Statrix Redux

I’m afraid to say that the saddle on my Fujiyama, essentially a piece of plastic covered in foam, has worn out its welcome. More specifically, it’s worn out my bottom. I’d love to put a Brooks B-17 on it, but there’s a catch. I’ll need to switch the seatpost as well and I don’t have a micrometer to measure the size. In fact, I’m not even sure I know how to measure it…
Sheldon Brown, RIP, has a bit to say on the subject of seatposts and saddles on his website. It looks like I’d need to measure it using something like this:

His database of sizes won’t be being kept up any longer but he does say this:

(The size is usually stamped on the bottom of the seat post.)

I’m really tempted to go check now, but I don’t think I have the right wrench with me. I generally have only been carrying a 15mm in case of a flat and a 10mm to work on my brakes a bit.
I need a new post to accommodate the rails on the B-17 instead of the older clamp arrangement my current post has. If I could get a new post I’d seriously consider putting on the B-17 I already have on the bike and … hmmm … no, it needs to come to Vegas.
In any case, I’m thinking of getting the British Racing Green version and putting that on my NWT and moving the black B-17 already on it to my Fujiyama.

Of course all of this requires money I don’t currently have. Sigh.
Maybe I’ll get lucky in Vegas and….nah….
Aloha!

Here's my daily commuter ride. It's an old Fujiyama mountain bike. Fujiyama seems to have been a house brand of McCully Bicyle. In fact I sort of me Mr. Fujiyama at the shop one day. He was truing wheels. Back in the day I guess McCully spec'd these bikes themselves as a house brand and picked Mr. Fujiyama to have the honors. Good deal.

Last time it rained I was caught out on my Fujiyama without fenders. It was not a particularly pleasant experience. I don't mind getting wet, but I do mind road goo being flung all over my bike or my body.

The weather has been just fine since then…till just this afternoon. I'd already decided to check out fenders at McCully Bicycle on my way home and am I glad I did. I ended up putting on some Planet Bike Full ATB fenders. They are nice and black, very inexpensive, and seem to work pretty good.

I hope I stay dry this winter…these should help.

Aloha!

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I’ve mapped the ride from Fremont Street to Red Rock Canyon using the information I could find so far; a bike map of the Las Vegas area. The information comes from the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada. You figure they should know.
The PDF map they have online shows that Alta Drive has a designated bicycle lane essentially from Fremont St. almost the entire way out to Red Rock Canyon. That’s the plan!
Here’s the route:

Best friends, Himalayan beasts, and…
No, no, no.
Bike Friday, The Yak mailing list, and the wonderful folks who’ve been there before me…
I’m off to Las Vegas in the near future and, as always of late, I’m taking my trusty BF NWT with me. In this case BF might as well stand for best friend instead of Bike Friday. Indeed, it’s my BFBF.
I’ve never ridden in Vegas before but I was pretty sure someone else has, so I put a feeler out to the folks on The Yak. That’s the name of the Bike Friday mailing list. It’s a great community of folks who ride and love their Bike Fridays. I’m one of them.
Admittedly I contribute far less than I take, but that’s probably because I’ve only been a Bike Friday owner for a year. Some of the folks have been around a lot longer than that.
In that year I’ve taken my NWT (New World Tourist) to Mexico City and Oakland, California. And now, right on the edge of my year, Las Vegas.
The benefits of having your own bicycle on a trip are enormous. It’s a much better way get the feel of a city than being trapped in car. I like public transportation, and use it, but even that tends to restrict you to main streets or being somewhere underground. On a bike the city is yours.
I didn’t bike enough in DF, something I made up for when I went to Oakland. So now I’m planning on the same for Vegas.
According the folks on The Yak the best one day experience seems to be a ride from LV out to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Aside from the beauty, it appears I’ll have a wee bit of climbing to do as well…

Still, that doesn’t deter me too much…well it’s a concern I’ll grant. But I’ve been getting better at hills over the past few months as I’ve gained strength. I’m slow, but I get the job done.
Back to The Yak. Paul in Cincy linked to this image of his Green Gear Green Pocket Rocket at the entrance to Red Rock. Thanks for the link Paul and I hope you don’t mind my showing it off!

I hope to have more or less the same image when I get back. My NWT is Green Gear (the company that actually makes BFs) Green as well…excellent choice of colors Paul!
I plan on doing a bit of riding around town too…we’ll see how that goes. 🙂
Aloha for now!

No, not the love boat, more like the love bike.
I’ve now been riding on my new and improved SS for a few days and it is really sweet here in flat Honolulu. It’s been a lot of fun.
In fact on Sunday I think I rode it about 25 miles total including a lot of off road riding out on Sand Island. I really didn’t have the tires for it, but it still worked pretty well.
The Geax Roadster tires seem to be holding up pretty well too.
I’ve got to figure out what to “improve” next. 🙂
Aloha!

My SS is more or less a “real” SS now…the SS cog on the back is great. I brought the new wheel home, popped on the tire, set it on the bike and…
…discovered I needed a 1/2×1/8 chain…
…so I went back to McCully BIke. They had one so I was good to go…
…or so I thought…
Once I got the chain on I realized that I was just a wee bit off. The chain was just too loose for safety. If I removed a link it would be too tight. I needed a half-link. This time I was able to ride down to the shop and ask. Ben, the owner and chief mechanic and bottle washer, was happy to get a half-link on for me and while he was doing so he admired my bike.
He said they’d brought the frames in about 20 years ago and they were “classic.” And, he said, the bike is named for the old fellow over there truing wheels. It seems “Fujiyama” was a house brand from a time when that was something shops did. Cool.
I even remembered to ask if I could get a new set of cranks so I could run a single chain wheel. Ben counseled me to leave it be for now. The quality on new cranks using the old square tapers is “junk”. If I wanted to pay hundeds I could swap things around, but the low end is garbage.
That’s fine. While I probably will get around to it one of these days, I think I’ll wait till the wear is totally noticable.
I am going to try putting on a Zefal Lock n’Roll skewer on the front end so I don’t have to worry about locking the front when I’m in a hurry. We’ll see. I’d be just as happy with a new solid axle up there, but this should deter thefts of opportunity.
And finally…for now anyway…I discovered I didn’t put my rear tire on correctly – twas backwards. Now it isn’t and I’m beat. 🙂
Aloha!

