Statrix Redux

Yeah! My Acorn Medium arrived today. I ordered on the first, today is the fifth, that’s service.
The bag itself seems to be very, very well made and it is certainly is lovely The stitching is tight, the leather supple, and the color is just right. There’s just not that much more to say till I actually get it on my bike and give it a workout.
I guess I have my excuse to ride today!
I should mention I’ve been waiting about 3 weeks for a front bag I’ve ordered. I’m not yet complaining but Acorn certainly made an impression.
Aloha!

Well I just ordered something I probably don’t need but…wow…I think I’m gonna love it anyway. Acorn Bags is a small company that makes reportedly excellent saddle and handlebar bags for cycling. I’ve wanted a saddlebag that is much smaller than my Sackville SaddleSack and much larger than the small toolkit bag I generally carry. You know, something I can stuff a jacket or a camera in and still have a little room for tools and such.
The Acorn Medium seems to fit the bill.

I’d thought about getting a bag for the front, perhaps their Boxy Rando Bag, but I’ve got a different sort of front bag coming and with my moustache bars I’m not sure what will fit correctly up there.
One of the interesting things about Acorn is their ordering method. They don’t take orders. Really. Instead their online store is restocked one a month on the first. If you can put something in your cart you can have it. But once an items is sold out, and things go fast, that’s it till the next month.
I’d forgotten about it this morning till a couple of hours after they’d “stocked” the store. Luckily the item I wanted was still available, but I’ll be that by the end of the day my Medium Bag will be gone.
Aloha!

I idly gave my MKS touring pedals a spin this morning and discovered that the left side didn’t spin freely as it should; this after all the work I’d done. But now, with my new found knowledge it was short work to open them up and loosen the cone a bit, just a wee bit, and put ’em back together. It’s all good again.
And, because of the accident yesterday I decided I needed a treat. So I pulled the trigger on the Grip Kings, also known as Lambdas as it turns out. Now as happy as I am to support small business, sometimes the difference in price is just too great to ignore. I found the pedals at $32 compared to the $54 at some other locations. If it were $50 vs $54 I might go with the smaller guys, but…
In any case it’ll be a while before they show up and I’ve a bunch of other stuff coming in so it’s not high on my list of things to think about.
Finally it seems my passport has been delivered. I sent my passport in to be renewed per the instructions I found at the U.S. Department of State website. I suspect it’ll take a lot longer to get my passport back than it will to get my new pedals, but at least things are in the works.
Aloha!

Today was not the best day I’ve ever had. Actually it wasn’t all that bad except for a brief couple of moments. Isn’t that always the way?
Here’s the deal. Today it was raining a bit and the roads were, um, slippery. I was riding downtown to take care of some business. Thankfully I wasn’t riding my Rivendell or I might have added some very unwanted beausage.
This is what took me down…

I was trying to cross the cable on my Fujiyama and I didn’t take it head on. I was at a bit of an angle and, had everything been dry, it would have been fine. It wasn’t.
Down I went. This is the result…

Do not try this at home. When it is raining, cross things head on or don’t try. Sigh.
I’m okay. It looked worse than it really was, but I am bruised and a bit sore everywhere. Fifty-two doesn’t hit the ground like twenty.
Aloha!

Yep, the pedal overhaul seems to have done the trick. I was finally able to get in a ride yesterday after work and for two hours I road in silence. At last my bike was silent. I groan, pant, wheeze, and some other stuff. Now the question becomes, do I buy new pedals anyway just so I can do it all over again?
I’m seriously thinking of getting a pair of the Rivendell designed Grip Kings.

Aloha!

