I’m really burdened by stories like this. It is upsetting.

http://urbanvelo.org/charleston-cycling … te-killed/

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eddy merckx’ nickname is "the cannibal," which makes THIS shirt 13 different kinds of awesome.

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Ever since I got a big body DSLR, I’ve been trying to finesse the optimized way to bring my ways and means around while riding, either to take photos of bikes in places, or take photos of anything else, by bike. I’ve tried backpacks, camera bags, slings, and even looked into tactical vests.

Meanwhile, I recently invested in a different hip bag for ride tools. Freeing up my original bag. And that’s when it hit me. I carry the camera on my torso for easy access, but needed an easy, unencumbered means of carrying the accessories. Why not a hip bag approach, as I’ve done with bike stuff anyway?

Above is the kit. Tested thrice now, works like a charm.

- Canon T1i DSLR, on strap with cover (in lieu of being in a bag)
- Ride hip bag containing:
- big 70-300mm telephoto (shroud is reversed)
- Lensbaby lens system
- macro lens
- macro lens ring options
- macro lens ring removal tools
- lens cloth
- remote, for extra rock
- gorrillapod tripod (not shown)

And it fits JUST SO, and not too heavy, and stays put as I ride.

Awesome, I says

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…of course, it’s going to be by bike.

In previous years, my annual game trip was done entirely by bike. I’d ride in from Mill Valley, where I work, usually head to the loft (about a quarter mile from the ballpark) and then change and switch bikes, then ride back and check in to valet. Easy cheesy. This year, I live AND work in Mill Valley, and had wee Z pick-up responsibilities later, so i was forced to drive. However, only as far as the Marina. It was a great plan.

I drove in and got over the bridge, where traffic was starting to collect. I pulled off into the Marina by Crissy Field and parked on a side street. Time check: 3:33pm.

The wrongTank LAUNCHED wrongBike(tm) as if by repulsor, and I was soon on my way, by bike, through the Marina (for some lookie-looing) and then back to the waterfront, over the hop, down through Fisherman’s Wharf, and around the bend.

Quick stop by the offices of Lung’s Torture, out of principle more than anything.

Ding ding ding! He didn’t hear me, and I was off.

The SFBC runs a bike valet in the belly of the ballpark, so it’s easy enough to roll up, quick-snap, and drop the ride off. I talked with another fixie guy that was bombing through traffic. He didn’t know what inchgear he had, but given the spread, i’d wager high 70s to my 71.2 on this bike. And with that, up to the suite where the party is that i go to each year.

The way back was awesome. On the way over, traffic was blocked up all the way to the Marina, some of the worst ballpark traffic I’d seen yet. Ont he way back, it was still pretty brutal, so I was able to weave through the Embarcadero, having a great ride and not being in that traffic. Nasty headwind on the approach to, and through, Crissy, but then I got back to wrongTank, hopped in, and got into traffic, only to sit behind an accident on the bridge for an hour. But overall, how could I complain?

It was a nice, refreshing, nostalgic reminder of my usual city riding. Same route, same sights, girls and sun and tourists and other bikes. Far better than the game itself. Anyway, so, that’s how you take in a Giants game.

Bonus, the SFBC folks liked my bike so much they tried to offer me some of their dessert. HA! Awesome.

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THIS is an interesting piece of tech, and i should immediately caveat that it’s made for the downhilling/MTB set. downhill bikes commonly have an oversized 1.5" headtube (news to me, not being a mountain biker), into which one would install this headset, but then run a 1-1/8" fork. by doing so, the tech of the headset allows you to change your head angle by up to 1.5 degrees positive or negative from 0, where 0 is the actual angle of the headtube.

yes, you can accomplish the same thing by running forks with different rakes, but that requires a whole bunch of forks and this doesn’t.

VERY fucking cool if you’re a techie. which i am.

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Crook Type 3 is a transformed version of Crook, the Cinelli Mash I built up and rode on Aids Lifecycle 9, from SF to LA. The concept was simple, and absurd: after completing the 570 mile ride (if successful, which it was) I would swap out the gray frame that made that journey for the limited edition green/ white variant, celebrating the achievement. You can read about the build process for Crook Type 3 here. Suffice to say, I kept the bottom end from the original Crook, and replaced the top end, going with a silver dip theme above the frame line.

