Last week or so I posted about a new back way to get over from Tam Valley into Mill Valley, dodging the mouth of the valleys themselves and instead heading up and over the pass that rises into Mt. Tam’s base. The first time I tried it, I was on Crook, so in other words a mid-gearing pursuit track bike, and I had a computer on my back. This was in the TO Mill Valley direction. That ascent was steep, and I stopped at one point to get my bearings, as I’m still recovering from a back injury and not up to par. Then, lots of twisty, switchbacky goodness to the bottom.

Yesterday, I took the same route BACK to Tam Valley, winging it. It was a pure impulse move, as I was on Carpetbagger (again mid-gearing, but a less aggressive posture, which actually hurts you here) and there was a ton of wind and traffic between me and home. So I veered right, behind the 2AM club, found Ethel, took that to the start, and wound my way back up this route from memory. I mean, it’s one of those things where if you don’t turn or choose wrong at a fork you aren’t doomed, you just keep winding somewhere else in the maze of these little elevated residential streets. That’s no problem: I have often ridden around in these areas just to explore and housewatch and stuff, and sometimes you end up back where you started or even further back, and sometimes you don’t. On the way home with dinner on the stove, though, you have to watch out.

Anyway, the point is, as I had hoped, it’s easier each time, once you KNOW it. Every climbing route I know has gotten progressively easier in perception based on familiarity. We’re not talking Alpine type roads or anything here, just a relatively short hop up and over, but I remember when Alpine seemed impossible. Until I did it, and did it again, and now it’s just one of many climbing rides available. So this is the same thing. Doing some steep but short climbs in this way is a GREAT option, because it’s on the commute, it’s not time-intensive, it gets you away from some of the vehicular traffic, and it is an opportunity to get a workout when you might not otherwise have the chance.

I love it! I’ll be revisiting it again in 3.9 hours.

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2 months after I first gave it to her, Zoe is finally able to get ONTO this sled. It is an Elmo branded wooden hobbyhorse that was made in the UK and no longer available, obtained, you may recall, from Re-Cyclery and spiffed up by self into one sweet whip. This steed has undergone some modifications, like having it’s frame inverted to get the seat lower, for one, which necessarily created a chopper out of it, with that fork angle.

Anyway, she can only get about 6 or 7 steps before tumbling over, but she’s getting there. Earning her Team Lope sticker!!!

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even though i tend to be an old-school guy who prefers friction shifters to indexed, or a fixed drivetrain to a multi-gear drivetrain in general, i have to say, THIS is fucking sick to me.

the toyota prius project concept bike is a collaboration between toyota and parlee cycles, in which several forward-thinking concepts were developed and executed. dig the front brakes integrated in the rear of the fork. the cyclist stat readout integrated into the stem. lots of really cool shit, but the crowning achievement is without a doubt the thought-activated wireless shifting integrated into the helmet. an array of sensors placed at various points on the cyclist’s head pick up the places where thoughts of shifting take place, and viola! you shift with your fucking MIND.

the most comprehensive overview is at prolly (first link above), but you can go to the project’s dedicated SITE for more if you like.

amazing.

also, beautiful…

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So, if you’ve been following along, I made a baby and cargo carrier out of an old Mixte frame, and called it Ye Blacke Death. The combination of fixie riding and a small frame was hurting the knees every time I took the Wee Z out, so i decided to do something somewhat sensible and move to a more traditional frame in my size. Thus, YBD was retired and Rapscallion was born.

Over the weekend, I completed initial assembly of the Rapscallion prototype, using an Origin 8 El Pasado frame that was once Ghostal, much of the YBD pieces parts, and a Sugino Messenger crankset and bottom bracket. I found, along the way, that the fork clearance, using the beefy 35c tyres, didn’t allow for the fenders, so i moved the fenders over to Wrongbike’s rebuild, and proceeded. I was able to fit the Gamoh front rack on there, and eventually took it out for a test ride. One significant problem unsolved: the brake. The centerpulls I was working so hard to retain were conflicting too severely with the mounting assembly of the front rack’s center tange. On YBD, the layout was such that i could squeeze that tange up IN there, under the transverse cable of the brake, stringing the brake cable above it. But on Rapscallion the stack is compressed but the stem is long, so it didn’t work out. I pulled the centerpulls and added a side pull… I thought, you know what, self? It’s less old timey now so who cares. And so, wrongbike gets MORE old timey, and Rapscallion less. Frankly, with the modern track frame at it’s core, it makes sense.

