to forth. With about 3 laps left a caught that 15(or so) year old shit. and had a really fun battle with him until he decided to break away with about a quarter lap left. Those last 3 laps were probably the most fun i've had in cross so far this season! Would've been more fun if i would've ended up on the winning side of it, but he's in a different cat, so it didn't hurt me in the end.
Put a cantilever back on the front of my masi cross. I set the straddle carrier as low as I could go while still having good tire clearance. Am I doing it right? Riding around my 'hood my steel fork shuddered. Is that the cycling gods telling me to get modern and put a carbon fork on there or should I deal with it?
I'm doing Cattle cross so I'm going to check how well i tuned the brakes there, and if I'm lucky, i'll fix it if there's a problem with it.
Annoying and easily amazed are words that come to mind. Those words are a result of years of field research. I've been cycling for years and until recently when I picked up a cyclocross habit (cross fucking rules ATMO), 90% of my friends were of the non cycling variety. The following techniques to keep bike to talk with friends and strangers who know very little to nothing to a minimum are scientifically proven* and guaranteed to work**.
The first problem that arises is mileage ridden. It seems that if you say you rode a reasonable distance, their first reaction is one three: looking at you like you just rode the tour, telling you how they haven't ridden in years or can't ride more than a mile at at time, or they just say 'Oh cool'. The last reaction is the most desirable ATMO(and that's my opinion) because you can just move on to something else. A general formula you should use to gage if they ask for specific mileage is as follows:
CD=AD/2/2
CD meaning claimed distance and AD meaning actual distance. Let's do some real world application of the formula with a 30 miles ride.
7.5=30/2/2
So for a 30 mile ride you will tell your non-cycling friends that you rode 7.5 miles. They will likely still be amazed but not enough to continue to ask you questions about the ride. One last note on the formula, for your cycling friends change the division to multiplication. Seen below:
CD=AD*2*2
To apply our real life situation to this variation of the formula:
120=30*2*2
Your meager 30 mile ride becomes an epic century and with a little fudging it can be an epic double metric century.
Ended up doing only saturday for multiple reasons, mainly to make up for all the studying I gave up to do all the cross/mtb rides locally. Also...I don't have job so i couldn't afford to, that'll be fixed soon enough. Hopefully.
Now onto the race. I ended up gettig 12th. When the race started out, I just missed out on the main breakaway group that probably had the top 10. If I could've stuck with that group, I probably would've been able to break the top 10 but i'm way out of the reach of getting a decent points position at this point so i'm not too concerned with that. Once the main breakaway group was out of site, I settled into a pace and was getting along good. On every hill, I mashed up it dancing on the pedals with my fresh Mud2 cross tire helping me along. I was eventually able to get comfortable enough to not need to use the brakes on most of the corners, though that wasn't doing much for my overall position just felt good to getting more comfortable on the bike and being able to trust my tires more. Mounting and remounting over the barriers is also getting much smoother, getting closer to getting the 'leap of faith' down.
As far as the hecklers go, I was a little disappointed. I did get cheered on and complimented on my Masi, but durig the race I ant to be broken down mentally so the pain of the race doesn't seem so bad and I can push it harder. However, I took some heckling lessons by the single barrier at the very top of the hill during the Cat 1/2 race and saw some proper heckling and took notes for future races.
Overall, my overal grade for the course is B+, hecklers C, my performance A+ (cos self confidence) and last but not least, free fat tire A+++
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Shit, this is intense. If I tried this, i'd imagine it involving lots of heckling, broken bones, swearing and only last about 30 seconds. My youthful enthusiasm might keep the broken bones to a minimum.
Now for more bad ass, this time more fix/ss pr0n Needs more 8/9/10 speed freehub. atmo
So I've ridden my masi on roller coaster, science center and denmends(probably spelled wrong ayhsmb). It's not too bad, but definately not the right tool for the job. Went Riding with the masi on some banner lake trails...35mm cross tires are not made for muddy off camber climbs or near vertical down hills.
