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Category: cycling

…to Richmond

Published September 3, 2012

It’s been a while since I last rode to my parents house, so with family plans in the afternoon I set out from home just after 11am, hoping to arrive a bit after 1pm. The last time I did this ride it took me just shy of two hours and I was left very winded with sore legs. This time I beat my previous time by twenty minutes and felt like I could have pushed myself harder. Sure, I was on a different bike, in different weather, and dressed differently†, but I figure all of that riding earlier this year has actually made a difference.

Here is the ride data uploaded to Strava, if you’re interested. No, I don’t have a wheel sensor on that bike, thus no cadence and GPS-only speed.

Here’s a few more photos that I took during recent rides:

· Start of the east loop at Holdridge, known as Gruber’s Grinder. This is a slow, rough, but fun ride.
· Mushrooms found somewhere along Gruber’s Grinder.
· Ducks in a park in Lake Orion while stopping near the end of a ride with Scott.

Now, back to work for a couple of weeks, then off for another two. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a bunch of autumn riding (read: hopefully cool, dry weather) in during that time.

† On the last ride I was wearing typical winter riding wear and on a full suspension 29er with a knobby front tire. This time I was in typical summer jersey and bib shorts on my older Specialized Rockhopper Disc with a 29″ front wheel and two Small Block Eight tires. I doubt the suspension and clothing was responsible for 20 minutes, though.

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Gaffer’s Tape for Emergency Bike Repairs

Published August 29, 2012

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.

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Tailwind Racing’s Medals are Shiny

Published August 26, 2012

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.

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Titus Frame Damage

Published August 26, 2012

While out riding at Highland last weekend I fell over on the Titus. I slightly injured my shin, but also took a few scrapes out of the down tube. This is the first scrape-type damage done to the bike in 2.5 years of riding it (and the only frame damage), so it’s a bit frustrating. Still, I guess it’s not bad after that much riding.

This isn’t anything that should cause any problems (it’s just cosmetic), so that’s at least good.

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Addison Oaks MTB Route in OpenStreetMap

Published August 19, 2012

With the upload of OpenStreetMap changeset 12787189 I have finished adding all of the hiking and equestrian trails, intersection markers, and mile markers needed to draw a second generation version of CRAMBA’s Addison Oaks map. This data includes the still-under-construction connector trail which’ll create a new park entrance at Indian Lake and Lake George and provide a safe route to Addison Oaks East and Oakland Township’s Cranberry Lake Park. I also added all of the named routes through the park as found on the official park map, including the specific hiking, biking, and equestrian permissions and restrictions.

If all goes according to plan, the next version of the map will show the actual locations of the C and D trails, shared hike/bike/equestrian (on C only) areas in the west of the park while highlighting the MTB route. The mountain bike route (trail F) frequently crosses these trails and occasionally shares their route, so I want to better illustrate the interplay between them all. This next version will also be based on OpenStreetMap data, which beyond the benefits of being CC BY-SA licensed should make it easier to update and use for future planning.

The only things I have left to add to OpenStreetMap before it’ll be usable for drawing a complete map of the park are a few campground roads and the B loop, a relatively flat and straight hike/bike loop around the campground in the northeast of the park. I’ll probably record that route the next time I’m at the park.

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20 Miles before 8:00 AM

Published August 17, 2012

After dropping Danielle off for the her volunteering / crewing at Oakland Mall for the 3-Day and picking up an apple fritter from Donut Castle in Warren I found myself home just a little after 5:00 AM. With a fair bit of time before needing to start work and my feeling sleepy I decided to head out to River Bends for a quick ride.

I returned home just shy of two hours later, having headed up to River Bends via the usual route, through 2.5 laps of the ridable single track (all but the floodplain seasonal loops), then back home via Utica and Whispering Woods Park. The photo above is from a brief jaunt down into the floodplain to see how wet it was. I came across Jeremy’s bridge, which will hopefully be put back some time within the next week.

Since I was starting out in the dark I brought along lights, but they were unnecessary for seeing on pavement, and not needed in the woods by the time I was done with the first lap. This was the first starting-in-darkness ride I’ve done, and as I’m not accustomed to starting off in the dark and needing lights less and less as things progress it was a bit weird. The sun also comes from completely different angles in the morning, making it unexpectedly glaring on some parts of the trail and causing a few stop lights to be difficult to see.

Details of the ride are available here on Strava if you’re interested.

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Functional Mukluk

Published July 27, 2012

After the ill-executed (but fun) beach ride a couple weeks ago the Mukluk was in serious need of some work. Specifically, I needed to replace the seized bottom bracket bearings and fix the lower derailleur pulley, and I also wanted to replace the becoming-worn middle chain ring as a bunch of chain suck during the beach ride kept me in the granny gear.

By picking up and assembling some tools (a blind bearing puller and a bearing press assembly) along with the required parts I was able to get all the affected bearings and chainring replaced, and I also swapped out the chain for a standard SRAM PC-991. The Mukluk had come with a KMC Z99 Rust Buster galvanized chain, and while it initially seemed nice I begun wondering if it’s rough surface was contributing to chainring wear.

The replacement chainring is a cheap (~$10) Truvativ ramped 32 tooth steel middle chainring to replace the stock e*thirteen part. While a bit heavier than the alloy model, I suspect that the steel ring will last quite a bit longer than the alloy one did, even when riding in potentially icky conditions. If it doesn’t, at least it was only $10.

