You're Invited...

Liza and I are going out Saturday night. We've got a sitter. Liza works until 5. We'll eat, then digest, then we'll go for a ride. We'll ride to some bar a few miles away and have a drink. Then we'll ride back downtown and settle in at the Baby Bar.

It happens to be St. Patrick's day, but we're celebrating Liza's new job and her new bike.

If you are interested in a night-time ride and some revelry, meet at the carousal at 7pm. We'd love the company of other night time riders. If you come: be comfortable (and visible) riding at night -- on the street.

Rolling Along

This has been a good bike weekend:
1. Liza started working at Two Wheel Transit on Thursday. She's legit. She likes it so far. I think having a knowledgeable woman in a bike shop can only help sales. I guess we'll see. Maddie and I had a great time on Saturday while Liza was at work. We rode in circles most of the day in the Wilson playground or on our back patio.

2. I took a nice shake down ride on my new Trek with David on Friday. I wanted to get some trails/rough surfaces in. We took the Fish Lake Trail out to Cheney, had a cup of coffee and rode back on Curtis rode. That is still one of my favorite rides. The Trek is great. David asked me if I could really feel the difference in the low trail as I hoped I would, and I have to say I don't. It doesn't feel bad. It certainly doesn't feel like my Atlantis, which is super trail, but I can't detect the "low trailness" of the ride. I'm not disappointed, but I think I'm a bit surprised. I also think we just adapt to different nuances in bike handling pretty quickly and I don't have the experience across a wide range of bikes to feel such subtleties. It rides nicely and I am beginning to drink the 650B kool-aide: there really does seem to be a nice balance of cushy-fast there.

3. We had some friends over on Friday night who are really interested in building some tall bikes. We've got a good pile of steel frames that I wouldn't feel awful about cutting up and we have access to some torches and welders. We may just start hacking something together here. I sure would like to find some other like-minded freaks. We've got a group of four now.

4. My buddy Alex picked up our new-to-us tandem in Seattle. We'll be getting it in April. The tandem we have now is just too big -- for both Liza and Maddie. It could work, but the Bike Friday is a great little tandem and they are super reasonable when you buy them used. Out of the box, the bike is ready for Maddie; no fussing required. It's pretty nifty: it has a Sachs internally-geared 3 speed hub with a 7 speed cassette attached to it. So all the shifting is in the rear wheel and it has the same (or similar -- I don't know the exact range) as a 21 speed. It breaks down into two pieces so you can carry it in standard (no extra fee) airline luggage. Maddie and I looked at the pics of it this morning and we're both pretty psyched.

Lots of Long Lunch Breaks Today

What an amazingly beautiful 55F-degree day. At about noon I decided to take a lunch break ride. My plan was to ride a package to the post office for mailing. When I went outside and began shedding my layers that I now put on in auto-pilot, I knew I'd have to hit the trails instead.

I usually hit the Highdrive trails about twice a week this time of year. I rarely see anyone and I never see cyclists. Today, I saw 5 cyclists on the trail, 4 walkers, and 4 dogs, one of which was actually on a leash!

I have figured out a neat little loop on the trails that allows me to stay on the trail and gives me nice downhill and good climbing without riding all the way down to the bottom of the trails. It's about 4 miles and about a 1/2 hour ride or so. I'll GPS it next time around and post it. It's a perfect lunch time spin.

Here's some pics of Liza's new fixed gear. Just finished. She built the whole thing up -- built the wheels, wrapped the fancy bar tape. She's legit now. Dang it -- if we only would've sourced some pink Deep V's instead of those boring old Mavics.

NAHBS Report

I went down to the North American Handbuilt Bike Show in San Jose this weekend with my buddy Alex. All of the pictures I have here were taken by Alex. He's really good at taking bike shots. More of his pics of the NAHBS can be found on his Smugmug site.

Here's some stuff:

Crowned

It's back. Finally, and what took it so long? The bi-plane fork was all over the place on the 29er's down there. And rightfully so. It's such a cool design.

Pacenti is selling this beauty. Long Shen is making it. It's about 60mm wide -- which is great for big downhill mountain bikes, but I'm hoping he'll get some 50mm's in for the rest of us that just like fatties on our "road" bikes. I don't really think there's a huge benefit to the design -- some kind of built in "spring" is the claim, but it just looks cool. Sycip actually had a bike with an original Ritchey/Bridgestone bi-plane fork crown on it.

Deep V's and Track Bikes == Peas and Carrots

First off: there were a zillion track/fixed gear bikes. A lot of mongo 29ers too. Cool if you're into that, and I am kind of, but me thinks these groups are overly represented. That said, I'm into the bling that is Deep V rims on fixed/track bikes. I'm not a huge blinger, but going to this kind of show there is a ton of bling everywhere and you start thinking about your bikes as sort of an accessory to your whole image -- and the fact that you do portray and image. Like it or not. It's weird. But it can't be denied.