Heres Rapscallion during the dead load test ride. I was cautious, not having a functional brake. See, the side-pull brake I put on there was short reach, so it didnt clear the brake calipers… I could have waited, put a longer reach brake on it, but I wanted to work with what I had. Those big tyres were juuuuuuust barely clearing both fore and aft, so I thought I’d try something new next. The important part was the fit was better, the ride much smoother (modern steel, even entry level, is so much smoother than 40-year old cheap stuff) and I managed to squeeze that crazy baby seat up onto a threadless steerer. The big questions were answered. Now, time to finesse it.

Here’s the bike on the second dead load test. I replaced the knobby in front with a trusty Soma Everwear (I always have one on hand, it seems) and dropping down to 23c from 35c? Huge difference, not only in clearance but friction, as you can imagine. Since I don’t do much off-roading for fear of losing my precious cargo, I didn’t mind the loss. I loved the look of those knobbies on YBD, but on the track frame it looked uncomfortably too FGFS for my tastes.
I restrung the brake a bit (more on this to come as I test a new theory later) and took it up the hill. By Jove, I could accelerate, climb (a bit) and stop! Yay! Note the deer in the background, judging the lack of new paint.

On the 4th of July, we went into San Anselmo for a little Q and Giants action, equally apportioned before and after pool time. I brought Rapscallion in order to do my first Live Load test.

One nice thing about the frame change, the bike easily fits in the bike rack now without special padding, as the fenders are off and the tyres are smaller.

In order to prepare for the test, we needed to properly affix the first sticker to Wee Z’s new helmet. My bebe upgraded to a larger size. Oh time flies. Of course, it was a Team Lope sticker.

The Live Load test: We were ready for action, despite me leaving both my SHOES and the little foot strap thingies for her seat, back at the house. Sleepy Hollow is pretty mellow so I was willing to risk destroying my arches. By the cried of ‘bike-sickle!!!!’ Zoe was good to go with the revised design just fine, though she seemed incredulous that I hadn’t mounted the bell yet.

It went well. Smooth ride, lighter than the last build, and easier to move around too, since I changed chainrings. I was using a road bike chainring on YBD and had fitted a fat 20 tooth cog in back. Now, I was using a 46 tooth chainring, so I went down from 70.7 to 61.4. It’s now by far my smallest inchgear fixie, but let me tole you what: carry a 25 pound kid AND groceries in front of you? The loading is hard to push around, so I’m down.

We rode all the way up to my wifebot’s old school, San Domenico, and back, stopping to admire an old timey car that sparked my daughter’s interest. Overall, a great test ride and a fun way to spend the holiday.

Thoughts:

-no getting around it, baby seat and cargo rack in front, even without cargo, is a heavy load for a fixed gear. At some point she’s going to get too heavy and I’ll have to transition to a rear rack.

-the new frame geometry helped my knees quite a bit. Not PERFECT mind you but much better. The frame is sized for me at least. The problem remains that you are riding very upright which messes up your triangle of powah. It’s a weird feeling, even on my old townie bike Redcoat. Anyway, I may experiment with changing to bars that, while still clearing the baby seat, are a little less upright and far back from the stem. I think I can get a little bit better riding posture that way.

-I’m striking the underside of the seat just a hair. Not enough to be a problem for ME thus far, but Wee Z snuck her hand back there and got it pinched between the seat and my massively powerful thigh, so I need to experiment there. I’m playing around with ways to get the seat even higher. Will advise.

All in all, a ton of successes, and very close to calling it a done deal and proceeding with repaint. More as it happens…

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Rest in piece

So I’ve been remiss in reporting on this, but I’ve been doing major surgery to Ye Blacke Death, my funky baby porter slash cargo bike. It was a great build, comprised of an old Mixte frame powdercoated matte black, with lots of old and new stock, a frankendrivetrain, custom chunky wheels by Joe’s shop, 718c in Brooklyn, custom handmade wood fenders, a front portage rack, and a Bobike stem-mounted baby seat. The only problem: the same thing that plagued the original owner of this frame, it’s a little too small. So, add to that the upright riding position for a baby carrier, and the fixed gear drivetrain? My knees were feeling it. I can’t afford that, not just for those rides, but all my other riding. So, I was forced to retire Ye Blacke Death.

RIP Ye Blacke Death. Long live Rapscallion*!

