Category: making things

Rotating Bicycle Cue Sheet

Published August 10, 2013

I once saw a cue sheet like this somewhere online, so I figured I’d give it a go for tomorrow’s ride. I’m hoping that instead of the MOT I’ll be able to take dirt roads for a round-about path to my parents’ house in Richmond, and this illustrates the roads that I’m not already familiar with.

Instead of a flat page and some manner of holder this is a basic paper loop around the bars, listing turns one after another. It can then be hand-rotated to advance the list. I currently list the name of the road, which direction I should be going on it, and if it’s at the end of the previous road (a T intersection). Next time I may make the font smaller, better clarify the intersection type, and note the distance on each road.

While I could have put a cue sheet into my Garmin bike computer it takes a fair bit longer than printing a basic note, and when I last tried it with a slightly older Garmin (Edge 500 vs. my current 510) it wasn’t the most reliable, so I’m hesitant to try it again. The paper band has the limitation of font and bar size dictating the upper capacity limits, it’s not really waterproof (laser printing only goes so far), and it could get torn off. But it’s also super-easy to do.

Hopefully the ride will go as planned and the cue sheet will be a positive contribution.

UPDATE: This worked out very well. I’ll be using this cue sheet mounting technique in the future.

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Home-Made Protein Bars

Published May 26, 2013

Earlier this year I asked Danielle if she’d come up with some manner of food / energy / protein bar for me to eat while doing longer bike rides. She took this Protein Bar recipe from Good Eats and adapted it to use things we had around the house, and they came out quite nice. I’ve eaten some of this stuff on all of the long rides I’ve done recently, and it seems to help quite a bit by getting some solid food in my stomach.

Once baked these have a nice, slightly fruity and peanut butter-y taste, and by cutting them, putting them in individual sandwich bags and freezing, it’s easy to take one out and thaw it before (or on the first part of) a longer ride. I’ve found that a large pizza cutter (rolling style) works very well for cutting these into individual pieces.

Here’s what goes into them — the adapted recipe:

4 oz. Vanilla Protein Powder
2 1/2 oz. Oat Bran
3 1/4 oz. Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 tsp. Kosher Salt
11 oz. Dried Cranberries (Substitute other dried fruit as desired.)
1 oz. Sweetened Coconut Flakes
12.3 oz. Soft Silken Tofu (Typically one package.)
1/2 cup Carrot Juice
4 oz. Light Brown Sugar
2 Large Eggs, Beaten
170g Peanut Butter (Natural as possible, peanuts and salt only.)

To prepare:

Preheat oven to 350°F.
Line a 13″ x 9″ baking pan/dish with parchment and coat with oil.
In a large bowl combine protein powder, oat bran, wheat flower, and salt. Whisk together.
Coarsely chop the dried fruit. Set aside in a small bowl.
In a third bowl, whisk the tofu until smooth, then add the carrot juice, brown sugar, eggs, and peanut butter and process until smooth. A stick blender can help with this.
Slowly add the the protein powder mixture into the wet ingredients and stir to combine.
Fold in the dried fruit and coconut flakes.
Pour into pan and spread into an even layer.
Bake for around 35 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 222°F.
Remove from oven, cool completely, then cut into the desired number of pieces.

Nutritional info for the entire batch, for the original recipe, which should be close to the modified version:

Calories: 4008 kcal
Total Fat: 120 g
Saturated Fat: 24 g
Protein: 192 g
Total Carbohydrates: 552 g
Sugar: 336 g
Fiber: 72 g
Cholesterol: 432 mg
Sodium: 1896 mg

I typically cut this batch into around 12 pieces, resulting in ~334 kcal and around 16 g of protein per bar. Most of them go into the freezer in individual plastic bags, and then I just take one two on each longer ride.

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New Bike: 2013 Salsa El Mariachi Ti

Published April 25, 2013

Today I finished assembling my new bike, a complete 2013 Salsa El Mariachi Ti, size medium, that I purchased from Trail’s Edge. For quite some time I’ve wandered a dedicated, geared hard tail 29er, and so back in September 2012 I ordered this one. It was originally slated to ship in mid-December 2012, but (apparently due to Salsa’s growing popularity) it slipped until this past week (April 2013). Regardless, I’m happy to have it.

