Category: cycling

Avid BB5 Caliper Damage

Published May 17, 2008

Damage to the rear Avid BB5 disc brake caliper after the top mounting screw of the caliper bracket came out while starting to descend The Rollercoaster at Stony Creek on 16-May-2008. This damage does not affect use of the brake at all.

Just after starting to descend The Rollercoaster at Stony Creek (a windy, narrow, fun descent from the highest point in Macomb County) I applied my rear brake and started to hear a tremendous houl from my rear brake and found myself slowing very quickly. I was able to finish stopping with my front brake, just as someone behind me asked if I was all right, and what the sound was.

A quick check showed that the upper bolt on the bracket which connects the caliper to the frame itself had come off and that in squeezing the rotor the caliper had rotated forward and lodged itself against the disk, slightly stuck between the frame and the disc. Walking about 15′ back up the trail I found the screw, I was able to partially put it back in by hand. Because of the length of the tool I couldn’t fit it between the rear rack and screw head, but thankfully the person who had stopped had a much shorter wrench and I was able to tighten things back up. A quick readjustment of the brake and I was on my way, with the brake actually working better than it had previously.

I’m not really sure how the screw came out. It was tight the last time I checked it (a few weeks ago), and it had thread locking compound on it. I do wonder if the combination of the rear frame, the slightly ratting bag, and the rough trails contributed to the bolt loosening.

Today I headed back out to Stony Creek with the frame removed and with only a multi-tool and my keys. While I didn’t like riding without the ability to fix a flat, I accepted the risk of a five mile walk until I can sort out the CamelBak Question. Things went well, and it seemed like it was a generally a quicker ride with the lighter bike, except it seemed like I had a much harder time getting up some of the steeper / longer hills (generally in the two-track area) because I kept spinning the rear tire. Twice I just stopped part-way up and walked. It was a much quieter / pleasant ride, although I do think I’ll get (or fashion) a soft chainstay guard to cut down on the loud chainslap.

Now it’s time to shower, eat something, and poke a bit with Ivan’s P3. I received new firmware, but it still doesn’t seem to be working, so I’m going to write a little test software for the PICs and be sure they are working right.

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CamelBak Question

Published May 17, 2008

To those of you who ride bikes and read this, I have a question about CamelBak bags.

See, I have a frame for the rear of my bike, and with its bag it’s great for touring type riding, but it has a couple deficiencies:

· It rattles a LOT on even small bumps.
· While it holds the normal bike stuff I’d want to bring (multitool, spare tube, pump, keys, wallet, cell phone, tire levers, Clif bar) it doesn’t hold my camera very well.

Yesterday I swung by REI and picked up an Aero Wedge Pack (Medium) for $26. It was really easy to fit to my bike, but with it I have nowhere to put my pump. I can fit a tube or patch kit, but not any method for reinflating things.

I’ve been hesitant to get a CamelBak because of the price, and because when outside in warm weather while wearing a backpack my back tends to get really, uncomfortably sweaty, to the point where it makes me hot a lot quicker than normal.

I’m just not sure what to do, and I’d love suggestions. I could keep the small Topeak bag, and carry a patch kit and CO2 inflator in it instead of a spare tube. The on-bike water (about 1.5L) is sufficient for most rides I’ve been on so far. I could return to Topeak bag and get a CamelBak and use it instead of the rear rack / bag full time, or at least until I need the rear stuff. Or I could deal with the really loud / bothersome rattling and lack of space.

If you would recommend a CamelBak for me, which model? The M.U.L.E. seems to be the most popular, but it’s also REALLY big. I don’t know if it’d be overkill. It’s $86 and REI, and returning the bag I purchased yesterday would offset $26 of that.

Something I’ll post about later, probably with a photo: While riding The Rollercoaster at Stony Creek yesterday my rear brake suddenly seize, accompanied by a loud howling sound. What had happened? Somehow the upper bolt on the rear disc brake mount had come out, causing the brake to pivot forward and the upper edge of the caliper to stop the bike as it ground against the edge of the disc.

I actually found the bolt a little ways back down the path, and it wasn’t too difficult to get it back in and get the brake readjusted. I did run into the problem the rear rack being in the way of the bolt, and my multitool wouldn’t fit in there. Thankfully someone who had stopped had a shorter one and I was able to tighten things up with that. What’s strange, though, is that this bolt was tight not too long ago, and it was Loctited.

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The stuff one finds in the woods…

Published May 11, 2008

An old Civil Defense vehicle found amongst a bunch of trailers and mobile homes at the end of a road, right near the aforementioned tree farm.

One sure can find odd things back in the woods.

