Bits

Wax lubes.
Groovy luv handles.
Fixed or free?
ESI grips.

Lots of questions. Searching for answers.

Polished off.

I decided on the cranks i'll use for the new bike and started work on polishing them up. I have never polished anything before, so it was a case of dropping down to machine mart after a quick read on wikipedia. All seemed to be pretty obvious, and the results would most likely depend on patience, a gentle hand and luck. This was borne out. The old xt HTII's were revived and a couple of gauges from 'dropped chain whilst fixed' issues filed down. Edges softened and then sanded. And sanded. And sanded. Getting a good finish really does take for ever!



Still, i'm reasonably happy now and after a day or two of use im sure they will be fine.

Anja was up for a quick visit after finding out she may or may not have work to come back to after her trip home to new zealand. Pretty rough treatment, id say. Hmmm. We got in a good meal and a beer or two before she had a hectic 3 days to pack and get in transit. I expect you'll be hearing about cx in new zealand soon.

I got in a ride. 105-110 miles or so on the fixed. Trying to adhere to joe friel's advice. Tough on a fixed, and the wet and the wind made it character building. Read more on VC Moulin.

Immediately after this (and perhaps because i lowered my defences) i came down with a pretty grim vomiting bug. No carbo loading permitted then...almost over that now.

The new practice opened today officially, with the university principal and members of the barclay family in attendance. All good. The rooms look great, with a much more contemporary feel than most surgeries. The future is bright...

Velonews

Even Persephone falls asleep on it now...my velonews sub has lapsed. Or was that velo snooze?

Bill Merchant's video of ITI 09

Stuff to do:

1) read joe friel's book - training bible for mtb
2) make a training plan
3) finish mark twight's book (extreme alpinism)
4) become a tough guy
5) ride lots
6) build trina's new front wheel - stans 355 650b onto xt hub
7) rebuild trina's bike
8) enter 12 hours of bristol bike fest [tick]
9) decide what else apart from ehandoah i want to race
10) build new cross-ish bike
11) other stuff

I was reading over on dave macleod's blog about the curent issues with grading climbs with and without the use of mats. Highball bouldering? free solo climbing? versus trad?

Interesting to me (at the risk of overplaying the comparison of rock climbing and biking) due to the difficulties riding the same stuff fixed off road compared to free wheel. In the last 2 months i have ridden 3 times with a free wheel. Bliss! ease! and to be fair fun!

Doing easy drop ins on a fixed? fear! adrenalin! accomplishment!

2 different ways to do the same move.

Enjoy...


(lifted from dave's sight, music by siren, black sparrow resident).

Shaggy

First time at iditasport. 4th place in brutal conditions. Awesome ride. You sir are tough enough.

(pic is epic erics...go see his stuff)

Ouch dammit.

Sometimes the smallest things can be huge obstacles. The other day i found a skin tag in my left oxter. Skin tags are small mushrooms of flesh which rear up from the surface of the skin due to constant dragging friction. Hence you get them around the neck, and under arms. Trina kindly tied a thread around mine, with the aim that it would lose its blood supply and fall off. What actually happened was the thread fell off. I hate these sort of things, and of course the one true way to get rid? cut it off.

For some reason auto amputation no matter how small is quite difficult to do. If the tissue is dead, well its fine. But if its going to hurt and bleed - a different story.

I stumped up the courage this morning. Weird.

Occasionally, i get air...

Photo is from here.

NAHBS

There is some amazing stuff (as ever) at NAHBS. I've stolen a few pics from folk...

The first there, is from sal_bass, and shows some of paul components stuff, including a very neat chain guide. The second, from the second from ronsta36, a snake skin 'do on a groovy. Think i might have to pick up a groovy luv handle.

The other bikes that caught my eye: curtis' snow bike, with mud guards, and black sheep bikes bike built for jake kirkpatrick. 17lb and that's about it. King inset head tube, removable rear triangle, scrub components disc rotors and lots and lots of swoop. Sweet.

(again, sal_bass)

So much stuff.

We raced at blairadam. There will be a report up soon at vc moulin. It was excellent.

Shaggy is on the move....check mtb cast amongst other things...

I'm playing with bikeforest cad.

We went to st andrews. It is 15 years since we left. We are definitely not royal.

This tuesday sees the end of the study in which i am a guinea pig. I am pretty keen to see the results. I saw some of the power curves the other day. My pedalling is pretty smooth, until i hit red line. Just need to work on cadence.

