A Report For Your Consumption

A few months back I received an email from one Ted Bongiovanni at Consumer Reports.  He had noticed that I ride past their headquarters in Yonkers with some frequency.  Given this, and the fact that I too conduct highly scientific testing on consumer products, he thought I might like to come by for a visit, see the facilities, and chat with some of the office bike nerds.

I had no idea Consumer Reports lay right on my regular ride route, nor did I even know much about them.  It was one of those names I just took for granted in the context of safety and integrity, like the American Dental Association or whatever organization gives out those "World's Greatest Grandma" awards.  However, Tom's pitch was intriguing, and as a semi-professional bike blogger who telecommutes from the couch I'm always willing to help people with actual jobs waste time at work.  So I accepted his invitation.

Consumer Reports is indeed under 10 miles due north from my Bronx manse, and it's a straight shot on the South County Trailway, which is a paved rail-trail that runs from the New York City line into Westchester--a convenient ride, but not necessarily a thrilling one.  However, by tacking on a few extra miles and zigzagging a bit you can also get there via the unpaved Old Croton Aqueduct trail, so that's what I did:

This afforded me an opportunity to feed the bloated tires of the Jones some dirt, as well as to admire the brilliant splashes of autumn foliage on the Palisades across the Hudson, which you can barely see due to my lousy photography:

It's a truly glorious time to ride a bicycle along the Hudson, but you'll have to take my word for it.

Anyway, I rolled up at Consumer Reports at exactly the appointed hour:

By which time the weather was positively glorious:

Ted showed me to one of the bike rooms (they've got another one with hooks and stuff elsewhere in the building), where I backed the ample rump of the Jones into the rack:

The tire didn't fit into the wheel slot, so the Jones had to sidle up alongside a cutting-edge-for-its-day Titus complete with fresh Brooks saddle:

As it turned out, the building's unassuming exterior and mundane office park locale belied a bright, airy, and modern workspace that evoked California more than Yonkers:

Then we began my private tour, and I was excited to witness my first product test until my guide politely informed me that it was just someone painting the wall:

"The labs are this way, idiot," my guide was kind enough not to say:

Here's where they test the washing machines:

Oh, sure, this may be a bike blog, but I'm willing to bet there are at least one or two Laundry Freds out there who debate the relative merits of vertical and horizontal drum setups just as passionately as they do those of Shimano and Campagnolo, and who find a fast spin cycle just as seductive as a buttery-smooth hub with ceramic bearings.  And for the weight weenies out there, that black platform next to the machine is a scale so they can measure how much water the machine is using--though as a Laundry Fred myself I don't use the public water supply and instead hook my machine up to a reservoir which I fill with H2O that has been bottled and distilled.

Here are the test fabrics, which get besmirched with various contaminants and bodily fluids and then laundered, and I can think of no job more thrilling than that of Washing Machine Test Pilot:

And this is just the washing machine testing room, mind you.  They have a whole other room where they test the detergents!

I was in Laundry Fred paradise, but reluctantly I moved on...to the helmet testing facility:

You know how I feel about helmets.  That said, I'm not a physicist or a structural engineer or a materials specialist--I'm just a guy who likes riding bikes and who's really into laundry.  So I won't attempt to analyze, interpret, or critique their testing techniques:

All I'll say is helmet goes up, helmet goes down, and there's an accelerometer in the "head" that tells them stuff about what happened:

And here's your's truley gesticulating in the immediate vicinity of the apparatus:

(Photo: Ted Bongiovanni)

There's a long tradition of me visiting workplaces and not knowing what the fuck I'm looking at:

The tag sticking out of my sweater tells you everything you need to know.

By the way, golf really is the new cycling:

Crash helmets need to be worn by golfers, says health & safety expert https://t.co/qQIaZASxK6

— Phil Hecken (@PhilHecken) November 2, 2018

Next it was on to where they test the cameras:

The mannequins actually move and fans blow their hair so you can really put the cameras through their paces.  I've even got video, which I'm currently too lazy to upload.  However, it was all rather captivating, and I'd never have imagined such amazing things are happening in Yonkers.

Oh, did I mention they really like to drop things at Consumer Reports?  Here's where they drop the phones:

And here are all the various surfaces upon which you might drop yours:

I didn't see a toilet, but they did have this pressurized container to replicate submerging devices at various depths, so presumably they could analyze what happens when you drop your phone in the shitter there:

Here are all the new iPhones:

And here are like all the other phones from like everybody else:

Usually if you check out new phones you do so at a store that only carries a few models, so it was genuinely fascinating to see so many in one place.