So the new project involves converting a modern track frame into my new baby carrier. I had an Origin8 El Pasado available, which was once Ghostal’s frame. I initially wanted to use it as a test model just to see if I could make the angles work (the bobike baby seat requires a tall stem in order to give you knee clearance, so the riding position is important, the size of the frame, the stem height, etc) and discovered, at least it seems so anyway, that I could make it work, with a seat adapter and some other changes. So, based on that initial test, I decided to continue with the Ghostal frame, build a rideable prototype, and if THAT stands the test of a field expedition, then I could get it repainted and boom.

So today’s report id all about the gap. Specifically fork clearance.

Here’s an example of the great fork clearance of older ten speed frames designed to use centerpull caliper brakes. Spacious! I didn’t even KNOW how good I had it. This is a shot of Wrongbike’s fork but if you look at that pic of Ye Blacke Death up top, you’ll see that I shoehorned a fender, a portage rack, centerpulls AND 38c knobby tyres. There’s a whole thread on that tangle elsewhere. Suffice to say, I’m glad I tested the wheels on the new frame because…

Yep. That’s a tight gap. The El Pasado frame was and is awesome for many reasons, not the least of which being the very versatility that allows for this project, so unusual in an entry level track bike frame. Not only does it have all the braze-ons and eyelets for racks and such, but the fork is wide enough to accommodate big commuter tyres. However, check that gap: it’s like 2mm-3mm. So, this means a change in vision: I had planned to bring everything over from YBD onto this build, but those fenders aren’t happening. That’s OK though, because Wrongbike’s rebuild (and eventually a new name will be required) is veering more old timey than it has been in recent years, and it will take those fenders just fine.

So, basically at this point Wrongbike, Ye Blacke Death and Ghostal are all blown apart and Ye Olde Shoppe looks like a bomb hit it. For now!

*As you may have noticed, I name my bike builds after old-timey villains. Villain, Crook, Redcoat, Carpetbagger, etc. The name Rapscallion is a good one for my baby carrier: evil in one definition, but playfully mischievous in another. Appropriate for a toddler delivery system. Of course, my wifebot certainly never appreciated the baby bike being called Ye Blacke Death. Heh.

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so i took my first trip with a coupled bike and wanted to offer thoughts, suggestions, and a general idea of what it’s like to do so.

the bottom line? HEAVEN. there’s nothing like checking a bike into the belly of a plane and not being charged any more for it than you would be for any item that you check. some airlines still allow you to check your first bag for free. most do not. i paid $25 on virgin america to check it, each way. but the upside, and the whole point of coupling a bike in the first place, is that whether or not your particular airline charges you for checking bags, they ALWAYS charge you for checking a bike in a bike-sized box. most airlines have a specific charge for bikes, and many will hit you with an oversized/overweight fee first, then tack on their bike fee. in the end, if you travel with a bike-sized box, you’re in for at LEAST $125 each way, and in many instances, nearly $200.

fuck a whole lotta that.

: : :

first of all, packing the bike…

THOUGHTS / it’s a little nerve wracking to know that you’re about to smash your bike into a box and trust it to the airline baggage handlers. those people are fucking savages and you know it’s gonna get thrown around like rip torn tossing wrenches at the "dodgeball" crew. but you gotta get over that. it is what it is and you’re gonna have a bike with you, so get ready.

SUGGESTIONS / in order to pad the setup so nothing scratched anything else, i went ghetto — i layered soft duffel bags between all the pieces. (the above picture is not the actual padded load photo, it’s just there as an example of what you’re gonna be doing.) this is suboptimal for several reasons. one, it adds a lot of weight. two, it saddles you with three extra (empty) bags to deal with on the other side of your flight. and if you’re going to be unpacking and riding from the airport to your destination, this is not going to work. i was not doing that for a few reasons, which is why i had this freedom. on the other hand, it gives you extra places to secure your tools and lock and the errant loose parts of the bike that are floating around in there. so you choose for yourself, but here are my thoughts on future applications of packing…

/ get some pipe padding at the hardware stoe and custom cut it yourself to wrap the tubes of your frame/fork. ALL the tubes.
/ put all the loose bits into their own bags, or a bag of their own. these parts are : pedals, handlebar, seatpost/seat, pedals, chain.
/ pack all your tools and your lock and your pump in the bag with the bike. i did this and it was great because it kept everything together in one place, and it also kept the shit out of my carry-on, which would have inevitably raised suspicions.

: : :

travel…

THOUGHTS / ok, the bag is heavy. there’s no way around it. you’ve got a whole bike in there, as well as a pump, a sack of tools, a u-lock, and any other number of heavy elements that you may have thrown in. so get ready. virgin even put a "heavy" tag on the bag (though they didn’t charge me for an overweight piece of luggage, which was awesome.) and that’s where the first difficulty of the bag comes into play. i’m six feet tall and i had to carry it with my arm bent, holding it up off the ground. and that’s not easy on the shoulders. the alternate method is to use the backpack straps (which my particular bag has), but i only suggest that if you really love the feel of an axle digging into your spine.

