Category: acquired things

I recently came into possession of a roll of fluorescent green Pro-Gaff gaffer’s tape. To date I’ve got little experience with gaffer’s tape, but from playing with and reading up on it, it appears to be the sort of tape that does everything that one ascribes duct tape to do, but probably actually does it. Most specifically, it has less vinyl and a finer cloth structure in the tape itself, and the adhesive is synthetic rubber and designed to be removed cleanly.

As a result of this, I replaced the duct tape wrapped around my bicycle pump handle with some of this tape. I think that, should the need arise to use tape for emergency bicycle repairs, this will be the tape of choice. The cloth leads me to believe it’ll be a very functional tire boot, and the finer adhesive seems like it won’t stick to itself as readily, a problem which generally renders a piece of duct tape unusable.

Shown above is my Crank Brothers Power Pump Ultra with seven or eight turns of tape wrapped around the handle. I’ve been quite happy with this pump so far; it’s just worked every time I’ve needed to use it.

Today was Tailwind Racing’s Stony End of Summer Classic race, and I found myself competing in it. A bit surprisingly I ended up coming in fifth, which got me a medal, shown above. This is the first time I’ve received any medal in a race since some of the Lake Orion High School weeknight races three years back. These are pretty nice medals. There is a sticker on the back which lists the race, class, and place.

This was a really fun race. It was somewhat hot, humid, and a bit dusty, but it was fun. Everyone that I encountered was really courteous and good about passing and being passed, the course was a good length without having an irritating extra short/steep sledding hill at the end. My official time ended up being 1:50:55.399 with laps of 35:49.943, 37:46.442, and 37:19.014. Only once did I almost throw up, but I was able to get that under control and keep going without any problems.

When riding I almost always carry a Deuter Race Air Lite hydration pack (photo) containing stuff I may need during the ride. I’ve had the bag for less than a year and recently a leak developed at the bottom of the bladder, right at the base of the outlet’s weld. Deuter bags carry a lifetime warranty, so I submitted a warranty request.

A few days later I had a new bladder in my possession, and instead of sending the old one back Deuter just asked for a photo of the bladder and where it’s leaking. That’s what can be seen above. This leak wasn’t huge, but it was enough that with each ride the bottom of my bag would be wet, occasionally dripping on me. I was more concerned that it would grow, resulting in an unexpected failure leaving me stuck without water.

I’ve been really happy with the Deuter pack thus far, and good warranty support when it failed was a nice bonus.

I really like ProGold’s ProLink chain lube, and I’ve been using it for a couple years. Since my smaller 4oz bottles were running out I picked up a large 16oz one and refilled the others. With the large 16oz bottle costing around $19 on Amazon I was able to refill the smaller bottles for half the price of buying new ones. This worked out pretty well, and pouring from the soda bottle-sized neck into the small squeeze bottle necks was easier than planned.

The only odd / amusing thing is that the 16oz bottle comes with a spray head. As I normally lubricate my chain one drop at a time (one drop per roller) I can’t ever see the need for dumping that much chain lube on anything in one go. Maybe if I was using it to lube industrial chains… Maybe…

Today two new middle rings from WickWërks arrived in the mail. Earlier last week I emailed the folks over there asking about some rumored stainless steel middle rings, and while they replied saying that project is on hold, they offered me some replacement aluminum rings for $10/ea. That was a deal I couldn’t pass up, as I really like their rings and will likely have worn through my current middle ring by the end of the year.

They also mentioned a set of 22-33-44 tooth rings that are coming out soon… Those sound pretty nifty. I’d bet there’s something neat they figured out with the 11-tooth step between rings.

A convenient trade took place recently, with me my swapping someone the white Specialzed Phenom from the trainer for a same-size one, but black with a red nose and wings. (He wanted the white one to match the all-white bike that he’s putting together.) Tonight I set it all up, taking the original Phenom with silver accents from the Titus and moved it over to the trainer and, as seen above, putting the new red-accented one on the Titus. I think it’ll match nicely with the other red bits on the bike such as the brake barrel adjusters, cassette, and cable housing.

This spring, once I put the trainer away (or maybe even a little before then), I’ll then take the silver-accented one and move it over to the El Mariachi. (This bike doesn’t have any red on it at all, and thus the red-accented saddle would have looked rather out of place.) I have a feeling I’ll be riding this bike quite a bit and I’d like it fitted with a saddle that agrees with bit more with my bits than the WTB Laser V that’s currently on it. The Laser V is a good saddle for a bike that I don’t ride for long periods of time, but extended periods of sitting on it tend to make things feel a bit… off.