So an update on the Masi CX, I cannibalized the front derailer and put a slightly larger ring on the outside of my gear to keep the chain on. After multiple renegades cyclocross practices, cross races, and mtb rides the chain has not come off, so it appears I've done something right. Anyway, pics. These are post Dirty Wooden Shoe pics.
Yes, that's a flat tire. Happened on the first lap, and after that I decided to use that race as a throw away race and used post race beers as the motivator to finish.
One last picture to add.
The red road bike is mine an will probably propel me to some cat 5 criterium wins next sumer. The tan bmx bike is mine awaiting me getting a job so I can replace the headset I broke on it. The rest belongs to my dad.
One last note I'd like to add is that the pink Bianchi funny bike is a smidgen to small for me.
Of course the obligatory stock pic from the website (ordered it, not in yet)
It'll get commuting/road/cross/mtb duty. Considering it has gears, it will usually be the bike I chose because my only other bike is an ss roadie. So excited.
The color is more of a purple that the picture the picture shows. It's actually sort of a pearl color. my plan is to sell my surly-alex da 28 700c wheel set and get a 26" wheel set to fit the frame. plan is single speed with front and rear v brake. The bars, stem, grips, brake lever, brakes I should be able to get from my house. Tires will be fat slicks, then mtb tires for winter. Of course I'll be using some finders and a front basket. Considering the frame is 2 or 3 sizes too small, this should turn out looking pretty awesome. The end goal is a tarck as fuck, commuterific basket build.
As I listen to the hip hop/urban channel on Pandora radio (which fuckin rocks btw,) blowing off studying which i've gotten in a habit of doing looking for something to focus my mind on, the first thing tht comes tomy mind is cycling. My main bike is a fixed gear so naturally that's what I thought of first. I was going to do an entry about the thing about fixed gear products and riders that pissed me off but there's enough of that out there. Instead, I will focus on the positives.
Firstly, it's easier to turn short trips into workouts. You can do this with geared bikes, but for me, it's too tempting for me to switch into a lower gear and take it easy. I have a cadence computer on the bike so I make it a game to try to beat my previous highest cadence. Currently it's ~160 at 35 mph. Living in a college town, every thing is pretty close to campus so the furthest I will have to go is around 5/6 miles, if that. it's also pretty flat so I can really work on my cadence. I usually try to do around 100 rpm which yeilds a pace around 20 mph. If i'm riding at the right time, traffic is going around 20/25 mph so I can keep up with traffic which makes me feel like Lucas Brunelle or one of those messengers in NYC or SF that I see in videos on youtube. I don't care how ridiculous it is to watch those videos, but they make me want to go out and ride, breaking some traffic laws while i'm at it. However, I have yet to imitate the heroics, or stupidity, of those riders which may actually be a good thing. Those videos have gotten me into the habit of running reds and stop signs. As i've learned the police here could care less about. One of those occasions would've lead to charges other than running a stop sign...I don't think I have to say what that other charge would've been.
Another reason why fixed gears are good is because they get some people into other forms of cycling, sort of a gateway drug. I know it brings a lot of people into the sport that are doing it because it's what the cool kids are doing, but the fad will die out, prices of parts will drop, and the people that got into cycling when the fixed fad came about will continue to cycle for the love of it. For me, it even got me int cycling a little more than I was before. I'm actually willing to throw on the spandex and walk in front of people to do rides and not be ashamed. Having a body doesn't hurt either.
Finally, fixed gears in shitty weather, like snow or rain, make me feel like a kid again. Skids on roads with less than ideal grip make me reminisce about when i had a kids bike with a coaster brake. The only difference is that I look 5x more redicuolous. This especially holds true when I over estimate my abilities and do moon walk skids on snow and end up on my ass in front of a group of people at 12:30 at night. Fun times.
I race cyclocross, though I spend more time riding single track with the cross. Next year will be my first year of road racing. I'll never outgrow 20" kids bikes so I will continue to look silly all 6'3" of me jumping around on a BMX bike.
