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Category: cycling

A Clean Drivetrain is a Happy Drivetrain

Since the El Mariachi Ti was caked with wet sand from Iceman I decided to give it a thorough drivetrain cleaning before riding any more. Everything is now shiny and clean, although I seem to have let the chain go a bit too long. After ~1800 miles it was stretched enough that I immediately replaced it, and as a result the small (26t) ring on the crankset is looking a bit hooked. I dropped a new chain on, and with replacements rings costing only $20 or so (much less than a chain!) I’m going to replace the ring as well before taking it out.

With winter coming, contrary to my normal practice of stripping off the factory lube and applying ProGold Xtreme, I left the original SRAM lube on the chain. I’m normally not too fond of this thick, greasy lube because it’s all over the outer plates and thus collects a bunch of gunk. I figure that with the potential for wet/sloppy riding I may as well leave it in place, as it’ll protect the chain from gunk penetration and be harder to wash out. With this lube the chain is notably stiffer than normal and it’ll likely pick up a bunch more gunk, but with all the other inefficiencies and sloppyness of autumn / winter riding I don’t anticipate it being much of a problem. I’ll just strip the factory lube off when I do the next drivetrain cleaning.

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Iceman 2013: Wet Sand and Fun

I was going to write a somewhat lengthy post about this year’s Iceman Cometh Challenge race and put together some bullet points about the race for things that I wanted to cover, but I can’t bring myself to flesh it out into a complete post. Instead I’ll just post the bullet points themselves, expanded a bit to be solid on their own. It was a very fun race, a nice day, but not eventful in any way that makes me want to write a lot. I simply enjoyed myself, saw lots of friends, and had a great weekend with Danielle:

Here’s those bullet points:

  • Wet sand.
  • Large, infrequent mud puddles.
  • Raining as we left Traverse City, but stopped on the way to Kalkaska.
  • Really friendly people: no problems with passes either way.
  • I thought my HR monitor was reading high, but it was either consistently off by a few tens of percent (never seen this before) or I was able to ride harder than expected for extended periods of time.
  • My official result: 14 1374 Steve Vigneau Shelby Townshi MI 9:59:35 10:48:13 2:19:11
  • Four minutes faster (would have been doable) and I’d have been in the top 10. Oh well.
  • Started in Wave 9, almost missed my start as I was using the toilet when everyone was lining up. Took longer than expected when I got done 9 was moving up to the start area.
  • Chain drop behind cassette on a steep climb when downshifting somewhere after Anita’s Hill. Unsure why: sand? Can’t reproduce.
  • Not spent at end, could have pushed more.
  • YouTube video of my finish: link.
  • Strava data: link.
  • Congrats to people who won things: Joe Seidl, Brad Lako, Alex Gonzalez, John Osgood
  • Person who died: http://kolotc.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/bigger-than-a-race-for-ken/
  • Someone got hit by a car riding away from the finish area on the road. No word on their condition.
  • Foods consumed: ~2 hours of Infinit (from a 3 hour bottle), ~40oz bottles of water in pack, caffeinated gel before hand.
  • Clothing: Pearl Izumi boots, tall wool socks, plain black thermal knickers, Under Armor thermal base layer, summer jersey, Pearl Izumi AmFib gloves, cycling cap, helmet, glasses.
  • Photos of me: MarathonFOTO.com.

The photo above? That’s just of some random sand still on my bike a week after the race. There’s so much wet sand and grit on my bike that it really needs a drivetrain cleaning before I ride it again. It was okay during the race, but as I’d switch to a less-used gear combo there’d be a few minutes of scraping sounds as the sand worked its way off the cogs.

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Specialized Avatar Comp Gel

I’ve really been enjoying riding the Jamis Nova, but as mentioned earlier I picked up a Specialized Avatar Comp Gel to try instead of the Specialized Phenom that’s been giving me issues. Today I headed out for a gravel road ride with Carlos and Lee and gave it a proper outdoor ride, and I’m quite happy with it. I spent 3-4 miles getting comfortable on it, but once I found a nice spot things were good.