I’ve recently returned from visiting my grandparents up north and doing a bunch of biking along the roads and trails, finding all sorts of interesting places which I’d like to explore more in the future.

I ended up having to put the knobby tires back on my bike for the offroad riding, but I was glad I did. I had no problems wandering around all sorts of fire trails, dirt roads, and other random, interesting areas. One of those more interesting areas was what I first thought to be an oil drilling dumping ground. It contained all sorts of interesting metal parts, old vehicles, trailers (including some marked radioactive), and other discarded stuff. After talking to my grandparents it turns out that I was on the property of a friend of theirs named Charlie who happens to collect a bunch of stuff like that. Best I can tell, he is also the owner of the old CD vehicle seen above. (If any of you can figure out the city it is from based on this photo I’d love to know.)

While I didn’t go that far (only about 30 miles over the two days), I do definitely want to head back up there and do some more riding. I would definitely like to tackle the portion of the North Country Trail which I happened to come across, but I’m not really sure if it can be legally biked. The information I come across on this seems very, very mixed. I figure if I’m careful, stick to the trail, and don’t bother anyone it won’t be a problem. That said, I turned back at this point because it was too steep for me to ride up. There is, of course, a whole bunch of ORV trails in the area, but they are too sandy to ride on a bike. Even my wide knobby tires regularly sank in past the rim.

If you’d like to see the KMZ aggregated to cover most of this weekend’s riding it can be found here, with the nodes differentiating things by ride and date: 10-11-May-2008.kmz

The rest of the photos, including the ones from when I headed out wandering on the sandbar off of Old Mission Point, can be found here: Up North (May 2008)

(Oh, and yes, I know those photos are a bit crap. They were taken with my old Nikon Coolpix 5400 which was nice for its time, but is now just so-so. Also, it’s big and not weatherproof one bit. I’m thinking I’ll probably replace it with one of these Olympus shockproof and waterproof, internally zooming cameras. The quality probably won’t be great on them either, but at least it’ll fit nicely in my bag and I won’t have to worry about rain or a fall damaging it. Although, realizing that the camera is five years old, maybe those photos aren’t that bad…)

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Traverse City Is Dull Unless You Like Shopping

Published May 10, 2008

I’m sitting in Espresso Bay in downtown Traverse City, leeching bandwdith from the first AP I found called ‘linksys’, tunneling everything via SOCKS (SSH tunnel). I drove up here yesterday in order to visit my grandparents who live about half-way between here and Grayling.

While I like visiting them, I find it a bit difficult to be in this area at times. I’d really, really like some nice veggie food, or at least some mostly-veggie Thai or Indian or Middle Eastern, but that doesn’t seem to be available. Despite being near water, seafood around here isn’t any fresher than it would be in Flint or Grand Rapids. There does seem to be a local organic / veggie eatery called the Homegrown Organic Eatery (WARNING! MySpace link), but it closed at 8pm. I think I’ll probably just end up grabbing a bean burrito from Taco Bell on the way back to my Grandparents’ place.

On the upside, I did get to do a bunch of outdoor things today. I first went for a bike ride, then swapped the touring tires out for knobbies, then went another 10 miles or so back on random trails that I came across in the woods. Some of the trails were particularly difficult because if the extremely (in many cases 100%) sandy soil in this area, but overall it was fun. I also managed to end up on some piece of property full of oil drilling remains, semi trailers (one marked Radioactive), campers, mobile homes, and other pieces of scrap. I think my grandpa knows the owner of the property and hopefully I’ll be able to get back there tomorrow with my camera and grab some photos.

My main reason for heading to Traverse City today was so that I could make my way up to Old Mission Point (at the 45th Parallel) and wander around the beach there. I ended up wandering down the beach, walking across a bunch of rocks, and ending up way out in the water on a rather interesting sand bar after quite a bit of walking. I think it’d be nice to bike up the peninsula one day, but it’s 18 miles (each way) of rather steep hills. The main road up to the point does have nice bike lanes on it, though. There are also some quite nice trails along the point in the park which might be good for riding around as well.

In lieu of other food I think I’ll just head back to my grandparents house now and grab a bean burrito from Taco Bell on the way. My grandma made turkey for dinner, but that’s one meat I particularly don’t like. No matter what it always tastes dirty to me.

Oh, something very positive: lunch today was pizza from the small convenience store near my grandparents house. While picking up the pizza with my grandpa I found that the store carries a small assortment of very good beers along with the normal stuffs. There were probably two doors worth of better Michigan beers and other imported things. While I don’t plan on getting any beer this weekend, it’s nice to know that it’s available in the future.

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Roland TR-606 for Jan

Published May 6, 2008

Detail of the area around the tempo knob on the TR-606 showing that it's worn down to the paint.

