some stuff

I think we need a longer stem on this bike. This picture doesn't illustrate the need for it. I think we have one more season on this frame. 

The river is wonderfully high right now. I've got the old mountain bike rev'd up. I took it out a couple times this weekend. If all goes as planned, this bike will be swapped out for a new Elephant hardtail 650b mountain bike this spring.

This is a great bike. I'll be taking it to Orcas in about a week and a half for a few days of single track funnery with some friends. It's the next year's version of this ride. 

First SOS ride of the season happened this morning. Rough stuff. We're all wheezy and shakey and weird. But I love this ride -- we came home through the park to check out the flow, which did not disappoint.

Some tortured thoughts on fittting and fit systems

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this post has been sitting in my drafts folder for a couple months. i'm not sure why i never hit "publish". this is deep stuff! fit for Hank's blog, by gum .

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A few days ago, I hung out with a guy who is thinking of opening a bike shop in Spokane. He made a comment that was something like, "I plan on offering a proper fit system, since none of the shops in town do it right."

Out of context, this quote sounds crass and thoughtless, and it's really not. The guy was a nice dude and had very specific ideas of what he needed in a fit system. His opinion was informed by his experience as a fairly accomplished amateur racer, years of performance-oriented riding, and his background in a technical vocation.  

In my experience, if you talk to shop owners about fit, then you'll often hear a version of the same basic sentiment: we do it right, other shops don't get it. Not all shop owners dismiss other fit systems explicitly, but they all insist that their person and/or system and/or philosophy is the best.

That's the funny thing to me about the whole fit system thing. From the outside looking it, the Fit Discussion strikes me more as a religious argument -- as many bikey subjects tend to fall -- more than one guided by a skeptical inquiry towards problem solving and acknowledgement (if not mutual respect) of the goals shared by various Fit System sects. 

Perhaps such a goal is too lofty for any bike-related discussion. Spend any time in an online bike forum or discussing technical matters with a group of cyclists and you'll encounter a domain where arguments are often framed in earnest, technical-sounding jargon, but fundamentally supported by mythology and anecdotal experience. And almost always driven home by referring to some hero-worship pro endorsement.

Because, on the surface, our culture seems to value evidence that is based on science: the authoritative arbiter of Truth. But in reality, I believe we're all animals that act almost entirely on emotions first, then rationalize those primal emotional attachments with our big fat brains, conjuring up all sorts of empirically-armored logic to defend our actions.

I feel like an outsider to the Fit Discussion since I've never taken much stock in it. In my opinion, (which of course is also informed by my emotional attachments to prejudice, ignorance, cynicism, and anecdotal experience), the pro fit thing to me is akin to selling and buying the high zoot, ultra light-weight, expensive gear: it probably can't hurt, but for me, if I want to improve performance, it starts by loosing a shit ton of weight and doing a lot fast riding up steep hills. 

I maintain that taking such an approach to potential fit issues would fix the glitch. My take is that if you ride a bunch and you ride a bunch of different bikes, then you can listen to what your body tells you about fit and performance. Sometimes your body gives directives in the language of pain. Achilles hurt? Maybe the saddle is too high. Wrists/shoulders hurting? You're likely too stretched out. Knees tightening and stiff? Check that the saddle isn't too low. Lower back? Maybe you need to slide the saddle back a bit.

Over the years I've sort of figured out the basics of what I like fit-wise. It's taken me forever. Go find a picture of my bikes from 5+ years ago on this blog and you'll notice the saddle was always pointed up. That had to do with reach and saddle height.

This illustrates how my fit system would work better for a more methodical person. My implementation of the system is pretty stupid. I've had bikes that don't fit right for months because I go by a general "good-enough" approach when it comes to setting them up initially. Glen says I should measure the relative distances on the bikes that do fit so that I have a better starting place when I build up another bike. That would be the methodical approach.

robbed

Who steels a basket? The front basket tied the whole bike together. This aggression will not stand.

This bike will be getting a basket that will take a bit more work to steal.

More carryings on about the Chrome Duffle Rack Top Bag

Click for big. I did a a temporary quick on/off hack for the new bag.
It's fast; I can hook it on or off in a couple seconds.