Hmmm…I’m not sure.
On the way home yesterday, after several days of flawless performance, my SS ran into a major snag. I bent the rear axle. Rats.
I took the wheel to McCully Bike where I’ve had excellent luck with work, but they didn’t have an axle that would work available. But since what I actually wanted is a single speed rear wheel I inquired and now I’m having a new wheel modified a bit. It’ll have a single cog and be redished a bit to fit. Hopefully.

It’s going to cost another $50 which follows on the $45 I just spent on new tires and tubes and the $60 I spent on new handlebars and brake cables. Admittedly the bulk of that last purchase was for Park cable cutters.
It seems I’ve now spent more money on fixing this bike than I did on the bike to begin with…isn’t that always the way? Not, mind you, that there was much wrong with the bike when I bought it — other than it was inappropriate for me at the time. Sigh.
This has got to be the end for a bit though. I do plan on getting a new set of cranks, or maybe even a new bottom bracket and cranks, but that’s got to wait for another day.
In any case I was told to wait 30-45 minutes and it’ll all be done. I’m going to be nice and wait an hour. Not anxious me, eh? 🙂
Aloha!

Sigh. Well, let’s just say it’s an improvement.
Today I changed the 26×2.0 off road tires for some 26×1.5 road tires on my SS. The improvement is huge actually. There was nothing wrong with the tires, in fact I’m keeping ’em. They just rolled like a cement truck on the road.
Unfortunately I couldn’t see my way clear to buy really good tires, so I’m hoping the cheaper ones I picked up last a few hundred miles at least.
They are Geax Roadsters which are not the bottom of the food chain but nearer to it than my Specialized Nimbus Armadillo tires. I figure I’ll probably upgrade as necessary, but I had to get those dirt tires off. Besides, the Geax have “Aramid” compound which sounds a bit like something made from ground up spiders.

Besides the improved ride, the tires have bright yellow writing which fits right in with the color scheme. 🙂
Aloha!

Today I finally got some time to play with the Fujiyama and…it works! Oddly Monday turned out to be a better day to work on projects than either of the days this weekend. Just too busy I guess.
Here’s how it started.
I wanted to see if I could raise the stem a bit as the bars were just too low for me. Unfortunately the bolt was stuck and I didn’t think any amount pressure would do more than break my wrench. Enter PB Blaster; I picked some up this morning and it worked like a charm in just a couple of minutes. I sprayed the top of the stem and turned the bike over and sprayed up the tube of the fork.
After all that I was able to raise the stem about a quarter of an inch. Sigh.
So…having a bit of time, I rode the bike down to McCully Bike where it seems I’d purchased it about 14 years ago. I checked with the repair guys but they didn’t have any spare used stems around. And they recommended I change the bars instead of trying a longer stem. Other than that they said the bike was in excellent shape (given it had been sitting for 11 years), even the brakes. Cool.
So off to the retail end of the business where I overspent on fixing the bike. Well actually I only overspent because I bought the Park Cable Cutter CN-10. I could have done the job without it…maybe. But I figure I’ll be changing a lot of cables in the years to come, so it’s a pretty good investment. That was about half of the $60 I spent. The other $30 broke down between a new set of riser bars (to replace the straight bar), two sets of cables, and the cable stops and ends for a nice finish. Essentially it cost me $30 to get the bike running.
Home I went and began to work. I had a bit of trouble with removing the brake levers which caused me to bend the head of the stem a bit. Bending it back (thank goodness for steel) worked fine though. I also scratched the new bars a bit, but I’m not a mech and it’s my first. All in all that part went smoothly.
I also had a few cute moments with the cabling, but all in all it was pretty darn easy. I really should have used my bike stand but…well I really should have used the stand.
In any case I got it all together in about 90 minutes and gave it a test spin. It was sweet enough I figured I could ride it off to an event I was attending about 3 miles away. I had no trouble at all. The bike is sweet.

There she is almost, but not quite on stage. Maybe once I get a new crank and change the freewheel I’ll put it on stage.
Tomorrow…ride to work. We’ll see how she does as a commuter.
Aloha!
So

I didn’t get too much done on the bike this afternoon, but I did change the chain. I’d unfortunately made the gearing a bit too low the first time around and thought it best if I moved up from the granny gear to the middle chain ring. Of course the chain I had on was a bit too short. Sigh.
Luckily I had a broken chain around and was able to use that. It was an interesting experience though. The rear freewheel is a six speed and I’d tried to put the chain on the second smallest gear. On my test ride I heard a terrible noise and…I’m on the 3rd smallest. Apparently my chain line was off. I had to adjust the wheels a bit as the chain was a wee bit too tight on that gear, but now it seems fine.
The other problems I’m having are…
1) Can’t loosen the stem…it seems rusted up
2) Rear brake needs adjustment but I don’t have the right size tools
Now I really wish I’d been able to afford that toolbox from Park…