Today after getting home from work I ate some carrots and hummus and hopped on my bike, intending just to run up to the bank and go to the ATM. Instead I ended up going to the ATM, then winding my way through industrial parks up to 24 Mile and M-53, where I turned around under the bridge after coming across this amusingly broken set of toy guns. I then wound my way home, taking time to ride through every industrial road / park I came across, racking up a total of 15 miles.

Yesterday I received this box in the mail, and tonight I opened it and grabbed some pictures. See, a guy by the name of Jan Czmok, who is the only person (that I know of) besides me to build a complete MIDIbox SID-NUXX (you can see his photos of his here) wanted to buy a for-repair TR-606 on eBay, but the seller would only ship to the US, so I’m relaying it for him. Here is a mirror of the auction, if you’d like to see it. For reference, the auction closed for $255.

I wish him luck in fixing it up because it’s not in particularly good shape. While it doesn’t seem to have a smell, the damage to it makes me think that it was either left in a garage for a few years, that it survived a flood, or maybe that it was just left at the bottom of a septic tank full of angry lobsters.

If you would like to see the full photos of the TR-606, click on this link.

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Trail at River Bends

Published April 24, 2008

I actually managed to leave work early enough today that I was able to go for a nice bike ride after work. It was only 1:16 and just over 16 miles long, but it felt good. I made my way from home over to River Bends Park in Shelby Township, then headed down the foot / bike trail through the woods. This is a 2.5 mile winding trail with some nice hills, sharp turns, and interesting things to look at. I found that the tires I have are pretty okay for this sort of trail riding, except on parts of the path. Oh, and I also found that moving quickly through a swarm of bugs while breathing heavily through one’s mouth is not particularly pleasant.

Since I’m uncomfortably stinky, and because I finally stopped at Trader Joe’s on the way home and purchased more deodorant (I’ve been out for a week), I think I’ll go shower. Oh, and my new server was actually delivered today, so I think I’ll unpack it and grab photos of it post shower. I also might try a new (to me) Southern Tier beer called Back Burner, but I’m not sure… Maybe I’ll just let that wait for tomorrow. I’ve already got enough things I still want to get done tonight.

Oh, want the KMZ of today’s ride? It’s here: 24-Apr-2008.kmz, and here it is in Google Maps. Please excuse the two tracks. Google Earth can’t merge tracks (I imagine there is a good reason for this), my GPS decreased the resolution when saving the current log to a file, and it seems that multiple Active Logs had to be created to deal with the number of points I was generating today. Oh, yeah, I decided to try doing one-per-second points which, as you can see, has resulted in a much smoother route plot. It’s too bad this relatively short ride filled 49% of the memory on the GPS. Maybe I really do need an SD based GPS data logger…

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GPS Logger and Bike Riding

Published April 20, 2008

As shown earlier and resulting some KMZ files, I will frequently clamp my GPS to the handlebar of my bike and log where I’ve ridden. The problem I’m finding is batteries… The older Garmin eTrex Legend that I have will chew through a pair of disposable AA in an hour and a half, and good rechargables don’t last beyond three. This is short enough that it’s starting to become a hassle to use the thing. On top of that, dumping the data into a computer sucks down even more battery.

I’m thinking that my next electronics project should be a low power GPS logger that either writes to some local flash, or to a microSD (or whatnot) card. I think that one of the random modules from SparkFun, a PIC, a off the shelf FAT library, a FT232R could make it all work nicely. It could recharge via USB and have a couple basic buttons and LEDs for resetting saved logs or whatnot. All I’d need to do is ensure that it’s in a standard format (shouldn’t be hard) and GPSBabel will be able to make it anything else I’d want.

Now, since I just rode ~21 miles, I’m going to go shower then get back to work on Ivan’s P3.

Oh, and look at this: FTDI’s USB to USB null modem cable (PDF Flyer). I could really use one of those too.

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Things I Learned Today

Published April 17, 2008

Today after work I rode to Rochester, then a little ways down the Paint Creek Trail, then back to work. It was a total of just over 16 miles, but they were particularly tiring. I also learned a bunch of things during the ride, and here are some of them:

