Category: cycling

I’ve been wanting a bike for more paved / dirt road uses, but something rugged enough to be banged around as I’m wont to do. For a while I was looking at the Salsa Fargo, but now I’m starting to have other thoughts, steering me towards building up something myself. In particular, I’ve been thinking that a black Surly Karate Monkey frame could do quite nicely with an Shimano Alfine hub and Avid BB7 Road disc brakes. With dirt drop bars and a Jtek Engineering Bar-end Shifter, I think this would be quite the machine for random go-anywhere-but-singletrack rides.

Swapping the bars for a more standard mountain bike bar would even turn it into an interesting, fully rigid off-road device if I wanted to do that. Or, I could even consider something between the two like a On-One Mary Bar or Titec H-Bar or J-Bar, as long as the brake levers chosen work right wtih the shorter pull BB7 Road calipers…

This evening after some late work, just after 10pm, I took off on my bike towards downtown Rochester. 21.88 miles later, averaging 15.2 MPH, I was back home. For rather knobby tires still at off-road pressures (leftover from Hanson Hills this past weekend; more on this later) I don’t think this is too bad. I took my normal route to the Clinton River Trail, then that into Downtown Rochester, then over to the river and bridges which indicate the start of the Paint Creek Trail. After standing around for a few minutes and texting a bit with Danielle I turned and headed home.

This was an interesting ride, as I’m not used to being on paths like the Clinton River Trail in the dark. With the 100% humidity there was also quite a bit of fog; enough that it was hard to see at times. The routes were also pretty much empty, save for one skunk, two rabbits, one possum, one muskrat, one raccoon, and a couple unidentified glowing eyes. Any cars encountered seemed a bit more confused by my presence than anything else, which meant no car problems.

I’m really tempted to build up my old fork, crankset, and wheels into something with smoother tires for this type of riding. I can’t help but continue to be tempted by something like the Surly Cross Check or Salsa Fargo, though…

With today being the start of a long stretch of great weather, I set out to Stony Creek to watch Tailwind‘s 2009 Stony Creek XC race. Some friends were starting at 1pm, so leaving my house at noon I made quick work (for me) of the ~14.5 trip, arriving just before they started off. This route took me up to 24 Mile and Dequindre, along Parkdale, up to Letica drive, then east along there and Sheldon, into one of Stony Creek’s rear entrances, then around two-track to the trailhead.

Once at the race I mostly hung out with folks, then snapped a few occasional photos of people. I would have headed off into the woods to grab actual photos of people, but since I’d left the memory card at home, I was only able to grab a few frames. These ended up being the following images:

· Bob, getting ready for the 2009 Stony XC Race, while Robert from Tailwind explains some things.
· Bill passing a guy riding Aerospokes while going into his second lap of the 2009 Stony XC Race.
· Bob, crossing the line to start his second lap at the 2009 Stony XC Race.
· Mike, crossing the finish line at the end of the 2009 Stony XC Race.
· Bob, crossing the finish line at the 2009 Stony XC Race.

After the race I headed back home via a slightly different route, heading out the main Stony Creek entrance, up the Macomb Orchard Trail to 24 Mile and Dequindre, then back the normal route home.

End result was just barely over 29 miles in 2:00:06 on an absolutely glorious Sunday.

I’m really unsure how this happened, but this is why the aformentioned chain link is stuck. It seems that the very end of one of the steel inner plates had some metal torn away from it, and this metal was then pushed between it and a roller, wedging the roller and link in place.

As this is the very end of a plate, it couldn’t have happened from hitting something. I can only figure that either a manufacturing defect which left a bit of metal flashing sticking out was finally hammered down into place, or maybe a rock or piece of metal or something got on one of the teeth and during a sudden/hard pedal stroke it cut the plate. While the cassette is steel and may have been strong enough to do this, the chainrings are aluminum and likely couldn’t make this happen. I’ve also looked over all of the teeth and they all appear to be in good shape without any exceptional burrs or dented spots.

Later tonight after eating dinner I’ll try to get the bit of metal out, in hopes of salvaging the chain. If this doesn’t work I imagine that tomorrow will also include a quick run to REI for a new chain.

UPDATE: Removing the offending link and dropping in a spare (which I’d forgotten that I had) seems to have sorted it all out.

Wanting to show some people around Addison Oaks, Bob set up a group ride, the Tour-de-Addision, for there today.
This morphed a bit, with some of us riding up from Rochester Mills.

This was a really great ride, totaling somewhere around 40-42 miles. We rode up to Addison Oaks via the Paint Creek Trail and some dirt roads, two laps around the park’s single track loop, through Bald Mountain, then out to the PCT again. On the way back the three people I was with (Nick, Jon, and Erik) were really pushing each other, holding a solid 22MPH for the roughly 8.5 miles from Lake Orion to Rochester. I was able to hang on behind them for a while, but once they got up near 25MPH I was lost.

After making it back to Rochester we all had food and beer at the Mills, then Erik, Kristi, and I walked over to Bean & Leaf for coffee. Unfortuntely my stupid-in-retrospect choice of espresso pushed me over the edge, and I ended up with a good bit of heat exhaustion. By the time I got home the feeling of a migraine was coming, I was really sleepy, and nausea was coming on. With this being signs of heat exhaustion and/or dehydration the AC was turned on, and I went to lay in the basement while sipping cool water. After mixed napping and drinking of cold beverages for three hours I’m feeling better, but I still haven’t had to urinate. Hopefully soon.

After a bunch of effort I was finally able to get the stuck extractor cap piece out of my crank. Then, after trying a bunch of non-productive methods, I attempted to clean up the threads of the crank with a Park Tool CCP-4, and it worked. This is good.