For parents preparing to get their younglings on their bike for the first time, the immediate dilemma is the methodology: front seat, rear seat or trailer?
If you set aside the culture of fear associated with the placement of your beloved botlet on an inherently unstable apparatus in perilous motion, it becomes a combination of factors. What do you want to experience on the bike with them? What do you want them to experience?

I’ve had every iteration of the youngling carrier in the Team Lope shoppe, and I can tell you that while each have strengths and advantages, there was a clear winner in my family. Your choice will be subjective and personal. But I’ll break down what I’ve found. Remember, your youngling must have the neck strength to hold their head up even when jostled, and most importantly, you must be able to get the helmet on. We started with a Lazer helmet, which is the smallest available, and upgraded more recently to a Headcase helmet of her own selection. Pink.

Front Seat: I wanted to interact with my daughter on the bike, see what she saw, and talk with her as we rode, so I was hot for the front seat assembly. This was our second configuration, after using a rear seat first for a few months. The advantages of a front seat configuration are that you obviously have your youngling right up their with you, allowing you to interact and take data. For example, are they enjoying the ride, or is wind bothering them, or are they asleep, that sort of thing. My daughter cares not about the wind when on a bike, and generally narrates our voyage. She and I also regularly engage in surveillance assignments, such as watching for ravens or MINIs. Or girls. Speaking of girls, she rings the bell when we pass people. The weight is forward of the center of the bike, meaning you are pushing that high center of gravity mass around. It is the most stable position for a strong-bodied adult, as you are always gripping the bars, and less prone to the swing-out of the weight being on the back and getting away from you on a dismount. Care must always be used, of course. Disadvantages include the system being somewhat more difficult to manage for smaller, weaker individuals, and the fear factor: if you are convinced your child is going to be injured, it’s easy to imagine such things when you’re riding behind them on the bike.

For my money, the best front seat system is the Bobike, which offers a compact seat and footrest, compared to any other system I’ve seen that utilizes overbuilt plastic cages. Nothing wrong with that business, but when on a front rack that’s a lot more to have to look around while riding, and it’s more THERE there to be in the way between you and your youngling. I like to get face to face with mine.
You can get the Bobike from the only domestic supplier that I currently know of, Longleaf, who also have the Lazer helmet.
http://www.longleafbicycles.com/product … bike-mini/

They also have attachments like a windscreen or even offer a deluxe seat. Great folks, and highly recommended. I should point out that you need to consider your ride when using this seat. It attaches to the stem, so you need to have either a tall quill stem, or if using a modern stem, you need enough height in the steerer to accommodate the mounting assembly (sold separately for modern stems) and do some adjustment so you aren’t striking with your knees. For me, on a fixed-gear, that meant playing around with bar types and seat positions. I started on an upright Mixte frame and now am riding in a pretty conventional fixed-gear position on curved short touring bars that are like risers in the setup.

Another option is the Yepp seat, also quite popular.
http://publicbikes.com/p/Yepp-Mini-Chil … dium=email

Rear Seat: The rear seat is the most common around, and we inherited ours from another family. The seat rests on a modified rear rack, which connects to your seat tube ad clamps to the wheel stays. This is the traditional business, with the youngling in a large bucket, secured over the rear wheel. Advantages are that it’s perceived to be more stable for smaller, weaker riders, and the youngling is protected from wind by your own body in front of them. Disadvantages include visibility, for one, and in my opinion, contrary to the above, a tendency to introduce a twisting moment at rest. So, I guess easier for some in motion, harder when stopped. Anyway, these are everywhere, so I don’t even have links for you.

