Cargo Turd

Rory just sent me pictures of the finished Cargo Turd. I love how this bike has stuck around. This frame was once mine -- I originally bought it at a garage sale for $5 and I rode the crud out of it before handing it off to Rory.

For more history, I have a fuji turd label on this blog. With this post, the fuji turd label has 19 posts! A proud history indeed.

Great looking paint job. I like the twin stays too. Nice touch.

Rory has been working on this project for a few months with Alex. It's the same basic design as the cycle truck that Alex made for me. More on Alex's blog.

It's alive!

alex

The Turd lives again.

more here.

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Turd revival

This is the bike that just won't go away. I originally bought the frame for $5 at a garage sale. I wrote about its history on 63xc.com a couple years ago. It's primarily been my snow SUV do anything bike. It's a fixed gear super simple tough turd of a bike. I couldn't even give the frame away, let alone sell it.

So I was thrilled today when my buddy Jon at OTM was lamenting how his freehub froze up and how he just wanted a simple snow bike. I jumped at the chance to build up the Turd for him. It took me about an hour to put back together. Hopefully, he'll take delivery tomorrow.




There's some nice little treats on this bike for the careful observing bike nerd. The Softride stem, the PJW-built Surly/Mavic rear wheel, the Ritchey cranks, the lugs. Under the saddle cover is a NOS Ideal leather saddle: it's the only saddle I had here at home with the old collar-style connector that this seat post wants. I think some Nokian Extreme studded tires would round it out and make it really a full-fledged winter bike.



I hate having useful bikes and frames sitting around, so this will be another loaner for life. Although I'll probably swap out the crank set with some old turdy Deore's once I find a chain ring and some BMX chain ring bolts. In any case, everyone wins.

The snow is nuts here. We're at around a foot or more and it's supposed to go until 4 AM tomorrow morning. It's really cold too, so it's great powdery snow. But it's hard to ride in, especially on the south hill where there's a layer of ice under it. Good times. Geez winter came fast this year.

Some Stuff

The Fuji Turd is done. If you're in Spokane and you want this frame, let me know. It'll go to the first person that wants it.

There are two conditions: you must build it up and ride it in the next month or so -- no hording (why would you want to?); and secondly, when you're done with it, you must give the frame away with the same conditions.

Comes as shown: with a post, front u-brake, and a poorly adjusted headset. Fits 2.3" knobbies (barley), has horizontal dropouts spaced at 135mm.

Party on Turd, you have served me well.

Maddie has conquered the monkey bars. She goes forwards and backwards. She's really proud of that, but for some reason, she won't let me photo her, so I have to be stealthy.

Sucky rack at Sacred Heart. I have followed a few commuters to Sacred Heart. Apparently the hospital has great facilities for employees, but I can't find a bike rack by the Womens/Surgery center.
And sweet new racks at the Rocket on 42nd. These are really "leaners," which is all they need up there, since cyclists go and sip on a beer or coffee and can watch their bikes. Nice use of plumbing pipes and fittings to make a cheap rack that is more effective than 90% of all other bike racks in town.

I laced up a wheel tonight. Thanks Sheldon for your straight-forward directions. I've only built a dozen or so wheels, but when I do, I use Sheldon's method. It's easy.

I'm tired and pissy since it looks like the wrong dust cap came with the hub, which means at least a 4-5 day delay in getting the bike on the road. Errg. I wish there was a LBS that totally rocked the internally geared hub deal.

I'll true and tension the wheel sometime this weekend. The hub is a SRAM S7. It's going to go on my 520, along with some swept back bars, a chain guard, and some more rackage. The point is to build a good townie/porteur. It's even going to have platform pedals.

More Snow Woes

I have no idea how many times I've read about how lower pressure tires help in the snow. Probably a million times or so. Yet, I've never fussed with the air pressure on my Fuji Turd, which has big fat 2.1" tires on it. I just pump it to 50 and go on my way.

So, I guess it takes about 15 inches of snow, compressed, and messed up by traffic to get me to do the bleeding obvious. No matter how you slice it, riding around in this kind of snow is not easy. But running 2.1" tires at about 20 psi, instead of 50 psi certainly helps.

