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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Related posts:

1. Bike Build Process Log: Crook Type 3 Conversion
2. Team Lope Bike Bio: Crook
3. Friends of Team Lope: Team Hype out of LA

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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Related posts:

1. Team Lope Bike Bio: Crook Type 3
2. Bike Build Process Log: Crook – Front End Work
3. Bike Build Process Log: Villain 3.0 – Strippery!

Could’ve used THIS on ALC, I say!

http://us.dahon.com/accessories/2010/biologic-reecharge

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yesterday, i took a ride with friend of TLTC r-e-L, who WR and i met on the lifeCycle back in june. r-e-L had planned the route, which was 50 miles through the berkeley hills. i was on one of my fixed-gears — the one i rode to LA. the route amounted to several thousand feet of climbing, with grades that approached 20%. some of the roads we were on had awful names like grizzly peak and wildcat canyon, and we did at least part of something called "the three bears." just the fucking sound of it is intimidating. we circled the reservoir and went by a couple parks as well. in the end, we spent well over half of our day climbing, and the heat was up in the 90s.

i’d prepared for the ride by resting and eating an entire pot of pasta the day before, doing a lot of stretching, having some muscle milk, and loading my bike up with dual waterbottles of powerade/water. unfortunately, we didn’t start the ride till 2PM, so despite what i’d done before, i went into the day with only a bagel in me that i’d had HOURS prior. NOT SMART. and i was doing this fixed.

the day started out pretty well, with lots of slow climbing and gorgeous views and general good times. we rode at a good pace and climbed and climbed and climbed. every ride i’ve ever taken in the berkeley hills is just climbing. it’s like the old stories your grandfather tells of having to walk to school uphill both ways. i don’t know how it’s possible. EVERYTHING is uphill. it’s fucked. but it’s not so bad and we talked and talked and had a good time.

about halfway through the day, the heat was really starting to get heavy. about this time, we found ourselves on a climb that i’d never felt the likes of before. the grade had to be near 20%, as my cross street in the city is 18%, and this was steeper. so steep in fact, that it beat me. i made it MOST of the way up and then completely shut down. i could feel myself going into dehydration and overexertion (tingly scalp, maxed-out heartrate, dizzy vision), but because i’m a stubborn idiot, i kept going. for like another 6 feet. hahaha!!! i pulled over under the shade and quickly stripped off my helmet, hat, and armwarmers (i have to — i’m too fair-skinned), and i unzipped my jersey. then i drank a TON of my liquid and popped a couple shotblocks and had half a bonkbreaker bar. r-e-L had come up on me somewhere in this process and i tole her to keep going, which she did. after i’d regained most of my strength (a few MINUTES), i climbed back on my bike and tried to go further. nope. made it about another 100 feet and it was just too steep and too hot. i had to give up. i walked up to where r-e-L was waiting and said "sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you." she was so apologetic — "i’m so sorry, i didn’t remember this being so steep and i know you’re fixed and i just feel really bad." i said, "this is all me. the last thing i had to eat was a bagel at 9AM and the last time i rode distance was ALC. i knew i wasn’t prepared for 50 through the berkeley hills on a blazing hot day on a fixed gear and i pushed it anyway."

after we were both rested up a bit, maybe a few more minutes, we got moving. i decided to try and ride the rest of the way up now, because it wasn’t that far, so i climbed on and grabbed my drops and clipped in and stood up and took one pedalstroke and CREAAAK! my whole cockpit collapsed. i have no fucking idea how this happened, but somehow the faceplate bolts on my stem came loose over the last week. my bars spun down inside the stem. WIERD. so we pulled over AGAIN and i fixed it and then we were finally out. i was coming around from my bonkout finally, and that’s when the right calf cramp started threatening. that lasted the rest of the day, which was awesome. more climbing and more climbing and MORE climbing.

we were now 3/4 of the way through 50 miles and i was pretty well out of liquid. that’s when i got the flat. rear tyre, who knows why it happened (there was nothing in the tyre), just one of those things. i thought about patching it, but i had a tube and a patch kit, so decision made — tube. more climbing and more climbing and descents with hairpin switchbacks and just a nightmarish back-and-forth of blazing sun and frigid shade. my body was taking a beating that i hadn’t experienced maybe ever. and now i was officially out of hydration. we kept hoping for a gas station or something, but we found jack. this is ghetto as fuck, but i did find a half-bottle of crystal geyser on the side of the road — lid intact and apparently ok. i poured it into one of my bottles. r-e-L and i were also sharing her last bottle at this point and she was running low. we were really on the dregs. and BOOM, heaven! a park with a water fountain. oh man, so stoked.