Trailer: I resisted this one for over a year, but now have one as well. A trailer attaches to your rear axle or stays and is on a pivot assembly so you have freedom to move the bike around without locking up the trailer. Your turning radius is thus quite tight, and depending on how deluxe your trailer is, the ride can be cush. We use the Burley Bee, which os pretty much a stripper. The reason I went with such a simple model was weight: in this configuration, you are pulling the weight behind the bike, and being pushed around a little bit by it as well. So, lightness to me was key. Additionally, for my use, it was for distance riding and hill climbing, giving me the capability to get something approximating my more aggressive rides in with my youngling along, so weight was absolutely the most important factor. More deluxe models increase the suspension, offer attachments to transform into a stroller, add a microwave, whatever. My youngling likes the trailer fine at first, but she prefers to be on the bike and involved. The trailer is a passive experience, and will generally lead to napping. So, in my mind, it’s somewhat more for your benefit and less about their experience. But great for long distances, many can carry two, like mine (planning ahead) and also great for inclement weather. Mine has a windscreen and a rain cover. A friend back east also pointed out they can be adapted for snow use in some cases as well. In my mind, the trailer is a good second option to one of the above that you might use more regularly.

http://www.burley.com/home/bur/page_306/bee.html

Note that your options expand considerably once your youngling is old enough to hold on for dear life, as you can introduce the ride-along extensions that offer a third wheel and second set of seat/bars, or upgrade to a larger kid carrier like a bikefiet or an Xtracycle. I’m entering that world soon and will be looking into those in more detail.

Anyway, have fun, and get those kids out there early. It’s a great way to commute with them, spend time with them, and get some junk miles in, so to speak.

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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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I love my front rack on the YBD cargo/Zoe carrier. The side rails that create the basket shape (which actually contain the wood floor boards, AND provide a bottle opener) work really well for most things, especially grocery bags, because I can cinch them down and then the bag is restrained from slowly vibrating over by that basket rail. But sometimes I have to sort out very large packages to take to the post office, and I have to get creative. I can strap larger ones on top of the rails and it’s basically the same as the flat surface of the CETMA system, but then I have to find ways of securing small stuff under them. The rails of this rack aren’t a mesh so there’s amble space for things to slide out if given the chance, such as otherwise netted up kid’s jackets, sunglasses, what not. Sometimes I think the rack could have done with a rail that had more frequent vertical supports for that purpose. But overall, I tend to get comments when out and about, from other people amazed that I can pile boxes as high as my eyes (or higher, if I wanted the deaths) and string the netting together to hold them down.

NO accessory on a bike I’ve built has been as functionally useful as a front rack.

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It’s been awhile since I’ve had Redcoat in rotation, as it was the baby carrier before YBD and never got switched back. I recently brought it in to the office to use as my townie once Wrongbike got pulled apart, and today I headed down to get afternoon coffee and man, what love abounded.

On the way, the guy from the gelato place was riding by on his custom cargo carrier (the one we’ve shown here before, with fore and aft freezer boxes on it) and he grinned and hit me with the bell. So I gave him a few honks from my Triad of Hornery, and I heard behind me as he passed more bell ringing, and some kids nearby were excited about the exchange.

Then, on the way back, I tooted my Triad of Hornery at a guy with a kid on one of those trailer tandem-style extensions, and then as I was father down the street preparing to turn up a side street, a minivan with a mom and a few girls in it went by me yelling ‘HORNS! We love your HORNS!’ Not just the girls, but Mom. I love it.

I do corny stuff like ringing my bells and tooting the Triad of Hornery, because it amuses my daughter, amuses passerby, spreads a little anti-asshole-roadie goodwill, etc. Nice on days like today where I can tell it’s appreciated…

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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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never has carrying mass quantities of craiglisted bike parts to the shipper been such a mellllllow journey.

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Show me a [Self-Generated] problem
yo I’ll solve it

Here we have the big 20 tooth cog on there finally (well, again) thanks to a fresh chain, and after an admittedly unloaded ride test (that means different things, depending on where, and when, in the Team Lope enterprise, we’re talking) and yes, it is reassuring to have the 70.7 inchgear as intended.

Wish I was well enough to actually ride as planed today, but these are still the problems to have…

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When my guy at my LBS helped me adjust the derailleur on Villain, I noted he was using a very awesome tool, referred to as the ‘third hand’ in that shop. Obviously that’s a name you’d want to buy the tool for, regardless of what it does.

