nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Category: cycling

Bike Shorts

March 22, 2008

Last night I picked up a set of Novara Exposure Double Bike Shorts from REI. Thus far they seem pretty comfortable, and the L size fits nicely.

I do wonder how long they’ll last. At $56 or so, hopefully at least a year. That said, I wonder if I’d be able to eBay them for profit after they are worn out. After all, there is a market for used women’s underwear. I’m sure there’s a market for used men’s bike shorts.

UPDATE: eBay does not seem to garner high prices for worn bike shorts, nor other men’s shorts in general. I imagine I’ll just have to throw these out once they are worn out. That’s probably for the best, anyway.

acquired thingscyclingmoved from livejournal

Cold!

March 21, 2008

I was able to knock icicles off of trees while riding up to the bank. Danielle and I are going to meet up with my parents, grandparents, and a bunch of other family members at a church fish fry tonight, so I needed some cash to pay for fish and chips.

I found that:

– Riding to the bank takes the same amount of time, even when I have to wait at 23 and Schoenherr for the lights. (Likely because making the left turn to the bank takes two or three light changes in a car, and one on a bike.)
– It’s funny to ride past long rows of backed up cars.
– The ATM isn’t very viewable from a standing position, likely because of a polarizer to make the display more viewable in sunlight.
– Being on a bike puts your head at head level of as a typical mid-size SUV driver. This is good for making eye contact.

I’m contemplating getting a skull cap and something to keep my ears warm while riding, but that costs money and I don’t think (hope?) that the sub-40F cold will last much longer.

Also this episode of This American Life, Episode 352: The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar is particularly good. I listened to it while showering (yes, a long shower) and then burned a copy to disc for my grandparents to listen to.

cyclingmoved from livejournalweather

Bike Rack: Confirmed

March 20, 2008

My Bike & Groceries
(Click for full size…)

Last friday I received some email from the person who had promised me that a bike rack would be installed at the VG’s near my house, apologizing that it hadn’t yet been installed. Sunday, on the way to and ‘s place, Danielle and I drove through the VG’s lot and saw a bike rack next to the front door.

I haven’t needed groceries yet, but with finishing up the yogurt, carrots, bananas, and smoked salmon within the last few days, and combined with some rather nice after-work weather, I figured I’d put the basket on the back of the bike and go pick some things up.

The basket, tires, and lock all worked out great, even though the basket does occasionally touch my bum while riding. As it’s only 1.5 miles to the store, that’s not a big deal. The cheap black bungee cords I picked up for holding things into the basket seem to work pretty good, and if they somehow get lost or break it’ll only be another $2 or so from Lowe’s to replace them.

I’d brought a brown paper bag to the store with me so that I could not take up another new bag, and that seemed to confuse the checkout guy a bit. He first took it and put the potato chips (Better Maid Hot, I hope they are good) and bananas in there alone, then went to get me another bag for other things. After a little prompting (and my saying that I’ll just carry the chips myself) he packed things differently, and it all fit nicely in the bag. That single bag then fit in the basket great, I was able to strap the top down, and ride home.

The lock worked out pretty good as well. It’d be nice if it was just slightly longer, but it worked. I found that the left strap on my helmet can’t be wholly undone, so it’s safe to lock it in the cable. Someone could cut the straps on it, but a helmet without straps is pretty worthless.

Now, time to figure out what to have for dinner. I would go for a longer ride, possibly trying to find a reasonable way to get to Riverbends, but it’s really windy and it’ll take at least half an hour to find and prepare food, I think.

Oh, darn. I just realized that I forgot to purchase bread.

around the housecyclingmoved from livejournal

Continental TravelContact

March 18, 2008

Continental TravelContact 26 x 1.75″ Tire

Today after work I picked up two Continental TravelContact tires for my bike. While the tires that it came with are pretty decent, I wanted a smoother rolling tire for when riding on paths and other paved areas. While I’d previous purchased some rather all right Forte FastCity ST/K mostly smooth tires, I found that they are just too narrow for anything other than pavement.

