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Month: June 2008

2007 Avid BB7

The new rear 2007 Avid BB7 disc brake mounted on my bike, replacing the BB5s that were damaged when I was rear ended.

As yesterday’s collision left me with a not-safely-rideable bike, I’m stuck at home during reasonably nice weather. Since Danielle and I were heading out to Zingerman’s Deli for lunch, I figured I’d check out some bike shops along the way to Ann Arbor and see if I could find a suitable replacement for the now-damaged BB5.

Calling around to a few bike shops (Tree Fort Bikes, who has an asinine policy regarding online vs. in store prices and Trails Edge who was very friendly but out of stock) and stopping by Wheels In Motion (who seemed quite nice) I was unable to locate a rear set of Avid BB7 brakes for my bike. After eating a rather nice BLT, we began heading back towards my house when I thought of stopping off at REI in Northville. Thankfully we did, because sitting in the clearance bin was a brand new 2007 Avid BB7 rear disc brake set for mountain bikes, clearance priced at $49.83, which is even cheaper than Price Point sells it for.

After stopping at ‘s place to borrow his inch-pound torque wrench (to be sure everything is right) and visiting my Mom (Dad was at work) Danielle and I headed back to my house, where I spent a while fitting the brake and getting it nicely adjusted. While I haven’t ridden on it yet, I can say that this brake is so much nicer to adjust that I may very well order the matching front version from PricePoint and install it in place of the current BB5.

While looking over my bike I found that there’s a good bit of water in the frame (some ran out when I removed the rear rack to fit the rear brake), so I think tomorrow I’ll pull the bottom bracket apart and see if any more water runs out. I also found that the front wheel is not turning very well, and investigating that showed that the cone nuts (or they may just be lock nuts if they are cartridge bearing) on the front end are loose, so tomorrow I’ll look into fixing that bit up as well.

At least now I’m on my way to having a nicely rideable bike again. Maybe I will be able to make next weekend’s charity ride.

Tree Fort Bikes lists the Avid BB7 brakes as ~$52 each on line, so I called and asked if I could come by and get them for that price. I was told that they are out of stock, but if they were in stock that the price would be higher because one has to pay for the lights and buildings and such. However, the person I talked to informed me that if I ordered online and set things up for in-store pickup, I could get the online price. This doesn’t make sense to me, as I don’t see how in-store pickup for an in-stock item should be any more expensive than in-store pickup for a special order item.

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(Almost) Comically Bad Day

My bent rear brake rotor after Brian's friend Mark rear ended me with his road bike. It will have to be replaced. This is an Avid BB5, and I may replace the whole assembly with Avid BB7.

If it wasn’t for my getting Danielle mad at me, today’s ride from Dodge Park to Metro Beach would have been comically bad. Monumentally, comically bad. (Really, it was probably a good experience, but just not filled with good things.) It involved me teaching someone to fix flats, my bike being hit damaging the rear brake, rain/hail/wind, and my falling over the handlebars while showing how quickly one can stop with a front brake.

To start, the start of this morning’s ride was postponed by weather, after which Brian (), his friend Mark, and I met up at Dodge Park. After getting my bike off the car I didn’t prop it up properly and it fell over, scratching up the rack and handle bar bit more. While getting ready to go Mark found that he had a flat rear tire on his road bike, which he didn’t know how to fix. I showed him how to fix the flat and we installed his spare tube, during which time Brian locked his keys in his car, and we had to wait for his grandma to show up with the spare set.

We then took off towards Metro Beach and everything was going well, up until right after crossing Prentiss, when Mark’s rear tire went flat again. We stopped and I showed him how patch it, but after he got it back on the rim and hit it with the CO2 inflator, part of the bead had pushed out beyond the rim, almost blowing the tire off. The tire was then deflated, adjusted, and when reinflating it no air would stay in. It seems that the Presta valve (oh, how I hate these) had torn away from the tube.

