this weekend, i was bound for a wedding on the north coast, and because of some tight timing with friday night plans, i was forced to leave my favorite bike at the office over the weekend. this is something i’ve done a zillion times — often for one night, but sometimes for the weekend, and once for nearly 6 days. our building’s garage is "secure," and i always lock up appropriately, in such a manner that the only way to steal my bike is to either break the lock (unlikely), or to cut THROUGH the back wheel with a grinding disc.

well, cutting through the back wheel with a grinding disc seems to work cause i’m down one ULTRA sick murdered-out leader build. it was my favorite bike that i’ve ever owned, and it was the fixed-gear that i rode from san francisco to los angeles on the AIDS/lifeCycle in 2009.

i took a quick trip through the garage to check on my beloved sled this morning and that moment when i saw it gone was a strange one. my first thought was, "wait, did i take it home?" i knew better, but because of my locking method and because the building’s garage is "secure," theft didn’t pop up as my first option. but when i saw the lock still there, with my helmet still attached, and my "spokeCard" hell’s angels support stickers on the ground, i knew what was up and my heart sank.

you know it’s not "if," it’s merely "when," but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.

i’ve got SFPD on the way over to take a report and then i can submit a claim to my renter’s insurance, and hopefully to the lock company.

on the upside, i have enough stuff around to build up another bike in the meantime, and when any insurance settlements come through, i can replace it even better than before!!!

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I had heard from an associate that there was a cool back way to get to downtown MV without dropping down into Tam Junction and getting tangled up with the cars and such. It involved climbing, but that’s a good thing, right. So, the other day, I went looking for it a little early before work.

About half way up this relatively short but steep grade, I stopped to catch a breath. Prolly shouldn’t have done this with a loaded backpack of computers and small gifts… and on Crook, a fixed-gear MASH… but onward!

I got to the top and looked back and it was surprising how steep that was. Up and over! No perceived damage to my spine, either, which was good. I haven’t done much STEEP climbing since my injury, so it’s a bit dodgy. Feels weird. But anyway. Whoa!

Then it was a bunch of tight rollers and then switchbacks to the bottom, and your’e basically out at the start of Ethel, back behind Whole Toles. Cross Miller and you’re almost at my office.

This is the kind of thing that’s tough the first time, and easier every time you do it. But it’s GREAT to have another route to work that gets in climbing and effort and gets you way away from most traffic*, without having to go up Tam and down the other side.

*excepting speeding Mercedes SUVs swerving through these little residential roads, of course. I was very inconvenient for them, and they let me know it.

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I was reading an amusing note on boingboing, then was mired in senselessly bitter, judgmental anti-fixed-gear ranting in the comments of the piece, atypical for boingboing. One light in the dark, so to speak, was a post about the commenter’s fixie conversion, built off of a 60′s Frejus road bike. I followed over to David Forbes’ site, and marveled at the conversion. This is what it’s all about: not necessarily stripping a well-functioning road bike for no reason, as some detractors say, but rather giving new life to old gear and learning a fun, invigorating ride style in the process. His father lost the bike off the roof of their family wagon and the rear derailleur post collapsed. So the bike, now in the hands of the grown son, was converted to fixed-gear and enjoyed a new existence. Now, what I love, beyond the fact something that might have been landfilled is on the road today: he really scratch-built the hell out of it. Hand modified front chainring, handmade wheel, and my favorite detail in the bike’s evolution, an internally routed headlamp wiring assembly to batteries within the handlebar ends with a toggle in the bar end plug. SO AWESOME.

Sadly, nearly no one in that comment string bothered to read through and see that bike, as it was the absolute perfect counterpoint to all their whining. For me, the answer is even simpler:

HATERS GONNA HATE. No reason in this life to criticize the personal choices of others.

Anyway, great build, David!

http://www.nixiebunny.com/frejus/index.html

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So this weekend I got a precious opportunity that has some scarcity these days: a ride! I mean, I get out on the baby carrier, Rapscallion, but as far as putting some work in over some distance, less so with a toddler and a baby on the way. But I was informed we were going into San Anselmo to swim at the in-laws’, so I snatched the moment.

Riding from Mill Valley to San Anselmo is no brag feat. it’s like part of the route to GET to China Camp or Alpine Dam Loop. But to be honest, between far less distance ride opportunities this year and my back and pelvis injury, I’m out of shape and everything counts. I took Crook, my Cinelli X Mash, and hit it. As usual, jumping on Camino Alto for that climb with little warm-up is a bit of a wind-sucker, but i found roadies ahead of me to chase down, and did. It’s one of those small joys of fixed-gear riding outside of the city: the incredulousness from roadies over you riding WHAT with WHAT gear over WHERE. So the guys I talked to and passed were pretty stoked. Sometimes they can be jerks, but these guys were very cool.