The Deep V's are super strong and actually make sense for "urban" riding. That's in "quotes" because it's a funny and overused and kind of markety word. But the point is that you want strong rims for bouncing around the city -- and of course you don't want to shy away from the occasional single-track or trail riding either. A little bling never killed anyone either, and the Deep V delivers. The bummer for me is that I had just ordered a Deep V before I went to this show and I got boring black or silver-- can't exactly recall. At the show, I saw white, pink, yellow, and gold. And red. Alex was the picture taker and I didn't bug him to take pics of the super bling deep V. There's always next year.

The City Bike: are we on the same page here?

Shimano has been doing a competition among bike builders/manufacturers to build the best the bike around it's commuter/city-bike gruppo, the Alfine (al-feen-ay). This is a polished up version of the Nexus dynamo hub and the Nexus 8-spd internal hub. The gruppo may include the shifters and lights.

This bike here is a "Bill Rider." He nailed the main stuff that matters: full fenders so you can ride on wet streets/rain and not get mucked up. Lights integrated into the rear stays. Nice. Sturdy racks. The rear rack is built with hefty tubing and will haul a good pile of crud. A nice rake to the front fork. The bag there is attached and stays attached to the front rack. It's main purpose in life is to carry a heavy lock. Good kickstand. Only thing missing there is a chain guard, and if you want to get super picky: a skirt guard.

Ok, the guy who won, did not only NOT have fenders, but he built a custom rack in such a way that you CAN'T add a rear fender. And there was no front rack. Huh? He said racks "mess with the lines of a bike." Second place, or was it third? Whatever: it had those funny little half-fenders and no racks; and the light was sort of tacked on at the end; pointing nearly into the wheel. Gimme a break! C'mon Shimano people: give the awards to the people that make a functional bike first.

Big Bikes that Haul Stuff

Lots of cool stuff going on here.

Sycip had the monster truck bike. This was optimized for motorcycle panniers made by Ortleib. In addition, this is the first bike I've seen that has built in provisions (as in brazed on bits) to support the stokemonkey. Looks like it would be fun to ride.

I think Fraser is going to be more well-known in this tiny niche of a niche market of big/long bikes. They are from San Diego, and I could definitely see the well-heeled 30-somethings riding down the beach path with this bike loaded up with kids and crud... check out the built-in foot rests. These are well-thought-out bikes.

Coolest Innovation

I got lucky a couple weeks ago when Hairy Gary pulled a 94 BCD NOS Ritchey crank from his stash and sold it to me. If he hadn't, there's no doubt in my mind I'd be shelling out $270 for these beauties.

This is the White Industries crank. Alex's notes on this picture say it all: "Outer ring is splined and available in many sizes. Inside ring uses any 5-bolt BCD. Great for compact doubles. $275, 108mm bottom bracket."

I love stuff like this. It is SO stinking simple. It's the kind of thing you look at and think, "damn, I could've thought of that."

Wrap Up

There was a huge collection of Bruce Gordon bikes. I think the earliest one was from 1974. The guy really is ahead of the curve. He was doing what we would call "29'ers" many years ago. It was also really fun to browse his 30 or so bikes and just look at component changes over the years. He's known for being kind of a grump. I told him I really enjoyed looking at his bikes and what a cool perspective it was to see them all together. He sort of grunted at me.

The builders at NAHBS represent such a tiny tiny fraction of the bike market in this country. Likely less than 1% would be my guess. And the majority of that is because "Seven" was there, so with out the representation of Seven, we're talking about an even tinyer minority of bikes. These guys that do this for a living do it because they love it. Maybe Richard Sachs makes a few bucks. Some day I buy a custom bike. If I do, I'll stay local and have Hairy Gary do it. Cause he's local, and he's good.

There was a rumor going around that NAHBS will be in Portland next year. That would be so perfect. We'll see. All in all, a fun show. If you're into bikes or just into seeing really well-made stuff made by real craftsmen, it's worth a trip.

Fish Lake Trail

There's a well-coordinated and supported effort to pave the Fish Lake Trail from Fish Lake to the Centennial Trail. Personally, I'm sort of in the middle on this one. One of my favorite quick runs is a ride through the unpaved portion of the Fish Lake Trail. I have it documented on Bikely.

I really enjoy riding Thorpe Road, which is a nice dirt county road, and hooking up to the trail at the top of the hill on Thorpe. The trail is some single-track, double-track, and contains all sorts of surfaces: sand, hard-pack, pebbles, "rail" rock. It's an interesting ride -- and fun. Right now the pavement starts about 2 miles out of Marshall and goes for about 3 miles, where you end up on a Burlington-Northern access road, cross two sets of live tracks, and then another mile to the Fish Lake Trail head parking lot, where the trail is paved to Curtis Road/Cheney. I enjoy taking a fattish-tired road bike or fixed gear on this route. So as I think about FLT being paved, it kind of bums me out, because today this is a quiet, under-used, no-traffic bike route.