SUGGESTIONS / i suggest finding some way to ease your load when you’re carrying this, no matter what. i certainly will be doing this. some thoughts for methodology…

/ figure out a way to get wheels onto the bottom of the bag (mod a skateboard or a caster dolly)
/ figure out a way to extraPad the surface that would go against your back while using the backpack straps.
/ fashion some sort of shoulder/handstrap combo. so the end result would be that there’s a strap crossing over from your alternate shoulder and then a handle midway down the outside face that allows you to hold and take some pressure off the shoulder that’s bearing the weight.

: : :

storage at your destination…

THOUGHTS / there’s something really, REALLY awesome about waking up in the morning in a hotel and seeing a bike in your room. i mean it’s fucking thrilling. it’s also an instant conversation starter in the hotel elevator and lobby. however, while i find it hard to believe that a hotel would deny you the liberty of keeping it in your room, it might happen. in that instance, i have to imagine they’d let you keep it in the hotel garage. one thing i do know, from WR, is that some hotels will make you take the service elevator if you have a bike. my hotel did not, which was great.

SUGGESTIONS / this is the one thing that is gonna cause you the most frustration if the hotel has special rules or whatever, so my only suggestion is…

/ call first. just tell your hotel that you’ll have a bicycle with you and ask. do they require that you take the service elevator? do they require that you keep it in the hotel garage? is there security in that garage? does it cost money to park a bike in their garage? do they have bike racks out front that a doorman has an eye on? just tell them your deal and figure it out with them. you’re the customer and the hospitality industry is notoriously willing to make your stay with them as easy as possible, so i really don’t anticipate much pushback on the whole thing, you’ll just need to figure it out together.

: : :

in the end, i HIGHLY recommend getting yourself a coupled bike and taking it with you wherever you go. it’s almost prohibitively expensive, but if you can swing the cost to do it, you’ll make that cost back up in just a few round trips. and it’s absolutely delightful to view a city that’s not your own from the cockpit of YOUR sled. rentals are fine, but let’s be honest — they’re not. they’re always big and heavy, laden down with map holders and handlebar bags, and you’re branded with "BLAZING SADDLES" or whatever. sub-optimal. your own bike is your own bike. you’ve built it to your specs, you’ve made it look the way you want it to, it’s just … better.

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This is not generally my cup of bike. However, the price point is $800, no typo, for an aluminum commuter with full disc braking. I recently priced a fork, disc brake, rotors, shifter set-up as a possibility for my baby bikery, and let me tell you, you might as well buy this bike, strip the NUCLEAR TRIGGER YELLOW/ORANGE brake setup for your build, and sell the rest, and stay in the green.

http://urbanvelo.org/marin-lombard/

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At the time these photographs were taken, I built up Carpetbagger, the Coupled travel bike, almost entirely over the course of an evening, stopping as seen above, with only a steerer tube cut, brake stringing and chain away from ride-out.

When I went to install the headset, I had some trouble because the home-brew headset cup press I made was mere centimeters too short. It drove me nuts trying to finagle it, so I eventually put it down and took it in to Tam Bikes, where MASH’s Dylan pressed them for me quick-snap. Actually, he admitted there was some difficulty with them, but he got it up IN there.

Back home, I dropped the bottom bracket in that night and built up the bike as you see it above. A note about that: I’m using a Sugino 75 kit that rode to LA as part of Team Hype’s Magnus’ Cinelli X MASH build. He kept it in pretty good shape, so I took it off his hands when he was liquidating before leaving for Japan, at the same time Team Lope pal Ryan was grabbing his frame. The Sugino 75 cranks can use a conventional sealed BB but he had a nice 75-stamped cup and cone and I took that too. Unlike the cup and cone BB’s I restored on Wrongbike and Ye Blacke Death, this wasn’t thirty or forty years old. I won’t say the others weren’t smooth, but this was like butter. The crankset and BB are noticeably lighter than the Messengers I used on several other bikes. I’d love to compare them to my Dura Ace cranks on Villain. Frankly, the specs are out there. But as someone who counts pizzas, not grams, it’s unusual for me to worry about weight on a build. But since Carpetbagger is intended to be a travel bike, I wanted it light, and so the rims and the cranks, my two heavier components usually, are much lighter here.