Elisabeth and her new Isla bike.

Rockin' it.

Stuff and spares...

King Cages are made in Durango. They absolutely rule in stainless steel, ti or as the iris cage here (for the under downtube position on the pinkster).



My stash of spare king cogs, in 18, 19 and 20 teeth, and a couple of velo solo fixed cogs. Both of which rule for their applications.

Then we have the best chainring tool i have found yet. I *hate* when you cannot solidly hold the rear as you tighten chainring bolts. Most tools i have (including park, shimano, and cyclus) have either too thick, thin short or protruding middle portions. This one? perfect...Actually shaggy's VAR tool is the best, but it is perhaps overkill!

New wheel.

Put the new wheel on the tIF. It is B I G.



I s'pose a 50mm wide rim will do that. I also sorted out the gearing on the town bike (cleaned it, refitted the non drive bb cup with 3.5mm of spacers rather than 5mm of spacers with the hope that this stops the crank creaking...i think its not far enough on the spline with my higglety pigglety set up).



The 39:16 is in an effort to learn to spin faster, rather than my glacial pedal stroke rate. Again, this is so when i go to shenandoah with a 34:20 instead of a 34:18 ill not loose as much on the flats.

Last ride.

Went out with a crew to the local trails. Slid, fell about, crashed and grunted around in the mud. All good fun. Dave went so fast down one section his calves were on fire....

There is a queue...

There is a queue outside my door that seems to stretch so far into the future, i cannot see the end.

It is not a happy queue. No one meets your eyes, unless it is with taunting, defiance. There is unease, guilt, fear and prejudice.

How do you insulate yourself from that which people bring into your room, as you hold the door open? Where questions are asked, forgiveness begged, hatred spilled and insecurity handed over like an unwanted gift?

Who is sick?

Is it me? them? or is it the world...





[photo pinched from lowrevolution]

24 hours old pueblo.

Looks like Dejay for the singlespeed solo win, Rebecca in 2nd women singlespeed solo and Ian in 2nd male open solo. Wow. That's deserving of a beer.

Tension

The inimitable David Shrigley. Also, a lesson from tonights wheel building. DT 240 hub (front). 50mm uma rim. DT comp spokes (black) and (red) alloy nipples.

Hoo. Ha. Hmmmm. This could be interesting. It is all part of a sort of grand experiment in the benefits of increasing tyre width. The uma is about as wide as you can go in 29er land. Its a single wall snow rim, in this case 'not' drilled for lightness. I guess if you are being sensible, you minimise all other possibilities for flex. Brass nips, straight gauge, perhaps even 'alpine' DT spokes?

Well, i havent. So we'll see how things go. Tensioned up pretty quick to 80kgf for the none disc side, and 130kgf for the disc side. The wheel has a *lot* of flex in it. I thought it would be more = left and right.


Now - this will either be good. Or, it will be bad.

The only way to know is to try it.

Salt and Peppa.

ESI grips...we'll see. Saddle and grips matching for the new season avec VC-Moulin (hey! i'm not getting left behind in the fashion parade...)

Black Metal Laundry.

Via surly. How to keep the shirts black.

(image stolen from fujicha, well worth a look...)

Starting something new.

Did a preliminary session with andy c at the dept of sports and exercise science at glasgow university. He is looking into preparation of the bodies system to take on prolonged high-power output exercise. Think bradley wiggins, and you will get where this is aimed.

The initial test is seemingly innocuous. 2 sets of 4 minute warm up followed by big ring high resistance sprinting for 60 seconds, with a small step down in resistance about half way through. Ouch.

There will be some interventions in the last 3 of 5 days, so we'll see. Today i was putting out 1000 watts for short bursts, then reducing to pedaling like a pile driver. Ugly. Still.



Here we have my latest work in micro fabrication. Its a (da da daaahhhhhhh!) second seatpost clamp. Why? well riding fixed means sitting down a lot and pummelling the seat post. At my weight, this leads to the post eventually slipping. So, i decided to cut down a metal seat post shim, and fit a second seatpost clamp above the one that is normally there. My calculations were a tiny bit out and i had to file off the rim of the new clamp as it was slightly deeper than the shim thickness. 5 minutes work with a file and some neatening up, and deburring, and its on. Hopefully it will add just enough so that the 'post doesnt sink. We'll see.


And remember kids, in a world gone mad with greed and selfishness, we are all just a small step away from evil.