Superior Hiking Trail

Are we there yet?

Dog wrangling

S & A were more successful at dog wrangling

Lake Superior!

Betty isn't sure she likes swimming

Whee!

Really? More hiking?

So tired puppies!

S starting dinner

A boy and his dog

Resting in a meadow

Lots of trees

Lots of water

Just minutes before tragedy struck

You're joking, right?

Pose for the camera

Really? More? Wasn't once enough?

Lake Superior meadow morning

Fungi

Very tall tree

More fungi

It doesn't really mean climb up this tree

It's ok, Blue, we're almost done

More water

More trees

What to do with a lot of plums

Plums!

Coffee cake

Ice cream

Jam

Cascade River

Oops

Raleigh Sportif: Similar vintage as the Raleigh Marathon that I've put over 1,300 miles on so far this year, but without a bent seat stay due to auto impact. It's a size smaller than the Marathon, which is good because I'm just a little too stretched out when riding that one. The tires are both 27 x 1 1/4, which should work for more wintry riding (when it comes). S & I turned the drop bars into bullhorns last night and I retaped them orange (because of course I did).

A new saddle has already been ordered. Oof. That sucker was UNcomfortable this morning. The brakes are ok, but noisy. I don't think I need to upgrade them with a dual pivot model, but I need to do something about the noise. I feel like I got spoiled by the quick, quiet braking action of the used Tektros that I put on the Marathon. Maybe a little cleaning and a little more adjusting will do the trick. The cross top brake lever looks much better than the ginormo bmx levers that the dude had on there.

I learned how a crank puller works, too.

29daysofbiking

Busy

So far this month, I've had another two flats. Neither of them forced a bus ride home, but now I've got a new (used) wheel on the front and a new tube & tire on the back.

Citrusy. Since putting the 700c wheel on the front, the original side pull caliper brake was cranky. It still worked cuz I'd adjusted it, but it did this weird hop before it engaged completely and slowed the wheel. I knew it was time for a new brake. The bike had Shimano 105 aero brake levers and hoods. I wanted to change out to a crosstop brake lever, partly yes, due to style, but also because the top tube is a bit long for my torso, so I couldn't ride resting on the brake hoods anyway.

This involved a lot of research and a lot of YouTube videos. I learned how to take apart what I already had on there (deconstruction always so much easier than putting the damn thing back together) and thought I had a pretty decent idea of how to install a new brake.

Taking it apart was fine: remove bar tape, remove brake levers, remove cable, remove brake...wait a minute. The 5mm hex nut holding the brake on to the fork was totally stripped. More YouTube. I tried a torx on the thing, but it didn't work and then the damn torx bit flipped out of my screwdriver and I lost it in the dirt. Next try: drilling. Step one: find the drill. Step two: charge the battery. Step three: find an appropriately sized drill bit. Step four: rake the dirt looking for the torx bit and then clean the handle bars with mineral spirits while the battery charges. OK! Drilling. Yeah, that didn't work either. Time for radical action. Hacksaw. I sawed thought the bolt on the front side and popped the stripped nut out the back. 

Now to install the new brake, which was a used Tektro 500somethingorother that I got from The Hub. Uh. Bolt isn't long enough. Crap. Get in the car, drive to The Hub. Dude says, "Oh, this is a rear brake." Wonder why the first mechanic grabbed me a rear brake when I specifically asked for a front brake. Back to the used parts area. Found a front brake, similar to the back one (which was in really decent shape), transfer the brake pads to the new old brake, and drive back home.

Now to install the new brake. Put on the crosstop brake lever, figure out where it's most comfy, tighten it up. Put the brake caliper through the fork, tighten the bolt, keeping the brake pads as even as possible. Unwind the cable housing, watch one of the metal tips fly off, hit the house and promptly fall into a black hole. Anyway. Thread the cable through the lever, then through the cable housing, realize it's all way too long, trim to appropriate lengths. Adjust. Adjust again. Finally centered and working. On to bar tape.

Though I didn't pledge 30 days of biking in April, I've ridden every day except for the 9th. I rode 116 miles this week.

No patching that

With 30 mph winds and gusts to 48 mph, I wasn't extremely confident in my ability to bike home anyway. Taking off the tire and discovering this total tube failure was just kind of funny. Well, I learned how the bike carriers on the bus work.

Bike, bike, no run

Ten days of commuting to work by bike in March for a total of 204.8 miles. Eight days of driving and I took the bus twice. I ran once. I think the dogs are going to rebel, especially since the weather is so nice this week. I guess I'll have to step it up and run with them. I also signed up for the Get in Gear 10k at the end of the month, so running some is probably a good idea.

Fingers crossed that there are no thunderstorms this afternoon when I have to ride back home on the bike!

Project Bike

Nice, isn't it? Ok, not so much. It's the definition of a beater bike.

I suppose to get to this point, you have to let me backtrack to December. That's when I decided it would be a good idea to start winter bike commuting. Why did I think that would be a good idea? Well, running hadn't been going all that great and there's no snow this year, so skiing takes a lot of planning. I'd been thinking and reading about winter biking quite a bit, so I talked myself into it. It's 10 miles one way to work, depending on how you go and I chose a way that avoided most traffic, using the river bike path, the U of M Transitway and a wander through the U of M St. Paul campus.