I gotta say: I friggin' love this bag otherwise. The size and the shape of monster hole opening are the best features. I often have a bunch of books and stacks of paper to haul around and this bag makes that so great when I have to find a single book or folder.  I throw my helmet in there, my jacket, lunch. It's like a magic hole that never fills up.
 In my initial review, I bitched about the lack of shoulder strap, but after a week of using this bag, I'm actually not finding that I am missing it. I think it's because there's already too many strappy things on this bag. Once I figure out how a permanent quick on/off solution, I'll chop the straps off the bottom to eliminate dangly things.

This is the "fix" for strapping down the back of the bag. So there's just the front stretchy bit and this bit on the back. That's it. Simple, good enough for the quick three mile run between my house and the bus stop, but not an ideal set up for the longer 20 mile, mixed-surface commute.
I got mega-dumped on again during my long commute home today. The sky opened up for about 10 minutes and drenched me to kingdom come... the bag is fine for waterproofiness. No issues there.

Here's a closer look at the temp fix on the front.

Review - Initial Impressions - Chrome Industries Front Rack Duffle

The folks at Chrome sent me this front rack bag to review. I've got one commute in the bag, as it were, and I have some initial impressions to share.

They call it the Front Rack Duffle; I'd call it a porteur bag. Or a front-rack bag. But, their name is better, because the duffle-ness of it is what makes it pretty righteous to me. More on that in a bit...

The first impression is that it's super light for how much bag you get. It's welded super waterproof fabric. I'm looking forward to seeing how that holds up. I'm guessing the welded thing does well, since that's what Ortlieb does and their bags last for multiple lifetimes.

I can totally vouch for the waterproofness of the fabric. Aside from the snowy rainy icy gunk that was falling out of the sky today, I also tested the bag by pouring a cup of hot coffee over it. I had inadvertently opened the lid on my coffee cup, which I had tipped over... as I walked through the cafeteria at school, thereby leaving a meandering trail of coffee dribblings about 30 feet long through the cafe. I wish I would've been bold enough to take a picture it, because the spill was impressive in its coverage and scope, but I was already feeling like a heel. And taking a selfie with the mess seems like it might have made my profuse apologies a bit less genuine.

Anyway: the bag didn't let any coffee in! I wish I could say the same for my jeans.

So the bag appears waterproof, and it's silly light. That's where we're at.

The other first impression is that I love how friggin huge it is. Like all bags I prefer, it's just a giant hole - no  pockets or organizing weird features. It's all about the dump and roll. And this bag, unlike the deeper and taller Ortlieb packs and panniers (which I love, and to which all bike-related waterproof bags ought to be compared), the duffle-shape of the Chrome makes access to all the crap in the bag much easier than the dark deep hole that is Ortlieb.

As I sat in my office today, I was very happy to have a giant target for books, lunch leftovers, and folders that I pitched into the bag. And when I got home to retrieve it all, it was a good thing to have it all contained, yet laid out in front of me. I am not the most organized person, and I'm finding the shape of this bag really enables my disorganization in a satisfying way.  It also made me realize that I spend a lot of time digging around blindly at the bottom of the ortliebs. Indeed, I think the shape of this bag is what will make it stick.

Stuff I'm not sure about on my initial impression includes 1) the lack of shoulder straps or other useful off-bike portability features and 2) the way the bag connects to the rack is generally not awesome, though I may need to get used to it.

According to the copy on the web page for the Chrome Duffle, the bag was designed "to function primarily as an off-body bag that mounts on flat Porteur-style racks." So the fact that it doesn't have useful off-bike features like a shoulder strap is supported by the design goals... but I think those are questionable goals if this is also to be used for commuting, which is also noted as a supported scenario. A couple days a week I have a multimodal commute: bike -->bike locker --> bus. So this bag is coming off the bike and living on my body for the rest of the day. It would be lovely to have a shoulder strap option, and I may fashion one up.

As for the rack connection deal -- I think I need to use it more before I carry on about that too much. But carry on a mite, I will: it seems fussy, slippy, and not fast enough. Fussy: you must mind all the dangly straps so they don't go into your front wheel (and so they are contained when off the bike). And by slippy, I mean, given the location of where the buckles live relative to the edge of my rack, the webbing slips out of the buckles, which is troublesome for obvious reasons. The fast part: the on/off scenario is still new to me and is too slow. I will give it a few weeks to see if a routine solution emerges with the default hardware. Otherwise, I'll be implementing the Rory Bag Hack, the finest front-rack on/off commute hardware solution of all time ever.