Cinelli Mash 09 Limited Edition Green/White Adidas-inspired variant
SRAM Courier 300 Cranks (48/165)
Shimano A520 pedals
Custom wheelset: Soma hubs laced to H+Son 43s
Sugino Track Cog system (17) (Currently 75 inchgear)
SRAM single chain
Dia Compe brake/ carbon fiber cable housing
Paul Comp cross lever, silver
Titanium spacers
Columbus headset and seatpost clamp
Thomson Elite post, silver
Thomson X2 stem, silver
Nitto RB-021 compact bullhorns
VO elkhide wrap
crankbolt wrap caps (!)
Brooks Swallow saddle, honey
Thomson stem cap
Continental Gatorskin Hardshells 25c
Awesomeness

Here’s the build in the wild…

Note the Paul Comp cross lever. That was a hard find, with a deceptively simple solution: Order direct from Paul Comp…
The elkhide is still stretching and getting comfy but it’s gorgeous. I miss gel padding, though. Crank bolts for bar ends. HA!

The gold hub works nicely with the color scheme, which was fortuitous. I’ll eventually have a brass bell on the front end too.

Sneaky inclusion of my Three-Pin rider logo under the chainring, for science.

On Crook 1.0 there was a quote here: ‘by hook or by crook’ which was my inspirational mantra for getting through ALC on a fixed-gear. Now that that was done, I elected to retire it, moving the bike name from the head tube to the usual position here. The cog decal moved from seatpost to seat stay. Oh, and there will be a pinup girl on the nose, it’s just not done. The other missing decals are a Type 3 lettering piece for the name, and a vinyl of our ALC logo used on our ride shirts.

Some adjustments will follow, in seat height and stem. But so far, it’s a greeeaaaaat rahde!

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THESE cycling jeans by SWRVE/barney’s have some unique characteristics that set them apart from other cycling jeans…

+ side pocket! one of the best things about dickies is the side pocket. not a CARGO pocket, just a nice little phone/iPod/multiTool-sized pocket to be able to carry more sensitive shit, and more importantly, to be able to access same WHILE RIDING. i like that.
+ reflective traffic-side beltloop. many "cycling jeans" have reflective material up inside the cuffs so that when you roll your pantleg, you glow. in fact, these jeans do, too*. but the downside to that savvy combination of technique and need is that you typically roll your RIGHT pantleg, which is AWAY from traffic. so this beltloop solution is brilliant to me.

of course, they also have all the same proven shit that other "cycling jeans" have…

+ back pockets fit u-locks.
+ waist is low in front, high in back.
+ *reflective inside right cuff.

$150 at the link above.

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As you have seen from previous posts, Crook was my Cinelli Mash fixie build, which had an expressed purpose: it was my ride for Aids Lifecycle. When I bought and built it, my vision was just to build the fixie I could do the MOST on… the longest days, the best climbs, the most agility, etc. So, it was done up with road drops, ridden for a few months before the ride (about 400 miles) and then on ALC 9 from SF to LA (another 570 miles)…

But something changed, along that preparation period before ALC. I found my initial rejection of the green limited edition version of this frame turning from dislike to interest. I couldn’t shake it. And then I had the idea: ride the gray ghost to LA, then have a metamorphosis to the green. So I took a risk on the green frame, site unseen, and ordered it before I left.

My initial plan was to come home, strip the bike, assemble the new one, then ride up to the city and meet Lung later that week with the surprise build. I had kept my plan a secret. The frame was shipped to my office while we were on the ride. All was well.

Until I got it home the day after we returned. The frame itself was gorgeous. The color is indescribable, and no pics do it justice. But the fork had carbon damage at the crown, painted over by the factory. Unacceptable! So I had to wait several weeks to get this resolved through my guys at City Grounds (zack is awesome, I say) and an understaffed Cinelli US crew. Ultimately, I got the replacement fork, and discovered the crown race was missing. We got that sorted, and I received the race in the mail last Friday, just in time to finish the build before Lung would arrive that Sunday for a birthday ride. The build was done from the back forward, but the front end was waiting on that race.

The ride is a dream, and you can see the Bio of the bike here.

Below are my process pics from the conversion, which involved using the original Crook bottom end, and a new top end.

:::

Unfortunately, the photos of the frame unboxing and the back end assembly were largely lost to a bad SD card. However, imagine me pulling a brilliant frame from the box and squeeing. The green is this iridescent color… not quite flaked, but shimmery. And more importantly, it’s a warm green, not a cold green. It’s paired with a creamy opaque white, a look I’ve always loved, going back to my one-time plans to white-paint-dip a stained-wood raw coffee table top for a project years ago. I love that look.

First, the original Crook was stripped to the bones, for sale to a fellow who was heading to San Diego fixed in a pursuit of folly similar to our fixed-gear Aids Lifecycle endeavors. How’s THAT for synchronicity! Last shot of Crook 1.0′s frame.

While waiting for the fork situation to be resolved, I dragged everything up to the deck for the extrusion shot (using the damaged fork, because hey.) and then decided to do the back end build work up there, while simultaneously BBQing and hanging out with wee Z. Here’s proof.

