A Long One

One of the internet sites that I visit has an entire forum about living car free. It’s hard to determine if these people are choosing to live without a car because they are sticking it to The Man or if they have to live without a car because The Man stuck it to them. It seems to be a little of both and you can almost guess by the postings who is who. I tend to think that these people represent one or the other faction because most people who are just poor and don’t have a car are just poor and don’t have a car. Most poor people that I have run into do not consider their carless status as something rebellious, cool or hip and would, given the choice, quite like to have a car. They certainly don’t blog about it on the internet. We didn’t. Oh yes. I have been car-free! Of course I was like five a the time and would have been pretty much car free for years to come any way but our part of the family, the part that wasn’t my dad, were all car free. We walked and took the bus and I rode my bake. Man! Did I ever ride my bike!

I was one of “those kids”. Not on purpose mind you but never the less I was one of them. I would tell my mother that I was going over Mike’s house and, true enough, I would. But then we would go over Keith’s house. We would tell Mike’s mother, of course and if my mother called Mike’s mother she would know exactly where I was. Right? Invariably, on the way to Keith’s house we might stop at the park or swing by the beach or who knows where. And from Keith’s house we would wander even farther afield. We would go from place to place all day long leaving a trail of blissfully uninformed and woefully under-informed mothers in our wake. We had, for the most part, BMK bikes. Little bikes with one gear and the handle bars that came up with a bar across them that was just about the perfect height to catch a boy across the chest and knock the wind out of him if he crashed or fell forward off the seat. I said mostly because one summer when we were about twelve or so years old Mike got a “ten speed”. I remember it well. It was a brown Columbia ten speed with orange, red and yellow striped stickers on the tubes. It was so much larger than any o your other bikes and FAST! Wow. You would think that the rest of us would have “seen the light” right then and there but that was not the case. Most of us were stuck in one of the great catch-22s of childhood: the Item Upgrade Quandary. In this case the items were our bikes and it worked something like this: We all had the standard issue twenty inch BMX bikes that we had hounded our parents for because they were cool and “all the other kids had one”. Except, now, Mike did not. Now, the odds of getting new bikes out of our parents were slim to none as long we had perfectly good bike. On the other hand if something were to happen to those bikes, intentionally or not, we were likely to wind up getting a lecture or worse punishment (these were the days when the Old Man could still legally and morally beat the bag out of you in a Mall on a Sunday and no one would look twice) and have NO bike at all. So we rode and pondered how to solve this problem, and a problem it was! We were all friends but mike found it hard to ride that noble, high-strung thoroughbred at the sedate pace our BMXers demanded and we grew weary huffing and puffing after him as he rode at even a slightly slower than “normal” pace for his bike. Sadly, in the end and as it should be, the force of friendship prevailed over that of mechanical advantage and we, as a group, walked everywhere together. In hind sight that ten speed bike probably did more to constrain and control our activities than any other single thing at the time. I have to wonder now weather those supposedly uniformed moms might have figured out a way to keep us safer and closer to home after all.

But that’s not what I wanted to write about at all……..

OK, I just do NOT understand...

.... I think Bikes are amazingly cool. I really do. I like mine. I was going to write about the latest addition to my stable, a medium framed aluminum MTB that I can use as a winter beater and not feel guilty about wrecking it. Then, I read one of my favorite bike blogs. The girl who writes it seems to feel that her twelve HUNDRED dollar bike is the perfect winter ride. I know that if I had a twelve hundred dollar bicycle it would winter in my living room! Heck, my FREE Peugeot PRN (not even a PX!) lives in the den. I can almost, almost wrap my head around a twelve hundered dollar three speed bike, but factor in that there are more old but pristine English Three Speed Bicycles hereabouts than there are in England any one of them can be had for two hundred bucks or less, that beautiful Princess Bike makes just a bit less sense. That bicycle was not what inspired me to write.

There is a well respected gent here in the Boston area that makes bicycles. He makes steel-tube, non-lugged (those are a thousand dollars extra) bikes that START at TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS and, based on the makers web-site and my years of reading-through marketing speak, I assume that those TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS will buy you a roadster-style single speed (perhaps three speed) bicycle. That's it. Yes, it is CUSTOM HAND MADE IN THE USA but that is a lot of money. Will it last forever? Probably. Do the bikes he makes typically speck out at FOURTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS MORE than the base model bike? According to the web site: yep. OK, just so we are clear about what we are talking about: a THREE AND A HALF THOUSAND DOLLAR peddle bike! I'm sure that it's very nice but it's not a cutting edge, top of the line racing road bike or even a motorcycle. It's a bike. a basic transportation bike at that. Oh, and I could buy another bike like the beater I got today every winter for the next 60 years (I'll be dead) for the price of the one, very, very nice bike.

My Preesssiooouusss......NOOOOOOoooooo....

Yep. I did it. I broke my precious Diamonback Sorrento by riding it around in the winter like a dope. OK, I only put a hundred miles or so on it all winter so it's probably the fact that it's ten+ years old that broke it, or maybe the fact that I smashed the metal cable end where it enters the read D on a rock or something. In any event, about a mile from home, in the winter, she stopped shifting out of granny gear. She was shifting funny in the big gears all ride but (very kindly) wiated untill the last leg before crapping out entirely on me. That little piece is buggered and the cable is all slack. I think that I have another little piece like it and I will try to replace it and pull the cable tight. What a mess though. The chain is all rusty and the front rings are rusty and it's just kinda gross. On the PLUS side, I got out and about and did 9.2 miles (almost
respectable) and did NOT die. It supposedly was 17 degrees out when I started but it felt warmer. I am exhausted though. I thought about taking the 3-speed out but there is NO way that I would have made it.