This will be a great camping bag. Mainly cause it's huge and light. I'll check back in and report in a month or two on durability and and hardware updates I make.

Landscaping on the FLT ALT trail

The only thing about the FLT commute home from Cheney that makes it not suck is the alternate trail at about the Mile 6 post. And really: that trail is not the rad: it's got a lot of sections of deep sand, and a bunch of tiny super steep climbs (with deep sand) that could be challenging if a guy was into that. There are exactly two fun descent sections that make the alternate FLT trail worth doing. And really, even if those weren't there -- just having an alternative to the flat paved soul-sucker that is the FLT would be welcome. So, even though I'm bitching up a storm here, I am thankful for the alt version of the FLT.

But understanding my conflicted relationship with the alt version of the FLT helps frame up even MORE bitching I"m about to go into. Happy Friday by the way.

Normally, trees felled across the trail would register as a minor annoyance. And by "felled" I am being explicit. These trees didn't blow over in the woods with no one hearing them.

Railroad people did it.

Big ass slash piles lined a section of the trail. Really: in terms of navigating, no big whoop.

But the way these guys operate is just so ridiculously focused only on efficiency that it illustrates how a bureaucracy can be optimized to just throw ethics out the window. It's easy to see how just decimating trees and the surrounding landscape by shoving them over with heavy machinery and indiscriminately pushing them aside pencils out when compared to the alternatives that would require a bit more care  for humans, animals, the environment.... you know: the rest of us that aren't concerned with the railroad bottom line.

These are the same guys that refuse to put a cover on the coal trains. Apparently, that doesn't pencil out either. Even though, a guy would think that there would be a way to balance out the books on the effect of thousands of people watching the coal trains go by -- piled with dirty ass coal flopping out and dusting up  --- like: wouldn't it make sense, if not for the right reasons, but for public perception to hide the coal under a covering? The privileged arrogance that informs this kind of thinking just amazes me.

Glen built an XO-1

A couple months ago, I noticed this frame sitting in Glen's shop. I mentioned it on the Elephant blog here. It's beautifully done -- fillet brazed with a standard diameter top tube, True Temper front triangle. Glen built it because a customer of his gave him a Ritchey Logic fork from the 90's and he wanted a bike for those famous forks.

Most of Glen's bikes are TIG'd. Sometimes he'll fillet braze a bottom bracket. The whole front triangle on this one is fillet-brazed. And it's pretty exceptional. It's a skill/art that takes time even when you know what you are doing.

Anyway I didn't think about the bike again until I went to his shop the other night and saw the bike back from the powder coater. The color is really mellow blue in a cool matte finish. I think the low-key, matte color makes the contours around the welds look even more remarkable.

So, this morning, I go to his shop and he's got it all built up and rad looking with drop bars. I'm already a sucker for 26" wheels, but the drop bars make it awesomer yet. He says he's not sure what to do with it. He says something like, "it's basically a road a bike with 26" wheels," and how that's not very interesting to people.

So there's that. If I were still a highroller, I would've bought it on the spot. This is my perfect bike. This whole "road bike with 26" wheels" thing is what got me obsessed about cycling as an adult -- about 10 years ago...

I pin him down on the geometry, which he has in BikeCad.

Sure enough, Glen has pretty much built a 1993 Bridgestone XO-1, but awesomer in exactly the right spots, with a shorter rear-triangle and a lower bottom bracket.

Dig it:

	Elephant	93 X0-1
ST/HT angle	73/72	73/73
ST length	54	55
TT length	56	56.5
Stand over	800	797
Chainstay	410	425
Drop	50	45

And he's put super components on it: White hubs, Sun rims. Specialized cranks --pretty sure these were the cold forged ones made by Sugino back in the day. LX canti brakes -- the super sweet mid-profile ones.

He'll probably ride it around the block or on a ride or two, but if you are interested or if you know anyone that loves this style of bike: it's for sale. Contact me if you are interested. (SOLD).