Statrix Redux

My Bike Friday is running superbly. Arguably it’s even better than it was new. Mostly that would be because since late 2008, when I took delivery, I’ve learned a lot more about proper fit and keeping a bike in tune. In addition the new Ergon grips really go that last mile in making this bike really, really comfortable. I’m tempted, if I can swing it, to do a really long ride tomorrow. Okay…for you randonneurs perhaps not so long. But if I can I’d like to the 80 out to Haleiwa. That’s a good day for me (and a lovely ride to boot).
Today I took in the Rainbow baseball game (as I do most home games) and watched them defeat the 28th ranked Wichita State Shockers. They’ve been fixtures out here for years and are always a pleasure to watch. Thankfully this time around we were the pleasures to watch (still too many errors) beating them by a wide margin today.
The I took a ride up into Manoa looking for at least a little climbing. I only found about 300 feet but if I add it to my new daily loop (it’s already part of it), I’ll have something I can do regularly in training for RAGBRAI.
And here’s the cool fly-by from Map My Ride:

Aloha!

NWT & Ergon GC3

Originally uploaded by StatrixBob

My GC3s came in yesterday afternoon and I immediately set to work putting them on my bike. I was a bit worried at first because it was looking like I wasn’t going to have quite enough room on the rights side where my Dual Drive grip shifter lives. 105mm is needed and that meant moving everything over a few centimeters – right to the bend. Then, of course, I had to move the brake lever on the other side for symmetry. But in the end there was just enough room, perhaps even a millimeter or two extra.

While I was at it I shortened my brake cables a bit and it’s a big improvement, in looks if not in performance. That is to say I’m sure it’s better mechanically, but I’m not sensitive enough to actually notice. Still the cables aren’t getting caught in my elevator anymore. Good deal.

I haven’t had a chance to ride more than a mile or two with the Ergons yet. I plan on a decent ride after work today to really give them a going over, but I can say in the short distance I’ve ridden I am at least infatuated if not yet deeply in love.

Aloha!

I’ve been spending a little time looking at the websites for each of the RAGBRAI overnight towns starting with Glenwood and finishing with Davenport, neither of which are necessarily overnight towns depending on your plans, especially Davenport at the end. I will be staying in Glenwood and not in Davenport. Some of the town websites have a lot of RAGBRAI content, some not so much.
GLENWOOD
There’s not so much as yet but I am impressed that they list the venue for RAGBRAI as the “Entire town of Glenwood.”
ATLANTIC
Ten years since the last RAGBRAI and it seems they want us back.
CARROLL
They’ve got a nice RAGBRAI header (among several others) and a nice little website! Looks like a great place.
BOONE
Boone has a whole website devoted to RAGBRAI – good on them!
ALTOONA
Nothing particularly RAGBRAI-ish yet though they do have a bicycle on a little badge encouraging “A healthy attitude.” Not hard to have one when you are cycling!
GRINNELL
What more can one say about the “Jewel of the Prairie”?

CORALVILLE
Not much on RAGBRAI here though they do have us on the calendar along with a zoning commission meeting. Is there a connection? Of course they are having a big concert featuring 38 Special on the night we get there!
DAVENPORT
A much bigger place than most of the towns we visit there’s some stuff on RAGBRAI but it’s a happening place and much is going on at the same time. I won’t be there long sadly, into town and onto the bus I’m afraid. Sigh.

I learned that my Ergon GC3s shipped today. I’d ordered with expedited shipping as that only brought the cost up to what I would have paid locally were such an item available locally.
Fellow local cyclist and blogger limom over at The Flat Tire commented, “Unless they got the goods I need in stock right there and I need said goods like right now, I’ve pretty much given up on all of the local bike shops.”
It’s too true out here. I’ve had some oddball luck at times and other times it seems a lost cause.
I noted that he’s ridden 800+ miles so far this year. I haven’t a clue as to my mileage though I suspect it’s climbing into the same neighborhood. With any luck I can add 25 to my total after I finish laundry today. I’ve been trying for an hour a day after work (I measure time not distance for my rides. By my tally I’ve got around 80 hours in the saddle, but some of those are slow miles, some slower.
Anyway, that’s not really the point today. The point is that my Ergons are on the way and I’m looking forward to seeing how much of an improvement they make on my Friday (and maybe on Friday).
Aloha

I ended up making just a couple of other changes though didn’t involve buying anything thank goodness. As I’m not riding my Fujiyama much at the moment I took the Grip King pedals I had on it and put them on the Friday. They really improve the ride as the pedals I had before were much smaller. Since I have GKs on all my other bikes I wonder why I took so long?
I also reversed the stem to lower the bars a bit. I’d been thinking about this since I ordered the Ergon GC3s (which haven’t arrived yet). The change is really pretty small but with big effects. The ride is quite different and pretty much what I expected. I’m going with it for a while.
Here’s what it all looks like now…