Even then, I'm only good for short rides and I'm all over the sidewalks if they're shoveled. I know my buddy Ken has continued to commute in this. And Liza rode down to work at REI today. You guys rule.

It took me over an hour to walk to Maddie's preschool and drag her back on a sled. I think the preschool is about 1.5 miles away. What a slog.

The streets were plowed for a bit yesterday morning, which allowed Liza to take Maddie to school on the kicksled. Once she hit the deep stuff, Liza did not dig the kicksled.

Snow then Rain then Slush

Joe and I took a quick loop on the high drive trails yesterday when there was still some snow. I've got a couple trails documented now. Got a Spokane trail? Send me a gpx or better, contact me and we can ride it while I track it. The why is here. My first couple trails are shown here (if you're running a Mac, you must view the page with Firefox).


I took the front rack and basket off the Turd. What a difference. It's so EASY to ride now. I also took off the holy rollers and put some more aggressive knobbies on there. These two changes make this bike a lot of fun to ride in the snow. I had a great time bombing around the high drive trails on it yesterday. I also rode it last night on the FBC ride.

I cannot figure out how to take good night pics with my camera. These photos suck, but they do a good enough job of showing how righteous the bikes looked. The FBC had it's monthly ride last night and all bikes had lights. But a couple really shined.

Considering it was pissing down rain at 9pm last night and the streets were all slushy and shitty, there was a good turn out. Eight or nine?

The Pain of Selling A Beloved Bike

Like anyone with an addiction, letting your guard down for a bit and not being steadfast in your resolve leads to a relapse.

I've got too many bikes again. I need to sell some stuff off.

I hate selling bikes. I hate selling bikes because I always want more than the market says they're worth. Most bikes simply do not deprecate in the seller's favor. And I get a silly emotional attachment to my bikes too. So that doesn't help.

Take the turd for example. I'm selling the turd. With the new snow bike, the turd lost its last opportunity to shine. I love this bike and I love riding it, but it's redundant.

Anyway, here's the list of stuff that is on the bike and the retail cost I paid for it:

• Frameset: Garage sale score - $5


• Albatross bars/dirt drop stem/cork grips: Riv - $89


• Nitto front rack: Riv - $135


• giant basket: free


• Rear wheel: peter white built mavic 520, surley flip flop hub, 14/15 spokes: $210


• Front wheel: cr-18 rim, shimano DH-3N70 hub, 14 gauge spokes: $135


• Surly cog (20t, 3/32): $20


• Tires: Maxxis Holy Rollers - huge crazy tires. Craigslist: $20


• Little brass bell: Riv - $8+


• Front light: DLumotec Oval N Plus - $80


• Rear light: DT Top light: $70


• Death pedals. I can't remember the manufacturer, but these have spikes on them and rip up everything they touch: your shins, your calves, the soles of your shoes. $40


• Saddle, post, cranks, chain, cranks, chainring, rear rack, cages, front U-brake, brake levers, bottom bracket: from parts bin -- say, $40.

Total cost of the turd: $852. You'd never guess that looking at. So, remove the fancy expensive, non-essential stuff: the front rack ($135), the lights ($150) and the front wheel ($135); that takes off $420, for a total of $432.

So for selling, put another front wheel on of decent quality (say, deore hub with Mavic rim, 14/15 spokes -- an $80 wheel), and the cost of the bike goes back up to $512. That's retail cost of new stuff.

Now the hard part: how do you figure wear/tear/depreciation? In terms of durability, the bike is just getting warmed up. The rear wheel has lived the majority of it's life without a brake on it. It was built by PJW, and it's a bombproof wheel. The frame, bars, all else is functionally as good as new. It's got scratches etc, but it's ready to roll for a long long time. I don't think folks would pay half of $512. I would try to sell it for $350. But will probably have to let it go for $300. That kills me.

That's why I'm much happier with the Loaner for Life scenario. The problem there, is that I'm getting to many loaners out there.

Any takers?

First Snow Aught Seven

We woke up to snow this morning and Maddie had a huge cow. She loves the snow. Here's Liza on the Schwinn snow bike, shod with Hakkapeliitas.

