New Commuter Pictures

How about some pictures of my new commuter.

New Commuter

I ended up buying a stock Surly Cross Check and changing out some stuff. It turned out to be quite a bit cheaper than doing a custom job, and the parts are fairly similar to what I'd have done custom (although I probably wouldn't have gone quite this crappy on the brakes, but I can replace those later if they drive me nuts).

Surly Cross Check.
Changed the tires out for some continental street tires (which are on order).
Changed the seat out for a Brooks B17 Champion saddle.
Added the new Shimano double sided pedals. They're SPD on one side, and a nice platform on the other.
Added fenders (which are on order).
Added the axiom rack I already owned, seems to work fine.

All in all it's pretty nice. I haven't even done a half dozen miles yet. But tomorrow will be her first commute! Then I go on a 4 day weekend.

The Brooks saddle is definitely a different feel. It's like a more connected, but gentler, feel on the road. But, if you ignore the bumps, it's really hard. If you account for the bumps, it doesn't seem so hard compared to gel.
I'm sure the steel adds to the ride quality.

The pedals are pretty great for regular shoes. I haven't tried them with my clipped shoes yet. They're not as wide as standard platform pedals, which is a nice feature.

It's good to have a frame that's so standard and has wide clearances. Thank you Surly!

Custom Commuter

Well, I've kind of had it with my current commuter. Here are my complaints:
* I can't put regular fenders on it
* It's really heavy (I carry it up two stories every day)
* There's a tick in the bottom bracket, and I've had it rebuilt once so it looks like replacement time.
* The chain rings are a bit scarred up, but mostly good.
* It's a mountain bike: Heavy, front shock, back rigidity.

So it looks like I'm going to get a new commuter and sell the old one. Hopefully I can get $100 or so out of it.

I have two choices: A trek 7.3 FX, or a custom surly. The custom Surly is a lot more expensive, but I think it's worth it. And hey, I'm not strapped for cash so let's build the bike I really want!


Here's what I'm thinking:
* A Surly cross check frame. I can't use a Long Haul Trucker (well I can) because in my size (54) it doesn't come with 700c wheels.
* Bar end shifters.
* Drop bars, obviously.
* Probably a Brook's saddle, my butt needs to feel good in jeans.
* Double sided pedals: One side is a platform, the other is SPD.

Everything else I'm less worried about. I've got a source for a very low cost 9 speed cassette, rear derailleur and crankset. Low end stuff, but I'm not looking for a racing machine I'm looking for a good commuter that I can still park. The cassette may or may not be satisfactory, I despise large changes in my cassette. I still dream of a cassette with decent range and only steps of 1 tooth. Maybe these new 11 gear cassettes will realize my dream in 6 years when they're cheap. 3 tooth steps suck. That's a small complaint I have on my current commuter, and on the 7.3 FX.

I rode a Cross Check at Monkey Wrench on friday, and it was a nice ride. I'll probably give it another ride and start ordering parts sometime this week. Should be fun, I've never assembled a bike before :).

I'm excited!

Why Congress Is Broken

"19th Century solutions to 20th century problems"

Ladies and gentlemen, I propose to you that this is what's wrong with congress. Now, don't jump the gun, go ahead and listen to what Mr. Patrick McHenry has to say. It's a very interesting point that he makes. Let me paraphrase:

I didn't read the bill, I just glanced at it. But it says something about bikes, and bikes are old technology. I'm pretty sure most Americans think old things don't work anymore, so I'm gonna say that's why bikes can't possibly do anything. You see, only things invented this century work. What? Oh, someone is telling me people still ride bikes. Um, they're retarded, they might as well ride horses.

Did I get that pretty close? Basically he just spits out a bunch of rhetoric intended to bring out your beliefs that bikes are for recreation and make the utilitarian use of them sound ridiculous. It's really very smart: Assuming the folks he's talking too are stupid. Luckily for us, our House knew enough to look at the other 10 things in this bill, and maybe even consider that many folks successfully use the individual transportation device (which we fondly call a bicycle) already.

It's apparently been stalled in the senate. 50-44. I haven't been able to track down the votes, but I'm sure Obama and McCain were absent. Oh well, if they're not lying about their green stances that would only have made it 50-46.

