on my way from a work lunch thing today, i passed by perhaps the most beautiful bike i’ve seen outside the beloved team lope stable. perhaps even within the team lope stable.

it’s a coupled freeman transport, with coaster brake and raw metal finish. and it. is. incredible.

in it’s full glory.

nekkid bars and beautiful headbadge.

fucking brazed-on downtube badge and meaty 32c tyre in cream.

closeup of the top tube coupler and the brooks saddle.

coaster brake and gorgeous track dropouts.

i mean, i don’t often drool over strange bikes, even when their owners aren’t around, but this one deserves every drop i spill on it. just an amazing townie.

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So I spent literally YEARS developing a DIY coffee carriage system for the bike. I bought several weak products. I bought one GOOD product. I even have a workable system you’ve seen me post about.

But it occurred to me the other day: when it’s warm, i wear shorts, and my shorts have big cargo pockets. It’s an efficiency thing: i often stuff crap in there at the grocery stoe or on walks with Wee Z or what have you, I often have one or more bikery tools in there… anyway, I suddenly became aware of a barely-thought-about habit I had formed:

I carry my coffee tumbler in a side pocket when I have both the tumbler and the pocket.

Kind of funny.
Anyway.

Moving on…

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You see all the winners and the nearly-winners (losers, according to the winners) on TV and in the write-ups. Here’s a great, terrible article written by one who was forced to abandon this year. A fascinating read for riders and non-riders alike. You ever feel too blown to continue your weekend climb? Well, think about this pressure…

This was the news blip I found on a UK small news site:

"Briton Charly Wegelius did not start stage 11 of the Tour de France on Thursday due to illness.
The Omega Pharma-Lotto climber has not been able to eat due to his illness and was forced to withdraw from the race.
"He’s not been well," said Omega Pharma-Lotto sports director Roberto Damiani."

Well, OK, but here it is in HIS words:

http://blog.canyon.com/?p=2793&lang=en

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Alrighty, so this could just be a really lame dorky ass post but I am going to do it anyway. It’s not about putting together a cool bike or anything but I am super stoked on these new shoes. My Sidi ergo2 served their purpose, and while they are probably comparable in price to these Mavics they are NIGHT and DAY. I opted to not get Sidis again for 2 reasons. Number one reason: everyone and their mother has these shoes. Number 2: They haven’t innovated anything in FOREVER. Their high end shoes are exactly the same. They are just phoning it and banking on their name, like Motorola did with their Razr.

Anyway, I digress. I chose the Mavics because this is their first shoe to market (which could be really stupid getting basically a beta but I am a google guy so I enjoy my beta). What this means though is that they have to create something damn good to dethrone, or at least compete, with Sidi and to be honest they succeeded. These things are so light, stiff and comfortable I can’t even believe I ever rode my Sidis for so long. They actually put some cushion in these things… what a concept. It literally fits like a glove.

I am going to pilfer some from some marketing speak but they are absolutely true and there is some cool info about it too.
"people might think that obsession with shoe weights is ridiculous. If you think it’s crazy, it’s probably because you’ve never picked up either a really heavy shoe, or a really light one. Each shoe is being lifted 90 times a minute while pedaling. A few grams might not seem like much, but after a few hours, even after an hour, lifting that little extra weight can add up."

"While it doesn’t get discussed much, sole thickness, or rather thinness, is also fairly important. The Zxellium has a 5.5mm thick sole that puts the foot 7.5mm from the top of the cleat. The closer your are to the pedal, the less energy you lose to "rocking torque.""

There is more about the locking, 3d molding, contoured carbon sole and stuff but you get the gist. One thing that is crazy is that the carbon sole is so thin that they have to send you special bolts that are shorter so you don’t blow through to your feet.