This was purchased as a complete bike and received it in the box so I could put it together myself. This worked out well because I both like assembling my own bicycles, and it allowed me to swap out the parts I was immediately wanting to change, like the saddle, handle bars, grips, and tires. I end up spending around 12 hours on the initial assembly of a bike this way, but then I’m comfortable with how it went together and how it’d been tuned, and when something goes awry I’m ready to take care of it.

The only problem I had during this assembly was with the tubeless setup on the rear wheel. I’d originally intended to use a Specialized Fast Trak Control tire, but I had enough difficulty getting it installed that I headed over to Rochester Bike Shop mid-assembly and picked up a Kenda Small Block Eight and used it instead. During the install I found the Specialized Fast Track on the Stan’s NoTubes ZTR Arch EX rim was such a tight fit that it was very difficult to get the tire fitted, and then it wouldn’t seat. Using my High Volume Inflater I attempted to overinflate the tire to get it to set, but before it did that the other side blew off the rim with an incredible bang, with enough force to bend and crimp the tubeless valve inside the head of the inflater. Thankfully the rim wasn’t damaged, so after getting the new valve and tire everything went together just fine.

I’m happy with how the bike came out thus far, with two exceptions, one minor and one major. The minor exception is that I don’t like the red logo on the side of the stem. It’s not terrible looking as there is some red at the bottom of the fork, but the bike now needs something red on the rear end to balance the color. This may get replaced, though, as the major problem is one of reach. While I’ve got the seat/crank area setup properly, the Salsa Bend 2 bar is not a drop-in replacement for the Ragley Carnegie’s Bar that I prefer.

The Bend 2 is both a little wider and doesn’t sweep back as far as the Carnegie’s Bar, and when measuring from the nose of the saddle to the bolts in the grip (same saddle and grips on both bikes) the El Mariachi Ti has 45mm more reach (saddle to grip) than either my steel El Mariachi or Titus Racer X 29er. It’s only a smidge longer than on the Mukluk 2, so I will give it a go for this weekend (scheduled for 8.5 hours of riding total) and see how it feels. I’ve thought that I’m perhaps a bit too upright on either the Titus or steel El Mariachi, but they’ve also felt fine for many, many hours of riding. Since the Carnegie’s Bar is no longer made and nearly impossible to find for sale I may have to investigate a stem change and trimming the bars if the current setup doesn’t work out. At least that should take care of the red color imbalance.

As with many tubeless setups the tire loses air for a while until a few rides can get the sealant wholly distributed, and this caused me one problem. When I got home from work today I found that the rear tire had lost its air, causing the bike to fall over in the stand. In doing so the top tube brushed a table leg, putting a small scuff in the finish. This is probably nothing compared to damage which the bike will incur from kicked up sticks and rocks, but it’s a bit frustrating for that to have happened before I even got it on a trail.

Finishing off the bike I topped the Niner YAWYD with a cap from Southern Tier Brewing Company. This black bottle cap with a shovel and traditional wood mashing paddle fits very nicely on the bike, and is a (admittedly non-Michigan) brand that I really enjoy. I’ve taken the bike for a ride around local neighborhoods to bed in the brakes and get the Garmin Edge 500 to auto-calculate a rear wheel size, so it’s ready to ride this weekend. This proved that the Elegant Cadence Magnet that I’d posted about earlier works great, even using a lower profile magnet than the one pictured before. It’s much nicer than a magnet sticking off the back side of the pedal, secured with adhesive and a cable tie.

So far I’m really happy with this bike, and I expect this to continue as I ride it more. There’s a little bit of fit tweaking like with any new bike, but I think I’ve got it pretty close, and hopefully it’ll work well for the foreseeable feature, allowing me to successfully complete a number of long rides. Weighing in at 26.16 pounds (as pictured here, including the Garmin) it’s also one of the lightest bikes I’ve ever owned.