After my recent experience with a bike shop I got to thinking. Never a great idea in my case, it still can bear fruit on occasion. As I’ve said, I’ll be riding my Bike Friday New World Tourist across Iowa. Now it’s been on trips before, several of them in fact.
Of course travel takes a toll on bikes, even folding bikes that fit in a suitcase. For the most part my BF has survived quite admirably. But things do wear out, especially cables. Especially cables that must do more than their share of folding. You can see my bike here on a trip to LA. Note just how much cabling there is hanging around. It needs to be extra long to allow the bike to fold up properly.

I’d been thinking of taking it in a couple of months before I left for RAGBRAI and have the cables changed and things serviced but then my bike fell over. I was at a vending machine getting a bottle of water (yes, I know bottled water is terrible for the environment but I’d forgotten my own Kleen Kanteen and sometimes…well I digress.
The point is I broke the right brake lever when my bike went down. It was an inexpensive Avid mountain lever but it moved things up a bit on my timetable. Rather than take the bike to the shop it occurred to me I could probably at least change the brake cables and levers. I’d changed the cabling on my Fujiyama and it hadn’t been a huge problem. I did buy a Park Cable and Housing Cutter back then so I pretty much had the tools so how much bigger a problem could swapping brake levers be?
As it turns out I decided I might as well go whole hog and change the brakes too. Some time ago I’d noticed the balance screws had broken on one of the brakes, probably from packing or repacking by TSA agents (to their credit though they check my bike pretty much every time I’ve not had much trouble).

Know I realize I can just bend the spring myself, and that’s what I’d been doing when necessary (not often), but I figured I might learn something and besides, these are not expensive brakes.
Luckily McCully Bike had everything I needed. I replaced the Avid levers with some Tektro levers they had on hand. The handles are a bit bigger and seem to fit my hands better anyway. They aren’t high end by any means.
While I’d love to buy nothing but top shelf stuff taking a bike that works somewhere tops not going somewhere with expensive gear everything. Besides top end stuff breaks too and travel is…as I said, rough.
I had to get brake cable and housing as well. It turns out there’s something like six feet of it on my Friday. Make that six feet twice. Now that seems like a ridiculously high number for bicycle and normally it would be. But the Friday has to fold and using a lot of cable is one way to allow that. The other would be to get cable splitters. I may do that someday.
In any case I got everything I needed pretty cheaply and headed home. I only had an hour or so before I needed to leave for the first game of UH baseball double header and made the decision to skip the first game so I could work on my bike. I made the first game. On my bike. With new brakes, levers, cables, the works.
This should not be taken as me pumping my abilities up. I’m not. In fact I’m more or less a klutz when it comes to mechanical things. Nope, it wasn’t me. It turns out it was just pretty easy. Really. I just followed instructions.
That worked so well that the next day I decided I’d take on the derailleur and Dual Drive cables. After my brake experience how hard could it be?
Once again it turns out to be pretty easy, taking about an hour from start to finish.
This one turned out to a real blessing as well. I’ll be honest and say I’ve always been a little confused by derailleurs. I’ve only rarely managed to get them adjusted on my first try. Well this time, having to change the cabling seems to have triggered something in my brain because all of sudden it seemed like I knew what I was doing. This is different from doing it well. I’m not saying that, but I am saying I finally got the why of what I was doing.
The Dual Drive was even easier. It’d dead simple to change cables. Really.
An hour after I got home I was back on the bike with new shift cables. Sweet. It all worked.
There’s only one little problem. It seems my BF had about 6’4″ of shift cable and housing for both the derailleur and the dual drive. I’d accidentally measured only 6′ so I came up a wee bit short. Luckily, as you can see by the photo my BF above there’s a lot of cable. Being 4″ short does not mean anything is tight or the front wheel won’t turn. It all works just fine and even looks pretty much the same. I can tell though and when I pack the bike there may be a wee bit of trouble. I will, of course, pack the bike to see if it is so that I can do it all completely correctly if necessary. I doubt there’s going to be problem but I’d hate to get to Iowa and discover I can’t shift.
If you’ve read this far, you probably agree with me…enough for now!
I’ll try and take a couple pictures of my Friday with it’s new livery so you can see what I mean
Aloha!

