So, this Sunday we decided to have brunch up at the Presido Social Club. I reviewed this joint previously here. Awesome atmosphere, very comfortable, great with kids, and a nice example of a tasteful renovation of an older structure. Anyway, since wifebot(tm)s sister was coming and we have a 4 seater MINI, I offered to ride. I’d get a short zip up the grade and over the bridge under my belt, and it would solve the seating issue. I hadn’t ridden in about 12 days, nursing a strained wrist, but it seemed the time to give up the rest and get on it. It was about 75 degrees when I left, and it jumped to the high 80s while I was out. Gorgeous day.

Side note: here’s a shot of the Jolly Roger I have on each bike, for science.

Side Note: note the wisced ’3′ on my stem. I’m superficial.

Side note: and I finally laid down a Team Lope Tyre Clubbe vinyl on Rogue, my Cinelli road bike build. Smaller than usual, but not a lot of room on this frame.

So I got out there and rode through MV, Sausalito and up Alexander to the bridge. This was my usual return commute when I lived in SF and worked in MV, so I’m not reallu used to it in the day time, fighting tourists and swerving cars and rental bikes and sun. On the other hand, no wind, and I’m accustomed to it blowing like stink getting up the hill and over the bridge in the evenings. Anyway, the ride was great, my wirst didn’t hurt too badly, so it was nice to get some riding in. You’re off the bike for more than a few days and you feel like everything falls to pieces. This photo was at the entrance to the Presidio Social Club, near the Lombard gate. Getting there was interesting due to all the construction from the Doyle Drive demolition.

Unfortunately, having scorchers then rain then scorchers then rain is tough on allergy sufferers. The trees get tricked and re-flower so pollen levels are at an all time high. I looked like I was a Less Than Zero extra by the time I sat down. My eyes were on fire and I had the hay fevers and so on. But the food was good and being with my family was better. Ate light. Just heading down the hill again, right?

Well, here’s what happened: the pedestrian and bike traffic is pooled onto the bay side of the Golden Gate Bridge while they do ‘construction’ in quotes, because there was nothing happening on the weekend of course and I saw no dangerous sections of that side in all my drives into the city at this point. I think they just close it off for months at a time and sort out the repair schedule as they need to later. It really pisses me off. Combining riders and pedestrians on the same side is a recipe for disaster, and I’ve commented on this several times here on Team Lope. It’s terrible. The tourist traffic is immense, no one looks where they’re going, the pedestrians stagger or JUMP out into the bike side the bikes get all tangled up with the tourist rentals and such, and then frustrated roadies plow through them all. It’s a bad scene, and very stressful. On the way over, I saw several near-misses, thanks to a girl scout march. Those girls were NOT being managed by the troop leaders, and were out of control.

So, on the way back, more of the same, and despite going slow and calling out and trying to safely and politely navigate through the throng of people who were paying NO attention, I still collected a girl scout. She tangled in my bars like ole Lance, though I was only going about 5mph and I didn’t fall over. The girl scattered and then the troop master or ward started screaming at me. I pointed out that if I was crossing the bridge in these conditions I’d be holding my daughter’s hand if she was out of control, as they were, and that SHE was responsible for keeping those girls in line. I said this very politely as she ranted about ‘us cyclists’. Keep in mind I was being very careful and calling out, while riders in front of and behind me were less patient. I made sure the girl was OK, and she was. She was totally backed up and quiet too, because she knew what she did: she was jumping out and tagging the opposing handrail like a game. Anyway, I was so fired with adrenaline and aggravated at those irresponsible women that I had to burn it off. Not engaging in a confrontation is like swallowing a grenade. So, I got off the bridge and decided to climb the Marin Headlands, and so I did.

That cleansed my palate! I haven’t ridden up that stretch since they repaved it and added a roundabout for all the tourist cars, and it was a nice refresher. Got to the top, took a few pics, descended the other side, felt that cool ocean breeze. Really great! Because of my wirst, my braking was weak so I locked up the back wheel a few times ont he descent avoiding braking cars, but overall, no issues. And MAN, is that tunnel back to the bridge exhilarating or what? I didn’t time it this time but I was ahead of the cars, it’s one way/staggered, and it’s a mild descent so it’s SO FAST. Love it.