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This is from Denika Robbins’ flickr. I came across it looking at something entirely unrelated, and fell in love with that image. Gorgeous! It’s a concept for a wedding invite.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sugarlumpk … 032523256/

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K and I just finished purchasing all our hotels for our first bike trip together, actually together or alone for that matter. This is nothing like the grueling fixie ride to LA that you guys did since we will be doing this in the pure comfort of gears, hotels, swimming pools, day breaks, and restaurants but it should be a little challenging with 380 miles of riding, without any of our miscellaneous adventures along the way, and 26k feet of climbing. How lucky am I that I got a girl who is willing to do that!

Anyway, the plan is to leave from SF on Saturday with a single night sleepover in Santa Cruz, Carmel, and San Simeon. We will be staying in SLO 2 nights since I went to Poly and haven’t been there since I graduated and K has never been there (a little show and tell time) for 2 nights and then 1 night in a fancy place on the beach in Pismo. We then take off to stay 3 days in Santa Barbara, which incidentally has to be the most expensive city to stay in (at least for any of the places we would want to stay at)! It beat NY in my book!

For those of you actually keeping count you will see that we used up all our days in cycling fun and city visiting so we cheated and got a rental car for our trip back on Monday.

So, I realized that I didn’t have a great backpack for cycling and also that we are going to need a whole lot more than just a change of clothes. We will need some essentials like tools, pump, lube and such. Oops, my bag just got a bit heavier, DAMN!, good thing I bought a new one (I’ll tell you all about it when it comes in and I try it out).

If you guys have suggestions for things I should bring, restaurants to visit, or just some scenic routes/rides along our route please chime in. I am all eyes!

This is a wonderful cause so donations are welcome!

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Well, Ye Blacke Death is finally finished! Finished in the since, of course, that it rolls and pedals and steers and mostly stops, not that there’s not much more to do. But this was the day that I was able to get it rolling and do some tests. Any build, I’m secretly relieved when it doesn’t explode on it’s maiden voyage. Weirder frames and pieces parts and I wonder a little more about that result. I wasn’t going to throw wee Z on here and hurtle down the hill, but I did want to get out and see what needed adjustment and how it held up.

As you can see, it came together pretty nicely. The bobike fits on a a bracket that seats on the quill, and is removable in under 7 seconds. You can pull the clamp off as well and it’s like it was never there, or leave the clamp on and use the cotter pin to remove the seat. Even on the bike, there’s no interference with the front rack.

The combination of matte black, laquered wood, leather and chrome work well together. It has an old timey vibe, but some new school details. More interestingly to me, it’s the most frankenbike build I’ve done, even more than Fix-e was, and it doesn’t LOOK like it. I think it looks like it rolled new off the assembly line of one of your vintagy commuter bike shops.
Most importantly, it came together how I envisioned it, with the black rims and knobbies, the little gleams on the chrome, the general geometry…

Wee Z even helped with spoke tension inspection. Not at speed.

So, what’s left: well, a lot. Some adjustments are required before it can really do what it was intended to do. See, I tried to hop on it and almost became a eunuch. The Bobike is low and back, so you cradle your precious cargo in your arms as you ride. But for most bikes, that means interference with your riding position. I could get between the seat and the Bobike, but I couldn’t get UP onto my seat. Absolutely no-go if there was a child up in there.

I was sort of resigned to the idea that maybe the seat wouldn’t work out (it was designed for upright commuters in Denmark with adjustable stems and that vertical clearance) and that I’d be putting the rear rack on. But I did some research last night and was reminded, thanks to www.longleafbicycles.com why i got my long quill stem in the first place. I was going about this the wrong way: I thought the clearance problem would be the seat being too much in my face, so I was pushing it farther and farther down the stem, to no avail. As it turns out, it needs to be HIGHER, which is counter-intuitive, I have to admit. That’s where the ginormous stem came in. So this morning, I raised the seat high on the stem (didn’t yet actually increase stem height) and equally-as-important, lowered the SEAT. It made all the difference, and it worked. AWESOME.

Another issue is the brake. I’m a mile from where I started: I have sticky salmon pads, a new center-pull caliper, and I spent a LOT of time stringing and restringing it, which is made more aggravating with this vintage of equipment because of having to use double- wrenches on the hanger nuts. I was too weak in stopping power on my test ride, which was after about three stringings already… and then I adjusted it and am now too tight, so i need to let out about 3mm of cable. But I’m close.

