i’m seriously freaking the fuck OUT.

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No, not the iMap My Ride thing, or a dubious iPad handlebar mount, or even a bike build the colorway of a Blueberry iMac…

… I was delighted when my Apple Genius guy, in seeing me constantly looking back at the mouth of the store where Crook waited, locked to it’s own self, but otherwise free for the taking by mall security or what have you, and instructed me to BRING IT IN. To a store filled with expensive electronics, overcrowded with lookieloos. ‘We do it all the time’ he said.

This man was my effing hero.

Best part: fixie-guy onlookers admiring the build, as if a Cinelli MASH should be on display in an Apple store…

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So yesterday I did some maintenance on Crook, following the Day on the Ride event which marked my experiment with the 82-inchgear as a default gearing for ALC. Nope, it may work for flats and rollers, and it may have even worked on a 60-mile China Camp loop, but over a whole day, including longer climbs, it just took too much energy. Time to cog down! And so I did. I also made some adjustments to bar angle, and took a look at my alarmingly loose bottom bracket after that 90-mile day. One cup was loose, the axle could slip about 5-7mm side to side, and it was ugly. So, I pulled the cranks, checked the BB spindle for deformation, checked the threading of the cups, and reassembled tightly. So far so good… we’ll have to see if the cup comes loose again. My working theory: Lung and I both tried greasing the BB cup where it met the BB shell, to reduce aluminum frame squeak. I wonder if this meant less stable purchase for the cup under the extreme torquing of the spindle by the cranks in that big gear? One would think that a properly installed set of cups couldn’t move, since there’s theoretically no action on the cups themselves, other than the internal bearing pressure from the spindle cartridge… but maybe those giant mash turns apply such an eccentric load on the spindle that it pushes hard against the shells. I don’t know…

Anyway, Put everything back together, tested it, and took off for the day. This day included a Paradise Loop, which was delightful in the lower inchgear. However, on the way home I noticed an increase in BB creaking (I didn’t re-grease the cup) and I felt more shifting under my left foot, which I thought was more trouble with that pedal and cleat, as they’ve been harder to get out of lately.

This morning, took off, felt MORE grinding sensation, or lifting, under my foot, and something didn’t feel right. I got through Tam junction and was heading over Almonte hump when I could definitely feel instability in the crank arm. I stopped and checked it and lo, to my surprise, the crank was coming loose. WHAT the.

Now, normally, I’d just whip out an allan, take care of it, and proceed. But funny thing about the 8mm key: it hardly appears in field multi-tools. I have one. It lives in the set of ride tools I took on Day on the Ride… now on a drying rack after being de-Poweraided. GRRREAT! So, I tamped it on, literally, as much as I could, hand tightened the crankbolt, and one-legged it to work. I got as far as WHole Paychecks, and the crank fell right off, creating the undoubtedly amusing sight of my left leg flying forward and out as I tried to keep the clipped-on crank from falling back into my wheel.

Now, this never happens to me, but I was actually one half-block from ACE, so I noodled over there, and sure enough, at 8:29am, I was a minute before opening. So, obviously, I proceeded to clean them out of 8mm loose keys. Tightened the crank up properly, took off to work, BB shell no longer supersqueaking, everything golden. And now, I have 8mm keys for every ride kit as well as the garage. HA!

Anyway, weird feeling, second time it’s happened to me (the last being the broken crankon Toro in Napa Valley) and hopefully the last. I can only figure that I must not have gotten enough torque on my little multi-tool 8mm when I was reassembling the crankset the other morning, not screwing it in deep enough. Oh well, no loss, other than some crank arm paint!

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On Crook, I’m using the new Sugino Cog carrier system, which does away with the traditional threaded cog, threaded lockring and chainwhip, replacing them with a carrier tray/ cog/ lockring, held together and on the hub through the use of a Shimano BB tool. It’s more tool to carry than the fixie tool I have for the other bikes, but the cog change is like 33 times as fast, and the finger shearing risk from the chainwhip is gone.

To show you how easy it is to change these cogs, I took a few photos when I pulled the 16t off and added the 18t in it’s place.

The wheel, divorced from the frame, showing the lockring system. Grab that BB tool!

As you can see, it’s a big wrench. I got the smallest one I could find, for the road (and even then, thanks to the carrier design, only needed on a ride if you plan on changing cogs: the cog will not unwind itself) and a more robust one in the shop.

The lockring comes off quite easily given the surface area of the wrench grip face, and here you see that the cog pops right off the SINE wave channel of the carrier.

Pop the new cog on there quick-snap!

And it’s back into the drops!

Total time was about 3 minutes, including taking photos and preparing a Kaysuhdilla.

And I can’t reiterate this enough: NO CHAIN WHIP.

You can get yours here!

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Yesterday A.M. the rain broke and it was time to get on the bike again, after four days of recuperation following the ALC Day on the Ride, in which I experimented, some would say foolishly, with pushing an 82-inchgear over a total of 90 miles of rolling terrain, as a test run for the ALC week to come in June. My quads were battered, my back was torqued, and most alarmingly, as the other isses were predicted and this was not, my bottom bracket was in shambles. One cup had unscrewed, the whole thing creaked like hell, and the BB was sliding around in there, which is a terrible thing. I took care of that matter, and you can read what followed, here… but let’s talk gearing.

