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

In all these years, I’ve never ridden Mt. Talampais on a mountain bike. For those not into history, specifically bike history, Tam is the home of the mountain bike. Sure, it’s more complicated than that, but what we all think of as mountain biking today, from equipment to the terrain that spawned the industry that followed, came from Tam in the 70s. More on that here (and yes, Lung, I can give you the film) so it’s kind of surreal to ride Tam off-road and imgine those guys int he early days retrofitting their frames and putting the big rubber on and muscling their way up the mountain. We take it for granted today. Kind of cool.

A ride, 15 years ago, that almost ended not well.

I used to do a fair amount of recreational mountain biking. I wasn’t like the local guys out here that shoot up the mountain every week, but it was the bike I road in the city and on trips, and I loved both single track and dirt road climbs. And even after I traded my mtb for my first road bike (ie. in the adult era), I still rented them on vacations and did rides when I could, such as in Arizona and the like.

Anyway, I’ve always associated the Tam ride with my road bike riding, as that’s just what I’ve always done. Shoreline to Panoramic to the Tam approach, paved, up to Ridgecrest, both peaks, then down. It’s still a great workout, and variations on it, either that route or the Alpine Dam approach, comprise most of the hardest riding I do in my back yard here in Marin. But I picked up a big ole 29er to build into an Xtracycle for kid and cargo transport, and thought to myself: self? You need to ride this as it was intended, before you hack it up… and nowhere better than Tam. So I did. I didn’t really know the route, though friends in the area gave me a general sense of it, and I just cut out of work a little early, and made a go of it. Unfortunately, it was during our recent heatwave, so I worked a lot harder than I would say, today, 35 degrees cooler just 72 hours later. Anyway, it was awesome.

It also kicked my ass! Even with all those gears, that specific gear ratio, the suspension, and a reasonably mild ride from a technical standpoint, it was work. For one thing, my bike isn’t the lightest, being on the entry level end. For another, I haven’t muscled my way up a mountain offroad since Sept. 11, 2001, so there was no muscle memory for that combination of high spinning AND the myriad little surges and pushes you do to get over broken terrain. Plus, it was effing HOT. And lastly, you know, after a full day of work, I wasn’t at my personal best by any means. And yet, it was still a memorable ride I plan to revisit soon.

I took Blithedale out until it narrowed to an unmaintained road, then hopped on the trail. The main route up largely involves Old Railroad Grade, which used to be the bed for a tourist rail system that brought people up Tam back in the day, itself something of some notoriety for being the ‘crookedest railroad in the world’…you can read more about that and the history of Tam here. I was initially disappointed when I learned it was a railroad bed, because my previous mountain riding several years ago was single track. However, it was still no joke. It was heavily rutted, bounders and ravines and rocks and slurry and steep drops down the side. It wasn’t technical enough to be outrightly dangerous to the inexperienced rider, but challenging enough and long enough to give you a go-round, regardless of fitness levels. Much like Paradise and other nearby loops, it’s one of those rides that can kick your ass at first, then become the FUN kind of workout once you’re seasoned. I love that kind of flexibility with regards to loops like that, allowing their continued enjoyment on repeat rides. So I knew going up that I was experiencing it at my general worst for this kind of thing, and that future runs would only be easier.

For the most part, the ride was just fine. I was flying along all the way up to the top of Summit Rd, through great sections of tree canopy and blocks of no coverage where the sun was very hot. I was hydrating and eating and not overdoing it, so I was approaching it the way any experienced rider on unfamiliar route/terrain would: I kept reserves and respected my ride. At the top of that, I missed the cut off to continue up the grade, so I went down quite a ways, further than I’d like thanks to some bad intel from a hiker, but then decided I was returning to Mill Valley that way, flipped it and went back up again. This time, down the other side the way I came, I found soem riders who let me tag along, and set me on the right course again before they peeled off. There are a million smaller routes and side trails you can take, even though general off-roading is banned on Tam to save the ecosystem from getting trampled to death. So after those guys were gone, I kept going alone. My only real trouble was zig-zagging going into a large raving and wrenching my left side, hand and foot, pretty badly in that maneuver, which I would then be favoring the rest of the ride, and much worse a few days later on the Primavera Metric Century later in the weekend.

Otherwise, I got as high as the West Point Inn (used to be a restaurant/shelter for people on that railroad trip, now a hiking shelter) before I got the call from home that my wife could use a hand with the kids, so I had to turn back rather than reach the East peak as intended. As it turns out, I was thisclose to getting there, and had I known that at the time I probably would have just continued to the top.