Some nice folks on recumbents happened by, asking if things were all right, and they pointed us to a bike shop back at Gratiot (about six miles round trip), so Brian and I headed over there to get Mark new tubes and some new CO2 carts. A little while and $19.04 later ($6.99 or so per tube!) we were back with Mark and we got his rear tire sorted out.

The ride into Metro Beach and back out was uneventful until a thousand feet or so before Crocker. Brian was riding in front, I was in the middle, and Mark was behind me. We came upon a jogger going the same direction as us who Brian went around, but because of people coming the other direction I braked and held back. Right as I braked I felt something slam into my bike from behind with a metallic scrape and crunch, and then I began slowing down even faster. Looking back I saw Mark taking a spill on the grass along the path behind me. It turns out that Mark was looking down to get out his water bottle, didn’t see the jogger, didn’t see me slowing, and just ran into the back of my bike. He said that he braked and tried to ditch on to the grass, but evidently he only managed to sweve right into the most vulnerable part on the rear of my bike. As we were going 16 MPH or so I guess it’s good that he hit me instead of the jogger, because then things could have been far worse (police, ambulances, etc).

Looking at my bike I found that Mark had hit the rear wheel and rotor, bending the rotor a good 10-12mm to the side and depositing a good bit of tire rubber on my disc and in the caliper. My rear wheel wouldn’t move easily and I couldn’t bend the rotor enough to get it to move. Wholly opening the pad adjustments didn’t help, so I removed the caliper only to find that the rotor was actually bent enough (photo above) that it was now rubbing on the brake mount. I then removed the rear wheel and removed the quite damaged rotor. I was then able to ride back to the car (another 10 – 12 miles), stopping only with the front brake.

Mark’s bike had a six or eight inch slice in his front tire, and the front tire was bent enough that we had to open up his front brake so the wobble didn’t cause too much drag. Thankfully it was still rideable, otherwise we would have had to leave him there and drive back with a rack.

We hurried up and packed tools and parts and such up, because coming right at us from the west were dark storm clouds and we (futilely) wanted to beat them to Dodge Park. Brian stashed our cell phones and water sensitive things in his pack, fitted the rain fly, I stuffed the brake parts and some tools in my bag, and we were off.

Within another mile (just after the I-94 underpass) we hit the storm and it was quite similar to the storm a few Sundays ago, complete with sideways rain, hail, and wind which nearly blew us off the path. The sweat was even being washed out of my Headsweats, running right down into my eyes and burning. Every pedal stroke made a squish feeling, and my shirt clung tightly to my chest. Hail was making a clattering sound on our helmets and stinging our arms and it felt like standing in the shower. Weirdly, people driving down Metro Parkway (16 Mile) kept honking at us.

To be honest, if one accepts the fact that you are going to get absolutely, completely soaked, riding in the rain (without rain gear) isn’t that bad. Not that I really want to repeat it, but it’s no worse than jumping in a lake clothed; only the wind and hail were bad. After twenty minutes or so of this (and the associated slow riding because of the wind) the storm had finally passed.

Riding along, approaching Utica Road, I was explaining to Mark how it’s not difficult to ride with just front brakes, how they provide most of your stopping power, and how if you brace yourself and stay back on the seat one can typically brake very hard without a problem. I proceeded to demonstrate this, braked a bit too hard, and ended up going over the handlebars and dropping on the pavement. Thankfully I only scraped my elbow and knee a bit, but it was a bit funny. I’m sure the people in the cars sitting at the intersection found it a bit entertaining as well. Thankfully that fall marked the last problem with the bike ride itself.

In the end, today I went 39.14 miles, averaged 14.5 MPH, and had a moving time of 2:41’13, despite taking just under six hours from arriving at the parking lot to getting back to the car.

Right before we were getting back to Dodge Park we heard my phone ringing, but as it wasn’t easy to get to (under the rain cover on Brian’s pack) we waited until we got back to the parking lot to check it. It was Danielle calling, and it turns out that I hadn’t been keeping a close enough eye on the time (to be honest, I hadn’t checked since before the collision) and we were going to be late, so she left to head home to her niece’s birthday party without me. Had I called Danielle and let her know what was going on things would have been fine, even if she had to leave, but I didn’t do that and that made things unwell.