I took the Turd out, which has big fat urban-type knobbies. These are no good in the snow. I figured they'd rule because they were so wide and they have knobbies, but the knobbie profile is rounded so these things just slide around. You really do need the hooked knobbies that stick out at the sides to get traction. It's all about the front wheel and keeping it in control.

I put the Hakkapelittas on my 720 last night and it's a breeze to ride. The snow right now is mostly powder, with some areas that are a bit more compacted from cars driving over it. I would not call it "hard packed." This snow is hard to ride on because it's unpredictably unstable. This snow tends to slide out under the weight of the front wheel. Compare this to hard packed snow or ice, which is predictably stable. It may be slicker, but you know it's going to hold up under your front wheel.

Conventional wisdom says that studs are only useful on ice and hard packed snow. I need to put some non-studded knobbies on the turd and see if they perform the same as the Hakkapeliitas that I have on my 720. Is it the studs or the proper knobbies that make riding my 720 easier?

I also think the next set of studded tires I buy will have the full studded surface. The Hakkapeliitas only have studs running down the center of the tire. Which makes sense for city riding, but a little overkill in the stud department would be interesting to check out.

Pumpkins

Critical Mass Halloween ride tonight. 4:30 PM at the Carousel. Costumes encouraged.

Liza and Co will be doing a post-func pub crawl afterwards -- likely to start with food at Isabellas.

Halloween is Liza's favorite holiday.

Follow the Rules

That is a picture of 4 cars: a cop car, a subaru, a white car, and a white minivan.

In the cop car, the cop is writing a ticket for the guy driving the subaru. The guy driving the subaru slammed into the woman in the white car. The woman in the white car decided -- like so many Spokanites do on a daily basis -- to make up her own rules for the road. Unfortunately for the subaru driver, the law that says: "don't follow too close" pretty much trumps all others. So even though the white car lady was making up her own rules and in my mind is the real perp here, the subaru guy gets the ticket.

The white minivan doesn't have a role in the story.

The white-car-lady's crime? Stopping in the middle of an arterial for a cyclist, who does not have (or want) the right of way to cross the arterial. Anyone who rides a bike for transportation knows this scenario and it drives them crazy. I've written about it here before. It happens to me daily. If I'm with Maddie on the tandem, I can guarantee it will happen.

Traffic rules in America are actually pretty simple and are certainly well-understood by most. When people make ad hoc, spontaneous changes to those rules, bad things happen.

On a brighter note. Can the Fuji Turd get any better?

Now that's a basket.

I rode the Turd up Monroe street last night from down town. I didn't know I could go that slow and still stay up. What a slog. Now I'm holding out for a 3-speed fixed hub for this sucker. That's a long shot unless the rumors about Sunrace doing another production run of the ultra-rare Sturmey-Archer ACS 3-spd fixed model are true.

Poor Man's Pugsley

Full frontal shot here.

I should never say never, but I don't think I'll ever buy or put together a Pugsley unless it lands in my lap or is otherwise given to me. But I have been interested in the super fat-tired bike version of the Hummer since I heard about the development a couple years ago.

Local bike shop owners: will one of you please build up a couple Pugsleys and rent them by the day? Pretty pretty please?

Until then, the Fuji Turd bike has evolved yet again. It's becoming such a great bike. I just scored these insanely mongo tires on Craigslist. At 35 psi, these guys will just about roll over anything. No skill required to ride this bike. Before I put the "summer" tires on here (note lack of fenders too -- just no room), I updated my site on the evolution of this bike. I've really been feeling the love for this one of late.

Liza also made a page on her new Super Course.

There's talk of a Saturday night (4/28) Centennial Trail ride. If you're interested please contact me.

Cranked

Well, today was a day of firsts. I busted a crank. A crank! And I had to call Liza for a ride -- I had a mechanical malfunction that I couldn't fix on the road. That was also a first.

I guess I'll need to start packing an extra crankset and chainring in my tool pouch if I want to be REALLY self-sufficient.

I got this crankset just over a year ago. I put it onto my old Trek a couple weeks ago. They are Sugino XD's. If you're keeping score.