We rode ~66.1 miles (Strava) of mixed pavement, gravel/dirt roads, and rail trail and I never really felt a need to stand up and stretch my butt muscles. The Avatar also felt a bit more conducive to being leaned over further, something that’s generally better for the drop bar bike geometry.

I did have one new problem with my index finger on my right hand being half-numb after the ride, a fair sign of nerve injury. This hadn’t happened to me before, so I suspect the new saddle has me positioned so I grip the bars differently than before. I think this means I need to work on the bar positioning a bit more…

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Refilling ProGold Chain Lube Bottles

My preferred bicycle chain lube is ProGold Xtreme (formerly known as Voyager), but I prefer to purchase the larger 16oz. bottle to refill the smaller drip bottles. Pouring chain lube is not something you want to screw up, as it’d be really frustrating to clean up.

To avoid problems I used a T-pin and punched holes in the foil safety cap on the large bottle as seen above. The large hole for pouring is about 3mm x 1mm and the smaller vent is just a simple pinhole. With this setup I can easily pour lube from the large bottle into the smaller ones with little risk of pouring too fast and splashing.

With this setup I’ve even been able to easily refill the ProGold eyedrop-size sample bottles with Xtreme, which is nice because I like to carry one with me when riding.

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2013-2014 Trainer Season Setup

Thanks to a friendly person from the MMBA Forum I was able to pick up a low cost Dimension (QBP #WE8677) rear wheel for use with the Jamis Nova when it is fitted to the trainer. Combined with an CycleOps Fluid 2 Trainer that I picked up a couple of years ago, a CycleOps-branded Trainer Tire (Kenda manufactured), and a barely used cassette from eBay†, and a Continental tube (recommended by Ron at Fraser Bicycle and Fitness for trainer use due to high heat tolerance) this should allow me to swap the bike on and off trainer quickly. Unlike my previous setup I won’t have to swap tires, which should make this bike more useful overall.

When on longer rides I’d been not-quite-happy with the Specialized Phenom saddle that I love for mountain biking, so I also picked up a Specialized Avatar Comp Gel to try out. After a bit of fiddling it seems like it’ll be okay, but I think an extended session on the trainer and a proper ride outside will be needed before I decide if it’ll work or not. With the time change this weekend I can only hope that there’s a good time for another long dirt road ride soon…

I’m not really looking forward to trainer season, but sometimes I need a bit of exercise, don’t want to venture outside, and thus find the trainer worthwhile. When used in conjunction with TrainerRoad and something decent on the TV it’s really not too bad, and I feel good when I’m done.

† The trainer wheel has the original Shimano CS-5600 cassette that came with the Jamis Nova on it; the normal wheel will get the nearly-new one from eBay.

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Stony Creek Lake is Low

 

Much of the water has been let out of Stony Creek Lake at Stony Creek Metropark so repairs can be made to the dams, and this means that the shore is far wider than normal. Stony Creek Lake is a man-made lake, so once the dams are opened the level goes down dramatically, exposing the typical clay soil of the area. As much of this has dried out it’s possible to ride much of it on a fatbike with the tires aired down.

This isn’t quite the same (or as exciting) as proper beach riding but it’s still something different and fun.

Yesterday I was in a poor mood and headed out to Stony Creek for a nice, slow, exploratory ride before Danielle and I met friends for dinner out in Ann Arbor. This ride helped clear my head and let me enjoy the nice autumn evening. The weather has been perfect this time of the year, and I really didn’t want to miss out on it.

Data from the ride can be seen here in Strava.

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Presta Valve Core

 

Here is a Stan’s NoTubes Core Remover Tool† holding a Presta valve core. A few weeks ago when preparing to ride Poto the nut came off the top of a valve core, and today I finally got around to replacing the core with a spare. There was something that I liked about the look of the core in the tool, and normally one doesn’t see this side of the valve, so here is a photo of it.

† I own both the Stan’s Core Remover Tool and the Park Tool VC-1 Valve Core Tool and, in my opinion, the Stan’s tool is much better. For some reason the Park VC-1 doesn’t fit on a number of the Presta valves that I have, whereas the Stan’s fits on them all.