Posting just to post

I suppose the whole reason to HAVE a blog is to POST in it, so I will. Even though I have nothing really to say. I rode the bike for twenty minuets today and put in a set of lights that I got at WallMart and, um, that's it. My Beloved Sorrento has some how become my winter beater. That saddens me a little but at least I am riding it and not just letting it rot like I used to do. So there.

England MUST be flat!

There is no other reason why they would have ever developed the three speed bicycle. Either that or those Olde Tyme English fellows must have been in GREAT shape. As you might have guessed I took my Triumph three speed out for a shake-down run after tweaking her here and there to get her road ready. The bicycle itself is a joy. The ride is plush and oh-so-civilized as one sits up and enjoys the countryside. I do think that I might raise the nose of the saddle just a smidge though. Second gear is nice. I like second gear. First gear is about the "spinner" gear for me in level ground situations. I can see how it might be useful for some people to get up hills and stuff but not this person! Not at 220 pounds any way! Third gear is a tough peddle. As hard as it is though it "runs out" quickly on the down hills. Hate the french all you want but LOVE their geared bikes (I have chosen to credit them with the invention of the ten speed. This does not rise to the level of what most people would call a "fact" but it works for me)! Untill I drop some weight and get into a little better shape I think that the Truimph will be relegated to MUP duty. It will be AMAZING for that use! For my fat ass trying to get up the hills around here, no way, not yet.

Errands and such today

This little guy here is The Bruce. That's not his name, just one of his several nick-names but it suits him. The Bruce is THE biggest impedament to my cycling for fun and fitness right now. I envy those people who have "normal" jobs some times. Not me or my wife. When we're gone we're GONE. 14, 24, 26 hours at a time. So the other is stuck that whole time doing things that ONLY can be done with the baby. A six month old infant can not really be out cycling with dad in sub-freezing weather so DAD can not be out cycling either. Unless he gets a babysitter!

My niece was kind enough to watch the boy for a couple of hours while I ran and got a haircut. I reached for my trusty Diamondback Sorrento and headed out. I rode down The Hill Of Doom and off through town to the barber. Damn. No cash. Hum, that's a down-side to biking errands: you can't just zip over anywhere that you want to any time that you want to! They were nice enough to cut my hair any way so I headed out to get some dough and a battery for my trusty old Sigma bicycle computer. Surprisingly, I was WAY ahead of time so I headed out for a little fitness. I needed it! I put in about 4 miles of "riding" and I did a couple miles of errands

I'm out of shape. Man! Am I ever out of shape! I do not get to ride my trusty English Three Speed because, quite frankly, I haven't determined weather or no it is particularly trusty yet! My winter outfit was a little TOO warm today. It was supposed to be pretty cold out, 20ish, but I don't think that it was that cold. I wasn't all that bundled up. It was nice to be out though and The Bruce enjoyed his visit with his cousin. It wasn't at all a bad day.

THREE SPEEDS!

Well, two actually. I can't get it to shift into first gear but what the hell, it's operational! I have to tell you, I really, really like the ride. I like the way that you sit and the feel of the steel frame. It was cold and the streets were not clear. I purposely tried to ride over some of those icy patches, just to see how the bike would handle. I was impressed. This was only the second time since I was a child that I rode a bicycle in the winter, but I DID try to ride an off-road motorcycle on snowy, icy trails a few years ago. THAT went amazingly poorly. In the mean time I have focused on the similarity between motorcycles and bicycles and those similarities have formed my apprehensions about riding two wheeled vehicles in wintery conditions. It turns out that the differences are more important and that the bicycle is much easier to control and stable on packed snow and ice. It was only a short ride because of the bicycle's shifting problems but it was nice to be out and very enjoyable to be riding my Triumph three speed

There can be only one....

... shitbox MTB project in the house. After I snapped the front derailure on my Trek 4300 project and spent a half hour washing road grime off of my (precious and beloved) Diamondback (in the shower...shhh) I decided to scrap the Trek project and build up the Cannondale M500 as a winter beater. I want to strip the 4300 and use parts to equip the 'Dale and up-grade the Sorrento. Nothing fits. It's clear by the dainty sizes of the posts and tubes, as well as high quality of the ones that are left on it,that the M500 was more of a high-performance bike than the others and it seems a shame to make it the beater bike but it would be more of a shame if my much-loved Sorrento started to rust out! I'm not sure how this is going to work out in the long run. I can't get a fender to fit on the front wheel despite the rigid fork. So, that could prety much be a deal breaker. I bought a seat-post and clamp and re-tasked some wheels with a nice Mega-Range 8-speed. I was going to make this a 1x8 because I thought the front D was mashed but it's not. It's fine. Of course, the BACK D that I thought was fine IS smashed. I'm hoping that I can fit the one from the Trek on the Cannondale. I need cranks and a shorter reach stem and to swap over some controls and find some way to make breaks work on the 'Dale but it should be operational in a week or so. Good Times.

New Year's Ride

Inspired by some girl from Somervile, I decided to take my newly -fendered Diamondback Sorrento out for a ride in the snow. It was my first ride in snowy, nasty weather since I was a little kid and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought that it was going to be. I LOVE the fenders! They helped more than I ever thought that they would. It wasn't hard at all to ride through the small amounts of snow at the side of the road and I didn't hit any ice that I can remember. Did I mention that the fenders were indispensable? I'm even thinking about getting studded tires for her!