Category: cycling

2010 Island Lake Bike Demo Day

May 9, 2010

Today was the 2010 Island Lake Bike Demo Day out at Michigan’s Island Lake Recreation Area. At this event a number of local shops and bicycle companies showed up with all manner of bikes to try out on a ~2 mile segment of relatively flat single track. Despite the on/off rain and mid-40s weather it ended up being a rather nice day as I was finally able to try out a number of different bikes and components that I’ve been curious about.

Specifically, I tried five bikes today; all 29ers:

· Mike Flack / Trail’s Edge‘s Pivot Mach 429 (Formula brakes, SRAM twist shifters)
· Marty’s Orange Vassago Jabberwocky (32:18 29er steel single speed, White Brothers Magic Fork)
· Niner S.I.R. 9 in A&W Rootbeer Brown (32:18 aluminum fully rigid single speed, Hope hubs)
· All Carbon Fiber Cannondale Flash (Lefty fork)
· Specialized S-Works Stumpjumper Carbon HT 29er (SRAM XX 2×10 drivetrain, Specialized Phenom saddle)

Out of all of these, the only bike I didn’t care for was the Specialized S-Works. Being a super-light race bike I think it was just a bit too stiff for me. Having a not-quite-right drivetrain didn’t help matters either as shifting wasn’t great in half the cassette but I imagine that’s just something that happens on demo bikes, especially towards the end of a demo day, which is when I tried it out.

I liked all of the other bikes that I tried. Each would have needed some minor adjusting to be something that I’d be able to ride frequently, but that’s just part and parcel of any new bike. I would have liked to try some road bikes, but the wet roads, cold weather, and on/off spray kept me away from it. It also would have been nice to try out a cyclocross bike, but there were very few of them present and I just didn’t really get around to it. After all of this I’m thinking that I might like to get a 29er single speed. However, that’ll have to wait for a bit, as I just recently picked up a new bike and I can’t actually justify one. Thankfully I may be able to borrow one from time to time.

This was also a nice day for hanging out with people, both those that I regularly see and others with whom I haven’t crossed paths in a while. I also happened to meet a few new people (including the frequent-replier-to-these-posts Ali B. and some other folks from the MMBA forum, including someone from whom I bought some tires and pedals.

Anyway, here’s two more photos from today:

· Erik on the Pivot Mach 429 as we headed down the pavement to the demo single track section.
· All of the Trail’s Edge demo bikes, tent, and work stand area fit in the back of Mike’s van. He packs very well.

cycling weather

LOHS; Lots Of Hard Singletrack

April 27, 2010

Lake Orion High School (LOHS), site of the Dragon GAP Winter Race that I participated earlier in the year, was the site of today’s bike ride. I met up with someone from the MMBA Forum named Mike in the parking lot, then Mr. Steve Kinley, builder of all the great (and difficult^†) trails at LOHS. While I’d ridden the trails before, it was only during races so I only got to see bits and pieces of the single track. As he led today’s ride Steve clearly illustrated the route through all the single track, and a nice outer loop around the trails at Bald Mountain South Unit. I’d imagine that I won’t have a problem finding my way through the trails next time I’m out there.

Amusingly, while riding through Bald Mountain we came upon a group of ten or fifteen hikers / walkers, most with children, who were congretating at a particularly hidden intersection. As we slowed to make our way past / through where they were standing, most of the adults were commenting to the kids about us wearing helmets and using us as some sort of example. One kid piped up, rather amusingly “can we eat them?”. In retrospect it’s possible he was talking about some found berries or whatnot, but the timing was perfect.

^† Mr. Kinley is a very good rider, and I feel that he builds trails which are challenging to him. Therefore they are particularly challenging to normal people like me. In this case it’s just a solid overall workout, leaving both my legs and lungs feeling a bit worn out.

cycling outdoors

Busy, busy, busy!