This weekend’s ride to Malaekahana was great. But like most things it wasn’t all smooth sailing.
My Quickbeam has seemingly had a bit of a problem since day one. It creaks and clicks a bit here and there. Now I’m sure much of this is normal for a new bike and, to be honest, all of my bikes creak a bit here and there. I’m a clydesdale and my stuff takes a beating. I ride pretty well these days and avoid most complications, but believe me, when I started all this in 2008 I broke more than a few things.
I’d pretty much taken care of the noises I could by following the suggestions I’d found online. I’d greased up everything I could find that might be contributing: quill stem, seatpost, the odd bolt here and there. And she’d responded by quieting down quite a bit. Except for the click.
There seemed to be a bit of a click in the cranks. The last time I’d experienced this I’d had to replace the bottom bracket on my Fujiyama. It’s unlikely to be a major catastrophe, but I was worried about it.
On the ride home the click became a real annoyance. I could even feel it through my foot. This was really mimicked the problems I’d had before, so I began to think I’d have to replace the bottom bracket and was planning on doing just that as soon as I could afford a Phil Wood Bottom Bracket. I mean, why not go for the best?
But I wasn’t ready to drop money I didn’t have so I kept researching.
I think I found the answer…it’s the pedals.
I’m using MKS Touring pedals which are a great big platform peddle perfect for me. But it seems they aren’t all that well put together.
No, I don’t mean they are badly made. Au contraire, they are great sturdy pedals. It just seems that when they are assembled there is a decided dearth of lubrication. They often, I’ve read, click. I had a click. What to do.
The answer was forthcoming over at bikeforums.net in a post by Panthers007. After finding that article I found more instructions just like them out on the web.
Panthers007 seemed to be speaking to me when he wrote:

The problem with them is you didn’t open them up and clean them and grease them. A pedal-overhaul is needed before you put most new pedals – especially with loose bearings – on the bike and use them.
I hear this complaint all the time regards MKS pedals. And it’s NOT your fault. Overhauling pedals is a dying art. One I’m trying to resurrect.

Since I had some bearing grease around the next step would be to follow instructions and have at those pedals.
At the StankerTanker blog you can find a bit more information with an image of the pedals pulled apart…

I did have to give one of the nuts in the pedal a shot of PB Blaster and let it stew for a while, but eventually I was able to disassemble everything without losing a single ball bearing. That’s a good thing too as I had no spares.
All in all it didn’t take too long to clean, repack the bearings, and rebuild the pedals. It was even a fun evening project. I haven’t had a chance to try them yet, but that’ll come tonight when I pull the QB back out for a ride.
Aloha!

This past weekend I gave my Quickbeam its best workout yet. I was invited to a friend’s birthday party at the Malaekahana Campgrounds. There are two sites, one is a regular park, the other has cabins and yurts and more facilities for camping. My friends had taken a cabin for the week for family and had invited friends for the big shindig on Saturday night.
Here’s some info on the campground
It’s only about 57 miles from my home to the park though it seems like it should be longer since it’s pretty much halfway around the island. If I’d gone only a couple of miles more I’d have been headed home. I probably added a couple more miles on both days running errands before or after the main ride so if anyone asks I’m going with 120 miles total even though it won’t show on the route map.
Here’s the route at MapMyRide
I didn’t ride with any particular goal in mind for time. I figured as long as I got there by 4pm (when it was suggested we arrive) I’d be fine. As it turns out, leaving at 9am got me there on time with plenty of time for chewing the fat with some folks on the way, having a great lunch, and basically taking my time to stop when and where I liked for photos.
I left town around 9am after packing up my bike. A partial list of what I took includes:
Hennessy Hammock
Tiny pillow
Thin fleece sleeping bag (really a thin blanket with a zipper)
Car sun shield for underneath the sleeping bag – this works great, weighs nothing
Some fresh socks and underwear
Towel
Swim trunks
Nikon FG SLR (circa 1982)
Film
Homemade Penny alcohol stove
Some instant oatmeal and coffee
Flipflop slippers for running around the camp site
All in all it didn’t weigh much. I tied the hammock and slippers to the front rack for a total of around 4lbs and the rest fit without bulging into my Sackville Large SaddleSack. The first image in the slide show more or less shows the quickbeam ready to go.

