Statrix Redux

Now that my BikeFriday is out of the picture for a couple of weeks I’m back to riding my Rivendell Quickbeam. I’d thought this might impact my training for RAGBRAI in that I’m less interested in doing hills. As it turns out it’s not nearly the problem I thought it might be.
I’ve ridden the QB long distances before and never really had any trouble. I do change the gear ratio for hills, but it’s still higher than the lowest low on my Friday. I guess I was just hoping I’d found a way to avoid hills until my Friday is whole again.
In any case I did very nice 32 miles today incorporating my “after work” route around Diamond Head and back through Manoa with a loop around Sand Island. The parts that seemed tough on the Friday were, oddly enough, not much trouble on the QB.
I know part of that is because I’ve been riding that route on the Friday so much that I have gotten stronger. I suspect part of it is also because if you’ve no choice you’ve no choice. Since I can’t really change gears (well, not to the degree I can with the Friday), I just go. Yes I spun a little slower and had to mash a little, but it wasn’t nearly as hard as I’d imagined. Tomorrow I’ll be back to my after work route (Diamond Head/Manoa) once again. Yeah!

I was just turned on to this vid which pretty much sums up everything you need to know about RAGBRAI. My favorite bit is that our hero is turning down a trip to Hawaii to do the ride.

It’ll be time for the RAGBRAI lottery results in ust a few days:

RAGBRAI is limited to 8,500 week-long riders and 1,500 daily riders. Entries can exceed the number of riders allowed, so a random computer lottery takes place after all of the entries are entered in the computer. Lottery results are available online on May 1, 2011.

I’m hoping that I get picked on the draw and don’t have to scurry around for a wristband though I am told by the Pork Belly folks that:

Should I wait to learn my fate in the lottery before registering with PBV? Definitely not. In the unlikely event that you are not selected in the lottery, we will introduce you to a wristband seller and help you follow the Register’s simple procedure for transferring wristbands. We aren’t allowed to promise, but in over twenty years, we have never not found a wristband seller for a patient Porker.

As it turns out, when I gave a list of things that could be wrong in my post on my BikeFriday problems:

1. The new brake was wider
2. The crank had bent slight in
3. The crank was mispositioned slightly on the bottom bracket
4. I’m an idiot
5. Something else

The correct answer was behind door number five, “Something else.”
The good news is that it’s all going to be fixed in a couple of weeks when I get some new parts in. The bad news is, well… it’s going to be a couple of weeks. I pull put out a full report when things are back to normal.
My Quickbeam is happy though as it’s back to being my ‘bike of choice’ on a daily basis. It’s been an interesting transition after a couple of months with gears to going back to the single speed. I love not thinking about gears, but getting used to hills without thinking about gears is somewhat tougher.
Aloha!

I’ve had a few of these over the past couple of years. The Traffic Cone Bag is the brainchild of Lynette Chiang, the GalFromDownUnder. She’s a real Jack of All Trades whom I first came in contact with through Bike Friday bikes.
My first TCB was the original size, a bit small for me but usable with carbiners on the straps. The next was her then new GuyFromDownUnder size.
The small one now lives in Hilo with my old Raleigh.
As for the larger one, I pretty much wore that one every day and, under the Hawaiian sun, it began to look like I wore it every day. It’s still good, definitely functional, but definitely shows a lot of what Grant Petersen would call beausage.
I was thinking about Lynette the other day and checked out one of her many websites only to discover her newest TCB has a reflective stripe sewn right in. Given the state of my then current TCB, I had to have one…sure enough today it arrived and I immediately put it use. Here I am headed home after its maiden voyage:

Aloha!

One of the problems of a compact folding bike design is where to mount the brakes. On my NWT they are mounted on the chainstay instead of the seat stay as with most normal sized bikes. This has lead to a bit of a problem I hadn’t noticed before.
As the crank rotates it passes by the brake lever pretty closely. When I first put the new brake on I didn’t have a problem, but as the new cable stretched out a bit suddenly I ‘clicking’ the brake as I went by, though only when I really mashed.

Naturally this is not a good situation.
I’m not sure if this started to happen because…
1. The new brake was wider
2. The crank had bent slight in
3. The crank was mispositioned slightly on the bottom bracket
4. I’m an idiot
5. Something else
#1 didn’t seem like the problem – I checked it against the old brakes and they are pretty much the same thing; the new ones being black the old ones being silver. That’s not it.
#2 is possible I suppose but it doesn’t appear to be the problem. Once of these days I’ll look into it but visually it seems fine.
#3 is also possible but I don’t have the tools to do anything about it at the moment.
#4 is true, but still may not account for the problem
#5 is probably partly correct as well
Now keep in mind that this really only started happening and as I’m riding regularly I needed to do something to ‘save the day’ as it were till I’ve got a bit more time to figure it all out.
The answer was pretty simple, at least as far as getting it working. I’d kept my old brakes because there really wasn’t much wrong with them. Actually it’s not even the brake I needed, just the old pads. I ended up simply took the smaller adjusting washers off an old pad and used it in place of the larger set on the new pad. Thus I have a pad with two smaller sized adjusting washers…