I’m a bit peeved today, well yesterday really, I’m over it now. As I’ve mentioned previously, it looks like I’ll be riding in RAGBRAI this year and am in the process of getting my Bike Friday NWT dialed in for the trip. More precisely I’m putting on miles and trying to wear things out so I can take the bike in and get new cables and such.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that I don’t really care for the flat bars on my bike. They are fine around town and on rides up to about fifty miles. After that I really get tired of the limited hand positions. The easy solution seems to be to get a set of Ergon grips.
I’ve decided on the Ergon GC3:

In some situations people simply need more hand positions. Employing the much proven ergonomic grip body of the GC2, the GC3 introduces a hollow formed glass fiber reinforced ergonomically shaped bar end. Featuring rubberized inserts for positive grip, like all of Ergon’s bar ends it can be independently positioned relative to the grip and acts as the clamp preventing accidental rotation.

Everything I’ve read about them suggests they are great. Kent Peterson, a fellow I’ve read on various email lists I belong to and trust says good things about them. That’s enough to give ’em a try.
Here’s the peeve part. I’d decided to get these about a month ago. For once I decided I would give a specific LBS a little business. I was thinking they’d do some work for me in the near future and I’d helped a friend buy a bike there. I’d found them to be good people.
I dropped by and asked if they had the GC3 in stock. “Nope, but we can get a set.” Great! I gave them my contact information and waited. A couple of weeks later I checked back. No shipment.
Now, a month later I still hadn’t gotten a call so I called them.
It seems I’ve fallen through the cracks.
“Yep, we got in a big shipment of Ergons.”
I said I’d ordered the GC3, large, in the grip shift configuration.
Nope.
I ended up ordering them off Amazon last night and even ponied up for expedited shipping which will, in the end, cost me the same as if I’d gotten them from the LBS. I’d have preferred to give my money to the LBS instead of a place out of state and Amazon. I wouldn’t even have minded waiting a month as I was really too busy for longer rides the last couple of months.
In any case I’m not going to mention the name of the LBS here, for now. I’ll give them another chance in the future. But I have to say that this one of the reasons people prefer to order online. I’m pretty sure they didn’t order my grips and just figured they’d get a set when they ordered a variety. I could be completely wrong, one reason I’m not naming them now, but I’m still peeved.
Sigh. I really need to go ride my bike. 🙂
Aloha!

Today I get to show off at work! Cool.
It’s our Green Team’s second anniversary and we’ve invited some folks who’ve come shared their knowledge with us to come back, have some cake, meet our employees, and generally promote things green.
I ended being a presenter by virtue of the fact that I blog on our intranet on things bikely. I was asked if I could bring a bicycle to work, not particularly daunting as it’s how I get to work, and answer questions about cycling. I’m a commuter and occasional long distance cyclist and I tend not to scare folks off by talking wattage vs. calories and what proportion of electrolytes I need to blend in my recovery drinks. I drink water and wear street clothes, even on long rides. I will own up to wearing really bright yellow t-shirts, but it ends there.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with dressing in technical clothes and fretting over how many grams one can shave off by changing to thinner bar tape, but that’s just not me. I’m glad you ride a bike too and would simply appreciate your calling out ‘left’ as you blow by me.
In any case I’ve brought both my Rivendell Quickbeam and my Bike Friday New World Tourist with me today. One is my daily ride and the other is my trip bike. At the moment my Friday is my daily ride because I’m really trying to exceedingly comfortable on it in preparation for RAGBRAI. I’ve been adding hills to the mix and want to practice on what I’ll be riding in Iowa.
My QB is dressed up with my large SaddleSack and my SlickerSack today. It’s overkill unless I’m planning on carrying groceries and the kitchen sink to rinse them in, but if you want to see a fully rigged commuter, this is. My folder isn’t getting really dressed for the affair, but it still has a rack and fenders…couldn’t live without ’em.
So that’s what’s up in about an hour. Hopefully I can add a couple of photos of my two bikes together here in a bit. But first some work…
Aloha!

Thankfully some experts put up maps for RAGBRAI XXXIX. You can find them in a couple of places. On the RAGBRAI site itself there’s a Google map put up by Craig Johnson and James E. Wilkerson using data created by Rich Ketcham, GeoBike.
That second link, GeoBike, has almost more information than I really want to know; especially the graphs of the hills. My knees are already aching.
So what have I been doing to get ready? Well I’m not quite up to riding up Tantalus yet, though it is in my back yard. I suspect I’ll have to ride it at least once before I go. I’m looking at but the full screen map worked fine. Thanks Tom!

Mikael Colville-Andersen gave this talk on bicycle safety, livable cities, and the like recently at a TEDx in Copenhagen…

Aloha