tastewar.com

Category: Biking

  • Clara’s Bike

    Ever since she briefly rode a friend’s road bike on vacation last year, Clara has been wanting a road bike of her own. There are kid-sized road bikes available, but they run $700 and up! So I scoured Craigslist, and eventually came upon a 1977 (I think) Fuji Junior, which is a kid-sized road bike, built on 24″ wheels. Nice. Picked it up for $60. Seemed like it had been garaged for a long time — grease was very dry, but the bike and its parts didn’t seem beat-up or anything. So, Clara and I took the bike completely apart with the intention of getting the frame painted nicely and generally overhauling all the moving parts.

    Brought the frame in to the powder coater just before we left for two weeks of vacation, and picked it up shortly after we returned. It looked awesome! It cost more than I expected or hoped, but it was beautiful. Clara picked out a nice teal, which doesn’t seem to be rendered quite accurately in the photos below. We’ve been working together over the past couple of weeks to clean and re-grease all the components and re-install them on the frame. It’s come along very nicely.

    The biggest headache, somewhat surprisingly, has been the wheels. The new standard in wheel measurement is from the E.T.R.T.O. and is now an ISO standard. Wheels labelled 24″ may be one of (at least) 4 different sizes: 507, 520, 540, or 547. These numbers represent the “bead seat diameter” in millimeters. Turns out, the version of 24″ on this bike is the 547, which is by far the least common. It seems to also be known as “S-5” a proprietary Schwinn size. After much searching, I came upon one tire that would fit, and ordered a pair plus tubes, even though they are bigger (wider) than I’d like. They are more like “comfort” tires than “road” tires. They are listed as 1 3/8″ where the old, cracked ones on the bike were labelled 1 1/8″.

    On the plus side, the tires do fit on the rim properly. On the down side, they are so much bigger, that the rear tire rubs against the brake hardware. I’m currently searching for a better option. Over the long term, I’d hope to upgrade from these heavy, chromed steel rims. Not only are they heavy, but chrome rims are notorious for bad braking performance. Seems that the best option for wheels that offer a better selection of road tires are the 520mm variety. The rear wheel wouldn’t be much trouble — everything is fairly standard on the back, most importantly the hub spacing is 126mm, for which hubs are still available without *too* much trouble. On the front, however, the hub spacing is an odd size — 91mm, which shows up in references as a “low end” hub. No hope of replacement there, which means to replace the front wheel, I’d have to re-lace the current front hub to a new rim. But even putting together all these parts leaves the issue of whether the new wheels would be too small — brake reach is the key issue here, because I’d be losing 13.5mm in radius, thus requiring brakes with 13.5mm more reach, which I suspect will also be tough to find.

    So for now, the bike is going back together with all the original hardware, with wear-and-tear items replaced: tires, tubes, brake shoes, cables, housing, handlebar tape, and ball bearings. Probably didn’t have to replace the bearings, but wanted to do a good/complete job. But it’s honestly been a bit hard putting all these old (& often heavy) parts back onto this new-looking frame. I hope, over time, to replace a lot of the components with new, improved, lighter ones. But almost certainly by then, I’ll have spent as much as (if not more than) a new bike would have cost, and Clara will have outgrown it. But perhaps it can be sold at a premium on Craigslist as a small but nice bike for a small woman, or a generous parent…

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  • A Late Start to the Season

    Mere hours after the Bruins season came to a victorious ending, my bike commuting season has begun. This morning, I biked the sixteen miles in to work for the first time this year, which took me an hour and seventeen minutes. I forget how that compares with previous years, but I’ll assume it’s somewhat slower. It certainly felt so, but my expectations were low: making it here in one piece is good enough. Let me tell you, tele-commuting is much easier! 😉
    There’s a biking blog I like to read called EcoVelo, which is written by a guy who is something of a bike fanatic, and I mean that in the most complementary way possible. I read with envy about his commuting in California, with its almost always beautiful weather, and I look at his pictures with lust in my heart. I could probably do my commute six months of the year, reasonably, without too much cold weather gear. But I know that when the temps are in the forties, my hands can get painfully cold in less time than that. In contrast to the dedicated bike paths, and quiet rural roads through wildflower-filled fields described by Alan, my commute is along heavily trafficked, narrow roads, frequented by trucks going 40-50 mph. Keeps me awake and moving, though! Plus it motivates me to get an early start on the day.
    Most drivers are reasonable, but occasionally I encounter one who clearly expects me to ride in the shoulder (or what they undoubtedly think of as the “bike lane.”) I’d like to explain to these folks: “See this painted line here? This line represents a contract between road users and road maintainers. The road maintainers promise that they will work to keep most of the storm drains and broken pavement on the right side of the line. They will sweep all the sand, broken glass, debris from car accidents, random screws, nails, etc. to the right of that line. They are saying, if you keep your big, four+ wheeled vehicle and it’s inch thick steel-belted radial tires on the left of the line, you will be safer. Now, do you really think it’s right to expect me to ride my vehicle, balancing on its two, eighth-inch thick tires, there? Really??”
    My commute route:


  • Ouch!

    Life gets busy at times. And then there’s the un-cooperative weather. Mix in some natural laziness, and you have the perfect recipe for a late start to the biking season. Yesterday, though I finally got our fleet of bikes out and got them ready for riding. For me, this means washing off the winter dust, inflating the tires, a quick lube of the brakes and derailleurs, and Bob’s your Uncle! Then I put the bikes away for the night, but they didn’t spend very long in the basement, as this morning we took a family ride to one of our favorite local diners, at Bagels by US on Mass Ave. After that, we continued up Mass Ave. a ways into Lexington, but not as far as the center, and then we hit the Minuteman Bikeway and cruised back home. We then watched the small Memorial Day parade,

    which we almost always do (I remember my dad being with us last year). This year, Clara and I followed the parade past their first stop (right near our home) and into the cemetery, and heard all the speeches, many of which were sobering reminders of what Memorial Day is all about (hint: it’s not about shopping).
    Then shortly after noon, I headed out on the bike again to Lexington Center, to meet up with my friend Mike, to go on a longer bike ride. It was challenging, to say the least. A loop a little over 20 miles, which was about 10 miles more than my legs felt up to today. My excuse is that Mike’s legs were fresh starting at Lexington, but mine already had about 13 miles on them before we started out together. It was both good to get out, and yet miserable. Mike and I are often pretty equivalent riders, but he’s already got more than a couple hundred miles on the bike this season, so he’s way ahead of me, and that’s where he spent most of the ride. Here’s a picture of me from the ride:

    Sorry to have held you back, Mike. Maybe in a couple of months I’ll be able to keep up with you. We stopped for lunch at Fern’s in Carlisle, which is quite obviously a big biker hangout.

    Anyway, here’s what our route looked like:



    The last 5 miles I did on my own, after Mike got back in his car and drove off from Lexington Center. That part is included on the map, while my 5 miles up to Lexington aren’t. All told, I put about 40 miles on the bike today. Which is good. Though it doesn’t feel that way now. My legs, butt, shoulders, and neck all ache from the abuse.

  • Get Lost!

    I went on a bike ride today with my new toy. I started by following the Minuteman Bike trail from Arlington Center to Bedford. Then I started back, but I deliberately got off the trail (it would be hard to do so accidentally) and just rode in a direction that I thought would take me a ways east and south. After riding for a while that way, taking semi-random turns and ending up somewhere completely unfamiliar, I asked my toy for help.

    Garmin Bug

    I confess that this is someone else’s picture of their toy on their bike, but you get the idea. I thought I would extend what’s normally just shy of a 20 mile ride by a mile or two. But here’s what I ended up with:



    You can see what I great sense of direction I have. At least I didn’t end up going west! Anyway, it was a fun outing and a fun, successful test of the new toy. It also records tons of data to analyze later. Hopefully it will be interesting to me at some point.

  • Longest Bike Ride Ever

    Yesterday, to celebrate Independence Day (observed), we went to Crane Beach up in Ipswich. Avoiding the hottest part of the day, we went mid-afternoon and stayed until early evening. It was a good day to be at the beach, but the ocean water there, Brrrr! still cold.

    The rest of the family drove the van up, but crazy me, I rode my bike. It should have been 34 miles, but I took an unintended, extended tour of Lynn, and made it 37 miles. Thanks to an anonymous biker and a resident of Lynnfield St. for setting me back on my intended path.

    That makes it, I’m pretty certain, the longest ride I’ve done in one “sitting.”