Anyway, I flew down at the measured, controlled pace for which I have been known in all my years of riding, as friends would fly past me on freefall descents, road and mountain, and sometimes crash out, on road and mountain. I gots kids! Anyway, it was a great descent. I knew of a shortcut that would have reduced the trip to 10 minutes all the way down, but it was very steep and seemed unwise so I kept at my original route until I saw a second access point to that alternate route and took that, ultimately dropping out just shy of Four Corners. At that point, I was actually thankful that I didn’t go that last bit to the peak, because my fuel ran out (OK, yeah, 3 fish tacos and a handful of peanuts was not enough for the day)… so I was bonking hard on Panoramic and all the way home, where I plowed through a beer and some peanut butter like an animal.

Word to Lung, whom I point at specifically, here, representing Team lope in the distance.

Lessons learned on this first ride up Tam the right way:

- stretch more in the upper body: unlike road riding, you rely on your arms and shoulders and upper back a lot when navigating rocky terrain, and I really just stretched legs and core out of habit. I might not have wrenched my wirst otherwise.

glorious fish tacos from FISH. Not enough.

- feed a LOT more than I did. I mean, this would apply to most any good climbing route, but I got sort of complacent about grabbing the chance to ride even if I wasn’t well fueled, as often happens on my morning or lunchtime Paradise Loops prior to eating. Up there you burn out faster, and then guess what: you’re far from home. It’s just common sense. But I had a chance to ride and took it, frankly not knowing how far up I’d make it anyway.

- Drop the diet for the climbs: I tend to use a low/no carb, lean protein diet when I’m trying to get fit, and of course, on ANY type of ride of enough duration and effort, it’s a challenge when you don’t have the carb reservoirs. I had nothing to burn on this ride. At least on event rides I break my diet and fuel up on carbs the day before and the day of. This was spontaneous enough for that not to be possible. I really wished I had that energy reserve up there.

- STAY LIMBER: my wriest wrenching was a great lesson on how easily you can jack yourself up on those jagged sections of trail.

- Lizards are awesome: I saw snakes, a tarantula, birds, a fox, and a metric ton of lizards up there, and in the latter case, I was taken back to my childhood obsession with gladhanding bluebellies. Make what you will of THAT.

- Mountain biking is pure: that’s something I used to know, but forgot over the years. I’m talking purity in the sense of being at eace, being contemplative, enjoying the sport aspect but also having some freedom from the stress of the day. I’ve clocked tens of thousands of hours on road bikes and fixed gears over the years, with a lot of that without a rider or car in sight. But being on paved roads STILL means density: cars, other riders, what have you. Plus, unexpected road condition dangers. On a mtb ride, you are equipped for uneven terrain and expecting it, and you may have other riders around sometimes, just like with hiking, but overall, you’re alone, you and nature. It’s humbling and wonderful. The smells, the sights, everything. It’s pure cycling fun. You put away he time trial brain (at least climbing) and focus on the experience. I mean, I do, anyway. There’s all sorts of competitive mtb riding appealing to any kind of rider. But for me, the lack of an SUV crowding me was the single biggest appeal.

As I said, I plan to do this more frequently, now that I know at least one route, and damn it’s easy to get to from where I am. Ridiculously so. I’ve always said I live in road biking mecca… but the same is so of mountain biking. Now in a few weeks time, my 29er will be an xtracycle. And it is planned to be running slicks. But I suspect that if I pull the kid’s seat off, and perhaps change the rubber, I could get that bad boy up. I mean, I never went into third, or granny, ring on the bike on this run, so even with the added weight of the xtracycle build, I’d have a whole ‘nuther ring to work with and the stability of that longer frame. I look for ward to finding out!

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1. Team Lope Ride Report – ALC Day on the Ride, WR’s Account
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3. Team Lope Ride Report: The Napa Ride Weekend of Destiny 07

despite being pretty grueling, the FFBC PRIMAVERA METRIC CENTURY was one of the best event rides that i’ve ever been on, and WR and i agreed that it was one of the best that TLTC had participated in, ever.

for the most part, this was the kind of ride we love and do with regularity — dozens of miles of long, winding rollies. that’s my favorite kind of ride because you have to be on your toes (cornering) and you can’t pussyfoot (climbing and descending the rollies takes effort), but you don’t kill yourself. you put in good work and you feel like you’ve had a ride, but you’re not blown out and useless for a day.