When I finally got home I’d also found that my having left the adjustment nut for the brake hanging from the cable (I couldn’t get it past the ferrule, and in trying to do so stabbed the end of my thumb on a wire strand, making it bleed) was a bad idea, as somewhere between the car and the collision site it had worked its way free and fallen off. So, at this point I think I’m going to end up having to buy at least one new set of brakes. It would have been possible to just replace the rotor, but I’m lacking the adjustment nut and the rotors cost $30 – $40 each.

For a while now I’ve been wanting some Avid BB7 mechanical discs to replace my BB5s. As can be seen here (this also shows the adjustment nuts I lost), the BB5 brakes only have a pad adjustment on one side. Adjusting the other requires preloading the actuating arm and/or moving the caliper side to side.

With the BB7 brakes there are pad adjustments on both sides, so once the rotor is centered in the caliper both sides can be dialed in as needed. Also, the BB7s have considerably larger pads, which should make it easier for me to throw myself over the handle bars in the future. A set of 160mm BB7 calipers and rotors seem to cost about $55 for each end of the bike from the local(-ish) Tree Fort Bikes, so I imagine they’d be similar prices elsewhere.

I guess it’s safe to say that I won’t be biking anywhere for a week or so, though. There’s also a good chance that I now won’t be able to ride in the 46 mile charity thing I was supposed to do next Saturday, but we’ll see…

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Rain, Rain, Go Away

Rain on the morning of 21-June-2008, right when I'm supposed to be leaving for a bike ride.

This morning I woke up at 7am sharp so that I could eat and get ready to meet up with and one of his former coworkers to go riding along 16 Mile / Metro Parkway at 9am. The weather was looking great, but just as I was about to leave a storm rolled in and everything started getting wet. There is currently a steady downpour and some light thunder and lightning.

Hopefully it won’t last too long and we can instead go at 9:30 or 10:00. As of right now it seems to cover the 16 Mile to M-59 area, and run from the lake all the way to a bit west of Pontiac. Fortunately it’s moving quickly.

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Ultimate Support Sport-Mechianic Bicycle Repair Stand

I purchased this Ultimate Support Sport-Mechanic bike repair stand from REI to hold my bike while working on it. It's quite useful.

After work today I swung by REI and picked up an Ultimate Support bike stand; the Sport-Mechanic model. (Here is a mirror of their catalog PDF, as the site is changing.) I really like this company’s stands, and as mentioned before, I have one of their display / floor stands for holding my bike upright when parking it.

This stand is quite useful, as I’m able to hold my bike off the ground and actually adjust things while pedaling, which is a nice change of pace. It was a hassle before holding the back end off the ground with one hand, pedaling with the other, and trying to see what wasn’t right. That said, I’m not sure if it’s really worth its cost.

The stand was $159 (plus 6% sales tax), and while I’ve found that online I could have acquired it for $20 less, including free shipping, at least this way I had the option of returning it if I didn’t like it. I also ended up getting two Park Tool items, the FR-5 Cassette Lockring Tool and SR-1 Sprocket Remover / Chain Whip, which are needed for taking apart my rear wheel.

I’m almost tempted to return the stand, partially because I can get it for so much cheaper online, and partially because I’m not sure if I really need it. I shouldn’t be buying expensive things that I don’t need and/or won’t use enough to make them worth the money spent. I’ll decide this tomorrow or over the weekend.

I also spent a bunch of time tonight washing my bike, cleaning up the drive train, and lubricating and/or adjusting the parts that needed it. The chain was cleaned in a solvent bath then checked for wear, which showed that it’s stretched 1/32″ over 11 links. Being half worn out it looks like I’ll end up replacing the chain sometime this year if I keep riding as frequently as I have been.

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How To Use Consolas with cmd.exe

Consolas in cmd.exe.