· Auburn Hills and Rochester Hills are named that way for a reason. What is a fun, hilly area to drive is hell under one’s own power. A few miles of uphill with no trees gets tiring quickly.
· The gates at work will not open for a pedestrian or a person on a bicycle, regardless of if a person is swiping a badge or the guard is pressing the button. There seem to be hall effect sensors or something similar in the pavement, and my bike is too small, too non-ferrous, or both. Thankfully an AT&T guy was pulling into one of the data centers behind me, so I just pulled forward until the gate opened for him.
· The sort of crosswalks Rochester has installed on the Clinton River Trail are crap. Here is one. It has a raised median on which it is too small for a bike to stop, but it is ringed with plastic posts making it difficult to traverse in one go. These should be replaced with crosswalk signals and flashing yellows which turn red when someone presses a button. It’d then be easy to cross in light traffic, and easy (despite stopping) if traffic is heavy.
· I could ride to and from work in a reasonable amount of time, but the area near work would make it pretty unpleasant. I’d also be quite stinky and there aren’t showers at work. As I’ve now ridden this route in two separate pieces, one day when I have more daylight available I’ll do it in one go.
· Armhair, particularly mine, is very good at trapping gnats and other small insects when riding through swarms.
· I still don’t feel very comfortable on non-paved areas nor around other people while using pedals which attach me to the bike. I may need to loosen the tension, and I definitely need to work on the positioning of the cleats themselves on the shoes.
· Way, way too many people don’t know how to handle themselves around bike. When someone says “passing on your left”, don’t stop and turn around. Yes, you have the right of way, but you should be reasonably comfortable with where you are as well. You also should be courteous and not take up the whole width of the path with strollers, dogs, or your desire to ride two or three abreast at all times, particularly when you can see people coming in your direction.

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Bloody Knee

Published April 16, 2008

My knee after falling twice while getting comfortable with clipless pedals. The upper (closer) injury is a puncture wound from the brake lever and the lower is from the pavement. Both happened while stopping and failing to unclip my right foot.

Having a bike I was bound to fall eventually. Unfortunately today I fell twice, both times on account of not being familiar with the new Shimano PD-M540 pedals I installed last night.

The first time I was at the intersection of 24 Mile and VanDyke, on the sidewalk, and as I went to press the crosswalk light button I didn’t get my right foot unclipped and I toppled over against the pole. Because of how I fell the rear brake lever stabbed the top of my thigh, just above the knee, making a nice puncture wound. The second time I’d just returned home and I pulled up in front of the mailbox and again didn’t manage to get my right foot unclipped before I toppled over, with my right knee, the rear rack, and the handlebar all hitting at just about the same time. The second fall hurt a lot more, but only scraped an area about the size of a dime. It still hasn’t finished bleeding.

Beyond my needing to get familiar with the pedals, I think I like them. I rode just over 20 miles today and for the most part I had no problems dealing with them. I just need to get the idea of pivoting my foot before moving it more ingrained.

There’s no GPS plot of the ride because I didn’t feel like logging one, but I rode from my house to the head of the Macomb Orchard Trail by way of 24 Mile Road before winding my way back home. Here is approximation of the route, save for the bit of trail leading from 24 Mile to Dequindre, and a few bits of wandering down side roads.

Oh, and the wind. ~20 MPH gusts aren’t much fun, particularly when you are riding straight into them. I had a hard time maintaining 12 MPH for the route down VanDyke back to 22 Mile.

I feel dumb about falling over, but it just shows that I need to get more familiar with using these pedals. My bike shorts and shirt are in the wash so that I can bring my bike to work tomorrow and possibly go riding from there. There’s a bunch of nicely accessible trails and paths leading from the end of the road my building is on, so it’d be a nice place to go riding. I’d just need to be sure to sort out dinner beforehand. And not fall over while practically standing still.

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Shimano PD-M540

Published April 15, 2008

While at Fraser Bicycle & Fitness (my preferred local bike shop) after work to get my bent wheel trued I ended up grabbing a pair of Shimano PD-M540 clipless pedals. I had originally been looking at the PD-M520 which has, but something about the PD-M540s jumped out at me. In particular, they are tightened down a bit differently (hex bit through the back side of the crank), and they appear to be easier to disassemble for overhauling (no need for a special tool). At US$79.99 they were only US$5 more than Amazon, so the price was pretty reasonable as well.

I was told that if my front wheel gets bent again, it’s most likely going to have to be replaced, but for now it’s pretty much straight. There’s a very slight wobble (1mm – 2mm at most), but it seems pretty good otherwise.

Before putting the wheels back on my bike I disassembled, cleaned, and greased the rear pulleys (jockey and tension). I also gave the the inside of the derailer cage and other dirty bits some special attention before giving the whole of the frame a washdown. It was pretty muddy from Saturday’s rainy ride and I wanted it clean again.

It was after 10pm so I didn’t want to test the new pedals out tonight, but hopefully I’ll be able to do that tomorrow. The cleats are fitted on my shoes, but I’m sure they’ll need some tweaking position-wise before I’m comfortable with them.

There are more photos of the pedals on this page, if you are interested.

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