April 26, 2010

I haven’t posted anything in roughly 20 days, mostly because I’ve been busy traveling Europe and generally being busy with stuff. I arrived home today, and I’ll post more about that later after I’ve sorted through the photos. Instead I’ll just mention the brief things that my day held:

· Waking at 4:30am UK time to catch a flight. Thus I’ve been up almost 23 hours straight and traveled by a car (on the left and right side of the road), train, bus, and airplane.
· Replacing a hard drive in banstyle.nuxx.net on the way home, as my mom waited in the car. I was very thankful for this, as it kept me from having to drive back to Southfield during rush hour.
· Got a replacement SIM card to put in my replacement Nexus One. My other one was lost / stolen (I’m really not sure which) in the airport on the way to the UK.
· Finished setting up a rigid fork on my Specialized 26″ hard tail, getting it ready to be used as a commuter / light trail bike complete with rack and new rear blinky light.
· Went for a 20-ish mile test ride mixing single track, two track, and pavement. The fork works well and I like it, so I stopped for frozen custard at Custard Spot. I don’t know the distance because the bike doesn’t have a computer on it.
· Washed sheets and showered to remove mud from me, and started other laundry.
· Downloaded all the queued work email so I can begin reading it tomorrow morning.

Now I think it’s time for bed. It was a really excellent trip filled with good friends and lots of nice people, but I must admit that I’m a bit glad to be home.

Sleep will be needed, because I suspect work is going to get quite busy as soon as I return tomorrow morning.

acquired things around the house cycling food work

Stupid Thorns

March 31, 2010

This morning when I went to leave for work, my bike (which was on the back of the car) had a flat tire. I opened it up, ran my hand carefully around the inside of the tire to check for anything poking through, and found nothing. The old tube still seemed to hold pressure, and after a new was fitted things were fine. Tonight’s ~22 mile ride had no problems, but after eating at Rochester Mills I found my front tire low again.

It turns out that the thorn seen above was hiding under some mud, relatively dull, and slowly poking at the tube. Oh well, at least I can patch them and be ready for riding on Friday, and it’s not something weird like rim tape shifting, bad seams in the tube, or a defective valve.

(Yes, I know that’s a terrible photo… It was a very long exposure and I think the tire deflated some while it was sitting there, moving the subject.)

cycling

New Crabon Fibre Breaks

March 27, 2010

After coming across a rather good deal for a barely used (installed, but removed before the bike was built up) set of 2009 Avid Elixir CR disc brakes with black carbon fiber levers (blades) I got them installed last night. While they felt soft at first, the brief ride that Danielle and I took around Stony Creek’s Trolley Trails got them about 50% bedded in. Even using a smaller rotor in the front than I’d previously had (160mm vs. 185mm) they seem to be quite sufficient stopping my heavy person on big 29er wheels.

Since I had to disassemble things a bit to fit the new rotors and such, I ended up swapping out the 2.2″ Kenda Nevegals that came with the bike for some 2″ Specialized The Captain Control tires that I’d picked up in the MMBA annual meeting fundraiser auction for $40. These are simply a larger version of the tire I’ve had on my 26″ bike since July 2008, and a tire that I rather like.

I also swapped out the NiteRider Rebel 1.0 computer for my old Cateye Strada Wireless, which despite having a large and somewhat fiddly speed sensor is much more readable and usable. The NiteRider Rebel 1.0 had two problems that I couldn’t get over. The first is the angle of the display coupled with my stem mounting and the stem angle, leading to the LCD being hard to read when leaning right over it or standing over the bike. The second is a lot of latency between button pushes (up to 1.5 seconds while moving) making it hard to switch modes and check things while en route. It would be hard to tell if a button press was not registering or simply being slow^†. Both of these were irritating enough to make me simply go back to the old computer.

With all of this working out it looks like I might have a pair of BB7s and a NiteRider Rebel 1.0 computer for sale soon. I might even consider selling off the Nevegals, although having some 2.2″ tires hanging around could be nice come winter, or if I’m heading anywhere sandy.