One thing that I don’t like this season: they’ve let the back side of Camino Alto go, presumably waiting to free funds or schedule to repave. It’s always been choppy on that descent in the reverse Paradise direction, but at this point, it’s so bad they put SIGNS up. Let me tell you, they’re correct. You want to get a little air and elevate your heart-rate? Take a fixed-gear down a road like this.

Anyway, from there, it’s not effort, just some really nice riding, long enough to get out there and think, enjoy the HOT weather (I came from Tam Valley where the marine layer socked the fog in and left wet) and ring the bell at a few cuties, the like. And prolly the best way to end a ride that doesn’t involve a burger: the pool at your final destination. Even if your mother-in-law drops your bike against a hose winder assembly and sends your helmet skittering along the pavers.

Nice way to end a weekend!

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I recently pulled Ghostal apart, after offering up it’s last rites. I really loved this bike, but in the interest of streamlining the Hangar and making room for other projects, this was the bike I selected to be disassembled.

I had initially hoped to sell it built-up, but the reality is that even when you work from a budget frame as this Origin 8 was, if you use new, reasonably good components, you’re not going to be able to recoup that investment on a cold sale. People spending a good amount of money on a fixie want it either to be custom built to their specs, or super cheap, or incredibly rare. I can dig it. I don’t want to buy complete bikes, and unlike 718c’s haunts, we aren’t as fluch with freshly-minted-hipsters looking for fixed-gears ready made out here in Marin. Anyway…

I didn’t put a ton of miles in on this bike, but really the only wear and tear was the front rim, which shows the streaking from the brake pads on the painted, non-machined rims, which will have to be cleaned off before sale.

Man I still love this collage of skulls used to cover up all the Origin 8 graphics that were dodgily located UNDER the clearcoat. Custom design!

And now, the frame and a few other parts are ready to be sold off. Sort of looks kidnapped…

Anyway, most of the components migrated to the new build, so overall, it was a good recycling. But I’m still nostalgic for the Ghostal as a ride. Steel, solid, supple even. It was just smooth. I really enjoyed it.

Pour your sip out!

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So yep, 14th Street.
My favorite detail, beyond that they, like friend Joe at 718c and Mission in SF, took a classic SF commercial boutique space and stuck tarcke on the walls, is that they chose the name ‘MASH Transit’ which is SUPER cool because it conjurs many, many images beyond just fixed-gear tomfoolery …

http://mashsf.tumblr.com/post/5141606246/welcome

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Yesterday was my birthday, and the weather forecast all week showed it as being the one day break in the storms we’ve been having. For the first time in years, I might have a dry bday (in at least one meaning of the term) so i was hot to get out for a modest ride in the morning. Of course, on the day of, there were dark clouds and cold whipping gusts, so it wasn’t so certain it was going to be as dry as was estimated, but hell with it, I was going. Team Lope’s Frenchie (Eric) and his brother-in-law-ish buf Donovan came in from the city on their Look road bikes, and I was on my Crook Type 3 (Cinelli X MASH) and we made for the loop, starting with the Strawberry extension to give it more teeth.

We got to the far third of the Tiburon half of the loop before sprinkles turned to light rain, but it was never pouring, soak-you-to-the-gills raining… just wet. It made for more careful descents and such, but it was well within the realm of rain riding that I consider enjoyable. You’re dressed in ride clothes, you have a jacket on, there’s reasonable weatherproofing on your layers for the phone, so eff it. And the ride, overall, was awesome. By the time we got through the Camino Alto section, dodging both wild turkeys AND deer in a matter of seconds apart, we landed in Mill Valley and the sun poked through again. The guys had some wind and such getting back up the grade, but I was stoked at my birthday ride. And frankly, riding with roadies means a lot of extra effort to keep the speed up on the fixed-gear, and I’m a little sore in the quads today. But wonderfully so.

GREAT bday ride gents!

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the test VIDEO is more than a little fartsy, but it does show the SR SUNTOUR SWING SHOCK FORK in use on an urban fixed-gear, and i have to say i have nothing but positive reactions to it. i love the simple, clean design of it, and i’ve thought occasionally about how a suspension system might be incorporated into a slick cityBike without drastically altering the simplicity of same. very cool.

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What: The Saris Thelma 3 – Rear hitch bike rack system

Why: I needed to acquire a bike rack for the new MINI*, and had a few objectives over previous racks, including weight, 3-bike capacity and modular design.

The Saris always caught my eye the entire three times I’ve seen one in the wild, because of its unique clamshell design. The bar itself is a C-shape that connects at the center to a swivel arm and receiver tongue. Thatswhatshesaid! Anyway, on this frame, the clamshells themselves are plastic with steel inserts. One bites the front wheel, the other cinches to the rear. Easy cheesy. I bought it because it looked to be lighter than other racks, the clamshell design would allow for use with the Mixte frame bike (if my experiment worked) and the modular design allowed it to expand as needed over time.