After a bunch of reading online and a bit of conversation here, I ended up going by REI and purchasing a membership, two tires, and two tubes. I wasn’t sure if the tubes already in my bike tires would fit, so I got these. I’ve got a spare 1.5″ – 2.0″ Forte tube, so that’ll continue to be my spare (these are 1.75″).

As you can see above (or in this top view), the Continental TravelContact has a really smooth center, with knobs on the edges. I took the bike out for a quick ride this evening after fitting the tires, and they definitely roll both more smoothly and easily than the knobby tires which were on there. I had no problem riding / hopping over some of the remaining piles of snow either, and they feel a good bit more solid / sure footed than the narrow FastCity ST/K ones I’d tried before. So, all in all, these seem like pretty nice tires. Hopefully I’ll have some time to ride this weekend and get a good bit more use out of them.

Oh, I also swung by Lowes on the way home and picked up this cheap lock ($12) for securing my bike when running up to the grocery store. It’s the sort of area where one could leave their car doors unlocked and most likely not have a problem, so I think this should be good enough for keeping someone from just riding away. I wouldn’t trust it for all-day use in a secluded area, but for a bike rack near the front door of a large grocery store, it should be fine.

UPDATE: I just remembered that I forgot to roll out the front tire and measure it’s circumference. Ergh. I’ll have to do this tomorrow. If I’m going to instrument something (in this case, the bike) I like it to be reasonably accurate.

acquired thingscyclingmoved from livejournal

Bike Tires

March 17, 2008

So, not long after getting my bike I picked up a pair of Forte FastCity ST/K tires. These are relatively narrow, somewhat smooth tires designed to make a mountain bike work better on roads. This they do very well, but they are awful on other surfaces.

The knobby tires which came with my bike seem to do well on trails, but whenever I’m riding on pavement they are a bit rough/rumbly, and just a bit harder than the smooth tires to pedal / go fast with.

I’ve been finding that what I really want, to match how I use the bike, is something which is smooth rolling on pavement, but will still be okay when I have to deal with spots of mud, puddles, and riding around on grass / dirt paths, two-tracks up north, stuff like that. Not true mountain bike uses, but more go-anywhere tires.

Looking around online I came across these, Continental Traffic tires, which seem to have a nicely smooth but still grooved center, and bigger knobs around the edge. From these reviews they look like they’d be pretty all right.

Do any of you have an opinion on these, or possibly recommendations for similar tires?

Thanks very much!

cyclingmoved from livejournal

GPS + Bike Stuff

March 16, 2008

Google Earth Plot of my Bike Ride
(Click for full res image…)

That right there is a plot of the bike ride I went on yesterday. Yes, it won’t make much sense for those of you who don’t know the northern Sterling Heights / Utica / Clinton Township area, but it’s a ~12 mile round trip.

If you’re wondering how this is made, I simply had my old Garmin eTrex Legend GPS mounted on the handlebar of my bike, logging the route as I rode. Then today I connected it to my Mac via a serial cable and USB adapter, fired up the Mac OS X version of GPSBabel+, set the input to the USB serial port, type Garmin GPS, selected to transfer only Tracks, and set the output to ‘Google Earth (Keyhole) Markup Language’, or KML file. Then I just opened the file in Google Earth, edited it a bit, deleted the points and left only the track, and saved it off as a new KMZ. Here is a screenshot of GPSBabel+ set up the way I use it for transferring data from my GPS to a KML file.

Note that when using the GPSBabel+, if I select Waypoints, Tracks, and Routes I only get Waypoints. If I select just Tracks, I get the data used for this plot. If I select just Routes, GPSbabel (or the crappy USB adapter, or something) hangs, with a process I can’t kill, even with -9. (This is why I suspect it’s the crappy USB adapter or its driver.). Also note that GPSBabel+ is a OS X GUI for the gpsbabel command line utility.

If you’d like to poke with the data for the map, and open it in Google Earth (or whatever) yourself, grab 15-Mar-08_dodge_park.kmz.