Side note: when I was up on the deck trying not to lose headset parts or let my daughter get all greeeeeazzy with her probing digits, I noticed some damage to the frame. Now, I will admit that at one point she waltzed over and drop kicked it onto the BBQ. But I think that accounts for a to-steel scratch on the seat tube. However, there’s a dent in the top tube and another lower on the seat tube, both under paint. Frankly, I think my pwdercoater isn’t very gentle. Remember, same crew that warped Wrongbike’s forks until they were about 14mm too narrow!
But forewarned is forearmed.

Again, another unfortunate defect: a powdercoating fail on the head tube! Fortunately, the scratch on the seat tube and the fail onthe head tube would ultimately be covered by custom vinyl, and the dents? Well, realistically, this is all just new-build glamor consideration. Once the bike is packed and shipped a few times, I’ll be amazed it there’s any paint LEFT on it. Travel bikes don’t stay pretty for long, even protected by tube insulation.

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getting closer!

a few weeks back, you may remember that i had a FRAME coupled. this was a fantasy project that sort of came out of nowhere one day and was enthusiastically supported by WR, who’d been threatening to do same for years. you can read more about the first few steps at the link above.

now here i am with the frame and fork back from the powdercoaters, where, as with nearly every other step in this project, new shit came to light and last-minute changes had to be made. specifically, i’d not wanted to color it at all. i wanted it sandblasted, acid-bathed, and clear-coated. the powdercoater said he could do that, but clearly (heh) he and i have very different ideas of what "clearcoating" means. you see, i figured it was a CLEAR. COAT. cause that’s what it is in paint. but in powder, it’s some flat grey. whatever, i could have bailed out and taken it to a painter, or even done it myself, but i was actually more married to the idea of the process than i was to the result. so i chose this really strange (for me and my aesthetic) color which looks brass in sunlight and green in artificial light. it’s actually a very cool color, and it drives a very cool theme which you’ll see as the build progresses. here’s a closeup of the color in it’s "green" phase…

i was actually looking forward to building it this weekend, as this is one of very, VERY few times in my life of building bikes that i’ve had nearly every single part on hand when the frame arrived. in fact, i’m only missing one part, which arrives monday. oh wait, except that one part, the headset, is the part that facilitates the overwhelming majority of a build. without that, you really can’t put almost anything together. i mean, you CAN, but your bike turns into two half-builds instead of one full build, so fuck that. i’ll wait till monday.

either way, STOKED!

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man, i haven’t been this excited about a build project in a long time. a few weeks ago i mentioned offhand to WR that i was thinking of getting my beloved fixed townie loos3y coupled. that frame’s been with me a long time, been through hell actually, and it remains my favorite of my stable. so i thought it would be awesome to be able to take it with me on trips. and WR had been fantasizing about building a coupled frame for a while, so it got him amped again. next thing you know, it was on. we had bikes stripped down to their frames and down at the framebuilder before we knew it.

the downside was that in EACH of our cases, the frames we wanted to use weren’t going to be viable. in his case, it was an old frame made of questionable quality steel that may have ended up being just a waste of a LOT of money (this is a VERY expensive process) when it finally broke or imploded or whatever. and in my case, loos3y’s frame had some fluted tubing on the downtube near the BB, so the coupler would have had to be put way further up than is structurally sound.

and what does all this mean when you’re a bike geek? that’s right, TIME TO BUY NEW FRAMES!!! WR ponied up for a gorgeous SOMA van ness track frame with chromed lugging at the head tube, while i went for the no frills pake rum runner track frame. since these frames were going to be stripped and cut and welded it really didn’t matter what color they were. my frame is red, my fork is black, and i don’t know what WRs stuff was before it was all done up nice.

anyway, a CRUSHING work schedule disallowed me from going to powdercoat immediately, which is why in all of these pictures it’s half-red, half-steel and all fucked up. but it goes to pc on tuesday morning, so before long it’ll be sporting it’s new look, which i’m keeping a secret for now. (incidentally, you can see WR’s after powdercoat over HERE.)

so that’s the frame up top, coupled. and here it is un-coupled…

i fucking love that picture. it’s so wrong and weird. only a bike geek would pony up over a grand to have a $150 frame cut in half and then re-attached.

here’s a closeup of one of the coupler joints…

i’m really thrilled that the couplers are lugged. it gives a nice touch of class to an otherwise plain frame. oh yeah, one kind of cool detail — since the frame didn’t come with bottle bosses, he added them for me. so i can still rock the hydration.

so stay tuned for further shots, as the build comes together. it should be pretty quick after powdercoating.

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