i parked my bike with the pedal-on-the-curb trick and went over and drank a TON of water, and then filled up both of my bottles. that was when my bike fell over on the cement on it’s new matte black cinelli drops. awesome. a pretty bad scratch the length of the lower, horizontal part of the left drop. the upside is that i was riding the bars with no tape on them, and i’ve been intending to get some soon, so it’ll eventually be covered. meaning no harm, no foul.

after that, the day was a cake-walk. we got back to her apartment, showered up, she made a fucking BOMB roasted chicken and some kale and roasted potatoes and we noshed on pita and hummus and carrots and snap peas — very kick-ass post-ride mealery.

unfortunately, BART stops running at a certain time, so i caught an 1130 train back to the city and CRASHED. OUT. i was fucking exhausted, had nearly had a goddamn heat stroke out there, and it was past midnight now, so i was feeling it.

today i woke up feeling tired, but not sore. that’s a GREAT sign. if i look back honestly on the day, the reality is that i almost bonked on one hill that was the steepest i’ve ever ridden fixed. that’s really all that happened. everything else was fine, and in fact, super fun.

i do recommend not trying this ride fixed, though, unless you run a high-60s inch gear. i run a low 70s and that hill beat me. granted, if i’d been properly nourished and it hadn’t been as hot as the face of the fucking sun out there, it may have been different, but that’s the way it is.

until the next time…

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Related posts:

1. Team Lope Ride Report: Marin Headlands in a Fixed Fury
2. team lope ride report : sf -> mill valley, roundtrip, FIXED
3. team lope ride report – fixed city circle, with DC seen.

SO NOTED.

http://www.pedalconsumption.com/files/f … ought.html

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Something about his prose, the simplicity of the coverage yet the elegance of the emotion conveyed, and the way it encapsulates the entire experience in the way a stranger to it can sort of understand but a veteran can get lost in emotional memory, really touched me. Read on:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outposts/aidslifecycle/

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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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As we talked about in our Aids Lifecycle ride reports, we came out fully prepared to deal with all sorts of mechanical calamity. We didn’t want to rely on the Cannondale bike tech support for our fixed-gears, in case they didn’t have the right tools for some of the components, so we packed full tool kits for overhauling the bikes. We brought tyres, tubes, chains, cogs, tape, brakes, electritole tape, everything. And nary an issue, other than a squeaky bottom bracket on Lung’s part. Of course, had I not replaced my cranks prior to the ride, it would have been a different story.

However, we did get quite dirty. These photos were taken after I returned from LA. That vinyl’s kind of gacho now! HA. Anyway, dirt is a badge of honor on a ride like this. I actually saw people cleaning their bikes at night. REALLY? I mean, I hardly clean my bikes at home. I lube and adjust the drivetrain, but dirt?

Anyway, here we are:

From my ALC Flickr set...

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I know Lung was onto this because I saw it open at his place before ALC. What a great concept!

http://www.the-scallywags.com/

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i’m not typically one to clean my bike fastidiously, but when it’s nasty and it’s been ridden hard without a tuneup for 813 miles, 570 of which were one single trip, well, it’s time.

my bike had a bunch of accessories (water bottle cages and a cyclometer) and an identification number and an in-case-of-emergency tag on it, and over the course of the last 813 miles, my bottom bracket had worked it’s way through all of the thread grease (constant pressure squeezes the grease out of the threads over time), and was creaking like a whore’s bed. DEFINITELY time.

you can see there that it was just caked with grime. that was road water and dust and gravel and powerade and all manner of nasty shit that’d caked up over the last couple months. you can also see in that picture that i’ve already cleaned the seat stays, so the contrast is a little more clear.

helpful hint : best bike cleaner in the world is WD-40 on an old sock.

here i’ve taken off the cranks and pulled out the bottom bracket and cleaned the whole rear triangle and some of the downtube. i wiped out all of the old grease and got all the nasty shit off the frame with the WD-40.

after cleaning off the cranks and BB, i reinstalled each with liberal amounts of grease. then i cleaned the rear wheel and lubed the chain, removed all the accessories, cleaned the seatpost and seat, and replaced my brake pads…

my brake pads had been on WR’s old road bike toro, which i bought from him long ago. i don’t know if he ever changed em. so it’s entirely likely that they were YEARS old.

here’s all the shit that went in the garbage or back into the parts bins.

what’s funny is that since the only thing i REALLY needed to do was the drivetrain, i cleaned nothing on the cockpit. the fork and front wheel and bars and stem and brake are all still pretty dirty. it’s clean-ISH. hahaha!!! but i got the imperative stuff done, and i can hit the front end later. i’ve got shit to do, dammit!

ta-daa! ready to ride!

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