The industry actually knows it as the ‘Fourth Hand’ because it serves the purpose of two hands… just by the time you subtract a hand holding it, you’re down to three. But you COULD let it hang, back up to—-

– OK, dork out over. Anyway, it clamps the brake or shift cable in place and then locks that position, nice and tight, so you can hold a nut or clamp and allen it with the other hand.

I’ve done 3,000 brake cable adjustments now without it. FINALLY I have the damn thing.

Ironically, I suppose, it’s not needed on center-pull brakes like YBD, which constitute the most recent 2,999 of those adjustments.

But fohwahhhhhd!

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So, Ye Blacke Death has been ride-able for 24 hours now. I mean, it goes and it stops, both reliably.

So, while it’s not yet complete, I do have thoughts.

Test Ride 1 was the coffee run last weekend that saw most of my coffee land in and over the front rack, being unsecured, plus was the ride I learned I had both a high-gearing issue AND a baby seat clearance issue. Subsequently, I swapped out the Nitto moustache bars for big-ass moon bars. This provides the necessary clearance to ride with the baby up ON there. I also swapped out the vintage hood lever for a BMX lever and restrung the brake cable 33 more times.

Test Ride 2: Wraps Run

So the bars are on, the brake strung, seemed to be in order, so i headed out. First thing I noticed was that despite cinchin’ it, the bars still moved in the stem clamp. So I was carrying all my tools in me pockets as I do on test rides, so I was able to really muscle it more and get it tighter. Good. Second thing I noticed was that the brakes were still just a bit too soft. It’s hard to finesse center-pulls like this. You under-do it and they slip, and over-do it and the cable get s smashed and frayed. So I stopped and adjusted again. Little better, not perfect.

I also noticed that riding with moon bars is kind of awkward. It’s fun, but when you’re used to the drops or the bulls, pitched forward, this position is kind of strange. You’re pushing pedals differently too, with your body geometry changing in that position. But as far as the first real RAHHHDE of any distance, it worked. It’s smooth, cushy. LAID BACK.

I brought back some wraps and a salad using the front basket, and used my webbing to hold it down. Worked AWESOME.

Test Ride 3: Commute

So after the ride last night, this morning I was able to do some more brake adjustment (still not perfect) and a few other things, and I was good to go.

Lung warned that my gearing was still likely too high. He’s right. I came down from my accidental 300 inchgear or whatever, but my chain was broken too small now, so i couldn’t get it back up to the bigger ‘pie plate cogs’ because I don’t have enough chain. So I installed the biggest I could fit, which was an 18. That’s still a 78 inchgear. Not terribly comfortable int he upright. Doable certainly in drops, but this is different. Add the short hills to get to my house. Add 20+ pounds of Wee Z! So yep, need a new chain.

I also found that man, it’s hard to adjust to those wide hand-positions. I kept instinctively slipping down to the stem to ride more comfortably as I do on Crook, but of course with a baby seat installed that wouldn’t be possible, so I tried to force myself to stay in position. Overall, fun ride, but need to do more adjustments. Possibly a drainpipe post, as I’m feeling a little forward from where I want to be, just like with Fix-e back in the day. I just happen to have Fix-e’s old one, so we’ll see.

I headed over to the stoe to get some groceries, and to Peet’s to get my coffee. Again with the webbing, this time pushing more of the limits of the reach of the net. Worked great. My bag was about 20 pounds too, and the bike handled well. That’s a good sign. Coffee in there too, nice and snug.

Test Ride 4: Afternoon Coffee Run

Yes, that’s a lot of coffee, i know.
Anyway, this time I webbed the coffee cup vertically close to the stem-side of the basket, and it worked like a dream. Even better than my modified gimbal on wrongBike. Narry a drip spilled.
Little more used to the bars now.

Please note the sweet, sweet sticker I through on here, courtesy of TRDL R3 Lieutenant Akua!

All in all, good rides. I’m heading over to get yet another chain tonight and replacement grips. Don’t be fooled by that red wrap. That’s just the under-wrap to the cork grips. I had to break one off to get the moustache bars off, which was crumbling from some cracks anyway. So more to come.

Onward! Next ride, lower gear, proper grips, bell and BABY! If all goes well…

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