Temporary Quarters

Until July 3rd I’ll be sleeping my spare bedroom / library / bike room while my parents are visiting me.  When I first moved into my place I had all my bike stuff piled up in this spare room along with my stacks of books.  Now I’ve got it pretty much wired so someone can live here comfortably for quite awhile without battling all my bike stuff.  Sort of like a transformer except it isn’t a car, and isn’t actually a robot so in fact not transformer-like at all.  Well, you get the idea.

So I’m not sure if I’ll make it to Northbrook this week or not, instead I’ll be looking forward to spending time with my family, eating a lot, and all that good stuff.

Random Notes:
- Jeffrey Brown is a really good cartoonist.  His books Unlikely & Clumsy are really great personal stories that I highly recommend.  And his comic The Incredible Change-Bots is hilarious.

- After finishing re-reading Moby Dick I’m on to Catcher In The Rye.  God, I love that book.  It kills me…

- I’ve started recording Top Gear, which along with Deadliest Catch, and America’s Test Kitchen has to put me in some strange category in terms of advertiser’s demographics.

Bike Profile: Track

My track bike used to be my “everything” bike. I’ve ridden RAGBRAI, multiple centuries, a time trial, and even a couple cyclocross races on it. Sadly, the insides of the tubes are rusting no matter what I try. It kind of freaks me out to ride it for fear that it’ll collapse under my weight, but on the plus side it keeps getting lighter for free.

Frame: 2003 Bianchi Pista
Fork: Kinesis Carbon
Rear Wheel: Miche hub laced 4x to a Fir Rim by Marcus
Front Wheel: Formula hub laced 2x to a velocity rim by Marcus
Cranks: Truvativ Elite
Drivetrain: 48×15 gear
Pedals: Look
Seatpost: Thomson
Handlebars: not sure
Stem: not sure
Seat: Richtey streem
Tires: Vredstein Fortezza

Track Clinic

Monday night I showed up for the Northbrook Velodrome Track Clinic run by Turin, a great bike shop in Evanston. This was my first time on the track in over two years so while technically I’m a Cat 4 I still felt more like a first timer.

After the usual paceline & jump drills we did two practice scratch races which went really well for me. I got 10th in one of them which I find pretty funny since it was after all “just a practice.” I remember as a kid when I’d play video games with friends if you fouled up your turn in Contra you’d always call it “a practice” to get another turn. I also remember calling kids who did this “bitches.”

The highlight of the evening was learning & practicing pulls for the upcoming Madison races on Thursday. In a Madison two racers team up and compete against other two-racer teams. At any given time only one racer is racing while the other is on relief. When it is time to switch racers in the midst of racing the relief rider will ride down track and the other racer will help them get to race pace by slinging them forward. That slinging is what we practiced on Tuesday. Overall I understand the mechanics & technique of the exchange, but for me the tough part was effectively judging the speed of my partner and getting really comfortable doing exchanges in middle of a race situation.

As you can see I used my GPS to record Tuesday’s clinic and at first I did it more as a joke for this site than anything else, but it does reveal a cool piece of information. If you look at the picture it looks like a bunch of rectangles instead of the expected ovals which match the track markings. This isn’t because the GPS is lazy since I (not you) can zoom in on the image and see the ovals too. No, the rectangles are because in a bunch of the drills and races you are actually spending quite a lot of time riding up the bank of the track and then shooting down in a straight line in order to take advantage of the track’s bank. Especially in the Madison where a large part of my time was spent riding very slowly up the bank near the wall trying to find my partner in a sea of red & black Turin jerseys while not falling.

In closing if you’re at all interested in track cycling check out Hipster Nascar & Chicago Track Racing.  Both great websites dedicated to the art of turning left.

West Town Bikes

When Ben & I first put together my bike we left about 3 inches of extra steerer tube so I’d have room to figure out my positioning before the hacksawing. This has meant I’ve been riding around with what is essentially a giant metal pipe pointed straight at my sternum just waiting to punch a giant gaping hole. No doubt it is an irrational fear (in what situation am I flying straight down onto my bike as opposed to up and forward over the bars), but suffice to say it was time to take care of it. Also that extra bit of tube & spacers are extra grams weighing me down.

Normally, I’d take my bike to Rapid Transit or Yojimbo’s for the work, but I really didn’t want to miss out on riding on Sunday in Oswego and getting bike work done in Chicago during the summer usually means at least a couple days wait. So thanks to a friendly online reminder I hit up West Town Bikes. For someone like me who is somewhat mechanically inclined (I got an ‘A’ in internal combustion engines in high school!) WTB is a great place to use the more specialized bike tools without spending loads of dough. They have classes too.

While I was there I used the following tools in exchange for a $10 tip in the coffee can:
Threadless Saw Guide (pictured right)
Tabletop mounted vise
Hacksaw
Threadless Nut Setter (pictured left)
Reamer

What’s On My Shelf?

