Cleaning, Overhaul, Pain

Overhaul! It's redneck for "take apart, put back together, and hope to hell it's nearly as good as before you started."

So I took the bike apart. Then I cleaned it using Simple Green and Mother's Mag & Aluminum Polish. You know what? It looked better, but not noticeably.



Next I overhauled the headset. I'd never done it before, but I had a book! This is when the pain started.



You'll notice there are no photos of the overhaul. I was able to clean and lube the headset (that's the part on the front that lets you turn the fork smoothly).

But the problem is I have a cheap bike-repair stand. And you have to put your bike upside down to put the fork back in.

So I'm down in the basement at this point, and my bike is upside down on the repair stand, and the kids are napping, and I'm not BELIEVING how much stuff I'm getting done. I've just put the fork back in, and I hear my oldest son coming down the stairs. I turn to answer his plaintive calls, and as I do the stand loses control. The bike swings down and CLONKS me on the elbow. Blood--EVERYWHERE! OK, mostly on my elbow, but it hurt like the dickens. Ewa thought I should go to the doctor. Doctor!

Nothing a trip to CVS, where the wound-care section is disturbingly large, couldn't handle. And you know, it still kinda hurts sometimes when I lean on it.

I have since finished the bike. But I will try to continue the story first.

Stripped Frame

Took almost everything off the Nashbar on Friday while watching Superman Returns. I didn't even know he was gone! Some nice surprises here--I thought I'd have to overhaul the bottom bracket, but it's a sealed one, a Stronglight. The stem is a Nitto Technomic, and the handlebars are the right diameter for the inverse brake levers I want.

Haven't gotten the headset off yet for its overhaul, just due to time. I'm hoping to get the bike finished before Superman returns again.

I feel like I must explain all the crap in the background. We're trying to move some stuff out of our basement via Craigslist. I sold my Bianchi Avenue yesterday. It was bittersweet. I realize that's coming close to showing emotion, about a bike of all things, so I'll just leave it at that.

Nashbar Treasure

All I wanted was a Brooks saddle for my Surly. My friend Joe had one, attached to a bike he wasn't using, and he offered to sell me the whole thing. Because I am an idiot, I bought it. Because I am an idiot, I thought I'd try to turn everything but the Brooks into a fixed-gear bike.


Yes, it's a Nashbar. Contain your envy. That's one of my favorite things about the bike. I figure the only way this could be less fashionable is if it had been handed out as swag at the 1976 Republican convention.

I'm naming this bike's aesthetic "false moustache" after the knockoff handlebars. It is what will guide me while choosing components. I've already made a couple decisions. The frame's too big for me anyway, so I bought some 700cc wheels on eBay and am ditching the 27-inchers. Riding a frame that's too big for you is never a good idea, but, with few exceptions, neither is a false moustache.


These dropouts are gonna work perfectly.


Rrrrrrrow!


Lugs!


It's a pretty nice frame. The flash makes it look like it's rusted through, but it's really just in need of a good clean and polish. I've ridden it to and from work a couple times, and I'm enjoying the dirty looks I've been getting from lobbyists on carbon-fiber Treks. I'm going to try to make this an all-around city bike, with a singlespeed freewheel on one side of the rear hub so I can tow my kids around in the Burley without worrying about killing us all. So, the brakes, which will fit the smaller wheels, will stay.

Tomorrow I'm gonna strip it down and start cleaning and overhauling the lucky parts that are staying.

2K on the Surly

This past October, a month after my second son was born, I bought a new bike. The Bianchi was a great start, but I wanted more and finally settled on a touring bike. I didn't know much about the mechanics of bikes at the time, so I decided to buy a complete bike. I thought about the Trek 520 and a couple others, but I finally decided on the Surly Long Haul Trucker because my bike shop actually had one in stock to try. Most touring bikes you need to special order, and then if you don't like it, things could get awkward.

I love the Surly. It has 26-inch wheels, so when you load it up with panniers or a kid in a seat or a trailer or what-have-you, it feels even better. Under the tutelage of my coworker Darrow Montgomery, I've moved away from what I guess you could call an REI aesthetic (hideous rain jacket in this photo aside) to one more informed by people like Chris Kulczycki at Velo Orange, who sells bike parts that invoke a golden age of touring cycles. That may or may not be real; I'm always suspicious of nostalgia but the important thing is that he sells really nice stuff.

One frustration with the Long Haul Trucker is its extreme geometry. I bought some fenders a few months ago from Wallingford Bicycle Parts, and they're just beautiful, a key component of my transformation to gentleman cyclist. And I cannot get the goddamn things on to save my life. I've spent God knows what on brackets, etc., and countless hours trying to get them right. I know a lot more about how bikes work and can perform basic maintenance but these freakin' fenders were way beyond my weight class. I should have just bought the plastic ones from Rivendell, but now pride is involved and I am going to pay someone to install them.

Last weekend I changed the handlebar tape to cork, which I whipped with hemp twine at the ends and then shellacked. It came out pretty nice.

And yesterday I rode my 2000th mile on the Surly. You can see here the beautiful spot where this occurred.

I ride pretty much every day, no matter the weather, though I make exceptions for snow and ice, which I'm not comfortable with yet, and high winds, which are depressing. Since I started riding a year and a half ago, I've lost weight, developed legs like bridge cables, and started eating better. It's the best thing that's happened to me since I met Ewa and the births of our two kids.

In the next year I hope to start doing some long-distance touring. My buddy Mark Nelson and I have talked about riding to Richmond next time he's back East, and I'd really like to ride from one end of Britain to the other. Time, time, time. Maybe someday. But the corollary of time is distance, and at least I can achieve that, albeit in 20-mile bursts.

The Long View

I hate working late. Unfortunately, I've chosen a career that often requires me to be at work at unreasonable hours. Fortunately, I ride my bike to work. And some nights I remember to stop after I cross Memorial Bridge and take in the view. It's really quite remarkable to see this vista every day. I hope I never stop appreciating it.

(I mostly blog at work these days. Here's where to find me.)

Red Dirt

I went to Texas and wrote about a music festival. You can read about it here.

Sony TCM-359V, 1995-2007

DIED, this morning at 11:17 a.m. of unknown causes, my trusty, longtime companion, the Sony TCM-359V, or "my tape recorder," as it was affectionately known. It was used to record and transcribe hundreds of interviews in the years since it first went into service, as a gift from my parents upon entering the field of journalism.

On the recorder's back is an all-access pass from a dEUS/Mano Negra concert in Nice. Despite the TCM-359V's owner's policy against keeping work souvenirs of any kind, this sticker, with the words "Tous Acces," seemed like something worth keeping at the time.

It will be replaced not by a digital recorder but with another Sony cassette recorder, the TCM-200DV, whose microphone I can only hope is as uncannily adept at zeroing in on soft-spoken subjects in noisy rooms.

It leaves behind a looming deadline, an eight-pack of Energizer AA batteries (with free Shrek the Third Ogre-Vision Viewer) purchased in the vain hope that it was my batteries that had collapsed, and a man more bummed out by the loss of an inanimate object than seems appropriate.