Of course now that smartphones have taken over our lives we're now using them to operate everything else.  Behold--this $8,000 smart fridge!

Picture this: you're at the supermarket wondering whether or not you're running low on broccoli.  No problem, all you do is check your phone and you can actually look at the contents of your fridge!

Now I know I'm supposed to lampoon the laziness of buying an expensive fridge instead of simply, you know, making a shopping list, but as a busy parent of multiple human children here's all I have to say about that:

Fuck shopping lists.

But of course there's another reason to be skeptical, and that's privacy.  What if your fridge starts spying on you?  What if you start getting texts from [insert brewery here] saying, "Why the hell are you drinking that cheap swill in your fridge?  Buy our beer instead!"  Well, now that we live in The Future, a lot of what Consumer Reports does is test these connected products to determine exactly how much of your personal data they may be sharing.  As it is, there's no standard for that, so in this respect they're performing a crucial function.  So presumably if you're in the market for a connected fridge you'll be able to check in with Consumer Reports to find out if it's sharing your shopping habits with General Mills.

From there it was onto the audio equipment testing area, complete with man-tastic tan Speaker Fred velour couch:

I didn't see the vape pens, but you know they're hiding somewhere:

Then, when they're sufficiently vaped up (is that even a thing?), they go into the anechoic chamber:

This room is completely free of ambient noise, and it basically sits suspended inside the Consumer Reports building, totally isolated from all noise and vibrations.  As soon as you walk in you feel like you're in an airplane, because apparently when you don't have soundwaves buffeting your eardrums at all times it's like being under different atmospheric pressure.  Plus, when you talk to others it sounds kind of like being underwater...then there's this trippy wall pattern:

Weird:

It was like being in a strange combination of solitary confinement and a sensory deprivation tank, and when nobody spoke all I could hear was my tinnitus.

Oh, by the way, this is what professional blogging looks like:

(Photo: Ted Bongiovanni)

In any case, I don't know how long I was in there, but it must have been years, because I finally emerged into a twisted, dystopian future in which Donald Trump was president and Jew-hating was back in style.

Then it was time for lunch!

They've got a pretty swank cafeteria up there at Consumer Reports.  I had the grilled salmon:

Once we'd filled our trays we adjourned to a conference room, where I bloviated for like an hour to an intimate group of people who I didn't worry too much about boring since no doubt they were just looking for an excuse to ditch work:

Such a fun and informative brown bag chat with @bikesnobnyc at @ConsumerReports today re: cycling, safety, scooters, and more. Thanks for stopping by and thanks @teddyb109 for making it happen. Let's all ride soon! pic.twitter.com/PUJlsZVEcb

— Kevin Winterfield (@kmwinterfield) November 1, 2018

I enjoyed meeting everybody very much, I was grateful for the invitation, and I headed home with buoyed spirits.  At the same time, as someone who hasn't held a real job for going on like 10 years now I sort of envied the plush accommodations and the camaraderie that comes with working alongside a bunch of people.  (Being a semi-professional bike blogger is like being a squirrel who's constantly foraging for nuts, and you feel especially squirrely when you're among lots of grown-ups who have offices.)  Then again, here I was pedaling home on a dirt trail, while they were all going back to work for the afternoon:

Suckers!

New Outside Column!

My latest Outside column is about how all motor vehicles should be total deathtraps:

I have no doubt we'd all be much better off.

Happy Halloween!

Yours Etc.,

--Tan Tenovo

You Better Knock On Wood

It's been quite a week of bicycle maintenance so far here at BSNYC/RTMS/Tan Tenovo, LLC headquarters.  Yesterday of course I tackled the brakes on my WorkCycles, and today I went a few rounds with the Renovo Aerowood.  See, there's nothing quite as exquisite as riding amid the brilliant foliage of fall on an artisanally-hewn wooden Fred Chariot:

That is unless that Fred Chariot is creaking like a haunted pirate ship on the high seas, which is what the Renovo has been doing lately.  I'd already snugged up the seat mast to no avail (It had been the source of some creaking in the past), so this morning I moved onto the bottom bracket, hoping maybe it was a simple matter of snugging up the cups.  First I removed the cranks and made sure they were tight (they were), then I gave the whole bike a quasi-thorough going-over, even going so far as to adjust the bearing preload on the rear hub.  (They're crabon and they're like two grand, but they don't seem to hold an adjustment.)  Finally I buttoned everything back up and went for a ride, and I was hopeful until I hit the first hill and...


It's a lot easier to inspect a bike under the brilliant rays of the autumn sun than it is under the energy-saving lighting fixtures in my basement, so that's what I did.  And here's what I fixated on:

See?