however, on this ride there were two distinct factors that we knew about going in. one was the heat. it was fucking desert hot. the sun just crushing you with almost tangible weight. this also means that you’re covered in sunscreen, which makes you filthy, and when it runs into your eyes, blind. the other factor was the climbs. with 3786 climbing feet over 63.5 miles, it SOUNDS like it would be a challenging but not necessarily backbreaking ride. but keep in mind that 2300 of those climbing feet are in two individual climbs — "the wall," at mile 18, and another at mile 50. because we knew we were going to be facing these challenges (and because i’d had a throat infection for a week and was still on antibiotics), each of us had outfitted out bikes with a bailout gear, like so…

my regular gear ratio is 44/16, which is a nice middleground 72.3 gear inch. the bailout shown above takes me to 44/20, which is a 57.9 gear inch — baby’s first climber. please note that i also carry an extra couple chain links to accommodate this bigger cog. my chain is outfitted with a master link, as is the extra section, so swapping doesn’t take me long at all. it proved to be a good decision. "the wall" is 1100 feet straight up, over barely 2 miles. "not for babies," as our brothers of HYPE down south would say. it stops guys on full cassettes, and we were fixed. given that fact, coupled with the heat, and trebled with the fact that we’d still have another 40-some miles to go afterwards, we didn’t even try it on our regular gearing, we just swapped at the bottom and proceeded. and even with this climbing gear, i was beat up at the top of that climb. covered in sweat, pushing hard, and moving slowly. but we both made it, and that’s what counts. then we flipped back to the other side for the next 30 miles or so.

we’d hooked up with TLTC supersoldier jefe, who was ghosting the ride, just before the wall, and he made it up and over with us (on his fucking BADASS klein road bike), as well as another few miles before he had the same catastrophic derailleur failure that WR had on the grand fondo some months back. his derailleur caught in the spokes and was torn upwards and apart in a millisecond. luckily for him, it happened on an ascent rather than a descent. we pulled over and endeavored to convert him to a single-speed so he could at least limp into the next town, but his shit was HOSED and it wasn’t happening, so we begrudgingly left him there with a promise to call his old lady once we got a signal, which WR did. jefe also lucked out when SAG brought him down into town, despite the fact that he wasn’t a registered rider. so everything worked out great there.

the only other mechanical we had was when WR threw a chain. turns out his axle bearing race (which is a misnomer, as he has sealed bearings, but it’s still called that because it has the exterior locknut) had come loose on his last wheel swap, allowing for his axle nut to loosen up over a few miles. once we identified the issue, he was good to go in a matter of seconds.

at mile 50 we hit the second climb, which was a different story. it was also 1000 or so feet of climbing, but this time was over a more realistic 5 miles. as such, we went into it without the intent of switching gears. we pushed up a mile or maybe even two, muscling along in our standard gear inch. we pushed and pushed, but every single time we’d round a corner, it kept going. there was never an end in sight, and that gets to you mentally. for me, it was when i finally got to a point that i could see a good 100 yards ahead and it was still going up that i decided to switch gears. ordinarily that would fuck with me but not push me to bail out. it was because at the terminus of that 100 yards, where it turned another corner, i saw a cyclist coming down the hill, whipping around the corner at speed. that meant that there was even more. and keep in mind that we’d been going for 50 miles in 90-plus degree heat, plus the previous climb. and it was a good thing that i did pull over to switch because i needed to take off my helmet & cap, as well as open up my jersey and down half a bottle of water. i was more burnt than i thought. additionally, after i did switch, there was no more shade till you got to the top. that’s a big deal. had i kept pushing through that on my regular gear, i’d have opened myself up to heat stroke.

at the top, once again, we swapped back to our regular gearing, which would take us all the way back to the start for another road ride conquered by the TLTC west coast commanders in a fixed fashion. we’re killing it these days, and getting known for it, and we fucking love it.

ordinarily when we show up on "fixies" to road rides we are met with a mix of admiration and indignation. some people condescend to us with passive-aggressive observations like "that’s just stupid," or "why would you do that?" others tell us that we’re awesome, or, as on this ride, "animals." we take it all in stride because we’re just out to have fun and challenge ourselves. we try and remain good-natured about it when people are shitheads, and we try to normalize it to others when they contend that we’re doing something impossible. but on this ride, it was extra nice because we didn’t really get any of the indignation. we were the only two people doing it fixed and we got a lot of props for it. people cheered us on and congratulated us and even wanted to talk to us about how and why we were doing it. it was really nice, a very cool community on this ride.