It stormed on & off all weekend so I pretty much stayed home and caught up on a lot of things.  I have a shelf in my apartment that I keep all the CDs, records, & DVD’s I’ve been playing and along with my stack of books on my nightstand it makes a pretty representation of what my interests are.  Here’s what’s there now:

Books:
Herman Melville - Moby-Dick, Billy Budd, & Other Writings — Is it crazy that I’ve read Moby-Dick already and never knew there was a hyphen?  Also Melville’s beard on the cover is a force to be reckoned with

Music:
American Steel: Destroy Their Future — AS is back!!!
Neil Diamond: Home Before Dark, 12 Songs, & Hot August Nights — Yes I’m on a Neil Diamond kick
Calexico and Iron & Wine: In the Reins
Bob Dylan: Nashville Skyline — Might be Dylan’s best record
John Doe: Forever Hasn’t Happened Yet
Drive By Truckers: Decoration Day
The Dismemberment Plan: A People’s History or…
Chuck Ragan: Ole Diseal 7″

DVD & TV:
Inside Man — Jodie Foster!!!
Bob Dylan Unplugged
When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions — Pretty much the same as watching The Right Stuff, but real.  A.k.a. incredible and a must watch
Top Gear – I always forget to watch Top Gear, so freaking good!
Battlestar Galactica

Bike Profile: Commuter/SS Cyclocross

Here’s the bike that I rode to some of my best sounding results in ‘cross racing (Top Ten finishes in tiny fields) and the bike I ride the most. Most of the time I ride it singlespeed with knobby tires on it. Thanks to a multitude of mounts I can throw full fenders and/or full panniers depending on my needs.
Frameset: 2004 On-One Il Pompino
Rear Wheel: Surly Flip Flop Hub laced to a mavic open pro rim
Front Wheel: Shimano Ultegra Hub laced to a velocity fusion rim
Cranks: Truvativ Elite
Drivetrain:42 x 16 gear.
Pedals: MXS Platform
Brakes: Paul Cantilever brakes w/ Texkro levers

Angeles Crest Highway to Mt. Wilson

Tuesday morning I climbed Angeles Crest Highway to Mt. Wilson. It was a pretty epic ride for me and it really hit home for me how much great riding there is in Los Angeles. For a long time I said that San Francisco was my favorite city, but the more I visit LA the more I really like it. Next time I go I’ll have to do a better job of bugging Nico & Chris for good riding routes.

Anyways here are some stats from my ride:
Distance: 44.44 miles
Elevation: 5,423 feet
Total Time: 3 hours 19 minutes
Time to top: 2 hours 16 minutes
Time to sea level: 1 hour 3 minutes
Average speed: 13.4 mph
Max speed: 35.2 mph
Calories burned*: 2,393

* I did not wear a heart rate monitor so I really doubt this # is at all accurate. I did enter my weight in my bike computer, but really who knows how it calculates calories burned. For example, it said I burned 1,115 calories for 1 & half hours of biking up Griffith Park which seems high. All I know is I ate a lot of awesome food afterwards.

Almost Completely Back

Update: United pulled through and delivered my bike safe & sound. Excellent.

I made it home last night no problem, but somehow United Airlines lost my bike. The baggage carousels at O’Hare weren’t operating so they had a group of throwers & clerks carrying out bags by hand. When they were all done they made a big announcement, high-fiving each other, and everything until they saw me. It was pretty comical seeing a group of people all shrugging their collective hands & shoulders. So here I am clicking refresh on United’s bag tracking website hoping for an update. This is like the complete opposite of ebay.

Bike Profile: Road

Fact: I own a lot of bikes. It used to be that walking into my apartment meant wading through a sea of random parts, tires, tubes, tools & nigh impossible to get out without acquiring at least one grease stain on your pant leg. A big push, thanks to some help from my friend Cale, was made and I’d like to think I’m slightly more organized and now I finally have enough storage for all my bikes. So how many bikes do I own? Well, today we’ll take a look at just one of them.


Note: An older photograph, currently my road bike has a carbon fork.

I met Warwick of Thylacine Cycles several years ago on Bikeforums.net. At the time I was riding my track bike all the time and was looking to invest in a bike I could take on long rides, and maybe race. Oh yeah and one that could travel. The result was a road bike with S&S couplers which allows me to pack the entire bike into a case that meets all airline specifications. No more overages for taking my bike on vacation or for work trips. The past couple of years I’ve ridden my road bike the least & if you’ve never seen it at my apartment it is because it usually sits in its case wheel & seat-less. However, my road bike has seen some of my better finishes in a road race including my 11th place at Hillsboro and a 14th place finish at Monsters. Yes, that’s right I raced a crit on a folding bike.

Frame: Thylacine Tephra (Columbus Foco tubing w/ S&S couplers)
Fork: Profile Design carbon
Wheels: Mavic Kysrium Elites (shared with my cyclocross bike)
Stem: Ritchey WCS
Seatpost: Ritchey WCS
Handlebars: Ritchey Biomax
Drivetrain & Controls: Shimano Ultegra
Pedals: Crankbrother Candy C’s
Saddle: Fizik Arione (also shared with my cyclocross bike)