This link opens the file in Google Maps for you, with street names and such.

cyclingmappingmoved from livejournal

Today’s Bike Ride

March 15, 2008

My Bike, Kinda Dirty
(Click for bigger…)

Today (Brian) and I met up at Dodge Park in Sterling Heights to go for a bit of a ride. We ended up riding through the park for a little ways, then down Utica to Schoenherr, up 16 Mile, through some subdivisions, and down Dodge Park (the road) back to Dodge Park proper. Brian was pretty cold by this time, as his shoes are pretty airy, and due to a fall (while he was getting used to his new clipless pedals) which got his glove wet. That, and he had to meet some people for Japanese food at 5pm.

By this time we’d gone around six or seven miles, but I was wanting to ride some more, so I headed back into the park and along the river, eventually going under M-53 and up to Riverland Drive. After this I stopped and had a Clif bar (I hadn’t eaten much today), then headed back. All in all I did just over 12 miles. I could go a bit more, but I don’t want to completely kill my legs in one day.

At a few points while riding I had to go through 3″ of standing water, and almost everywhere ridden was either wet, muddy, or snowy. Despite almost all of it being pavement, only the residential roads were dry, which, as you can see meant that I had to wash my bike off when getting home. I hosed it down and gently brushed it with a soft car washing brush., and it’s pretty clean now, but I could use some degreasing cleaner to sort out some parts of the frame.

I grabbed a GPS track of the whole ride, so hopefully I’ll have a nice plot tonight, layed over Google Earth or something. Now, time to shower, go to Target and get a more proper shirt for biking in, swing by work, get some Indian food, then… I’m not sure what else.

cyclingmoved from livejournal

Bike Rack

March 6, 2008

Danielle’s Townie and my bike on my car.

Today the gigantic box containing the Thule 917 T2 bike rack which I had ordered from backcountry.com arrived today. Upon opening the box I found that the contents were a bit disshoveled and the instruction manual was missing. Also, a few of the parts were scratched a bit, and there was a rather scuffed up, but spare, pipe end cap in the box. After looking the rack over, based on the wear on the nuts, I figured that someone had purchased it, assembled it up to the point where it had to be put on the car, then put it back as it was, and returned it. This meant that it really didn’t have any wear except. The parts kit hadn’t even been opened.

The scratches (example) aren’t too bad, and being a car part I figured it would eventually get a few scratches on it anyway, so I decided to go ahead with assembling it.

I finished putting things together, fit both Danielle’s bike and mine on there, then used a plumb bob (really, a washer and some sort of high tension fishing line I found in a park) to measure the distance between the end of each wheel and the center post. I then moved the bike racks side to side, and now both bikes fit, nicely centered on the vehicle, with plenty of clearance between them.

All in all, I’m quite happy with it. The rack doesn’t take a standard hitch pin, instead coming with a bolt and lock washer which should hold the rack very securely in the hitch. One particularly great part is the fit of Danielle’s bike. Because of the fender on it I was afraid that the mechanism for holding the front wheel down would require removal of the fender. Well, as can be seen here, I was able to securely fit the clamp in front of the fender where it still securely holds the wheel. Yay!

If you’d like to see more photos of the bike rack on my car, please take a look at then end of this page (photo gallery retired) and all of this page.

automotivecyclingmoved from livejournal

Bike Rack

February 24, 2008

So, now that Danielle has a bike, I need a bike rack for carrying them. I can’t really use hang-on-trunk rack, nor do I want a roof rack. After seeing ‘s experiences installing a hitch on his Civic I think a rear hitch mount rack would be best. But, what kind?

There are two kinds of hitch racks; those which the bikes hang from and those which cradle the wheels. With Danielle’s bike not having any horizontal pieces, I can’t really get a hanging type. That leaves me with the wheel nestling type. Unfortunately those all use a bar to hold down the front wheel, which may have issues with the fender on Danielle’s bike.

That all said, I came across these photos of someone using a Thule T2 wheel-nestling-type-rack on a Civic Si. I think this is the bike rack I’m going to end up with, even if I have to sort things out with the fender.

This should be good for taking bikes up north, to local parks, or things like that. It’ll cost a bit more than I wanted to spend (about $450 total), but it should be nicely usable. And, thankfully, the rack can be moved to other vehicles in the future.

automotivecyclingmoved from livejournal