Back home through the tourist madness of Sasaulito, up to the deck where the whole fam was hiding out from the heat, a beer and a baby in my lap. Great way to end my impromptu climbing ride!

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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 : bay point to sacramento NAHBS ride

I’ve said very little in the wake of the recent political furor over the cyclist in San Francisco that apparently plowed through a pedestrian crosswalk against the light and killed an elderly man. This has elicited an overwhelming anti-bike and anti-illegal-riding response, with which I agree with the latter and not the former. As a rider well used to rolling stops and riding illegally when it suited me (within reason, and safely, always) with the change in my lifestyle that led me to have a brilliant and OBSERVANT toddler on my bars, I’m now a rider that TRIES to break those habits, certainly with her, and even alone. There’s never any defense when you break the law, regardless. But the backlash against cyclists in the wake of this incident troubled me. The cyclist’s publicly-displayed attitude was disconcerting, but overall, the idea that the rising terror of out-of-control cyclists had become some sort of crisis that needed to be crushed? Myopic to say the least.

This article today in the Examiner captured my thoughts exactly. Bike kills pedestrian, it’s a social crime. Car kills pedestrian? Oh, that’s just the price of progress.

Cyclists have to not only work at not striking cars, pedestrians and so on, even in a completely legal riding environment, they ALSO have to work actively to avoid being struck by inattentive or belligerent car drivers. Car drivers do not. It’s like a food chain of vehicle-related violence. I am quite seriously routinely yelled out by drivers because I’m riding on the road NEAR where they want to drive, though my legal right is to do so. Drivers break the law and threaten me with their cars (nudging, swerving, sudden breaking) and yet when we have car vs bike accidents, almost always the driver is let off without charges filed. It’s enough to make a cyclist bitter.

But I’m not. As my pals at drunkcyclist said a few weeks back after the Oakland incident, we ALL need to chill the fuck out. I think there are many factors involved psychologically in why car drivers threaten or actually injure/kill cyclists and pedestrians unnecessarily, let alone other car occupants, including inattentiveness, frustration, numbed empathy, delusions of invulnerability, denial of personal responsibility in our social contract, bitterness over the behavior of OTHER people, drivers and riders and walkers alike… but a different but equally important set of factors apply to cyclists: some are inexperienced, others distracted, others belligerent and defiant. And pedestrians can be some of the worst, leaping out into traffic, walking staring down at their phones, jumping lights, whatever. The point isn’t that any one particular group is at greatest fault (though the car driver, capable of the most harm, SHOULD be the most responsible, even if the authorities, and the media, ignore it) but rather that we all need to take a deep breath, get out of our own headpspace, and think about others.

I try and drive/ride/walk like those with me and those in vehicles around me are all my daughter or my son. All of them. I try to imagine how their lives would be impacted in our collision. When I get pissed at other drivers, other riders, anyone on the road, I TRY to remember my perspective. We’re all human, we’re all someone’s family, and we all ave everything to lose by being at war with each other rather than take personal responsibility, and a few extra minutes, to navigate the road defensively.

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After last week’s ride up Tam, I realized there was NO way I wouldn’t be doing this on a more regular basis. But the 29er is about to become an xtracycle! What to do?

Well, I’m just going to ride it up anyway. Lung pointed out the long wheelbase adds stability. I read on a few sites that mountain bikers found Xtracycle conversions quite doable on intermediate rides, ie. not extremely technical only because the bike will bottom out more frequently and you have to turn with the bike, not the bars, more, so it’s a tough nut down a steep single track. But totally doable. So I’m stoked. Further, I talked to my buddy Bryce at Tam Bikes and he said not only did he think it was feasible, but he wants to organize a longbike Tam ride, once I’[m built up, with him and a few other guys. Awesome. He also suggested I could use the slicks as planned just with less pressure. So I’m not going to fret about the lack of knobbies.

Go for launch!