How’d It Do:

First of all,t he rack IS light. It’s about half the weight of the all steel Thule that I sold off, and heavier than the previous two-bike platform type model I used ont he last MINI. This is very handy.

The construction appears solid. In my case, I bought from an e-tailer that looks to have boxed up a display model, because the rack was beat to hell in transit, many of the plastic components gouged or scuffed, and some broken and missing parts too. Saris offers lifetime warranty on their gear, and quickly replaced the missing and broken parts via Fed-Ex (even faster than the vendor was able to do) and the rast of the damage is superficial. If you’ve used a bike rack, you know they wear pretty quickly, between sun and scrapery. So no big deal. And I got it for about $250, a hundred off of retail.

The design is modular, so while this is one of the only 3-bike capacity racks on the market (I wanted to stay away from 4-bike racks, being 2" receiver size, and wanted more than 2-bikes for when Z has a bike to carry.) you can set it up, as I have done, with only two of the three placements. I set them up at far ends so there is space between them to allow the cargo bike extra clearance.

This yellow tab locks the clamshell in front into a clamped position, which is in addition to the straps. It’s very solid, yet a thumb-push away from release.

The receiver tongue is on a swivel mount that is held by a single cotter pin that is strung to the rack itself so you don’t lose it. very smooth operation.

The rack installed easily. Well, I should say, it took a long time to put together, between waiting for the replacement parts, and assembling it up on the deck, but that’s because you have to get it nice and tight in order to hold together, pretty much inevitable with an assembly-required rack. Lots of muscle went into the assembly of the thing, but hey.

In the up position, you can see it’s extremely shallow. Especially against the flat vertical surface of the MINI Clubman’s barn doors. You could park pretty tight with this on, and hardly be affected. In the up position, you extend the front clamshell 180 degrees and cinch it to the rear shell with straps. Smart design! Note also the red reflectors built into the rack’s C-section.

Here it is in the down position. I’ve put one bike on, my Cinelli X MASH fixed-gear Crook Type 3. Note how the clam tucks in there just so. It’s very snug, yet the clamshell pieces are wide enough in their arc section to accommodate knobby tyres. The rack’s C-section is fairly long, so no judicious parallel parking here. You can see I left one modular rack placement off, in the middle, which would orient the middle bike in the opposite direction.

My experiment involved Ye Blacke Death, my cargo bike. The build includes wood fenders and knobby tyres. To be clear: Saris does not support the use of fender bikes. But I thought I could make it work. What I ended up doing is taking advantage of this particular fender design to work for me: I loosened the bolts that hold the fender in place on those side support rods, so it could push down against the tyre and create a solid mass. This allows it to tuck up into the clamshell just so. I used some dense packing foam to protect the wood from the clamshell’s plastic surface and minimize chafing from road vibration, though I suspect some damage will be inevitable. I was mostly concerned about stability. I used a double-length of strap to get around the wheel and clamshell, cinched it all down, and then pulled hard. It stayed in place. Excellent! Your mileage may vary, and I may lose YBD on the freeway sometime in the future, but it APPEARS solid enough.

View from the front. That’s with the cargo bike on the outer position and the Cinelli in the rear. There’s actually enough clearance to have the heavier cargo bike on the inside position too.

Another shot, side-view, showing the clearance. Very nice.

So, any cons? Well, I think probably the box could have been better packed, though I have no way of knowing if that was the vendor or the manufacturer. Saris tells me their packages are well padded. The only other issue I see is that I think they sized their receiver tongue a few millimeters too small. It allows the rack to rock a bit in the receiver hitch. Now, all racks rock to some degree, and when they don’t, they’re impossible to slide in and out, especially if heavy. But this will rock enough that it will introduce a lot of exaggerated moments on the far end of the cantlever, ie. the last bike on the rack. So I will next work up a shim that will hold it a little more snug in the hitch.

So far so good!
Stay tuned for a follow-up, discussing a related mod…

*No small irony, when I sold my Thule 4-bike hanger-type hitch rack last week, the buyer gleefully discovered it was, in reality, a 1 1/4" hitch after all, which stumped me to no end, as the hitch I bought for the Element was specifically listed as a 2". Which means that when I bought the Thule, used, IT TOO was listed as 2", but I installed it, found it to work, and never thought twice because I never had anything to compare it to. So my customer was excited that he could use it on his car, and I was a bit stymied that I hadn’t needed to buy a new rack after all.