one of the greatest things about the day was the support and organization. with the possible exception of ALC, this was the best-supported and organized event ride i’d ever been on. there were enough SAG vehicles, the rest stops never felt overcrowded, nor were they ever out of any food/liquid supplies or medical/mechanical aid. it was really wonderful. nevermind that we had access to a pretty large meal at the end. lasagne, hot dogs, salad, fruit, juice, brownies, cookies, whatever we wanted. very awesome.

the one improvement that we offered as a suggestion was that they could have used a bit more clear route direction, but that was suggested with a caveat — the route WAS marked clearly, it was just marked on the road surface with spraypaint rather than on trees and such with signage. not everyone knew to look to the pavement rather than to signs. i figured it out early on and had no troubles at all, but others didn’t know about it, so we suggested that they just make that better known.

i was also happy to have made a new friend on the ride. this guy here saw me taking pictures of him so he strutted over and regarded me…

a great day and a great ride. and stay tuned to this link, because i have video at home that i have to edit down and post.

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Related posts:

1. Team Lope Ride Report: Primavera Century 2008
2. Team Lope Ride Report: Mt. Tam Climbing Century
3. Team Lope Ride Report – ALC Day on the Ride, WR’s Account

So the Primavera Century is coming up this weekend, and Lung and I are doing it fixed. At first, I was gung-ho without much attention tot he details only because:
a) we ride fixed everywhere, frequently climbing
2) we rode to LA without an issue
d) fackit

But I started thinking about the last few times I did this event… the Calaveras Road section has ‘the wall’ which is just one of three big climbs of the day… I remember this being an issue for many of the road riders, let alone a couple of dorks on fixies. I got through it, and the other climbs, using my usual double-ring road bike config, but in thinking about muscling up those on a fixed gear, three details emerged:
a) it’s one thing to muscle up a climb, as we often do. It’s another thing to blow that much anaerobic resource on a long day of riding, headwinds and heat and other climbs to follow
2) I recently upgeared to 76*
d) ohfack

Additionally, I haven’t overhauled Crook Type 3 pretty much since I built it up after ALC… and that’s far too long. I rotate through bikes (at one point, 8 of them) in my commute, so the more rigorous overhaul isn’t as necessary for me or as frequent anyway as it is for Lung, riding the same bike every day with few exceptions. And I’ve done several maintenance and corrections evenings, spot-overhauling parts of it. But the creaks int he bottom bracket were joined by some ping-pings recently, and my brake pads were stubs. So it was time to do it up.

I didn’t COMPLETELY overhaul it in the sense that I didn’t break it down to it’s complete extrusion photo level of strippage, but I did the primary stuff: complete drivetrain overhaul, brakes, all bolts and major adjustments. All I didn’t do is pull the 17 off, as I recently put it on, and I didn’t break down the headset.

I’m now whisper silent. I mean, I still have the minor chatter of chainline issues, but the bike itself is a ninja again (a green and white and elkhide and chainline-chattering ninja)… it hasn’t been this quiet since I built it. So smooth. And it’s of course all thanks to judicious applications of my best pal in the shop:

Ole Phil never lets me down…

As far as the Primavera goes, what I ended up electing to do is keep the 76 on the one side, and add a 19 cog on the other, which gets me to around 67. So the total rig is not as nimble as Lung’s 72/03 (or whatever that 21 gets him) but at least we both have a climbing gear to fall back on as needed, one way or another.

I rode the hills by my house a few times on the new cog to get cinched, per the usual routine, and rode in on it, which was sort of torturous, not unlike trying to spend much high-cadence saddle time on Rapscallion with it’s 20 cog (baby bikery) but I really wanted to give it some time to settle in. I will say it’s nimble to climb with it.

Excelsior!
*I’ve been saying it was 77 but I checked and it actually rounds to 76, my bad. 48/17

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I don’t know, kind of has a nice ring to it…

http://www.citysports.com/pedal-pushers/Search

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Friends of TLTC Drunk Cyclist just sent over a package of sweet, sweet stickers, including the aforementioned #OCCUPYBIKESEAT sticks. AWESOME.

We’ll be getting something out to them shortly as well, so that Team Lope can be represented in the fine state of Arizona…

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What does it mean: overkill?

