Statrix Redux

It’s been raining hard today here in Honolulu with flash flood warnings and everything. Of course I was out in it on my Hunqapillar getting soaked as met up with a friend for breakfast. Coming home wet as a drowned rat I was pleased to see a shipment from RBW. I completely forgot about the weather. 🙂
I’ve been continuing to play around with my Quickbeam now that the Hunqapillar has become the bike I used for carrying stuff around. Because of all the rain we’ve been having I decided to switch to Gripsters and away from Grip Kings (love both, keeping the GKs for other uses).
I also decided that since I have an Acorn saddlebag and a handlebar bag they should both go on the same bike. I’ve also always like trunk bags but since I’ve got a basket on the Hunq (moved from the QB) it can’t take one right now. But…I was pretty sure my QB would look great with a matched set of Sackville TrunkSacks so with a little extra cash (is there ever such a thing as ‘extra cash?’) I picked up new pedals and matching TrunkSacks. I’d thought about the Nigel Smythes but as I have a Sackville huge saddle bag…well bag matching may not be my thing all the time but…

It’s not a great picture and I’m not taking the bike out as I’m off to Maui with my Bike Friday in about 2 hours – I’ll be riding down Haleakala on Sunday. It’s also raining hard and until I put a little Obenauf’s on the leather I’m going to keep the Sackville’s out of the rain.
Anyway it’s the look I was going for so…happy trails all!
BTW – for those who might have wondered how the voting is going on which bike I should ride April’s Haleiwa Metric Century (VOTE HERE), right now it’s the Quickbeam:
Bike Friday: 10
Quickbeam: 15
Hunqapillar: 12
Aloha all!

This is not, repeat NOT, the map of RAGBRAI 2013. It’s a map using Google Maps and their cycling option to see what the route across Iowa from RAGBRAI 2013 might look like if the Google folks planned it. It’ll be interesting to see how far from reality it turns out to be. I’ll be correcting it as I get more information so in the end it’ll probably be close, but you never know.

View RABGRAI 2013 in a larger map
Aloha!

Not again! No, no, no. Not with a bad hip, not with no money, not with a old beat up Bike Friday…what can you possibly be thinking?!
Yes, it’s true. I’m off to RAGBRAI again. There was something incredibly infectious about it and…well…it’s tough, it’s fun, and, it’s Iowa.
There’s not really much to say at this poing…it’s still sort of sinking in. I’ve bought my plane ticket though and it’s more or less non-refundable (I guess I could use it for something else at big loss which would be okay). I’m sending a check tomorrow for half the fee for my charter company (Pork Belly Ventures again).
Of course I’ll have to do a lot of riding between now and July. That’s a given. I have much better idea of what to expect this time so I’ll probably be riding more hills and not worry so much about distance. My Oregon ride was tough and I hadn’t really done any training, but because of my commuting I was fine – if not happy all the time…but it was wet and cold so…
This time I’ll also be a bit more prepared when it comes to knowing what to take with me. Lot’s of wire ties. They are very useful. Lot’s of powder. And I’ll remember not to collect so many water bottles. Indeed it really isn’t necessary to take any as you are given dozens of the damn things.
I will admit to a little buyer’s remorse at the moment. I’m going through the ‘what could you possibly have been thinking’ stage. Sigh.
More later…

I’ve been riding my Hunqapillar pretty much exclusively since it arrived last October. I love that darn bike but that doesn’t mean I don’t love the other bikes I own as much. I finally decided that my Quickbeam needed an update.
Now that I have the Hunq with its racks and basket I don’t need my QB for carrying stuff quite as much as I did in the past. I decided I’d lighten it up a bit by taking off the Platrack. I also decided I wanted to try Alba bars on the QB as I love them so much on my Hunq.
I made the decision a bit after my birthday earlier this month. I had a pretty nice credit at Rivendell waiting for me and a one time birthday discount available as well. It was time.
I ordered up a set of Albatross bars, some Portuguese grips, new brake levers and cabling (time for a refresh there for sure) and mixed up a batch of shellac.
I haven’t been able to do a full set of photos yet but I’ll get around to that soon. In fact I only have some badly done phone camera shots of the bike with the new bars but before I put on the cork grips. They are blurry at larger sizes so I’m only putting one here. Stay tuned for better bike porn.