This summer, I found an old Huffy Cherokee mountain bike in the trash on my street. All it needed was new tires & tubes, some new brake pads and a tune up. I didn't ride it more than once or twice when the weather was good. But hey, a free bike. I figured I could ride that when there's ice and snow and salt. Well, I can. Just really, really slowly. I am the slowest biker in the world. Fat smoking college boys on fixies pass me routinely. But I get there eventually. It takes about an hour, give or take. There's more downhill on the way home, so that's usually faster, even though I'm more tired.

I rode three days in December, four days in January, seven days in February and one day so far in March. The coldest morning ride, it was -5 degrees. Once I got the layers right, it was fine, and I was only too cold once or twice. Neoprene face mask all the way when it's below 10. Light myself and my bike up like a christmas tree and everyone can see me coming & going. I lost one light when it fell off my bag. There was a spare in the shed.

This mid 1980s Raleigh Marathon has been hanging in my shed since I moved in here in 2009. One of my old softball teammates gave it to the boy sometime around 2006 or so. The boy was riding it to school in 2008 (?) when he was t-boned by a pickup truck running a stop sign. The drive side seat stay was bent into the rear wheel, so it was unrideable. But, this is a steel framed bike...

I decided to see if I could salvage it. I got bronchitis last week and I needed a project. I removed the wheels. I convinced the seat stay to bend itself back into a more tire-freeing position (i.e. cold forged it). Enough so there's sufficient tire clearance, and the tire is centered with the rest of the frame, but the rear brake isn't going back on. Can't get it straightened enough.

I was thinking of taking apart the cassette on the old wheel and seeing if I could singlespeed this thing myself, but it turned out that the crash had broken the axle. The wheel was really toast, bearings from the hub all over the floor. I cut the derailleur cables, took off front and rear derailleurs and took off the rear brake. I bought a new 27" wheel ($59) and an ACS Crossfire 16t freewheel ($27). I reused the rim tape and the tire & tube from the toast tire. Surprisingly, both front and rear tubes are holding air just fine. The chainrings are welded together, so taking them apart was not an option and I didn't want to futz with removing the cranks and shopping for a new chainring. I checked the chainline from the smaller 40t chainring to the new 16t freewheel and it looked good. Small chainring it is. I shortened the chain with the rear wheel as far forward in the (luckily horizontal) dropouts as it would go, then backed it up tight into the dropouts. Straight line from wheel to frame to front wheel and straight chainline. No redishing of the rear wheel needed because I didn't get a singlespeed wheel (it could take a 6 speed cassette). Less than 1/2 inch of chain slack - within tolerable limits. Success!

That left just a few things. No seatpost. No saddle. No pedals. The seatpost from my Bianchi was too big and the one from the free Huffy was way too small. I don't have a calipers and guess what, a tape measure doesn't really give a good read on the inside diameter of a cylinder. Who knew? I bought a couple of seatposts at REI (27.2mm and 27mm), but both were too big. REI had a decent saddle on sale for a price I was willing to pay ($30) and the mechanic sold me a bolt ($4) for the seatpost (also missing from the bike and neither the bolt from the Huffy or the Bianchi's quick release would work). I returned the too-big seatposts to REI and went to the Hub for some more prospects (26.6mm, 26.4mm and 25.8mm). Turns out that 25.8mm was just right ($20). The bolt was also just right. That just left pedals, which I managed to find in the spare parts crate. They look like the originals that were removed for the clipless pedal fad.

But how does it ride? I tried it out today on a short jaunt to the Hub to return the extra seatposts and then to the co-op to get some Breathe Easy tea (and more ice cream). I haven't ridden a singlespeed bike since the 70s (orange Stingray, awesome bike, thanks Mom). Google maps promised me that my route was "mostly flat" and it was. It was pretty fun. The bike is quiet and nothing seems out of whack. The front brake works well, but I have to true up the front wheel a bit so the one brake pad doesn't randomly skip off the rim. I was riding slowly & carefully (I still have bronchitis and feel like walking up the stairs is a big endeavor), but it turned out that my not-healthy, not-breathing-well self was cranking 13 mph on this new singlespeed. That is slow, yes, but a measurable improvement over the 8-10 mph that I can get going on the 18 speed Huffy.

The $140 I spent could have realistically bought me about 2/3 of a new bike, if I shopped hard enough. But this was fun. And C would really make fun of me if I suddenly had four bikes...

Let's Pretend that Never Happened

2014, I mean. There's no proof that it did, since I didn't blog one word. I read some books, but not enough. I trained for two marathons, one of which was canceled due to a lightning storm, the other in which I crashed and burned at mile 18. Work mostly sucked. I had quite a few interviews, but no job offers.

There was some good stuff. C & I had a ski vacation up north in the cold in a tiny cabin with a woodstove. I got to go to Utah to see S & A, ski at Soldier Hollow and backpack in Zion National Park. S & A moved home to Minnesota. Blue earned enough points to become a Flyball Master (after spending $1000s rehabbing her torn quad). We got a new dog named Betty who is awesome. C & I got to go to Maui and spend a week with her whole family for her parents' 50th wedding anniversary. We snorkeled and saw cool fish, sea turtles and an octopus. And we drove to the top of the 10,000 ft peak where it was cold and windy but the sunset was beautiful.