Image from Riding the Spine, an awesome resource…

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2. lungWish #333 – the xtracycle
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This is a companion report to the detailed, dare I even say thurra, ride report Ironlung posted this morning. The Primavera event is probably one of my favorite charity rides in the area, largely based on what Lung pointed out in his write-up: excellently supported, beautiful views at the reservoir, and close enough to home to keep it from being a travel hassle. In previous years, I took a road bike, so my perspective was shaky as I planned for this year’s run on a fixed-gear. I remembered the Calaveras Wall but that was about it. Anyway, Lung and I basically rode a variation on what we took to LA in Lifecycle, and ride every day, basically: him on a Cinelli X MASH Bolt, me on a Cinelli X Mash [sceond gen]…we were set up a little differently from each other. He used drop bars, and I had bulls. Our gearing was a bit different too: he ran 44/16 for a 72 inchgear as his base, and 44/20 for the steep climbing sections, yielding something like 57 inchgear. I rode a deeper 48/17 (77 inchgear) with a 48/19 (67 inchgear) for climbs. Previously, neither of us had used bail-out gears on our bikes. We brought cogs on Lifecycle but never used em, and on all of our rides in Marin and the like, we muscled through climbs with what we had, and avoided the super-steep stuff altogether out of practicality (if one may use the term when discussing fixed-gear bikes in this context)… but here we were facing climbs that were part of a regular regional loop for roadies, and those climbs were spread out over a good distance, so attrition would also be a factor. As any cyclist can tell you, you can go all out and ride farther and longer than you thought possible… on one climb… but that’s it, you’re not going to recover. To sustain for a whole day you need to see the long picture. We knew this was going to be the most climbing we’d done fixed, and early in the riding season to boot, but we were all in.

It was also one of those rides where there were very few hitches. I got out of the house 15 minutes ahead of schedule, we arrived about 20 minutes ahead of our plan, and had no delays in check in. We ditched the start and got right on the road, didn’t dilly-dally at the rest stops, had great food throughout and at the end, and never needed SAG or field support. No llama drama. And Lung never had tripleCramps and my bike didn’t become, like a helicopter, a cluster of components traveling in unstable formation, which was all in all a nice change.

Yep, my gearing was too brutal to make it up the wall without stopping, but not for long.

It wasn’t devoid of challenges. I got two hours of sleep before the start, thanks to a sweltering heat wave. Team Lope vet Jeff Muadib Marks met us on the route, living thereon) and made it up Calaveras before suffering the SAME EXACT MECHANICAL that knocked me out of last year’s Gran Fondo, a rear derailleur shattering that I had never even HEARD of before.

Here’s Jeff examining his SAW III type deathtrap derailleur

Lung’s salt tablet deployment system was getting a little surly, and I dropped my chain on the rollers due to bearing race issues in my rear axle, though quickly resolved. There was some saddle soreness. I had suffered a pretty bad wrist wrenching on Mt Tam a few days prior that i was nursing at the start of this, which was at full bore inflammation by the end, so the final descent was very painful. BUT. It was the descent after the final climb, after a full effing day of climbing and riding so I was stoked. And like Lung said, it was great to burn your candle on a long day like that but walk away (literally) without injury or recovery issues, feeling like you could ride the next day. You never know, especially when pushing fixies on these things.

The Calaveras reservoir area was my favorite. Thanks to Jeff’s misfortune, we got to enjoy it longer than in previous years.

Anyway, it was a great ride. I will say that I wasn’t as well equipped as Lung, partly avoidable and partly not. For one thing, I chose to keep my 77 inchgear as my main drive, rather than gear back down to the 72 we both generally ride… had I switched back, I would have probably felt better as the day went on, because of the muscle work I was essentially wasting. I mean, it’s a compromise, right. Go to 72, spin more, ride slower. But at 77, ride faster and work harder, sooner. I needed to swap cogs sooner than Lung, and I was suffering more at the end of the day. My bail out gear was a 67, which was not enough. It was sure as hell better than the 77 but it was still too steep for these climbs, so while I DID successfully ride all the climbs on the route, I stopped a number of times to recover.

Interesting snake whip skids coming down to Rest Stop 3 at speed…

But man, we had a blast. Skidding all over the place, flying along those rollers, great conversations on the route and at the rest stops with wide-eyed riders that marveled out our general madness, and I can’t reiterate this enough: AWESOME ride support. Strawberries and pineapple and all sorts of carbs at every stop, fudgecicles, ICE for the water bottles, effing ROOSTERS for no reason, more SAG vehicles on the road than I can remember ever seeing, even when you consider the smaller scale of this event compared to the rider count of something like the Gran Findo or the Marin Century. It was just a great time all day, even when it wasn’t.