*Granted, Ye Blacke Death, my toddler cargo bike, uses a Mixte frame and can’t hang by the top tube it doesn’t have, which would have been a problem with that other rack. They sell a top tube surrogate that clamps to seat tube and head tube for this purpose, but between gravity and road vibration, it would undoubtedly grind the frame to bare metal in time. So no loss.

Update:

on the Clubman, the unique way the SARIS pivots on an elevated joint from the hitch level means that it’s the first rack i’ve found that didn’t allow the Clubman doors to open, even when folded flat. Now, that said, I use the SARIS for other reasons that outweigh this, but it’s something I didn’t consider until I mounted the rack. I’m not sure how this would affect the Countryman… on the Club the doors would strike that elevated joint just a few inches from their near corners.

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great interview over on the MASH BLOG with chas, who runs TCB courier and reps MASH and team murder. i’ve actually talked to the dude once out on the streets, really nice guy.

anyway, the questions they asked seemed really cool so i figured i’d put em up here on the TLTC page and see what came of it! the below are my answers. (follow the link above for chas’ interview.)

just copy/paste it into your reply and sub your answers for mine.

~~~

what do you ride? (can be your stable or just one bike)
+ the majority of the time i ride a murdered-out leader track build with some trick details.
+ my lock-up/pub bike is another fixed-gear that i built on a scattante frame i got from nashbar a few years back for like a buck twenty and it’s finished with whatever parts i had laying around at the time.
+ one of my road bikes is a sweet bianchi veloce that i bought for a song from my main dude thom.
+ my other road bike is still being built, but it’s an 80s japanese steel bianchi f/f that i’m slowly getting JUUUST the right parts for.
+ other than that, i have a bunch of half-bikes around and some frames that will probably never have anything happen with em.

how long have you been riding and what started you?
i always like to say that i’ve had a bike under me since the training wheels came off, but in truth there was a couple years there in the late 90s when i was doing a bunch of cocaine and i didn’t ride at all. so given that, i’d say 25 years to be safe. i started for the same reason every kid starts riding a bike. it’s your first taste of freedom. you can go farther and faster and most importantly without your parents. i CONTINUED riding because i love the feeling of it and because it’s good for me. not just in a physical sense, i mean it actually keeps me sane.

do you wear a helmet and why or why not?
like 95% of the time. i wear it for the same reason i keep a front brake on my fixed-gear bikes — you may only use it once, but when you need it, you’re stoked on it. the only time i really don’t wear a helmet is when i’m just noodling around slowly, late at night — my insomnia rides. or if i’m going out on a date.

favorite shop? why?
my favorite shop is the one i built in my garage. it’s my favorite because it’s mine. but in the spirit of the question, i’d say valencia cyclery. they’re really nice in there, doesn’t matter if you’re an OG or you just bought your first bike, they treat everyone the same. they have a good selection of parts for decent prices and they sell my favorite tyres.

clip or clipless?
on my lock-up/pub bike i have clips and straps, but on all my others i have SPDs.

ride with headphones?
exclusively.

sponsors or teams/gangs/clubs you are a part of?
TEAM LOPE ALL DAY EVERY DAY. i’m considered a straggler member of mixtape velo crue, though. nomad style.

fav. race?
i haven’t raced since the BMX days, so i’d say it was the time that i crashed out in the first turn (in the lead), but managed to get back on my bike and work the track till i made it back up to first and win. that was rad cause i only had one guy left to beat as we approached the final turn, but on this track there were two routes to get to that turn — on the left was a tabletop, and on the right was a huge set of doubles. but since it was a right turn, the easier side (the table) actually put you in a less desirable position. and the dude in the lead was either over-confident or tired or scared or something cause he went that way. i blasted the doubles and landed in the lead, going into the turn. it was all gravy from there.

fav. place to ride or route(s) in SF (lung edit : you can put your own city, but just specify it)?
it’s hard to really pin down just one cause they all have their positives. i love going over the bridge to the north bay and doing paradise/strawberry or just el camino alto, i love bombing hills downtown or out in potrero or bernal, i love long mellow cruises around the waterfront. whatever. i think my favorite route would have to be this one i do that takes me up through pacific heights, out to land’s end, down past the cliff house and all that, and then home through the park. i like that cause it’s really varied terrain, you get a good workout, but it’s not super long. or oak street. oak street is the SHIT. see, i can’t pick a favorite.

fav. person(s) to ride with?
i prefer to ride alone, but of course my boy thom.

dope chill spot?
i dunno, wherever there’s a good view and a place to sit.

why SF (lung edit : you can put your own city, but just specify it)?
it’s SF. there’s no place on earth like it.

what do you do for work?
graphic designer by day, bartender by night.

best and worst thing(s) about riding in SF (lung edit : you can put your own city, but just specify it)?
(lung edit : chas and i have the exact same answer for this one) the hills of SF are both the best and worst thing about riding it.

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