The weather was good but the VOG was terrible. When we don’t have tradewinds we often have a lot of volcanic gas blown in from the Big Island. You can see in the images just how hazy it was.
The first 15 miles from my home take me from the center of Honolulu out to Hawaii Kai and involve little climbing except for a wee bit around Diamond Head. I’d ridden my QB around Diamond Head before so I knew having only one gear wasn’t going to be a problem without gear, but with the gear I figured it might be a little more difficult. I was in the standard 40×16 configuration and never felt the need to change to something else (I’ve got a 16-19 White on one side and a 22 bailout on the other if I need it along with the regular 40-32 chainwheel set).
In Hawaii Kai I stopped at a Starbucks and had a long morning coffee and bought a banana for when I reached Makapuu as a treat for getting over the next two hills.
Once past Hawaii Kai, and the climb around Koko Crater (near Hanama Bay), I descended to Sandy Beach and started taking images. I’d chosen the Nikon FG with a 28mm lens (I had a 50mm with me too but no zoom) and Fuji 100 Reala print film as a fitting tool for the ride. I only took one digital image (with my iPhone) and that was of lunch on my way out.
From Sandy Beach there’s another climb up to the Makapuu lookout and I managed to drop a tandem on the way up. I was going slow, but they were going slower is how I’ll describe it. I never even came out of the saddle on the whole ride as I recall.
Once we descended to Makapuu Beach I hung out with the local Heavy Breathers club. They ride out this far every weekend. Some go on to lunch in Kailua, others head back.
They were almost all very impressed with the Quickbeam, the fenders with mudflaps, the Brooks, the Saddleville SaddleSack, and the fact that I’d dropped the tandem. I think this was the first time I’d passed anyone on a hill ever, so I was impressed as well.
I was continually surprised at how lightly the QB climbed, even loaded, and how steadily it descended. In fact the limiting factor on my descents was me not the bike.
The only fellow who wasn’t impressed was a young guy in technical clothes, painful looking shoes, and bike that will probably be splinters in a year or two. He said it was just “an expensive copy of an old frame.” He wasn’t having any of it. Everyone else drooled. I chatted with them for quite a while, maybe 30 minutes. I also took a couple of shots of Rabbit Island while there.
Then it was off for a ride through the back roads of Waimanalo. One can follow the main road, but it’s a lot nicer through the back route. Actually I didn’t go as far back as I could, opting for a pleasant route that is closer to the main road.
Next it was up Keolu Hill where I took the shots overlooking Kailua.
The next section was the biggest challenge of the ride. Between miles 27 and 30 there’s pretty big drop and climb as the road passes through a gulch. I probably should have stopped and changed my gearing but I toughed it out slowly.
Then it was through Kaneohe (not really all that pleasant though safe enough if you keep your wits about you) and down to Kahaluu and the Hygienic Store, a local landmark. It’s really just a Mom & Pop place but it attracts good business it seems. There are some lunch wagons selling lau-lau, poi, and other local foods as well. I wasn’t hungry yet, having had a good breakfast.
Now I was on the real scenic part of the route, out in the country as it were. The rest of the ride goes past some of the most beautiful spots on the island (there are many) and is reasonably safe even though there’s only one road and shoulders are narrow. I wouldn’t try this at night, but during the day folks seem quite used to cyclists. The only real problem areas are the small bridges over streams that have no shoulders at all and generally only a wooden walkway off one side of the bridge. Signs say to walk your bike but no one does. Since they are so short it wouldn’t be worth it..just take the lane and go. No drivers complained that I could tell (no honking, swearing, or peeling out once folks go past me). There are a lot of bikers out most days, but fewer and fewer the further afield I got.
I stopped for lunch in Kaaawa. Yes, it there are 3 a’s in that name. Ka-a-a-va (short a’s) would be close if you trying to pronounce it. The location was Uncle Bobo’s and I took the only digital image of the trip while eating my well deserved pork BBQ. It was ono (delicious in Hawaiian).
And then it was over. I had arrived about seven hours after I’d started covering 60 miles with plenty of rest stops for chatting with fellow cyclists, taking pictures, having coffee, eating lunch, and….remembering to get a birthday card to replace the one I realized I’d left on my kitchen counter. Sigh.
I set up my Hennessy and joined the party.
The next day I rode pretty much exactly the same route back. One reason for that is there just isn’t much of a choice. I wasn’t any quicker getting back, but once again I stopped for pictures, lunch, and a visit with some of my family who live in Hawaii Kai. They think I’m nuts, but in a good way. 🙂
Here’s the complete set of images from the ride. I didn’t bother editing them so be warned, some are better than others and some are repetitive.

This lovely video showed up on the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day site. It’s the known universe in six minutes, thirty-one seconds.

Enjoy!