Yes, I realize it's in shadow, but what you're looking at is a split in the wood where the left chainstay is bolted and bonded to the rear dropout.  Remember how I said early on I found some cosmetic cracks in the bike?  Well that's one of them, and here's what it looked like back in November 2017 when I first discovered it:

The short version is Renovo were going to build me a whole new frame and send it to me, but I declined as it hardly seemed worth the effort.  Here's what Ken from Renovo had to say at the time:

The chain stay is both bonded and bolted to the dropout, shouldn't be a problem. If the gap changes in width or you see other changes we'll get you a replacement immediately. If that happened on a customer's bike we would replace it immediately, as we were prepared to do for you. In any event it won't catastrophically fail.

Anyway, now Renovo is Re-no more, so I'm not going to follow up with them, and while I can't tell from the photos if it's in fact gotten worse it is a bit more vexing in light of this new creaking I can't seem to track down.  I suppose I'll go through the usual steps of swapping wheels and pedals and so forth, but even if this crack isn't the culprit I can't help wondering what else might be going on deep in the bowels of this ship.  Or, for all I know it's temperature-related--maybe the bike swells up in the summer when it's hot, but then it contracts when it's cold and the fittings start wriggling around a little bit, hence the creak suddenly manifesting itself in autumn.  Or maybe it's unreasonable to expect a quiet wooden bike, just in the same way it's unreasonable to expect a quiet wooden staircase. Or maybe it's just termites.

Clearly I need to consult with an arborist.

Or, you know, ride a bike made out of metal.

Them's The Brakes (Do You See What I Did There?)

I was going to get all kids of stuff done today.  However, as I took my younger son to school this morning the braking on the WorkCycles (Magura hydraulic rim brakes) was simply too bad to ignore.  (Believe me, I've been doing my best to ignore it for months, but when both levers are bottoming out on the grips you cross that line between "sub-optimal braking" and "bad parenting.")

"No problem," I figured.  "I'll just change the brake pads."  Indeed, I already had a set of fresh brake pads ready to go, and in theory installing them was a simple matter of popping the old ones out and snapping the new ones in.  Just listen to this German man explain it to you:


The thing is, on the WorkCycles, it's not quite so straightforward.  See, the great thing about this bike is that it has fenders, skirt guards, a full chainguard, an internally geared hub...  What all that stuff means is that the bike can spend most of its life outside, and also that you can hop on it without having to worry about your pant cuffs or whatever.

The bad part, however, is that half that shit has to come off because you have to remove the wheels to replace the pads.

Still, I was feeling optimistic as I rolled the bike into the basement:

Indeed, the front brake was easy, since the only extra steps I had to perform to remove the front wheel were to move the front light out of the way of the brake's quick release, and to unplug the light's wire from the hub.

The back brake was another story.  I've removed the rear wheel on the WorkCycles a number of times now, and every time I have it's been a pain in the ass.  No doubt my own ineptitude has a lot to do with it, but even so there's no getting around the fact that you've got to undo a lot of shit--even with the handy removable dropout:

There's the axle nuts, and the dropout bolts, and the chain tensioners, and the chain guard, and the cable for the hub gear...  By the time I was actually able to access the brake pads I was pretty pissed off, and I reinstalled the rear wheel with the impatience and contempt of a cop shoving a perp into the back seat of a squad car.  Oh, also, the chain tensioners are directional.  See how the axle nut washer has a little tab that fits into a slot in the tensioner?

Well, if you flip the tensioner the slot's on the wrong side and you can't tighten down the axle nut:

Pretty much every time I remove the wheel on this bike I put the non-drive tensioner on there backwards, realize it when I'm just about done, and have to undo everything to put it back on the right way.

Anyway, two hours later and the bike finally stops like a dog outside of a veterinarian's office, but there goes half my day:

For some reason I insist on doing all my own bike work, but if I had any sense I'd just bring the WorkCycles to a shop.  In fact, I'd probably have given up long ago, except I have this (no doubt totally unfounded) fear that the shops in New York won't be sufficiently smug to service this bicycle.  Or else I'd move somewhere with a garage where I could set up a workshop, in which case at least I'd be able to spread out and take the time to do the job right.  Oh how I dream of hanging my tools on a wall instead of having to dig them out of a tiny storage space like a toddler rummaging through a toy chest every time I want to use them...

(Image stolen from Park Tool website)

Then again, if I moved somewhere with a garage I'd be in the suburbs, in which case might as well ditch the WorkCycles altogether and say "Fuck it, I'm leasing a Hyundai."