I LOVE IT.

http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Tra … est-Drive/

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This isn’t the first custom security bolt system for bikes but it is by far the most comprehensive I’ve seen. On the low end you have security skewers such as the ones Lung and I have used, which use a single triangle shaped key universally. Next up, a number of services that offer skewers and track bolts with custom key heads. But Inifinity3d by Atomic22 actually offers a complete system for your track, road or mountain bike. You sign up and get a custom, unique key hole shape. Then you select all the bolts you need, from stem cap to seat binder bolt to saddle clamp bolt to pedals, and so on. These aren’t cheap. It’s a UK business and to price it you need to make an order and it gets sorted based on your location (ie whether VAT is added) which is really a smokescreen for keeping the sticker shock down. But I mean, if you have an expensive ride and don’t want your sensitive shit stolen, it’s hard to put a price on that security.

For me, if I have expensive parts they may or may not be on an expensive bike, but either way, I’m not leaving that bike out to get stripped or stolen anyway. I lock all my rides for a short time under reasonably controlled environments, and beyond that, if there are questions about security I’ll bring my bike in. I’ll buy it a ticket. Glass of wine. Whatever it takes.

But anyway, there will be scenarios, among all possible scenarios, in which you have a bike of whatever overall quality, either super valuable or very inexpensive, but the issue becomes keeping a loss from happening, regardless of value (ie. you’re on a road trip through Bent Ankle, West Egypt, with nary a bike shop for hundreds of kilometers) and you need to lock your bike up and do work or explore or whatever your mission is, and you just need to have the comfort that no one can swipe your seat or whatever… in that scenario, these definitely have a place.

http://atomic22.com/

Bonus:

This is what the custom heads look like, close up and purty.

And this is how the key system works. You use a spanner or lockwrench with the key.

Found on the LSS forum.

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I mentioned this elsewhere, but I recently decommissioned Rapscallion, my baby/cargo fixie. I pretty much delayed doing this until the last possible moment, as I LOOOOVE riding fixed with my daughter in front of me. I’m melancholy about not being able to do so. But 10 pounds of rack and 2 pounds of seat and 30 pounds of daughter PLUS groceries was becoming pretty squirrely. So rather than have a dreaded overturn and injure her, I decided to bite the bullet and move on to the Xtracycle Conversion of my 20er, which will put Wee-Z behind me, and eventually Matteo too. And in 6 months, I can put the seat back on here and take HIM on solo fixie jaunts.

In the meantime, I have this bike at the office set up for grocery runs. Super low gearing means it’s easy to noodle around and skid and zip through town, and I like that it still has a purpose.

I asked Wee-Z if she was OK with Rapscallion being decommissioned if it meant that we’d soon be riding on much longer rides on the new bike setup this spring. Her response:

Not actually true. But you know this.

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So I did a blasphemous thing yesterday, and put SPD cleats on my SIDI Genius III’s.
Actually, that was the culmination of a series of blasphemes.

- As a proper road rider for years, I’m not supposed to ride in anything OTHER than my high tech road shoe of choice, and that choice is limited to SIDIs, Time, Mavic, and a few other road shoes from Europe, and of course you stick with one brand only, just like you don’t go from Campy to Shimano. And of course these days I ride in modern versions of Vittoria’s loft leather shoe from 1975, and it’s a recessed cleat so I wear them to meetings. That’s forbidden. Proper road riders are supposed to hobble around on slippery exposed cleats. (Also, I ride non-road-bikes and I wear things other than kits, but I digress)

- As a proper road rider for years, I’m putting SPDs on my SIDIs. Now look. LOOK. They were LOOK for years, and before that Speedplay for years, but whatever the flavor of pedal, no self-respecting road rider uses SPDs. Much too heavy and cumbersome. Much too low power transfer. Much too mountain. And yet, these days I’ve converted all my bikes to SPD pedals so i can have one shoe to rule them all. Half of them use halfnhalf platform/clip pedals. It’s all sorts of wrong as far as the proper road rider is concerned.

Anyway, back to this: getting SPDs on SIDIs isn’t easy. The standard cleat mount is designed for Euro road racing standard cleats only (Look, Time) and you just can’t find accessories easily. This process began several years ago when I made that decision to go SPD. I wanted to be able to use my road shoes, of course. Of COURSE. I finally got someone to import the adapter plates for SPDR, which is not the same as SPD but is the SPD equivalent for road race pedals. From there, I used a second adapter plate and got the SPD cleats on there. This project languished for years. I just got around to finishing it.

These are my office shoes for lunch jaunts in the unlikely event that I had no clip shoes and DID have a bike to jaunt with.

Anyway, blasphemy!

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Related posts:

1. Bike Build Process Log: Villain 3.0 – Swappery
2. clipped and fixed — should be scary, but mostly awesome
3. NOS adidas eddy merckx cycling shoes

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