Back in January I mentioned that I have switched to Consolas as my preferred monospaced font for on-screen work. As part of this I switched cmd.exe to using it as well, but doing so was not a trivial matter. If you wish to do so, here’s how in a couple of nice, easy steps:

1) Get a copy of Consolas. You can either get it here direct from Microsoft, or I also have a copy of just the .ttf files here.
2) Add the fonts to the machine by dragging and dropping them into %WINDIR%\Fonts (eg: c:\windows\fonts) or add them using the Fonts applet in Control Panel.
3) Add a string value called 00 with a value of Consolas to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont. Importing this .reg file will do this for you.
4) Start up cmd.exe and you’ll now be able to change the font to Consolas. I suggest saving the changed properties for future use.
5) Note that despite changing the selected font at this time, it does not actually change in the window. You must now reboot the computer (not just log out, but actually reboot) and then log back in.
6) Fire up cmd.exe and you’ll see that the font being used is now Consolas, as shown above.

Note that the window shown above has the font size set to 14 point. For what it’s worth, I run the console on my laptop (with a 1400×1050 display) at 14 point, with a window width of 150 characters and height of 70 characters, as can be seen here.

I also use Consolas in PuTTY running at 11 point, 80 columns and 50 rows and in Notepad++, also at 11 point.

One last thing to remember is that this font was designed to be used with ClearType, Microsoft’s implementation of subpixel rendering. Without this it’ll look like poop.

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To Metro Beach and Back

After getting home from work and quickly eating some “dinner” (English muffin with cheese and butter, orange juice, granola and plain yogurt) I hopped on my bike and set out in the direction of Dodge Park. I ended up riding there, through the park, then down to Metro Beach and back and back to my house.

Per my bike computer I was moving for 3:05’28, I went 44.51 miles, the moving average was 14.4 MPH, and my max speed was 23.4 MPH. I stopped for five minutes or so at the end of the path in Metro Beach (where the photo was taken) to eat a Carrot Cake Clif Bar and a number of times for traffic / lights / pee breaks, but never for an extended period of time.

The weather was really nice, somewhere in the mid 60s the whole ride, little wind, and nice overcast skies. Most of the ride back was in the dark, and while I had lights I’d never done such a lengthy night time ride. Part of it also involved the windy paths through Dodge Park, which was a little unsettling at first, but ended up being quite a bit of fun. I’m very certain that the blinking headlight contributed greatly to people seeing me; people seemed to notice me far more than in day time. The tail light seemed to ensure that people coming past me in the road didn’t just turn into driveways cutting me off.

All in all, this was an excellent, fun ride. After getting home I took a shower to degunk myself and shave, since going to sleep with a freshly shaved head and face on a cool evening with clean sheets is so wonderful it’s almost beyond description.

Here’s a couple more photos from today’s ride, all of which involve my bike sitting in front of something to show that I was really there:

· On the pedestrian bridge over Grosbeck.
· In the gazebo, looking at Lake St. Clair.
· In front of the Metro Beach Metropark along the canal.

Now, time to contemplate bed.

(And yes, the distance from my house to Metro Beach and back is shorter than I expected. I figured that it would be just over 50 miles. For the next long ride I think I’ll try heading up to Lake Orion. Maybe Saturday…)

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New Belgium’s 1554

New Belgium's 1554, an &quote;Enlightened Black Ale&quote;.

Tonight’s beer is New Belgium’s 1554, which is listed as an “Enlightened Black Ale”. It’s made by the same company which makes the oft-mentioned (and overhyped, I’ve been told) Fat Tire.

This beer is quite good once appropriately chilled, and if I could get it in Michigan I’d probably buy it again. For now I’ll just enjoy this last glass of it figuring I won’t be getting more any time soon. (For reference, this was purchased at Cub Foods in Peoria, IL on Saturday night, along with some Soy Sauce, locally made crispy cheesey junk food things, an apple, and some muffins.)