Anyway, at least I don't have to worry about it until the brake pads wear out again.

Rigid In My Thinking

Further to my recent Outside column about the joys of voluminous tires, I see that a new suspension fork has hit the market with great fanfare:

Now I should begin by saying there's certainly lots of room for improvement as far as suspension forks.  I should also say James Huang knows his stuff, so if he says this fork addresses many of those shortcomings I'm inclined to believe him.  Nevertheless, as a cloyingly smug rigid bike enthusiast it's hard not to read stuff like this and wonder, "Why?"

“On every telescopic fork, when you come into a corner, you want stability. But what happens is that you weight the front of the bike, the fork dives, you get less mechanical trail, and the bike gets less stable. We humans have learned, over 120 years of riding telescopic forks, to just deal with it. The brain is good at just making it work.

“But I wanted to know what happens if you make it more stable? Is it worse? Does it not make any difference at all? Or is it super better? So I designed a device to answer that question. It was this crazy-ass test mule, a big Terminator-looking thing that weighed 7 1/2 pounds (3.4kg). I built it up, bolted it up, and went for a ride in the middle of January 2014. I got two corners into it and was like, this is way better.”

Sounds like he's managed to invent something that handles nearly as well as a rigid fork with high-volume tires.

Then there's the price:

As groundbreaking as the Message clearly is, my guess is that Trust may still have a tough time getting people to buy into the idea. For one, it may offer some genuinely tangible performance benefits but it also comes with an outrageous price tag of US$2,700. That obviously leaves an awful lot of room to expand downmarket with a less-expensive version, but for now, it’s only deep-pocketed buyers who will even consider this.

I strongly disagree, and in all sincerity I think $2,700 is way too cheap.  Two grand is the going rate for a wheelset these days, and the most expensive telescoping forks are already well over $1,000.  Why not just price the thing at $5,000?  Not only will the Mountain Freds gladly pay it, but they'll be more likely to pay it because with a price like that it's gotta mean business.

Anyway, hopefully this fork takes off and they have to start designing bikes around it, which will make pretty much every mountain bike currently out there obsolete.

As for me, I've been reveling in smugness recently by riding a bike that lacks not only suspension but also derailleurs:

I know I said I love the plus-sized tires--and believe me I do--but I also love flicking around a light, singlespeed bicycle with "skinny" tires:

Actually, it's not even that light, but after riding the Jones it feels like it weighs like fifteen pounds.

It's been just over seven years since I first took delivery of my artisanal handmade Engin, and while commissioning an expensive bicycle that can't be shifted may seem no different than paying $2,700 for a suspension fork that works almost as well as a rigid one, I congratulate myself for doing so every time I ride it.  I'd been a fan of Drew's bikes (check out his Instagram by the way) since I went down to Philly with some friends years ago to check out his workshop, I'd never had a custom bike, I wanted one because I was a newly-minted author and celebrity bike blogger, and here's why a singlespeed made the most sense for me.  For one thing, I have the most fun on them because they bring me back to my BMX-and-tube-sock days:

(© Danny Weiss)

For another, while you can put together a pretty sweet singlespeed mountain bike for cheap, most of the frames are suspension-corrected and/or designed to be run with or without gears or just generally funky because they're for people putting together their sixth or seventh bike out of stuff from their parts bin.  I, however, wanted a nice, clean, rigid, purpose-built singlespeed, and the way to get that was to go custom.  Sure, you can't tell from my shitty zoomed-in photo, but you don't get awesome rocker dropouts like that on a Surly:

Instead you get something like this:

And that's in no way meant as an insult to Surly, who I applaud for their versatility.  But I wanted a really nice singlespeed, not a giant adapter, and so Engin it was.

Then there was obsolescence.  No velocipede is more obsolescence-prone than the mountain bike.  Suspension; frame spacing; drivetrains...all of these things are way different now than they were just seven years ago.  However, it's hard to imagine a time when I won't be able to find the necessary parts for this thing, and geometry fads aside, an awesome-handling bike is an awesome-handling bike.  Best of all, since it's designed not to use gears or suspension it was already "obsolete" the moment Drew finished welding it, so what do I have to worry about anyway?

In any case, the joy one gets from material things is always fleeting.  Nevertheless, thus far my rationale for commissioning this bike has been borne out, and I'm also glad I got in the queue when I did because now he only builds in titanium and on a limited basis and probably wouldn't even give me the time of day.  Really, if you think about it, my ordering this bike was like getting in on the Google IPO.  (Assuming someone would give me like $25K for it right now, that is.)

Wonder how it would ride with one of those Trust forks...