I’ve got a few parts leftover that I probably won’t use (Salsa Back Country Lock-On Grips, WTB Pure V saddle, too-short Salsa Pro Moto 1 Seatpost, Salsa Pro Moto 1 Carbon Flat handlebar, Continental Trail King 2.2 tires) on this bike, but they’ll be good things to add to the spares pile. I’ve also got a SRAM X7 S1400 2×10 crankset without bottom bracket (it was stock on the El Mariachi Ti, I replaced it with the X0 that I picked up a few months back), but as it is 104 BCD I can see myself using it on another bike as a single speed or 1×9 crankset.

A bunch of photos of the bike, including stock photos and some of the parts added to the base build can be found in this album: Salsa El Mariachi Ti. Photos of the complete bike can be found here.

Here’s the exact components on it, as of this evening:

Frame: 2013 Salsa El Mariachi Ti (Medium / 17″)

Fork: Fox Racing Shox OE, CTD w/ Open Bath Damper

Headset: Cane Creek 40 ZS44/EC44

Bottom Bracket: Truvativ GXP (XR / Black)

Crankset: Truvativ 2011 2×10 X0 GXP (00.6115.422.070, Blue)

Rims: Stan’s NoTubes ZTR Arch EX 29er (Blue Accents)

Tires: Front: Schwalbe Racing Ralph HS 425 (29″ x 2.25″, New Style, TL-Ready), Rear: Kenda Small Block Eight (29″ x 2.1″, DTC, non-SCT, K1047)

Hubs: Front: Shimano HB-M788, Rear: Shimano FH-M785

Spokes: DT Swiss Competition (Black)

Handlebar: Salsa Bend 2 (23°)

Stem: Salsa Pro Moto 1 (100mm)

Seatpost: Thomson Elite (Straight, 27.2mm x 410mm)

Seatpost Collar: Salsa Lip-Lock (32.0mm)

Saddle: Specialized Phenom Comp (143mm, Grey / Black Underside)

Grips: Ergon GP1 BioKork (Large)

Shifters: SRAM X9 2×10 Trigger

Front Derailleur: SRAM X7 High Direct Mount

Rear Derailleur: SRAM X0 Medium Cage (Blue)

Cassette: SRAM PG 1070 (11-36)

Chain: SRAM PC 1051

Pedals: Crank Brothers Eggbeater 3 (Blue)

Brakes: Shimano XT, Levers: BL-M785, Calipers: BR-M785, Front Rotor: SM-RT67-M (180mm), Rear Rotor: SM-RT67 (160mm)

Bottle Cages: King Cage Iris

Other Accessories: Mirracycle Original Incredibell, Niner YAWYD Top Cap, Planet Bike Superflash Stealth, Scotch 2228 (Chainstay Wrap), Race Face Crank Boots, UHMW Tape for Cable Rub and Heel Rub, Garmin GPS Mount.

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A Clean Closet

Published March 17, 2013

The closet in the office has always been a bit of a dead space. It’s housed a filing cabinet and been used for a bit of storage, but ever since moving in here eleven-some years ago it’s been rather neglected. It was originally a basic particle board shelving closet with the curved metal faces to hold hangers, but something more was needed. Previously I had fit a plastic filing cabinet and old wood CD rack in one side, and two cheap shelves and the printer on the other side. This worked, but something more was needed, so with Danielle here we decided to make better use of the space.

By picking up a HON 510 four-drawer filing cabinet the plastic filing cabinet could be replaced and more stuff filed away. ClosetMaid-brand wire shelving was installed as shoe racks in the lower half of the right side, and the upper half was fitted with a rail-based adjustable shelf system. This provides much more storage on the upper part of the closet, better filing of paperwork and things that I want to save such as old manuals and receipts, and a place to put shoes that isn’t right next to a door.

Total cost for this project, including the filing cabinet, was $343.78, with $178.47 of that being the new filing cabinet (after tax and shipping, purchased on a sale at Costco) and $165.31 being the wire shelving and some extras that Danielle wanted for the bedroom closet. This also provided the impetus for cleaning out the closet and disposing of a fair bit of old paperwork and media that I’d let accumulate over the years. I still have a bit of filing of old data and audio CDs to do and some cables to put away, but that should only be an evening’s work.