A quick ride at River Bends this afternoon ending in rain showed that everything is working nicely, so hopefully everything’s in order for riding the bike as part of a fatbike-only team at tomorrow’s Tree Farm Relay.

Here’s some photos of various steps of this work:

· The e*thirteen bottom bracket after removing the bearings with a blind bearing puller. Conveniently this bottom bracket uses 6806-2RS bearings, the same size as BB30.
· Detail of the 6806-2RS marking on the bearing from the e*thirteen bottom bracket. This one seized up after a ride along the beach and in some fresh lake water.
· KML-brand 6806-2RS bearings to replace the seized bearings in the e*thirteen bottom bracket. These are BB30-size bearings.
· Bearing press made from some eBay-purchased dies, threaded rod, washers, and nuts. Bearings are also shown.
· Home-made bearing press before pushing the BB30 (6806-2RS) bearings into the e*thirteen bottom bracket cups.
· KML 6806-2RS bearings (BB30-size) pressed into e*thirteen bottom bracket cups. This went very smoothly.
· e*thirteen XCX crankset test fit with the newly-installed bearings. Everything aligned nicely.
· Lower SRAM X9 rear derailleur pulley after pressing in a new 626-2RS bearing. This cracked the inner ring of the pully, but appears well seated and spins smoothly so hopefully will remain usable.
· New SRAM PC-991 chain and steel Truvativ Trushift chainring (104 BCD, 32 T) on the e*thirteen crankset.

For reference, here’s the specialized parts that were used:

· e*thirteen Bottom Bracket Bearings: 6806-2RS (Same as BB30)
· SRAM 2011 X9 Lower Derailleur Pulley Bearing: 626-2RS
· BB30 Installation Drivers purchased from eBay seller mtbtools with threaded rod from Mid-States Bolt and Screw.

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Ruined e*thirteen Bottom Bracket Bearings

Published July 18, 2012

My Salsa Mukluk 2 came fitted with an e*thirteen XCX+ Triple crankset, and unfortunately, the bearings that came with it were not as sealed or water resistant as I’d expected. After last weekend’s fat biking excursions into the lake I gave my bike a good check-over which included pulling the cranks to look for water in the frame and check out the bearings. Upon initially pulling the cranks the bearings were dirty and felt a bit scratchy when turned, but there wasn’t any noticeable water in the bottom bracket area so I left it all apart to thoroughly dry and clean figuring that I could live with the slight scratching. However, after drying out overnight the bearings went from slightly crunchy to thoroughly seized up.

Since the bearings were clearly useless I purchased a blind hole bearing puller and removed them from the cups, leaving the cups in the frame. I then removed the seals and cage from one baering, degreased it, and took the picture above showing just how damaged the bearings and races became. (Another view of it is available here.)

Normally the bearings and races should be shiny metallic, not corroded and scored as they are here. To my surprise the seals were fairly easy to remove and there was a lot less grease inside than I’d expected (the balls were only lightly coated, not packed), so I can’t help but wonder if with more grease the bearings wouldn’t have had problems. It also makes me interested in trying to pack extra grease into the replacement bearings. However, this would require removing the seals which brings with it a risk of damage…

(For reference, the e*thirteen bottom bracket uses the same 6806-2RS bearings (30mm x 42mm x 7mm) that fit the BB30 standard, this got me thinking about replacing the bearings instead of buying a whole new bottom bracket. I’ve obtained a blind hole bearing puller, bearings, and tools for pressing new bearings into place, so with any luck I’ll be able to replace the bearings and get the crankset working properly again.)

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Fat Biking in The Thumb

Published July 15, 2012

Yesterday some friends and I had plans to meet up in the tip of The Thumb to do some fat bike riding, which resulted in two separate rides. For the first, Bob, Rodney, his friend Gary, and I met up near at Danielle’s family’s cabin near Sleeper State Park and rode along both Sand Road and some of the forested dunes near there. This went well, but wasn’t really much different from riding typical sandy two track, and after an hour of this it was time to drive down the road and meet James for some beach riding at a park he’d picked out.

Arriving at Jenks County Park we found a rather nice beach heading in both directions, along with rocky shallows extending quite a ways out into the lake that we could ride on. This worked out quite well for almost two hours of riding, doing everything from super low tire pressure (~5 PSI) plodding along in the sand, riding in the edge of the lake, cruising over dinner plate like slate, and riding in 4-8″ deep water along small boulders. Being on the beach the average temperature for this ride was 97.3°F with the peak up at 102.2°F. The water helped temper this a bit, but it was still hot and very sunny out there.

Riding in the water seems to have been a bit problematic, as my chain is pretty gunked up and resulted in some frame-scratching chain suck that was really frustrating me. Per this article (a pretty authoritative source) this shouldn’t happen even with a dirty chain, so now I have to figure out how to repair (mostly recolor and cover) this damage and keep it from happening in the future.

After riding we chose a restaurant mostly-randomly (based on proximity and sane reviews via Google Maps) and ended up eating at The Farm. While not cheap (entrees were $15 – $30), the food was outstanding. I was quite glad we were able to find a quality restaurant somewhere up north. It was a very nice end to a fun day.

If you’re interested, here is the GPS plot + stats from this ride, and here is a small album of random snapshots taken at various points along the way. There is also this video of James riding his fixed gear Pugsley through the outflow of a river in Port Crescent State Park. It was a bit too deep for him to keep going, as the buoyancy of the tires and thickness of the water seemed to keep him from moving forward once the bike got to the top tube.

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