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Massive Fallout 2013: Single Speed Edition

When I woke up this morning for the highly-anticipated Massive Fallout ride it was raining, the ground was wet, and there was a threat of continued precipitation throughout the day. With the forecast calling for the dripping to cease at 9am I decided to ride the Salsa El Mariachi Single Speed instead. It was already a bit dirty, and I really prefer to ride a single speed when there’s the chance to ride sloppy trails and roads, as the simplified drivetrain really cuts down on wear and the potential for things to go wrong. A clip-on fender was added to keep spray off of my rear end, which is quite nice during longer days.

While I’d never really considered a single speed an appropriate bike for me to do long endurance-ish rides, I figured it was worth a go. Having been fitted with a suspension fork in anticipation of PSSWC this seemed like as good of time as any, and it worked out quite well. I missed the gears in a few places (slow climbs, dirt roads, the PCT), but it was comfortable and removed concern about grinding parts down with wet grit.

The group I was with ended up finishing the whole route, save for skipping the upper ridge and switchbacks in Bloomer as not everyone in our group was comfortable on those segments. We finished by riding over to the Stony Creek main entrance and visiting the Trolly and Fitness Trails before riding the paved path back to the main parking lot. My computer logged a total of ~60.47 miles with an ride time of 5:38:16 (out of 6:59:52 total). Unfortunately the wheel magnet was bumped early on so this is mostly GPS/GLONASS data and thus less accurate (as deatailed here for the GPS-only Edge 500) and full of false pauses, so the actual value may be a little higher. The data in Strava can be found here.

Massive Fallout is my favorite group ride. During my first year of riding (2008) I rode with Rob Ritzenhein and Jeff Wood, having an incredibly great time. It was hard, but I finished, and I enjoyed it. I strongly suspect that the friendly folks on that ride and the comfortable atmosphere are a big reason why I kept enjoying the social aspects of the local MTB community. For this year’s event I ended up meeting Wendi and Jered in Stony Creek and riding with them, adding Ian to our group for the final half. This was really fun, and exactly what I wanted out of today: a long, beautiful autumn ride on some of Southeast Michigan’s best mountain bike trails with friends.

Oh, and the rain that was threatening all day? It didn’t arrive until almost 10pm at night, long after we’d finished.

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Thoughts on Interbike by Invitation

Having vacation time to use up I decided that heading out to Interbike would be pretty nifty. I didn’t have time to set things up for attending as a proper attendee (one day I would like to go representing CRAMBA-IMBA to get us more sponsors/donors), but Mike Flack at Trails-Edge was able to get me on the Interbike by Invitation program.

This new program allows invited consumers to attend the last day of Interbike as a VIP and receive a gift bag on registration, for a $50 fee. This seemed reasonable to me, so I booked a trip to Las Vegas.

On my first night in town, Wednesday, I planned to attend CrossVegas, which was recommended by both the Interbike site and CX-fan friends. This is where I hit the first wrinkle: Interbike passes were required to board the shuttle to the race site, but by Invitation people couldn’t pick up their passes until the following morning. I ended up taking a $40 cab ride out to the venue and was able to just board a shuttle back without showing a badge, so everything worked out. But, it was a bit frustrating to not be able to use the outbound shuttle.

The CrossVegas race itself was great. A full writeup on the race can be found here at Cyclocross Magazine, and the venue is a great bowl-shaped grassy area with great visibility. There was also plenty of reasonably priced beer and burritos (from Qdoba, but still decent) available. I’d love to attend races like this more often.

When collecting my ticket for CrossVegas I received an interesting coupon: offering my admission to Interbike on Friday, the same day I was already limited to via by Invitation, for $25. This is half the price of the way by which I’d registered, and didn’t involve receiving a bag of goodies, but upon receiving mine the following day I found it to not be worth the $25 up charge. My bag included a poster, long-form uber-stylish cycling magazine, cooling band, size small T-shirt, and some sample self-adhesive reflectors. I feel bad and wasteful saying this, but it is mostly stuff that I’ll toss out because it is completely not useful to me.

The following evening was the USA CRITS final in a parking lot of Mandalay Bay, the venue for Interbike. This was a pretty fun and exciting race as well, but due to the onsite food being handled by the resort it was a good deal more expensive ($6.50 for what seemed like a 12oz cup vs $5 for 16-20oz at CrossVegas), and I suspect this contributed to the more mellow crowd. I’d never seen a crit before, so it was pretty exciting to see pros holding ~27MPH for 1.5 hours around a twisty, metal-edged 1km course.