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Syringes are Useful

Published March 7, 2013

I’m really glad that we keep syringes and hypodermic needles around the house. The oyster mushrooms that are growing in the basement have stagnated and somewhat dried out, and I think that this is caused by the growth media drying out. Having a 60cc syringe and a 19 gauge needle sitting around I figured the easiest way to get water into the media without breaking open the plastic surrounding it was to inject it with water. A few syringe-fulls later and the media was quite a bit heavier, so hopefully the mushrooms will now grow properly.

These 60cc syringes have also been quite useful for putting Stan’s No Tubes Sealant in bicycle tires, as the Luer taper fitting fits very nicely over a Presta valve stem with the core removed.

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The New MMBA Trail Guide

Published March 6, 2013

I’ve been working on much of the behind-the-scenes stuff for the Michigan Mountain Biking Association (MMBA) website for a few years now. This started with a group of us moving from a broken phpBB2-based site to a Joomla site and a phpBB3 forum. After a couple of years the Joomla site was replaced with the more manageable and updatable WordPress.

Back when on Joomla there was a decent page that presented a Trail Guide that Rob Ritzenhein had built for Joomla which was a searchable list of mountain biking trails within the state along with a ZIP code-based proximity search. With the move to WordPress I had to drop this searchable trail guide and replaced it with a basic, text-based list that had been generated off of the old trail data. After two mis-starts and incomplete attempts to find a replacement during 2012, I was a bit concerned that I wasn’t going to have much luck finding someone who was able to write such a guide.

Out of the blue in late January 2013 I received email from a guy named Jeff Lau who said (in much more polite words) that our existing guide sucks and that he’d like to have a go at making something better. He was very right, and after he showed a very promising proof of concept I was really impressed, so he and I met up and things got rolling. Fast forward a couple weeks and he had software nearly ready to go. I was able to help out with some graphics stuff (made my first sprite sheet) and get the old trail data adapted to the new format and loaded into the site, and get a bunch of interested volunteers to proof and submit updates to the data. Following a few rounds of testing and small tweaks it was ready to release.

Last night Jeff and I were able to launch the site publicly, and thus far it’s been very well received. The guide is no longer an impenetrable wall of text, but instead a dynamic, flowing, zoomable Google-based map paired with a list of trails and their details which simply feels nice to use. Updates are easy, done by putting data in an OpenOffice.org Base database and running an SQL query which generates the CSVs, then uploading them to the trail guide’s data directory. Everything seen by the user is client-side JavaScript with the actual data stored in simple CSV files, so it all runs in the user’s browser and requires nothing special on the server.

I’m really impressed with the work that Jeff did in writing the Trail Guide software. He said he wanted to do something, did it, and turned it around very quickly, just in time for spring. The weather is just starting to warm here in Michigan, and getting this kind of guide ready before people look for it is key. I believe that this guide is one of the most important publicly accessible Michigan mountain bike trail advocacy tools that has been put forward in a while.

I strongly believe that one of the best ways to ensure trails remain good for and open to biking is to keep people using them. Once they reach a critical mass they become self-maintaining (users remove much of the deadfall themselves), and the chance of them becoming closed to bikes diminishes because they are well-used and known cycling areas. Giving people a guide to help them find trails increases usage by increasing accessibility.

This cost of this guide came in at a cost of about 120 hours of Jeff’s time, and 40-50 of mine. (While he kept detailed records I did not, but I did have a few 6 hour evenings of researching trails details for accuracy and entering them in the database one at a time.)

The official announcement of the new trail guide can be found here on the MMBA website, and the trail guide itself can be found here: http://mmba.org/trail-guide

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Crooked Maps?

Published March 3, 2013

In working on the forthcoming MMBA trail guide data I’ve had to find the lat/lon boundaries for rectangular maps so they can be presented as overlays on a Google Map. In doing this I’ve found that almost all of the Michigan DNR-drawn maps seem slightly crooked compared to what I see in OpenStreetMap. It almost looks as if the designer of the map rotated it slightly so that the north/south roads align with the page border.

When making the Stony Creek and Addison Oaks maps I’d noticed that roads which I’d previously thought of as oriented perfectly north-south or east-west were slightly crooked. Now I’m wondering if there’s something I’m not understanding with regards to map projections in Michigan.