As I walked the bike out of the trails to meet Liza, I tried to figure out how many miles this crankset has on it. It's hard to judge: I ride a bunch of bikes and I never track my miles. I'm not a super mileage person. I ride a lot, but not long miles on a regular basis. The fixed gear has certainly gotten the majority of my time, if not miles in the last year. And much of the riding is very hard. I'm heavy and I'm a grinder and I love racing around on the fixed on the high drive trails and any other single-track that looks interesting. My guess is that these cranks lasted somewhere between 1200 and 2000 miles. Not much.

This calamity befell me as I was mashing up the single track there kind of north of the doomsday hill bridge on the single track that follows the west side of the river -- going towards bowl and pitcher. Anyway, the chain popped off on a grind up a steep little climb. I walked to the top, put the chain back on, then started going down a bit of a hill and back pedaling. Then ca-chank! The crank is done. Sheered. Lame.

I may be ultimately to blame though. I had a bit of chicanery going on with my set up. To get a good chainline, I put spacers in between the crank spider arms and the chainring on the inside of the arms. I think this localized the stress on the spider arms more than they could handle. If the chainring had been seated up against the inside of the spider arms the load would be spread a bit more across the chainrings, bolts, and arms. That's another theory I came up with on that walk out of the trails.

We took a great walk/hike on the highdrive trails this morning. Damn, I love those trails.

Here's Liza: bikes locked up and all ready to roll. Maddie was already halfway down the trail at this point.

And there's Don and Maddie. Post-hike. Maddie ran the entire way while explaining/singing something important (and in great detail) that we didn't quite catch.

It's All About the Kids

I am on the Spokane Bicycle Advisory Board. We advise the City of Spokane on things related to bicycling. Seeing change and the effect of our work is a long long process -- measured in years. So I was pretty skeptical when I wrote off a quick e-mail a couple weeks ago to the park manager at Bowl and Pitcher (B&P) State Park suggesting they add bike/hiker camp sites.

B&P is a great local thing to have: basically a full-service campground on a giant river with hundreds of acres of unique topography just a couple miles from downtown. If you look around Spokane, you see a lot of amazingly cool things like this (trails on the bluff, Fish Lake Trail, Minnehaha, Dishman Hills, etc etc) -- but anyway. The great thing about B&P is that you can kind of spontaneously decide to go bike camping with the family on a Friday or Saturday afternoon: load up your bikes with the minimalist gear in an hour, then a short ride (a good chunk of which is on the Centennial Trail) and you're camping. There's swimming, hiking, exploring and just general camping/outdoors stuff.

So anyway: the email. I'm getting there. Last year, Maddie and I did one of these spontaneous deals and showed up at B&P on a Friday afternoon and the place was full. I was shocked that they turned us away -- two people on a bike. Our overall footprint was one 2-person tent and the bike. The park is sprawling and huge. They wouldn't even let us set up in the day use area on cement! Policy is policy. We ended up going further down the river and camping in the bush, which is fun too, but with Maddie, we would've been happier in the campground.

Anyway: I sent an email to the park manager/ranger, Rene, who emailed me back the next day informing me that the park officials were about to meet to discuss issues for the upcoming season. And then about a week later, she emails me back:

Hello John, We are going to establish two

hiker/biker sites that are on a first come first serve basis.

They will be located at the Bowl and Pitcher.

I'll let you know the locations when we receive

the approval from our parks planner. Thanks Rene'

That may be my biggest and best contribution to the world of cycling in my life. And I want it documented here.

Funkenstien and Other Random Fillers

Oh my god! I want to do more riding but I'm a lazy bastard. I've got into the post holiday funk and it's a hard climb out. I will, no matter what, start getting out again in two weeks. Really. It's not that I have to for some weird-o regiment here. It's that I have to because my whole world just sucks when I'm not getting out and riding a few miles first thing in the morning. I'm going nuts here. Why two weeks then? Well, Liza is in Ashland OR at UBI. That's a bike school. She's learning bike maintenance and loving it. That will hopefully relieve me as the primary bike fixer in the family, and I'll finally learn the right way to do things from her. Anyway, I'm on my own until she gets back and it's sort of frowned upon to leave your 4 year old at home alone in the morning. So that's my excuse for now. Come back in two weeks and see what it is.

Bike Swapin'
Ok, Spokane needs a bike swap. Make that "the Inland Northwest." I'm on a mission with some friends here to put something together. Watch this space.