This let me keep the brake arm adjusted much closer to the wheel and out of the way of the crank. Of course that threw the balance of the rear brake off a little but for now the adjustment screws have allowed me to keep both sides working.
I’ll still have to work on this a bit over the weekend and find a better solution or confirm that my solution is okay, but for now I’m good. I’d put a picture here but I did this last night with bad lighting and today my bike is locked up in our cage at work and a picture would show my u-bolt not my brake.
If there’s a moral to this story, keep all your old parts around that aren’t totally trashed. You may need bits and pieces.
Aloha!

I was just asked about the bike path through Ala Wai Park. The Ala Wai Canal, for the two or three folks who may stumble upon this and don’t live in Hawaii, is the canal running just behind Waikiki that channels the streams coming out of the mountains out into the ocean. Waikiki used to be swampy and this was part of the effort to dry it up.

The Ala Wai Park is the portion of the Ala Wai starting at McCully St. and running towards Diamond Head on the mountains side of the canal and ending more or less at the Ala Wai Elementary School.
And yes, there is a bike path (shared) running through it. Construction has shortened the route a bit and forced a bit of a detour for part of the way, but you can still bike in comfort provided you watch out for pedestrians, joggers, dog walkers, and everyone else on the path. I ride it often and have learned to expect that when I call out “on your left,” that’s exactly the direction most folks will move…right into my path. Slow is the watchword here.
The whole route (which does connect up to the Date St. bike path) is just over a mile so slow down and enjoy the park, you can ride faster later. Here’s the route:

Aloha!

Not time for much before I head off to the UH Rainbow baseball game, but I had a seriously great day. I rode from Honolulu to Haleiwa. It turned out to be a beautiful day as the expected rain showers never materialized.
I left shortly after six and shortly after one I was having a smoothie in Haleiwa. It’s about 75 miles which actually makes me pretty darn slow, but happy.
I gave my HTC EVO a try as a GPS and sadly it looked like it was going to run out of juice in Kaaawa. I’d figured this might happen so I brought a long a spare battery. Of course that means I had to record the ride in two parts.



…and…

I spent the weekend on the island of Kauai and am always struck by how lovely it is there. I spent time over several summer as a child in Hanalei. When I first started going Princeville hadn’t been opened, there was a commune at the end of the road and you could spend all day on the beach without seeing another soul.
I wasn’t there for vacationing though, I had two days of meetings to attend so I was pretty busy. Still I did a bit of looking around and what struck me is how few bicycles I saw. I didn’t see any roadies. The only bikes I saw were neighborhood MTBs in various states of disrepair. I also noted that while the shoulders on the main road are signed as a bicycle route they look awfully narrow from the vantage point of my rental car. That doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t safe and from experience I know they’d look a lot wider from the saddle, but still…
There are some planned routes and some open routes though. I found this out through the Kauai Path site. They are actively creating bike routes and I’m hopeful that soon it will be great bike destination. I was on the east shore and this is the map I found on the site for the area:

Maybe next time I get to Kauai I’ll bring my Friday!
Aloha

NWT with Ergon GC3

Originally uploaded by StatrixBob

This is a little better angle on the Ergon GC3s I’ve got on my NWT. They’ve improved the comfort of my Bike Friday by a wide margin. The Friday has always been fun, now it’s fun over long distances.

I rode around 25 miles yesterday, the longest ride yet with them and my had no problems at all. I’m really looking forward to being able to ride out the North Shore. Sadly it won’t be this weekend.

Still I’m on track for RAGBRAI. After just a few days I’ve done my 50 for the week. Next week is just 50 as well, though I suspect I’ll go well over that if I’ve got the weekend. We’ll see.

Aloha

Twenty thousand feet of climbing. Ouch. I guess I’ve got to make hills my friends. The only way to do that is to ride hills. Now I’m not quite up to climbing Roundtop quite yet, but I’ve figured out a decent route home (mentioned before). Here’s the complete loop…



I’m using a training matrix from RAGBRAI to make sure I get enough miles before I head to Iowa. Basically it’s just a way of keeping myself on pace with more miles every week. I still have to find the hills.
Anyway I’m on pace at the moment with about 25 miles today. I am counting my community, but it was the evening ride out to Niu Valley which added things up. I need a total of 50 for the week, which isn’t really that much. I didn’t ride on Sunday and between Monday and Tuesday I’ve got 42 miles already. I won’t be able to ride this weekend, mostly because I won’t be near a bike, so I’ve got to ramp up and get in those last 8 miles tomorrow and Thursday…that’s like…um…4 miles a day. That shouldn’t be too hard. 🙂
Soon though the miles will increase and hopefully I’ll be in tune for Iowa.
Aloha