Folks pushing for pavement here suggest that this will be an ideal commuter route for Cheney-Spokane commuters. Maybe so. The Cheney-Spokane Road is a good route for that too, although there are some pieces that are a bit tight.

The major cost of the project is not in paving, but in putting up overpasses over two live railroad tracks. I can't remember the numbers exactly, but what I seem to remember is that there is about a $6 million cost for this project; $4 million of which is for the overpasses. That's a good gob of money.

It's interesting what draws bike-related money -- people love the idea of multi-use paths with no traffic. I understand the draw, but if I had $6 million for bike-stuff in Spokane, I'd be pretty satisfied with the Centennial Trail. If you're a recreational cyclist; Spokane is great. You've got to be happy.

On the face of it, it sounds crazy, but, thinking about it, I'd blow most of that wad on education: teaching drivers and cyclists that it's ok and normal and lawful for cyclists to use the road. Like the "seat belt saves lives" campaign when I was a kid. There was a time no one wore seat belts. Then we were clobbered for years with TV, radio, print ads that told us to wear seat belts. In addition, there was a threat of fines if you didn't wear a seat belt.

What if we did the same for cyclist/driver-education? What if the message: "cyclists have the same rights to the road as a car; bikes are vehicles; cyclists have the same responsibility to follow the rules of the road as car drivers" was pounded into us everywhere we turned? What if we taught our kids, in school, how to safely ride in traffic? What if parents rode their kids to school, on bikes, while following traffic laws? What if the WSDOT manual and related driver training had more emphasis on bikes-as-traffic? What if your traffic violation doubled if cyclists were in the area, as we do for work zones? What if cops busted cyclists for traffic violations or riding on the sidewalk?

Eventually, I think we'd see a lot more folks riding their bikes in traffic and a lot less need for more multi-use trails.

Oh yeah, and if there was any money left over; I'd be painting some sharrows.

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.

My Weak Contribution to People Who Want to Fix Thier Broken Brooks Saddle

That there is a picture of a Brooks b-17 saddle that is about to be man-handled by two hairy men for an hour. When it comes to re-railing, that B-17 is one tough customer.

I busted the rails on it last summer when I was riding around Vancouver Island. It's a bummer, because the saddle was only about 3 years old and just starting to break in. I ordered a replacement frame for it about 6 months ago and just got around to fixing it now. My plan was to take photos along the way as we fixed it. If you lurk around the iBOB or Touring bike lists as I do, you'll come across a number of folks who have broken the rails on the Brooks saddles that have the copper-coated rails. So, I was thinking I'd be doing a great public service to sort of document and photo the re-railing of the saddle for the benefit of mankind. I didn't do too well on that account.

The reality is, you just have to brute force that sucker on there. The deal is, is that the leather is really stretched over the frame. There's quite a bit of tension there. As we figured, you have two options:

1. Fit the nose hardware in the front and attempt to pull the leather over the rear of the saddle while you punch in the rivets, or

2. Punch in two of the rivets in the rear, then figure out a way to jam the front hardware into the nose.

Option 1 seemed impossible. We had some extra rivets so we decided to go with Option 2, figuring that we could drill out the rivets and go back to Option 1 if we totally hit the wall.

As I mention, it took about an hour. It's brute force and some filing and squeezing the front hardware in a vise to shape and squish it a bit. There's some wrestling, some swearing, some head scratching, and a large rubber mallet involved as well. If you have a saddle with a broken rail and you are trying to get it repaired, all of this non-precise instruction will make sense. Granted, it likely won't help much, but it will make sense.
After you force the front hardware into the nose, punching the rivets is pretty straight forward. It's also a two person job. One person to hold the saddle and the punch and the other to strike the punch. I'd love to see some pictures of the folks at the Brooks factory putting these together. They must have some pretty specialized vices and hardware.


Updates
Swapped
Bike swap will be next year. There's a back story there, and it will be told. And I will tell it. But not now.

Trek
I've been riding the Trek and it's everything I want it to be. It's back at Hairy Gary's getting fit for a convertible rack. He says a week. I say I'll start bugging him in a week. It is a really fun bike to ride.

Liza is Certified
This should be the headliner -- Liza did her 2 weeks at UBI and just got her test results back today. She is officially a Certified Bicycle Technician. She took lots of pictures of bikes and there's a couple shots of her at UBI here. UBI is not an easy course -- Liza didn't have a ton of mechanical experience going in, so she had to work super hard. And she did: staying late, going in on the weekend to practice.
She rules. Since she's been home, she's totally reworked our little shop into a pristine workshop; she's built two wheels; overhauled her daily driver; swapped out a crank set and handlebars on my buddy's RB-T; and has a bike to-do list a mile long.

Bicycle Advisory Board
Next Meeting. All meetings open to the public: Tuesday -- Feb 20th, 6PM in the City Hall, bottom floor in the Council Briefing Chambers.