I’ve a few problems so far though, mostly centered around the cork grips. Sigh.
The build itself was a piece of cake. I took off the moustache bars and road levers and they’ll be headed to Hilo for my RB-1 to replace some drops I don’t care for. New brake cabling was easy save that I forgot I need tandem length cable for the rear – my bikes are large. Soon everything was together and tightened down for a test ride. Sweet.
You can see in the image I’ve got black foam grips on the bike. I wanted to wait till I could shellac the grips before I put them on. So I mixed up some shellac, a little too thin actually, put on a couple of coats, let ’em dry and stopped.
How to put on the grips. I’d test fit them and they were a bit loose. I’d need to glue them a bit but with what. Riv recommends Gorilla Glue but I was worried I’d never get them off again or, having gotten then off I’d never get the glue off without scratching up the bars.
I did a bit of a search through the RBW owners list and discovered what other people have used. Two things came up, hospital fabric tape and hairspray. Okay. I picked some up the next day and put a couple of bits of tape down, spraying the bars and put on the grips…breaking one in half in the process.
Oh no! Now I was effed.
Well…maybe not.
Actually the grip broke but didn’t really lose any cork. I could put it on, jam both ends together and the split more or less disappeared. Good enough. Not great, I’ll always know…and now you, but hey, it’s okay.
Today I was able to ride to work for the first time and noticed that…yep…the grips were loose. Not too loose to ride to work but something would need to be done before I went more than another mile.
Okay, more tape and wood glue – just a little wood glue. I should be able to get that off…I hope.
This time I did loose a wee bit cork on one little section but it doesn’t really show and I can’t really feel it. If starts bugging me I guess I’ll order another set and try again.
But how does it all work?
Great. The QB was super fun to ride this morning. I can’t wait till work is over and I can head out again. Rain be darned.
I’ll have more pictures soon…just don’t have time at the moment!’
Aloha!

Over weekend I rode my bike out to Sand Island to play around with my new D5100. I didn’t get anything I’d consider noteworthy but I was very impressed with the camera.

This shot was taken because someone on one of the forums to which I belong wanted to see a bit of our island as he is living somewhere quite a bit colder.

Now that I have better idea of how the camera works, maybe I can put it to better use.

This shot was taken on a tripod and triggered with the little Nikon electronic remote button. Good stuff.

Recently I’d rediscovered one of my favorite blogs about photography, David Hobby’s Strobist site. I hadn’t looked it for a while and it got me thinking about lighting again. I own two Nikon SB-800’s, great (but discontinued) flashes. I’ve used the before for a few things but have never really gotten the most out them.
Well that got me thinking about cameras. It turns out my last DSLR purchase was back in 2006 when I got a Nikon D80. I still have it and used it as recently as last year (which, you might note wasn’t all that long ago). But it’s getting a little creaky in some ways. I don’t care much about the number of pixels it has, but newer sensors have better dynamic range and handle higher ISO settings better. What to do?
I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a new body. Money is almost always better spent on glass. I don’t have a lot of glass and what I have isn’t great – though it’s definitely good enough for my level of ability. It’s also Nikon glass. Functionally that means unless I want to about face and go start collecting glass from another manufacturer I might as well stick with Nikon. They make great cameras and lenses. So does Canon. I guess at a professional level it might be worth arguing over (though your time would better be spent shooting), but not at my level.
It was also a good time of year for sales and closeouts. As it turns out Nikon has just discontinued their D5100, replacing it with the D5200. Now the D5100 is a very nice camera from what I’ve been able to gather. It’s not quite at the bottom of their line, but it’s close. On the other hand even the bottom of the line (D3200) can make beautiful images.
There were some drawbacks though, and in some ways they are major:

• No Flash Commander Mode!
• No built-in motor meaning I need to use AF-S lenses (or focus manually – not a huge deal really)

With the two SB-800’s the first bit seemed like a bit deal. The AF-S requirement turned out not be such a big deal, my 18-200 zoom is an AF-S lens so I can use it if I want. So is the 18-70 I have around, the kit lens from my D70 way back when. I do have a nice 50mm f/1.8 (everyone should have one), but it’s not AF-S so…well nothing’s perfect.
I ended up by the D5100 with a kit 18-55 VR lens for a very good price on a long financing contract that will let me pay no interest for far longer than it’ll take for my tax check to arrive (which will more than cover it). I really am not a big fan of buying stuff I don’t have the cash for, but in this case it’s safe enough and little enough money that one paycheck would cover it with change left over (though I’d be squeezed on bills).
I also ordered the NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8 DX AF-S lens which I’d heard is an excellent prime for DX cameras. It is.
I have also decided to learn to use my flashes off camera…in manual mode…that is, I’ll have to calculate the power output rather than relying on the circuitry. People have been doing this successfully for quite some time so I expect it’ll be fine. To that end I purchased some inexpensive radio triggers (Cowboy Studio). They work well as far as I’ve been able to determine so far.
Ultimately I have to use the camera in order to make this all worthwhile and that’s the plan for the year. I’m going to improve my photography…so much for New Year’s resolutions. My other resolution is breathe for the entire year.
The D5100 with the 35mm f/1.8 lens turns out to be very, very sweet. I haven’t had a chance to do much yet but today i took a few shots to help illustrate a conversation on a bike list to which I belong. The conversation is about using Pitlock seat tube locks to keep one’s saddle safe. I use them on both my Quickbeam and my Hunqapillar and decided I’d take a couple of shots for the benefit of the folks participating in the discussion.