Dumb bike update
A month or so ago I wrote a review on 63xc.com about our funny Fuji fixed gear mountain bike. Here's the URL if you're interested: http://www.63xc.com/johnspeare/laidback.htm. Anyway, I expected not to like this bike. But I've been digging it. It was intended for Liza, but she pretty much hates it. Way too much reach. I tried mustache bars, flared drop bars, flat mountain bars and we've finally hit on something she doesn't hate as much: big-ass flared albatross bars. I'll take a picture one day. Anyway, I haul Maddie to school with this bike every day. When I have to make a run to the store, this is the bike I grab. It's like an SUV. It's got huge studded fat tires on it. It's geared super low and as a fixed gear, it can just go everywhere as long as you're willing to sacrifice your knees to get there. With the albatross bars, I really like it more than any other iteration.

The end-all-be-all-bike update
I think I've ridden my Garyized trek a total of about 11 miles. There were a couple days there where snow was not covering the ground and I got in a couple short rides. It rules. I've not changed any of the issues I wrote about in the last blog -- so, there's still work to be done. I've decided that I really can't provide a full on report on exactly how much it rules until I do a really long ride on it. Like at least 50 miles. But really, it should be around a 100 miles. Those in the know say that low trail bike are better handling for folks that are about to fall over from exhaustion. So I need to test the bike under those conditions. At my current rate of non-ridingness, maybe I'll only need a 10 mile ride or so to test it out.

Ugg. I don't even want heat here. I just want clear roads. Not roads that are mostly clear with the randomly, yet well-placed ice patch, but clear. And above 30F.

More Snow

Although winter officially just happened on the 21st, it's about this time of year when it feels like the winter part of the year has lost its charm. I think about riding in the summer in a t-shirt a lot this time of year. And how nice it is to just be able to jump on the bikes with the family and go. Riding in the winter requires gobs of suit-up time. At 4 years old, Maddie tires of riding in the Burley trailer -- she's actually a bit big for it now. She can no longer stretch out her legs in there. Hauling the trailer through snow is a work out. On ice, it's slow and deliberate.

For Liza's 33rd birthday yesterday, we loaded the bikes on the bus and went downtown, rode to the MAC, then rode to a new Indian place for lunch buffet. The arterials are clear, with slush and ice on the side of the roads. The secondary streets are a combo of slush, ice, packed snow, and slippery man-hole covers. We had a great time and ate way too much for lunch, but riding this time of year is now getting a bit tedious.

We woke up this morning to about 3 inches of new snow, with new snow still falling. Maddie and I got up early and shoveled and enjoyed the brief quiet. Predictably, the quiet was soon broken as folks fired up the snow-blowers to clear their 20 feet of side walk. We've got to the point in America where every single outdoor chore where folks used to get some basic exercise has been replaced with loud internal combustion 2-cycle engines. It's such a bummer: snow blowers, lawn mowers, leaf sucker-blowers, hedge-trimmers, weed eaters, edgers, pressure washers, etc. Think of how quiet the neighborhood might be if gas shot up to $10/gallon.

Maddie and I decided that walking to Manito Park to sled didn't sound like fun. But our neighborhood is flat. So, we rigged up the bike-sled and took a couple laps around the block. She was singing "Jingle Bells" at the top of her lungs the whole way. That's good neighborhood noise.

Car'ing your bike

I really hate hauling my bike on my car. For so many reasons. Probably the biggest reason is that I just think "driving to ride" -- in most cases -- is just a silly thing. In most cases there's great riding out your back door if you're willing to explore. Recreational riding that requires driving to the "riding destination" is an easy fix. Especially, *especially* in Spokane, where you would be hard-pressed to find yourself more than 20 riding-minutes from any kind of riding you want: rolling hills, single track, trails, country roads, logging roads, etc etc. Riding through town, going somewhere closer, leaving the car parked... these are all good things.
Anyway, I go to the Seattle area about once a month for my job. Typically, I fly in and my buddy Alex hooks me up with a bike. But sometimes I drive with family and haul a bike on the car.

Usually, it pours down rain and the speed of the car drives the water into every deepest nook and cranny of every bearing race. So, this time it was sort of a nice change to see the bike turn into a giant ice sculpture.