After getting a good night sleep I woke this morning, excited to attend Interview and see what the show was like. Overall this was a really good time, but I was actually a bit let down as many of the brands that I hoped to check out weren’t present. Of QBP‘s family only Surly was there, which disappointed me as I really wanted to see All-City who, per this blog post, chose to skip the show citing strong sales. Salsa also wasn’t there; maybe they are doing so well that they don’t need to be touting their wares at a B2B show.

There also seemed to be a strong standoffish feeling from many vendors, which I can’t help but think from our notably different …by Invitation badges. While I can’t really fault internal sales folks for being apprehensive about talking to the general public, it seemed as if some of the brand reps didn’t want to say much. Then again, it was nearing the end of the last day of what’s probably their most hectic week of the year.

It was also pretty clear that the brands people were dancing around their normal show sales, with tape covering (or changing to MSRP) prices for show specials and others just saying that the product (even those which aren’t shipping yet or were special Interbike versions) are available at your local bike shop. This is good for the shops in general, but always came after some awkward checking of ID tags. A couple vendors offered me their products on a deal anyway, and while I’d love to have tried the two, I didn’t really need them and they would have been awkward to carry. I probably could have snagged some cheap carbon rims or a frame from one of the Chinese vendors as well, but again… no need.

I did get to see some pretty interesting folks as well. For some reason I kept crossing paths with Jeff Jones, and saw Kirk Pacenti,
Ron from King Cage, and a very business-looking guy with the last name off Thomson in the Thomson booth. I also got to meet and shake hands with Stan of Stan’s NoTubes while talking to him about his prototype fatbike tubeless rim. (He kept having to stop and ask people — including me — not to look inside because it is the very first prototype and still has some very secret details. He seemed quite proud of it, though, and holding it with a deflated tire soundly seated I’m apt to believe his claims.)

So all said, I think it was a good trip thus far, and if the Emerald Expositions folks can sort out the … by Invitation quirks I think they’ll have a good option for the general public. I think for me I won’t want to come back unless it is as a full attendee, hopefully with a bit of business to do as well.

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Jamis Nova + CrateWorks Pro XL-C

I’d previously had plans to ship a bicycle out to California for a trip visiting friends, but ended up cancelling this part after beginning to pack my bike. A buddy of mine, Tom Lining, was nice enough to let me borrow the CrateWorks Pro XL-C box which he used on a recent trip to Germany for Bike 4 Peaks. This would have worked out rather well, but mid-packing I came to the realization that my trip will likely be much less stressful if I don’t bring a bike.

While it’d be nice to have a bike out in San Francisco and people to ride with, these downsides felt overwhelming and kept me from wanting to bring it.

  • Packing the bike: If I do this wrong, it’ll get damaged, either outbound or inbound.
  • Unpacking the bike: I’d really prefer to have my full suite of tools for bike assembly. Without this I’ll have to make do with a multitool and whatever I pack.
  • Clothes: I’ll also have to fit in bike clothes, shoes, helmet, gloves, glasses, bottles, etc.
  • The City: I’m not at all familiar with road riding, much less in an urban area. If I wasn’t certain to have someone to ride with I’d be very apprehensive about going out myself.
  • Routes: I don’t know any good cycling routes in the area, and it’d be very complicated to find some if I can’t find people to ride with. Thus, my desire for lengthier (2-4 hour) rides each day would likely not be met.
  • Insurance: Should something go wrong, do I really want to have to deal with insurance and prove that I didn’t screw up? And what if I did?

Shipping via BikeFlights.com was quoted at a very reasonable $170-ish (round trip) with $3000 insurance, but that’s still $170 I don’t have to spend. I’d consider this same setup (a CrateWorks box + BikeFlights.com) again in the future should I need to ship a bike. It seems like a good setup, but for this trip… I think I’ll stick to walking / hiking, and maybe renting a bike for a short poke around the city.

Just simply coming to the decision that not bring a bike was for the best made me feel more relaxed. And that’s what vacations are about, right?

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