Now these aren’t great shots. But they are straight from the camera. The colors are dead on. The exposure is great (used aperture mode) and the focusing is perfect. I’m quite happy. Yes, I could have done with another camera, lots of them in fact. But as a quick test I’m pleased. Now that I’ve broken the ice with the camera, I can go learn how to use it well and hopefully make some beautiful images (and continue documenting all this bike stuff).
Aloha,
Bob

It’s been a bit on the wet side for the last few days here in Honolulu. Here’s a cheap trick shot in which you should be able to see a bit Diamond Head but, because of the curtain of rain, well…

So, as you might imagine, I’ve been getting wet lately. My Hunq has been handling the wet weather really well and I feel quite safe, unless of course, the weather is so bad I can’t be seen. It happens.
But things were not quite right. In the past week I’d begun to notice a wee bit of trouble shifting. As I’ve not adjusted the derailleurs since I received the bike in October I thought perhaps a bit of cable stretching or some such had gone on and figured I’d do a bit of work this weekend.
Not to be.
On Wednesday while on my way downtown to cover a shift on a volunteer phone line my shifting went all to heck and was followed quite quickly by a sudden lurch as my chain parted. I swore, picked up the chain and put it in a plastic bag I had with me, and hoofed the mile and a half to my shift. Naturally it was raining so…yep…I arrived quite soaked, even with a rain jacket. I do wear clothes that are quick to dry so it wasn’t a huge problem, but given I’ve got a cold right now…well…unpleasantness all around really.
Luckily I had a chain tool with me so I was able to make a repair sans a couple of links while at the office.
Now I know once a chain has parted it’s on its last legs so I figured I’d have to pick up a new one the next day. I also needed to renew my driver’s license downtown and figured I could make it a few miles on the repaired chain, after all, I’d gotten home just fine the night before.
So after work I went home on a fairly direct route to pick up my passport which is valid id for renewals in Hawaii. I didn’t read the entire instructions though.
I headed downtown, about three miles, in the rain of course. So far so good. At the satellite city hall I was told I also needed my Social Security card. Really? They’ll let me in and out of the US and into most any place I care to go with a valid US passport but I can’t get a licensed renewed? Yep.
So it was back home in hurry to get my card. Wouldn’t you know it, after the three miles back in the rain my chain parted again, right in front of my apartment building. That was a blessing though. It left me time to get my card and hurry back on my moped…in the rain.
The upshot is that I got my renewal, got wet, and, on the way back, got a new chain.
My but the chain was expensive. My Hunq runs a 9-speed cluster in the back so at the first (?) LBS I asked and was handed a nice Shimano chain priced at $40. Okay, $39.99. That’s silly I thought and asked for something a little less pricey. They didn’t have one. Keep in mind, I don’t use index shifting and while the Shimano LX derailleur is fine, it’s not super high end.
Off I went to my favorite place, McCully Bicycles. They had a nice new chain, Shimano as well, at around $23. That was much more reasonable. In fact they also had the same chain I could have purchased for $40 at $34. To give them a little more business I opted for the $34 chain, even though I’d have been fine with the $23.
Back home, after more rain, I cleaned the bike up a bit and put on the new chain. I noticed that my old chain was a PC951 by SRAM. I use SRAM 8 speed chains some other bikes I own and have never had a problem with breakage so I figured this one was just a bit off. No worries.
Today when I rode to work I got a big surprise. My shifting is a lot smoother than it had been in the past, even before I started having problems. I’m not going to say it’s because I’m running Shimano with Shimano, but there does seem to be a difference. Perhaps I’m just not remember how smooth things were when I first received my Hunq. Still I does seem smoother than I ever recall. Food for thought.
I’m thinking I’ll probably get go back to the SRAM PC951 at around $15 next time around and see if the difference is real or just in my head. I’m cheap, no two ways about it. But if the difference is real, I know what the next chain will be. Of course this doesn’t change what I’m doing with the bikes that work fine with the 8-speed SRAMS.
Aloha from damp Honolulu!