In other news. William, who runs the site at 63.xc asked me to write up an account of my Fuji. You can see the write up here.

Ice

Yowsa. So, we had about 4 inches of snowfall a couple days ago. Then it got to about 40F that night. Everything kind of half melted into a mess of sno-cone-like slush. Then, it froze. I don't think it's gotten above 30F in the last couple days.

Here's what the street in front of my house looks like:

It's not obvious from the picture what's going on here. The ice is solid for sure. It's not a clean, smooth sheet. It's rutty and bumpy. At the moment it's snowing lightly, so there's a film of snow over the top of that.

This makes for really interesting riding. We took two rides today: first, we took Maddie to school. Liza did great. She was on the Fuji and hauled Maddie. No issues. We took it nice and slow. Then, I rode to the doctor's office this afternoon. I tried going a bit faster, maybe 10 mph? I went down in a flash. I guess my front wheel just slipped out from under me. It was sudden: one second I'm just riding along (JRA), the next second my bike, my frozen-solid water bottle, and I are having a little skate down the road -- sliding silently and effortlessly.

Riding on this stuff -- even with studs and on a fixed gear -- really takes equal parts of luck and skill to get around on. I took a spill, I messed up my pants and my knee a little; no harm to the bike. But really, given the overall distance I rode today (probably about 6 miles), and the fact that I'm pretty new at this, I'm pretty pleased with my accident to miles ratio.

I'll be keeping it much slower until this ice melts away. 5 mph tops.

Snow

Yay. It finally snowed with some authority today. Looks to be sticking too. The last word I heard on weather was that it was now going to get very cold. Right now it's just over freezing, so we're getting a bit slushy. It should get down to about 25F tonight, so that will freeze everything up nicely for Monday morning. I'm happy that I ride a bike on days like tomorrow will be... but even happier that I work from home.


Here in the Speare/Mattana household we'll be running fixed gear bikes with studded tires this winter.

The picture above there is Liza getting her snow legs worked in. That miserable Fuji does well in the snow, even though it feels like it's just sucking away your energy at twice the rate of any other bike we own. What a dog.

I also hit the trails on the bluff after the snow had piled up for an hour or so. I was not the first cyclist to hit the trail with snow this year, as I followed some wide mountain bike tracks for a good portion of my ride.

We're running the Nokian Hakkapeliitta W106 studded tires on both the Quickbeam and the Fuji. The tread and stud pattern is optimized for city riding, with a row of carbide studs essentially down the middle of the tire. So, on trails, I wouldn't mind a few studs sticking out of the side of the tire to grip the side of the hill, but overall, these tires are great and I wouldn't want the extra studs on the road where I do the majority of my riding. Tires with carbide studs cost about twice as much as those with mild/normal steel studs. The carbide wears much longer. My neighbor, Dennis, is a year-round commuter, who has about a 20 mile round trip commute. Last year, he left his Nokian's on his bike for about 4 months, so these tires rode on a lot of non-snowy/icy pavement. Last time we chatted about these tires, he said he couldn't even tell the wear on them.

It's going to be a great winter.

If I was the king of the world...

I would require all citizens to have at minimum, one bike outfitted with a basket capable of transporting at least one half-rack of bottled beer.
Such a bike, especially if ugly and not-steal-worthy, is an essential component for all households.
We have this old Fuji outside, under a tarp, at the ready at all times. It's really uncomfortable to ride for more than a mile or two, but it's perfect for quick grocery runs and for hauling our daughter in a trailer.
Many "serious" cyclists only have their 'road' bike and their 'mountain' bike, or maybe their 'rain' bike... typically such a bike requires the usual ritual to ride: suiting up, special shoes, etc. You miss out on a lot of spontaneous riding opportunities when you are required to "gear up." Additionally, a beater with a basket is made way more useful when you put fenders on it. Come to think of it, all bikes are way more useful when you have fenders on it... At the moment, I don't own a bike that doesn't have fenders. Seems like an essential piece of gear that is just crazy to go with out... yet 90% of new road bikes do not have room or eyelets for fenders.
So, if you don't have a beater, spend some time on craigslist or at Goodwill and pick one up... get a wald basket and some fenders and you're ready for a ride at the drop of a hat.