Reading this article from the DNR about map projections I see that Michigan has its own projection system called Michigan State Plane Coordinate System. (More info here at Wikipedia.) So, I’m starting to wonder if there’s something that I’m missing and possibly doing wrong with regards to map making in Michigan. I just don’t know enough to know yet.

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Home Grown Oyster Mushrooms

Published February 21, 2013

Danielle’s brother and sister-in-law sent us a kit from Cascadia Mushrooms that promised to grow oyster mushrooms. We’d inadvertently ignored it for a couple weeks, during which time it started growing, so we quickly set to starting it properly. The first harvest of mushrooms was good, but a little bit woody, so we’ll pay much more attention to the second crop which has just started growing.

As seen above, clusters of mushrooms have just barely begun growing, with the largest one comprised of a few primordium now visible. (The scale shown is a millimeter ruler.) I expect that within a week these will be much larger and almost ready to harvest. This time I’ll try to collect them before they turn woody, and if timing works out I’ll try to serve them up with scrambled eggs and toast, just as I ate when Dominic and I were in Brussels.

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Heel Rub Protection for SRAM X0 Crankset

Published February 17, 2013

I recently came across a great deal on a 2011 SRAM X0 2×10 crankset; something which should be a drop-in replacement for the X7 crankset that’s slated to come on the bike that I’ve got on order. Being carbon fiber and looking very nice I want to keep them in great shape, so I decided to apply some protective tape to cut down on heel rub^† and some plastic caps to keep then ends from chipping when hitting rocks.

Race Face’s Crank Boots took care of the end of the crank arms, but for heel rub I turned to my favorite rub protection material, UHMW polyethylene tape. After a few minutes with some masking tape, a marker, and some drawing software I’d made this template which was easily transfered to the tape. As I used some thin (.0045″) tape it was a bit of a hassle to get in place, but hopefully my cleaning routine (glass cleaner followed up with isopropyl alcohol) got the cranks clean enough that the tape won’t begin peeling before I want to remove it.

The applied tape looks a bit milky, but I think that once in place on a bike it’ll be fine. The photo above is worst-case for appearance, as the angled lighting shows all of the slight surface imperfections in the tape. Just as when used for cable rub protection I feel that this super-slippery, strong tape will do a better job of preserving the cranks than the crystal clear polyurethane films that are normally used.

With the peel-off backing still in place the tape only weighed 1g, and with the Crank Boots coming in at 15g for the pair this bit of extra protection won’t add much to the overall weight of the bike. This photo shows the boots and pedals installed, and I’m pretty happy with how it all looks.

Since this crankset is a pretty common style and SRAM doesn’t appear to have changed the molds for their carbon fiber cranksets much recently I hope that quite a few others find this PDF template useful: SRAM XO Crank Arm Protector Template, Designed for 175mm 2011 2×10 X0 GXP Crankset, part number 00.6115.422.070.

^† Heel rub is when one’s shoe rubs against a bike’s crank arm, wearing off the finish.

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Marty’s Orange 9:ZERO:7 Susitna

Published February 9, 2013

This evening, amongst a bunch of other stuff, I had the opportunity to put together most of my friend Marty’s new bike, an orange 9:ZERO:7 Susitna. Named after Alaska’s only area code, 9:ZERO:7 is one of the premier fatbike brands, and one of the few (or only?) mass-availability models that aren’t sold by QBP.

Marty’s bike is mostly stock, but with SRAM XX Grip Shifters and the Gore Ride-On cables they came with, Ergon GP1 grips, a Ritchey carbon bar, Planet Bike bottle cages, some flat pedals that I had laying around, 45NRTH Escalator tires, and some peace sign rim tape that Nick (her husband) set up on the wheels for her. I also added the usual compliment of UHMW tape for cable rub protection to help the frame look nice for a long time to come. (Disclaimer: I didn’t put the wheels/tires together, so the not-aligned logos and valve stem are not my doing. Yes, I acknowledge that is a very pedantic detail.)

As shown it comes in at 32.62 pounds, which is quite respectable for a fatbike where weight wasn’t the priority in the build.

With the orange frame and peace signs the look of this bike just screams Marty, and it should work out very nicely for her. I had a bunch of fun building this, and I hope it serves her well. It’s a really, really great looking bike.

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