^†I suspect the device uses an interrupt on change for the wheel sensor then just polls the button, and has a few opportunities for user input to be slowly read. Perhaps their higher end computers are better.

acquired things cycling

Early Spring 2010 Moblog Photos

March 23, 2010

Here, have some new photos posted to my moblog:

· I rolled up the rim and did not win.
· My Specialized is now lacking a fork, as the Fox is being sold and the new rigid fork has not yet arrived.
· UPS RMA label for sending back the damaged Belleville 700 boots received from Botach Tactical.
· Six bottles of Blenheim Ginger Ale in the fridge.
· Garlic and sesame bagel, part of my breakfast before going to work on the trails at Addison Oaks.
· The urinal at Pei Wei in Rochester, MI is rather close to the ground. It would be good for urinal pooping.
· Sending my census form in. This makes me feel like an adult.
· Ice and snow around a drain pipe on the Paint Creek behind Rochester library. Seen while wandering around before an MMBA marketing meeting.
· Forlorn bag of salt in the parking lot at work, with a bit more context.
· A cut open bag of salt left leaning against a curb at work. I imagine it was caught in a plowed pile of snow.

I should set up a more automated method of posting these than simple manual uploads.

cycling food found things outdoors work

Battery Charging Paranoia

March 23, 2010

This is my setup for the first charge of the Li-Poly battery used in the a Bicycle Video Recorder. I had the battery sitting in a partially covered ammo can, my multimeter and thermocouple monitoring the battery’s temperature, and the charger connected to a Kill-A-Watt to show current flow. While charging occurred I’d periodically check in on this to be sure the temp isn’t way up, current draw isn’t unexpectedly high, or the battery hadn’t exploded. Not pictured is the fire extinguisher which was located ten feet away from this setup towards the stairs.

As the green light on the charger shows, the battery is now charged, and everything sitting in place without a coating of extinguisher dust shows that nothing exploded. Now it’s time to grab an 8GB or 16GB SD card and do a runtime test. That sounds like a job for tomorrow, though.

cycling making things

Danielle Rides Trails!

March 19, 2010

Today after work Danielle and I headed out to Stony Creek so she could try out her new 29er on some trails. Prior to today she hadn’t ridden a bike off road, and despite some initial (but quickly alleviated) fears about how a bike feels when it’s on loose gravel she did great. We rode most of the easy two-track; following the route P-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-17-18-19-5-4-3-2-1-P as seen on this map.

Here is another photo of Danielle, this time riding her bike and approaching marker #6 just before the entrance to The Pines.

cycling family

Macomb Orchard Trail in March

March 15, 2010

Since the trails are still thawing and thus generally unridable, a group of us got together tonight to ride the Macomb Orchard Trail from Onyx Ice Arena to the bridge over M-53 and back. Instead of driving up Jon and I decided to leave from my house to add a few more miles on it. The result ended up being 2:41:45 of moving time to cover 37.2 miles, for an average of 13.7 MPH. Peak speed was 24.6 MPH, likely achieved on the hill down from the bridge over M-53, even though there are times when I knew I was above 20 MPH on flat ground with the wind at my back.

Despite being a bit cold and with a 15 MPH headwind on the way out, with particularly chilly spots near the still-frozen low-laying swampy areas, it was a really nice ride. I didn’t eat enough and ran out of energy a few times, but small handfuls of granola and a bottle of double-strength HEED helped with that.

I also gave the aforementioned sample contact lenses a try tonight with some clear-lens protective glasses and they worked out very well. Without astigmatism-correcting lenses my vision wasn’t as perfect as it could be, my eyes weren’t dry and I could see quite well. I’ll wear another pair some other time this week and be sure that it’s not a fluke, but I’m pretty sure that these worked out well.

Now, off to get some more to eat, but only after figuring out why my furnace won’t light.

around the house cycling

Spring Has Sprung!

March 7, 2010

Setting out for a ride from Mt. Clemens at roughly 12:30pm today we headed out to Metro Beach and back along the pavement. The spring thaw has made the trails sloppy and unridable, so pavement is the only current option. The excellent weather that we’ve been having was perfect for riding a springtime paved weather bike ride, exactly the kind of shakedown the Titus needed so I could get a good feel for the bike geometry, shifting, new bar, etc. I logged roughly 22.2 miles over 1:34:04, making for a moving average of 14.2 MPH.

Such a nice day. :)

cycling weather