After all, how often does 12-12-12 roll around?

I went camping this weekend past at Bellows AFS campgrounds with a group of friends. Naturally I rode my Hunq. I’d really hoped my new bike would arrive in time and sure enough, thanks to the good folks at RBW, it did.

I took the day off on Friday and tried to make an early start. It didn’t completely end up that way as I couldn’t find my solar panel anywhere. Since I was headed somewhere electricity would be available it wasn’t completely a bust, but it did annoy me to no end. I could find all the bits and pieces that go with the darn thing, but no panel. Ah well.
I’d packed up my Ortlieb panniers the night before and made sure they fit well on my new Nitto Big Rack. I put those last few odds and ends together, forgetting a coffee mug….sigh…and took off while it was still morning.
It was a windy day and given that we were getting trades I would be riding into the wind most of the way there. I’m not a big fan of wind but it was a beautiful morning and I had a beautiful bike so what could go wrong. The answer, blessedly was…nothing.
The Hunq handles superbly both loaded and unloaded. I had my sleeping bag and some clothes on one side, my tent and a few toiletries on the other. Up front I’d folded up my Thermarest pad and put it into my Ortlieb rack pack and stuffed it all in my basket. All in all, including the weight of the packs themselves, I probably 8-10 pounds a side and 4-7 pounds up front. Not a whole lot. I wasn’t taking but one change of clothes as I would only be there for two evenings and had dispensed with food and cooking gear. I wasn’t traveling light, I’d be comfortable, but I wasn’t carrying a kitchen sink either.
Did I say the bike was superb? Yep? I’ll say it again. Superb.
I was comfortable the whole way, eschewing stops I’d made in the past on other bikes to stretch a bit. I did stop for some photos at Makapuu Lookout, but that was pretty much it for actually getting off the bike.
The whole ride is really only about 25 miles and change but the wind made it a bit more challenging. Going up the hill into the wind at Makapuu is always the worst bit and sure enough it was, but boy was it worth it. The views were superb, blue sky, just a few clouds, wow.
I finished off my first water bottle, had a good slug of the second and figured I’d be at Bellows before I needed a refill. The wind kept up but I was getting closer. Arriving at Bellows on a bike is always fun. The guards, and yes, they are real military guys and gals doing a great job, always seem interested in my bikes, where I came from, how long it took, was it dangerous…compared to their usual gigs it’s not dangerous at all. Indeed compared with walking in Honolulu it’s downright safe.
I set up camp, ate lunch, chatted with friends, took a hot shower and nap and generally did as little as possible for the rest of the day.
On Saturday, besides the big helping of nothing I doled out for myself, I took a ride around Waimanalo’s back roads favored by the Freds. Sure enough I was passed my several. All of them looked at my lovely Hunq, basket and all, tooling down the road. Yep, they passed me, that’s okay. I wasn’t racing, training, measuring wattage, counting calories, or working on cadence. I was just out for a morning ride. Sweet. I’ll be a few of them were envious. At least I can can pretend.
Sunday came too soon after another afternoon filled with very little but relaxing, eating, eating, relaxing, eating, talking, napping…did I mention eating, and more nothing.
I packed up fairly early. I could have stayed till one in the afternoon, but it’s hot this time of year and I wanted to be home before noon. I was, just barely though – stopping for Shave Ice added a few minutes. The ride back was great as well…this time I had the wind at my back (sort of and sometimes) and the hills seem much easier. The only hill I don’t care for is the same Makapuu hill, though this time in the opposite direction. This way hugs the side of a rock wall and there’s no where to go when a bus or big truck comes by. Sure there’s a shoulder and it is wide enough for saftey, it just doesn’t feel like it.
I’ll give this to my Hunq…it tracked a straight path up that hill keeping me safely on the shoulder the whole way up. It feels tougher than it really is, mostly because of the location. In any case was up in no time at all and hardly even felt it. Yes, having gears you can change without getting off the bike is great.
I’ve done this on my Quickbeam as well and it’s really not a problem. It’s just a whole lot easier on the Hunq when under load.
As I said, I made it home before lunch, no worse for wear, better in fact. I’d had a great time, spent time with some good friends, and ridden a damn fine bike. I’ll keep her.