That’s the last of the unreasonable fixed-gear assaults on event rides for this year, as Marin Century and Gran Fondo both warrant road bike use (I mean, warrant it MORE) and we missed the Wine Country Century (and gave up on Solvang due to travel time)… but we’ll continue to ride our unreasonable fixed-gear bikes up unreasonable climbs in Marin and around the bay area year-round, so wave or holler if you see us…

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Related posts:

1. team lope ride report : primavera metric century 2012
2. Team Lope Ride Report: Primavera Century 2008
3. Team Lope Ride Report: Mt. Tam Climbing Century

My practicing of ambi skids is still slow going. However, my other tasks continue to improve. I’ve been practicing skidding on different bars (and by extension, different geometries)… certainly Crook is the easiest to skid with, being a pursuit frame, and the bulls letting you get way forward. But I’ve now been able to skid on Rapscallion (the baby cargo bike, currently now only a cargo bike), Wrongbike and Carpetbagger. That’s in the drops (Wrongbike), on risers (Rapscallion) and on rising arcs (Carpetbagger)… but the Wrongbike situation leads to the next task: sit skids.

Being able to skid from the tops of the pista bars on wrongbike led to my cracking the sit skid. Before this, I could sort of accomplish it by getting into the drops or bulls or whatever, and I could get a bit of sit skid, but not much. Once I could skid from the bartops (granted, not long skids) I was able to focus on the lift and skid necessary to skid seated. I love it.

More arrows, you see! Now I can, for the first time, ride without my finger resting out of habit on the lever. If I see something happening, I can initiate a sit skid while getting to the brake.

Next up, more ambi skid practice, and I’m in the early stages of working on one hand sit skid. Which, of course, means coffee carriage.

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Related posts:

1. Look Ma No Breaks
2. You Don’t Stop
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So I finally finished wrapping up Wrongbike’s new pista bars. These were by far the hardest I’ve done.

I used a canvas base wrap, for two reasons: additional padding, and to help the elkhide stay put. I didn’t use any on the first wrap job (Crook) and over time the wrap has slid down the sides of the bulls. However, here, it posed a new problem: the diameter is now thick enough that the lacing can’t go completely tight, and just getting it as far as you see in these pics was brutal enough that my fingers and joints are still jacked up.

I had help, to the tune of two cats and three late night martinis (perhaps ill-advised, as the former were gassy and needle-grabby, and the latter led to a very short three hour sleep night thereafter, and not pleasant sleep either, with all that gin being processed; let’s not to mention the sewing errors I had to keep correcting)

It took about three hours all in I would say. Or, more accurately, 4 episodes of NY Ink forwarding through commercials. HA. It was tough. Going around that corner on the drops was hard. I had to abandon the double stitch towards the last leg of the drops too, in order to have enough thread. But on the upside, the red sneak in the wrap looks pretty dope, or SAWish, as Lung commented over the weekend.

Anyway, the build it TIGHT. I rode in today on it (yay Spring) and it felt great. I can skid int he drops pretty well, and on the tops in small amounts. In current config in the top photo, the bars are pretty low so mashing in the drops is hard on the knees. Though, side benefit, I can ding the bell with my knee at the ladies, the ladies. But it’s not a very comfortable spot. So I’ve subsequently tweaked the bars a bit and will keep screwing around with it until I have it dialed in. For now, I flipped the stem, but that’s goofy, so if I like that height, I’ll just stack some spacers under the stem as it was before. I’ve looked at the stem adapter I’m using and I think I could add about 10mm or so of rise without losing purchase on the steerer. I also tweaked the seat height yet again. I need to get a new seat bolt clamp to hold it place, as it keeps slowly dropping.

Gorgeous, I think!

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1. Wrongbike Gets Barred
2. Bike Build Process Log: wrongBike – Bars, Cuts, Wraps!
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HERE’S my first stab at video editing for ya. it’s a quick little 13-mile ride from my apartment in SF to WR’s in mill valley — something i do frequently, and which often precedes a more robust ride for both of us once i arrive.

the raw footage was collected on my new GOPRO HERO2 HD video camera, which i mounted under my handlebars.

i don’t know shit about video editing and learned as i went, using iMovie, which is SUPER user-friendly. i managed to get the footage down from over 40 minutes to the most interesting or exciting 4:45. the song is the glitch mob’s remix of the white stripes’ "seven nation army," and i have only three reasons for choosing it — one, it’s awesome. two, it’s over 4 minutes long, so i was able to maintain more footage. and three, it was a free download from the band’s own site, so i have no copyright infringement worries.

i hope you like it!