The cork handles, which were kind of an experiment anyway, were 50/50. One went on great, and one shredded like you’d expect thin, true cork to do. Wifebot(tm) suggested glue but i don’t think it’ll hold together very long, so if I keep using these, I’ll be replacing one.

The bars, which LOOK rad, once again may not work, just as has happened on my other rides.

The sweep brings you too far forward, and I think I’ll interfere with comfortable positioning when Z is on there. So i may have to switch to sway, or boulevard, bars. I’ll be looking at that tonight.

Lastly, when I set out on the test ride, I was like DAMN this is a bitch. What is UP. The gearing was higher than I anticipated. I discovered the culprit. Remember how I was messing around with different combinations of cranks and chainrings? I ended up going with a 53, not the 39 I started with. Makes a teeeny bit of difference.

I calculated the inchgear at a gruesome 101. GAH.

I’m putting a 20 on the back tonight, getting it back down to my comfortable low-70s.

All in all though, very exciting and satisfying day.

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As you may recall from Crook 1.0, prepared for Aids Lifecycle 9, I finished off the build with a custom vinyl pin-up girl nose art, as is my style, with the help of the gang at Buzzy’s. They donated these, and much of our Team Lope vinyl graphics, in advance of the ride, and also did Ghostal’s custom skull stickers too.

When I built up Crook Type 3, after the ride, I knew I needed another pin-up girl, so i did a variant color scheme on Three-Pin Maria, which had been one of the two choices for the original application. I think with the color tweaks it worked out very well, despite what wifebot(tm) calls gacho-boots. She feels very strongly about footwear.

This time, to ease the labor burden on Buzzy’s I did the sticker trimming myself. It took awhile, but as an architect, i’m good with an XACTO so it got done. This is white background not clear applique so I had to be pretty precise.

One difference this time around is that I had the image done in mirror-images to better fit the bike, and I think it looks better than it did on Crook 1.0.

Gorgeous I says!

Thanks again to MJ at Buzzy’s Surf Shop!
http://www.californiasurfstickers.com

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Team Hype was up in SF this weekend, so we volunteered to give them a guided tour of one of our mellow Marin hops. Unfortunately, TH’s Remi had to go it alone, as his brother-in-arms, Shoelace, was home growing chest hair. But not to worry, we gave him a workout!

We took Remi over the bridge (no tourist bike collidery or SUV crushery or wet-grate slidery, so we were statistically in the green) and down through Sausalito to the Paradise Loop with the Strwberry Extension. This is a great staple ride here in Marin, because it can be done in many different ways: as I do it most often, these days, as a lunch ride; you can do it bombing on road bikes, mashing on fixies, easy-cheesie with inexperienced rider friends, whatever the flavor of that day might be. Remi was on his road bike a DA-4-Life Fuji, and Lung and I were on our Leader and Cinelli bikes, per the usual. It was a good ride, pretty brisk pace through the hops. We warned Remi not to be fooled by the mannequin in a squad car, but sure enough, we rolled up and he promptly through himself on the ground, raised his hands over his head (for protection, not surrender) and had his cameraphone running. I eased his burden. "These aren’t PV cops, brother!" I says.

I brought the powdered donuts. Of course, by 9am the powdered donuts were already sold out, so we had glazed donut holes. Which are, admittedly, for babies.

Great ride, good friends, and we even met some nice girls on a lay-of-the-land tour (no, Lung, NO) and helped them out of a flat tyre bind. Good mojo all around.

Read Hype’s report here…

Update: Forgot to mention, got a call-out on my green Cinelli Mash build from a rider passing in the opposite direction. Oh yes, Mash’s Rainier. That was nice!

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Now, I disagree with the statement and fauxfascist imagery is a tough nut… but I give it three thumbs up for putting a bike helmet on the eagle. HA…

http://jamfactory.bigcartel.com/product … hirt-black

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