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Scott Lamkin + Jessica Runck

This weekend I drove a total of 1040.4 miles, taking Danielle and I down to Peoria, IL for the wedding of my cousin Scott Lamkin to his girlfriend Jessica Runck.

I’m currently too lazy (busy?) to caption the photos, although I hope to get to that sometime this week.

I don’t envy the photographer’s job in working on the wedding photos themselves, as the ceremony was held in a hall at the Boy Scout Camp (Wakonda in Chillicothe, IL) which was lit by both high pressure sodium lights and cheap fluorescent lights. I’m not sure how one could properly color correct it, but you can see the weird color straight from the camera above.

The drive was fairly uneventful, although on the way there we passed through a storm alogn I-94 which provided ~80MPH headwinds and rain. I had to tail a semi in order to have a point of reference, then after getting through the storm we found rest areas without power, downed trees and billboards, and an overturned semi. On the way back we took I-80 / I-90 through Indiana and Ohio, mostly paralleling a rather large (and beautiful) thunderstorm the whole way.

We stopped by Danielle’s house to visit some with her family before heading back to my place, and when heading back on to I-75 for the remainder of the drive home a quite beautiful sunset presented itself.

Now I think it’s time to eat lunch. Maybe I’ll post more about this trip after captioning the photos.

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Peoria, IL

I just drove through downtown Peoria, IL in about five minutes doing the speed limit (55 MPH). I’d also forgotten just how flat some parts of the US can be, and we’re not even west of the Mississippi.

There was a tremendous storm encountered as we were somewhere in Michigan west of Ann Arbor which threw such blinding wind and rain at the car that I had to follow a semi’s tail lights in order to have any sense of direction. Thankfully it passed in about 20 minutes and the rest of the drive was relatively uneventful.

Dinner was eaten at Cracker Barrel where I had some cod, mashed potatoes, fried okra, cornbread, and some of Danielle’s food which she didn’t eat. Food there really isn’t that bad. It’s a bit salty and portions are huge, but it’s better than just eating fast food.

When we arrived at the hotel our keycard was in a lockbox and the staff was just shutting down for the night. When I asked about internet access the person just wrote down the password on a piece of paper and told me that “it’s wireless so it can’t detect your room so you won’t be charged [the $4.99 per stay fee]”. A quick connect to the AP with an SSID of goesh (I don’t know either), web-based login as user Sam Iam of Iam, Inc., access test to foxnews.com, and everything else is just an ssh connection to either Troy, MI or Reading, UK.

Now, sleep.

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Stinky, Dirty, and Happy

One of the teeter totters in the still-under-construction skill park area of the Stony Creek Mountain Bike Trails. This is being built by the Michigan Mountain Bike Association (MMBA).

I currently smell bad, mud is stuck to every major part of my body, and I feel very content. I’m also amazed at just how much water the skin on my head can wick from the rest of my body, only to sweat it out. (Yes, I have a big head and it is really oily and sweats a whole lot.)

Tonight my brother-in-law Craig and I met up at the Stony Creek mountain bike trails, as he’d just acquired a new-to-him bike and we wanted to do some riding. Not far into the trail we happened to run into the folks who were doing the regular Wednesday Night MMBA ride and tagged along with them. As we’d hit up The Pines earlier, we ended up covering all of the single track in the park, pretty much none of which Craig had been on before.

The ride was pretty uneventful and fun, and Craig seemed to do quite well for his first time on them with that bike. I almost fell once on The Pines when learning just how slippery mud is, but that wasn’t a huge deal. The mud after that just meant that both my bike and I regularly got sprayed with lumps.

After finishing up about 9.5 miles in the mountain bike trails Craig headed home and I took off to ride over to the still-under-construction Skills Park so that I could see it and hoping to meet up with Nick / Dirt. I’d been told that there were people there working on it this evening, but everyone had already left so I took a few minutes to down half a Clif bar (I was feeling a bit faint) and then headed back to the car and home.

Total distance today was about 14.5 miles, with more than 2/3 of that being off road, and primarily single track. I feel good.

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