Here’s a close-up of that damage to the fork. Not a MASSIVE deal, but the concern I had was two-fold: one, the top surface of the crown is unpainted, so it’s visible in the gap between the frame and fork. This would be more obvious as a result. And two, it’s not like it was a sealed defect. That’s the EDGE of the paint. It’ll fray.

That was never fully resolved at the time of this writing. My boys at City Grounds took up the effort in dealing with Cinelli on that front, as weeks had gone by without any fruitful response from the manufacturer. It will be an argument over manufacturing damage vs shop damage. I believe manufacturing. In the meantime, as these weeks went by, my Crook parts hanging on the bikeBasement pegboards like those trophy skulls int he Predator ship, Lung was fast at acquiring and gleefully riding his new Cinelli cockpit. I was dying. I prayed he wouldn’t have a similar issue, like opening the box and finding his bars twisted into the shape of a rhombus or something. They weren’t. Gorgeous bars!

So as I mentioned, the bottom end was remaining from Crook 1.0. These were all new parts before ALC, right, so this transformation was to swap out frames, and the top end changes were largely cosmetic, except for the bars. So I kept my wheels, tyres, cranks, pedals, cog, brake… well, new chain, but other than that, same same. For the new stuff, the idea was to have chrome up top, black down below. I could have done all black, but the few green builds I see on the supernet go all black in the components or in one case all silver. So, in keeping with the ‘dipped’ theme of the white on the frame, the top end was dipped silver. Conceptually. Here wee Z is carefully scrutinizing some small gifts for manufacturing errors. That’s a shim set for the Nitto bars (unfortunately a necessity), a star nut and a special awesome Thomson solver stem cap. I used Nitto RB-021 compact bulls on this build, since the road drop necessity of ALC was over. I sourced a sweet silver cross lever directly from Paul Comp, too. Awesome. Same stem and seatpost, both Thomson, just now in silver. I used a shorty stem this time, feeling like going compact would get me into the bulls’ drop position easier. This is still pending final approval, as on the road it may be too close to me in this configuration, putting too much pressure on my arms. The saddle is one of my Brooks, already broken in, and the wrap is elkhide.

Here’s one Lung will like. Once I finally got my crown, I built my own crown race setter. And by built, I mean I had the hardware stoe cut me a big section of 1 1/2" black PVC. Tappity tap tap!
Look at that, saved $100 right there!

To me, the scariest step is cutting the steerer. On Crook 1.0, I left about 5mm extra, ringed with a final spacer above the stem, anticipating needing some height adjustment on ALC as I went. Didn’t end up needing it. Plus, this time, the bars are compact, so the taller the stem, the closer they are. Anyway, measure TWICE cut once, here at chez Wrongrobot.

Setting the star nut is actually kind of fun. Whamma bamma.

Here the bike is ready for wrapping. The Paul lever is installed on the thicker portion of the bars, as far over as possible to minimize cable housing scrape on the sharp curve of the X2 front end. This would be the slowest step, wrapping the bike up (literally) taking me from Friday night after getting back from Lung’s birthday party, through Saturday and into the next evening.

The elkhide is really interesting. It’s stretchier than calf hide, and is more porous, shows more defects. It’s really rad though. I had started with a lighter color that purported to match the Brooks honey color saddle, but was too tan, so i sent that back and got the darker brown, which matched perfectly. I used something close to a baseball glove stitch. I had no experience with this. You use one thick waxed cord with two stubby needles, and work from the stem outward. I’d get three good stitches and then a fail, distracted by my baby hurtling herself off of something or Anne Hathaway on film or whatever. But it wasn’t arduous. Just required time to get right. Go slowly, etc. In practice, on the road the wrap slips a bit as it’s stretchy and you apply so much force with your hands, so it pulled away a bit from the edges where they started, but still good. Will take some miles to settle in. Easily the most gorgeous bar covering I’ve ever had.

And with that, Crook Type 3 was born. We rode Paradise Loop under windy conditions, and it was a dream. I have some adjustments to make, reducing the inchgear down to the more universal 72 from 75, and some messing around with seat and stem position, but overall, love it. LOVE iot.

So that’s the story of how Crook became Crook Type 3 in a post-ALC transformation!

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The age old question, as we’ve seen before: What Would Jens Voigt Do?

What would he do when his bike has a mechanical and he’s going to get DQ’d for being too far off the back since his team car can’t get to him with a replacement? That’s right, snatch a kid’s bike from one of our Team Hype guys and ride THAT like a bat out of hell back up to the main field and survive.

My knees hurt.

http://teamhype.blogspot.com/2010/07/je … -dude.html

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I was looking all over for a clip of his latest, and our baby brothers at Team Hype posted one. Perfect! There’s something about popping a wheelie on a road bike that impresses me. Doing it after 130 miles and whatever else… yeah, impressive cubed.

http://teamhype.blogspot.com/2010/07/robbie-stunts.html

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