This is the Orbit, an innovative new drink holder from Carver. Lung spotted one in one of his LBSs in SF. I’ve been developing and redeveloping drink carry-systems for the office for what, two years now, settling on a scratch-built system involving two tumblers, plastic L-handles, duct tape, plastic packing tape, cardboard and bungies, which reasonably allows you, the rider, to apply your own dynamic balance control onto the carry system without having to, you know, carry the drink(s) in your hand as you ride, risking death. However, with the news of this new Orbit product, I had to try it. So I bought one this weekend at Valencia. The display model, no less!

So, it’s basically a gimbal. The holder mounts to your bars, and contains a ring, within which a smaller ring pivots on one axis, and within that a tertiary ring pivots on a perpendicular axis. The idea is that the drink remains level, even as the angle of the bars changes.

Out of the box, it’s a delightful fail. That is, if you find frothing, boiling coffee ejaculated onto your neck delightful. See, the Orbit has no shock absorption quality. So while the cup attempts to remain level, thanks to the mighty fist of gravity, the road vibration, especially over bigger bumps and chasms, slingshots fluid out of the escape hole of the cup at high velocity. Upwards. Now, sure, if one had a completely sealed container like a sealed tumbler or a water bottle, one wouldn’t worry. But then, one wouldn’t require an elaborate carry-system either.

However, I jiggered a modification, and on my afternoon coffee run, it proved successful. See, the tertiary ring of the gimbal was the one that experienced the most swing through road vibration. What I did was pivot the entire assembly down 90 degrees. Instead of shooting outward in front of you, it’s hanging the cup down alongside the head tube. The cup rests against the front brake caliper. This steadies that wild, swinging tertiary ring a good amount. There’s still road vibration, but it no longer has that swirl and launch thing going on. Much like my old hand-built system, it now sloshes upward int he cup on big bumps but doesn’t have velocity to push out of the escape hole plugged with a small gift.

Now, my home-brew system has the advantage of greater balance and shock absorption, as it relies on one hand holding it level, though it hangs over the bars. And it carries two drinks. But for the single-drink adventure or, like this afternoon, when your hand is occupied with yet ANOTHER object, this in it’s modified position, actually works pretty well! My neck is spared!

Your mileage may vary.

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This is a lot of reach here, but I love this OSHA warning graphic. It always reads to me as ‘no gear!’ like some sort of anti-road bike declaration.

Of course, fixed-gears have gears, I have road bikes, neither have two cogs grinding together, and even if they did, all we really need are more pie plates.

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Two quick updates on the YBD project front.

Bottom Bracket.
I installed it. Shimano, basic, tight, smooth. Good to go!

Wheels.
Hereby completed by our man Joe at 718cyclery.com, and shipped!

We could be, and should be, go for ridery this weekend!

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This is another inchgear calculator app. Now, I like mine just fine, and it’s quite powerful. No disputing this one is aesthetically pleasing, though, no doubt.

However, I love the copy:

"How many inches are you pushing?

We’ve all been there. The dude/t isn’t taking the hint despite the fact that you’ve used "interesting", "stock" and "just like the manufacturer made it" to describe the bike in question. You suspect that the tiny chainring and huge cog yield some wimpy drivetrain, and in the days before Chainvetica you couldn’t be sure. Now you can.

Chainvetica does the math your PBR addled brain cannot. Given the tooth count of your chainring and cog, it calculates gear inches — an ancient formula designed to sum up just how hard it’s going to be turn over the cranks on your fixed gear. The more inches you’re running, the harder it is to push. Use it to pick your cog. Use it to quantify the power of your massive quads.

As an added bonus, Chainvetica also calculates your speed at a cadence of 90 rpm. Your skinny jeans will make 90 rpm exactly "as fast as you can pedal" so basically, this app also calculates your ride’s top speed without all the bourgeois cables and stuff.

All this functionality presented on a bed of orange and Helvetica. Good stuff.

(Does this work with SS mountain bikes? 27c tires? 650c wheels? Kilometers per hour? First of all: yuck. Secondly, we’re working on that.)"

Dude, if I were a hipster urban cyclist with an iPhone, I’d be like ‘Sweet! Wait. What?’