The 82-inchgear, while disturbing some that I’ve met ont he road, isn’t THAT dramatic. I heard a story from the Team Hype guys of a young guy pushing a 105-inchgear… and when you get right down to it, it’s not the inchgear itself that’s the issue: it’s the terrain, and the bike’s inability, by it’s very fixie nature, to compensate. An 82-inchgear, in Crook’s case, was not far off from your big ring in front and three or four back, depending on your cassette, on a modern road bike. For long flats and modest rollers, most roadies are in the big ring. And though I spent a few years exclusively in the 39 to amp up my spinning ability, as a rule, you want that bigger gear to go faster and more comfortably at speed. This was the logic behind Villain: to bomb flats more easily. I figured hell, if I have this many bikes, why not have more gearing options? The issue with the big gear on a fixie, unlike on your road bike, is that you’re theoretically stuck with it: once the climbs start, you’re in more pain and spending more energy, that a lower geared bike. Same with starting from stops. Same with controlling descents. That said, like any fixie, the inverse is also true: the big gear makes lomng-distance flats and rollers easier and faster. It’s a trade-off. I’ve ridden the big gear for a long time now. It wasn’t a question of doability, it was a question of efficiency on Lifecycle.

The challenge was always going to be energy consumption more than knee strain: I planned on gearing down for climb days and major sections anyway, just like the MASH guys did in the renegade Tour of California they ran. But it was more about the attrition of dailr rollers, and all those stop signs. As Day on the Ride proved, the stops took their toll on energy levels, and the modest climbs proved the seond experiment: big gears up even modest hills sucked energy that long-term would be needed. I exclude the major climbs of the day because they were ridiculous on this gearing, and had I BROUGHT another cog, I’d have cogged up already by that point, just couldn’t. But more importantly, the intermediate climbs: I’d watch Lung shoot ahead of me as I wound down, down, down into this slow mash. When I didn’t NEED to. And I got over them. Like I said early on, I’ve dragged this gearing over the rides here in Marin successfully… it was the imopact on a longer ride I wondered about, and Day on the Ride proved that by mile 70, those hilld had taken their toll. Again, I exclude the bigger climbs, which also battered me, and far worse. I just knew THOSE would.

Anyway, now the question became not whether or not the 82-inchgear would work, because I decided about 2 hours in that Saturday that it wouldn’t… but rather, would a lower gearing work for ME, given my knee issues which haven’t flared up for a few years but I did feel some of by the end of the day. Worst-case, I can still take a road bike, but keeping with the plan to take Crook, what to do? What gearing to use? I decided that, rather than gear to the mid-point (17t cog, dropping to mid 70s-inchgear) I’d go whole hog the opposite direction, and use the 18t. This cog system only offered me 16-18t (cassette lockring system) so what the hell. So, off went the 16t, on went the 18t, and I was good to go.

In the last few days I’ve put approximately 45 miles in on the resulting 72.5-inchgear, and while I admit it took some getting used to (only one of my fixies is this low, WrongBike, and I haven’t been riding any others other than Crook as a rule in warming up for ALC) I soon became accustomed to the relatively high cadence. Again, this is all relative: Lung has pushed low to mid-70s near-exclusively, if I recall, in his city bikes, and until Villain and Crook, so did I. It’s just on THIS bike, after what, 500 miles or so cumulative on the 82-inchgear, it’s quite a change.

But yesterday, I took a necessary trip over the hill to the Apple Store as an excuse to enjoy this fabulous post-storm weather, and did an afternoon Paradise Loop. I felt like I was FLYING. It was refreshing, after the weekend experience, which I sort of mentally associate with struggle, to ride Crook and feel fast, beyond the flats as I did before.

So I’m optimistic that this will be a suitable low-impact gearing for ALC…

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Dylan, who works at local Tam Bikes, has a Superpista that has similar geometry and build-up to my Cinelli Mash. He’s a strapping young guy, and quite the climber and sprinter. But when he showed me this alarming crack in his frame, he assured me it wasn’t from FGFS business. That’s wild. I’ve had some undercarriage issues in my big gear fixie builds but no carbon separations (yet)… apparently he can’t get warranty assistance from Once-Known-as-Reliable-Bianchi because it’s a whopping 3 years old and he doesn’t have documentation. On the one hand, i can see whay frame builders are wary of the liability involved in accepting a warranty claim in this era oif tricking and alleycatting, but seriously, take it in as an out-of-warranty courtesy swap, then.

Anyway, MEH!

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very short and sweet little mellow EDIT of the rules of bike polo.

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when i first posted about THIS, i had no idea it was a socket that you ADD to your existing krypto or bulldog.

"Fits all Kryptonite Evo or Classic U-locks and OnGuard Bulldog U-locks."

STOKED.
purchasing tomorrow.

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from TRACKO.

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best messenger bag EVER, spotted on PC.

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