Maybe I missed something when I read this bill. But here's what I got out of it:
* A tax credit for building wind farms.
* An individual income tax credit for solar panels (think, those things people put on their roofs).
* An extension of the tax credit for biodiesel
* $20 a month, given through the employer, for commuting by bike

The tax credit for wind farms and solar panels are probably the big items. Home solar panels are already considered to be cost effective, but the period you must wait is something like 8 years. The tax credit would shorten that period, and make the benefits more immediate. This should make these panels more popular, which would decrease the load on power grids. Here in Lincoln, NE this is no big deal: LES is cheap and supposedly has room to expand. But Californians might think about this differently.

Making room in the power grid is going to become more important as electric chargeable cars come to market in a serious way.

As for wind energy, it seems that many states are doing this anyway. It might just be too little and too late.

And the cycling part is just a minor item. It's not much money. However, this will provide one more immediate incentive for riding to work. It doesn't sound like you have to be a everyday rider, but a most of the time rider: Hopefully, just an every fair-weather day rider is enough.
$240 a year should be obvious to most consumers as enough to pay for their bike over a few years (assuming they don't qualify for many of those months and bought a decent bike).

But this bill must struggle, because there are people who think that rhetoric has something to do with reason. People like Representative Patrick McHenry.

Repair Stand

http://trekstorecincinnati.com/itemdetails.cfm?id=1888

There's a picture in the link.

This is my 1st anniversary present from my wife, a bit early. So I took the opportunity to use it and did a more thorough cleaning of my road bike. Cleaned most of the grit off the frame. Degreased and washed the chain (on bike). Removed the cassette and washed it (although I didn't disassemble it, I don't have the tiny allen wrench). Put her back together and re-lubed.

I waited a few hours and took it for a short ride. She rides better than the day I bought her. The shifting is perfect. I didn't even mess with it, I just cleaned it and the shifting got better (I think I had it pretty well adjusted already, it was just dirty so it tended to slam the chain around). Pretty good for a road bike with 1700 miles on it. Let's hope for another 17,000 :).

The repair stand is pretty nice, works quite well. Kind of makes me wish I'd got a smaller frame and set it up more aggressively so as to avoid changing my seat height. Oh well, the seatpost was getting a bit stuck so it's good I moved it.

Commuter Work

I lost a spoke on my commuter last week. It was a joyous occasion (lie). I ended up riding the bike back home on the broken spoke (mistake). I then waited a week to do anything, because I was about to leave town for a few days.

When I got to working on it I ended up discovering how many tools it takes to change a spoke. Let's go through the purchases:

First Trip, bike shop:
* 3 spokes ($3), two for the broken spoke I knew of, and one for the future on the other side
* 2 park allen wrenches ($20), these had nothing to do with the spoke, I just needed them for other things

After this trip I discovered I had three broken spokes. Oops. I also discovered I'd have to remove the cogs to get to the broken spoke, *doh*.

Second trip, bike shop:
* 1 free wheel tool ($8)
* 1 chain whip ($22)
* 3 spokes ($3)

Then I realized I didn't have a wrench to grab the free wheel tool. I also didn't have an adjustable wrench (Okay, I'm 23 I don't have many tools!).

Third trip, Lowe's:
* 2 adjustable wrenches ($30)

So I finally got the free wheel loose. Yay! I then proceeded to work with spokes. Well this didn't go so well. I overtightened the first one and stripped the nipple. The guy who cut the new spoke gave me lots of extra thread, I assumed (wrongly) that I needed to get most of the thread inside the nipple before it was even close.

Fourth trip, Home Depot:
* 1 pair of bolt cutters ($15)

So I cut the spoke out, fixed all three, and trued the wheel against lines on a piece of duct tape (on the bike). This bike has disc brakes, so I couldn't use the brakes. The wheel is true enough, but I'll probably have it trued this summer. Or wait until Christmas, when I'm going to beg for a truing stand.

Then I decided it was time to do other work on the bike. I took some parts off my childhood bike (a tiny frame on standard 26" wheels and other parts, a Specialized Hard Rock from about 1995). I stole the kick stand (commuter bikes need kick stands, it's a fact of life). That was easy, although sadly damaging to the paint job: Oh well, Giant does a shitty job of painting anyway (Don't buy a Giant, they're cheap for a reason).

Then I decided to steel the handlebars from my other bike. They're regular straight flat bars, about 3-4" narrower than the up curving bars I had. They also had slightly rusty and banged up ends: I had to hammer my shifter assembly over the ends! Handlebars should be aluminum!