Piss being taken WHILE item being sold!
ha

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chainvet … 6126?mt=8#

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These kits look really gorgeous to me. Wonderful color scheme.
And a lover of solid sans typefacery too.
Courtesy of designer Brandon Shincock…

http://trackosaurusrex.com/pblog/index. … 610-101639

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I originally wanted to post about Mick’s ascent up Mt. Ventoux on his fixed-gear bike. Because wow.

Then I got into his blog. You have to explore it, below. He’s been riding all over Europe, South America, his native Australia, and it’s such a love letter to the kind of bike tourism I love and fantasize about: not the drag-your-tent-with-you randonneur type, but the bring-your-track-bike-and-spin kind. I LOVE it. And I want to go to there.

This does remind me of my ongoing SS Coupler project, as well… hm.

Ventoux:
http://ifeellikealittlekid.wordpress.co … t-ventoux/ via Trackasaurus!

The whole blog:
http://ifeellikealittlekid.wordpress.com/

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That’s right, a bike-based taco peddler, commissioned by my favorite SF seafoodery Weird Fish. I’m ecstatic. And you will be too, once you click through and consult the bike pr0n diagram.

http://www.biteclubeats.com/2010/06/the-taco-bike.html

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Why choose?
Poor Cavendish.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/others … rland.html

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I love this concept so much it hurts.
And the execution? Well, the edges look like they’d hurt, too, but otherwise, AWESOME. I’m really a sucker for punch-out extrusion type products.

http://trackosaurusrex.com/pblog/index. … 614-081500

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My conversion of my previously-converted fixed-gear Look to a road bike is well underway. In fact, thanks to some late night enthusiasms, it’s almost done!

I’ve never built up a road bike before. I’ve done simple maintenance, but frankly, the majority of my road bike riding time I was focused on riding, letting the LBS do the annual tuning, and that was that. As you have seen, I most recently have been riding a KG 381 Jalabert-Edition Look road bike, circa 2003, but got a second frame, the KG 381 Team, a spare from the 2003 season. I converted the latter into a big gear fixed-gear bike, which was awesome. But now I’ve decided to condense a bit. I’m attempting to strip the Dura Ace groupo off of the Ja-Ja build-up and put it on the Team bike, then sell off the former. I love them both, but purgery compels me.

I assembled everything additional I would need, which frankly isn’t much. The one stand-out change was new tyres. The Ja-Ja Look was running bright red tyres, which was cool and all, but the Team bike is a low-key affair. It isn’t murdered out, per se, like Lung’s Tumbler, but it’s mellow. If his bike is the absence of light in the shape of a fixie, mine’s the shadow. From the light that isn’t there. Or something. Anyway, since the Conti Gator Hardshells did so well down to LA, I went for them again here.

I was going pretty slow and being methodical, not only not being particularly familiar with the componentry and their adjustment from the mechanic side, but also because it was late, I had to be quiet, and really, you don’t want to eff up Dura Ace parts by being overzealous. I actually had very few issues. My biggest stalls were pulling the self-extracting cranks and then the BB behind them, and ultimately there was nothing wrong, I’m just gunshy about putting muscle into it, given the propensity of stripped-threads and tweaked parts being a part of muscly-mechanic behavior when you don’t know what to expect and how it should behave. Ultimately no problems. Everything was stripped, degreased, regreased, and reassembled. By the time I was done for the night I had the entire groupo swapped, front and rear brakes strung and set, rear derailleur strung and set, and the bars taken care of. All that remained was stuff that I needed to research or replace.

For one thing, the Ja-Ja had a braze-on front derailleur hanger, and the team bike doesn’t, so I needed to source a derailleur frame clamp. I picked one up yesterday in the city on a ride-around with Lung, but it was the wrong size (of course, the one time I don’t get more than one just to be safe) but I ordered a shim, so that’s fine. I wanted to use a fresh chain, had to pick that up and did. I don’t think I swapped the previous chain in 4 years of riding (shudder) though two of them were almost exclusively dedicated to fixed-gear stuff so it didn’t see many miles.

I’m almost there! Yesterday afternoon I swapped out the tyres, set the wheels, readjusted the brakes, adjusted the wild cable housings in front (I’m so used to Campy from my Bianchis that with Shimano my instinct is to let them fly out, even though they usually get wrapped tight to the bars) and a few other things, and I’m pretty close to completion. I’m going to re-use some bar tape from another ride, swap another saddle on here, and then I can start trying to fine tune the shifting system.

Kind of exciting, working on a road bike for the first time. No major explosions in the pipeline yet!

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