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1. team lope ride report : sf -> mill valley, roundtrip, FIXED
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As Wrongbike continues the transition from a vintage themed rando style ride to a more composite fixie, I decided to pull the red stripe gumwalls off and replace them with Vittoria rubber. The gumwalls had tread but had been on for over 5 years so I decided maybe I didn’t want to be skidding on them.

My first thought after putting the new rubber on (these are 25s) was that it was jarring to have brown leather goods and chrome/silver polished parts and then black tyres. But that’s from having gums on there for so long. Look at any vintage roadster out there, even with whitewalls on, it’s got black rubber. Once I got used to it, I started to like it. The new slammed cockpit and pistas are making a big difference in making it aggressive too, along with dropping the wood fenders.

It’s really fun in this configuration. I’ll be wrapping the bars in elkhide when I get a few hours and martinis to spare, but as is it’s been enjoyable. I can skid in the drops, at least a short bit, though my experimenting was cut short by a loose pedal clip. I need to tighten that up. No fun flying out of the pedal on a skid. Above, Rain Mode.

All in all, refreshing to ride this bike for the first time in at least a year…

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1. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Rubber Side Down
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Indiana June is an interesting project. June, let’s call her June, is engaged in a choose-your-own-adventure live action exercise in which folks on her site vote on tasks and adventures for her to perform, and then, well, she does them. She appears to be funded by donations and local support, and had already accomplished a ton of amazing tasks.

Tomorrow, 06:30PST, she will be attempting to ride up the twisty section of Lombard Street in SF.
There are steeper runs to try in the city, but that’s not the point. She was dared to do this ride, and so, she will. She needs someone to ride behind her with a videocamera on the bars and chronicle her attempt, and already has someone lined up to block traffic at the top.

If anyone is available to help her, free coffee is in it for you! Contact her at ditansey at gmail.

http://www.indianajune.com/home

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This is just a pet peeve post. Not much to report.

I slung the front brake on the latest iteration of Wrongbike the other night, using new Tektro finger levers sized for the pista bars being used, as donated by one Lung.

The annoyance I feel is the adjustment of the ‘clothes hanger’ on the front brake cable, which collects the straddling cable that in turn holds the two sides of the caliper system together. This Brake Delta or Brake Triangle, or, as I like to call it, COCKBIT, drives me nuts. Sure, I’m somewhat spoiled by stringing and adjusting side-pull caliper brakes. But the center-pull design is what I started out on with these conversions, first with Fixie and then with this bike. I’ve adjusted these 5,000 times, and enjoyed precisely zero of them. Now, look, it’s not rocket science, I know. But to test your setup you have to cinche that cockbit down tight, and that’s always a pain in the ass for me. Wrench on the back, socket on the front, fingers bleeding from the brake cable pokery invariably, and somehow it’s never properly adjusted the first time, and I have to adjust it two or three times. Let’s not forget you’re either holding the brakes together somehow, or you’ve sized it, let go of the brakes, then are setting the cockbit blind and hoping you didn’t slip a bit.

I have a tool called the Third Hand by some, that grabs the cable and pulls it tight against the tool itself, freeing you up for the aforementioned wrench and socket action, but I’ve had little success with it, due to clearance issues. The porteur rack makes access very tight.

I think what also frustrates me is that you go through this and the end result is a brake that works OHHKAY. The stopping power on those little chalkboard eraser pads is there, but not THERE there. And you have none of the mechanical advantage of side-pulls when using a finger lever. You aren’t supposed to be using the finger lever, actually. That’s part of the problem.

I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll keep this brake as is or just through a simple side pull on there. We’ll see, once I get to take it out for a test… which, looking at the longevity of this storm system, may be April.

Note also the space madness of getting the brake cable housing looped down to the hanger. I don’t like that one bit. So far.

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1. one lever, two brakes
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