Trials and Tintinnabulations

Life as a semi-professional bike blogger isn't all glitz and glamor.  Sometimes you've got to get your hands slightly dirty.  Such was the case this morning when I deigned to engage in manual labor.

First there was the pesky flat tire on the Pine Mountain 1 I'm borrowing until Marin files a police report:

After reading every single flat fix instructional in the Bicycling magazine archives (there are over 26,000 of them) I was convinced I could do the job myself, and so I rolled up my sleeves and got to it.  First I locked out the derailleur with this clever little button SRAM is using now isn't that handy what'll they think of next:

(Sarcasm aside, it is pretty handy.)

Then, using the six-inch fingernails I've grown specifically for this purpose (I harden them with lacquer), I prized the tire bead from the rim:

It turned out to be one of those pesky flats where you can't find anything in the tire and where you can't find a hole in the tube even after inflating the thing to comical proportions, moistening your lips, and running them around the periphery.  The wheels are tubeless ready, and I had half a mind to just dump some sealant in there and go that way, since as a semi-professional bike blogger I've got all that stuff in my vast parts closet:

However, the other half of my mind said "Fuck it," and instead I just put a new tube in there, because you see it's not my bike.

So I crossed that job off my list.

Done, and done.

It will probably be flat again by tomorrow.

Next it was time to install the new $50 artisanal bell that's been knocking around my mansion and serving as a children's toy for far too long:

Sure, I'd managed to replace an inner tube, but a full bell swap was going to push me to the very edge of my mechanical abilities.  So I studied up on the bell by watching this video:

Spurcycle Bell Craft from Spurcycle on Vimeo.

USA, baby!  Donald Trump approves.  I'm happy to pay five times what a typical bike bell costs so I can be secure in the knowledge that it was assembled on the good side of the Mexican wall by Americans with college educations and California drawls:

See, Donald Trump is going to bring jobs back to America--good ones too, like Bicycle Bell Lubemeister:

You get into that Bicycle Bell Lubemeister union and you're looking at a starting wage of $50 an hour, plus benefits.

And that's how you Make America Great Again.

Anyway, the upshot of the video was this:

"The result is a powerfully loud bell with a convincing tone and a longer ring than any other."

That's good, because I hate unconvincing bells.  You know how it is: you ring the thing and the person in front of you goes, "Was that a bell or did a chipmunk just fart?"  Well, there's none of that ambiguity with the Spurcycle.  It resonates decisively in the unmistakable timbre of liberty.

I was excited to join this rarefied new world, but first I'd have to remove my old bell:

This was a daunting notion, and for awhile I considered just leaving it on there and running two bells.  Sure, it was cowardly, but I could justify it by performing a test wherein I ring the cheap bell and then the expensive bell and then compare people's reactions.  (Cheap bell: "Did a chipmunk just fart?"  Expensive bell: "All Hail President Trump!")

Ultimately though I decided to tackle the bell removal, and after employing an exotic tool known as a "screwdriver" I eventually succeeded in doing so, but then there was a frightening stretch of time during which my bicycle had no bell at all which meant it was completely unrideable!

Finally, six hours later, I managed to install the Spurcycle:

Please note the placement of the bell is temporary until I can get access to a wind tunnel.  Also, I'm going to need some sort of laser sights to level the bell for optimum sonic wave distribution:

Another source of stress is that I failed to ascertain exactly what material the clamp is made from, as well as to pen a desperate screed to Lennard Zinn asking whether I should have used some sort of assembly paste with my incredibly pretentious titanium handlebar:

And perhaps most vexing, I only noticed after installing it that the clamp has a label stamped into it!

Should the label be facing right or left?!?  OH MY GOD!  I am clearly not ready for high-end bell ownership.

Nevertheless, I set my anxiety aside temporarily and looked for an expensive vehicle worthy of my expensive bell's sonorous chime, but I'd missed the morning drop-off at the fancy prep school and any remaining luxury cars were parked:

Indeed, the only vehicle even remotely in my way was a Ford Fusion, and there was no way I was wasting a $50 ring on that.

So I continued on into the northern suburbs in search of wealthy people walking purebred dogs, but they'd long since headed into Manhattan:

So in the end I was left to contemplate the bell's elegance, as well as its resemblance to various parts of the human anatomy, including but not limited to the eyeball, the mammary, and the phallus:

As of press time though I have yet to ring it.

I'm saving that for something special, such as a double-parked Tesla or a jaywalking Dalai Lama.

The Indignity of Commuting by Bike: Getting Slower

I'm devastated.  Crushed.  Demoralized.

Last night I rode a Citi Bike, so of course immediately afterward I checked my Cat 6 Strava (that's the Citi Bike website) to see how I did compared to last week's ride.  The result?  I'm getting slower!  19 seconds slower, to be exact:

NINETEEN SECONDS?!?  That's an eternity in competitive cycling!  It's the difference between putting on the maillot jaune and slipping into total obscurity!  (Assuming you pass all your drug tests of course.)

So how could this be?  It couldn't be aerodynamics.  I was wearing the exact same non-aero puffy jacket and knit hat as last week.  I was also riding the older model Citi Bike both times.  (Even though the new bikes are designed by Ben Serotta I prefer the older models, so I guess that makes me a bike share retrogrouch.)

If anything, I should have been much slower last week, for the following reasons:

--My bike last week was seriously fucked up, barely shifted, and the drivetrain sounded like an egg beater trying to smooth a bowl of gravel;
--I'd eaten myself stupid at a fancy restaurant before checking out the bike;
--I had a chat with someone as I rode across the Manhattan Bridge span;
--I was snapping photos as I rode.

None of these things were true of this week's ride, from which I can only conclude I've already stuffed a Gazzetta dello Sport down the front of my jersey and am officially on the descent to irrevocably diminishing fitness and, ultimately, death.

Either that or there was more of a headwind last night.

Oh wait, I did take one photo last night of a police car in the bike lane:

This was in front of the Apple store, so I can only assume they were apprehending someone for attempting to steal an overpriced pair of Chinese headphones.

Can't wait until President Trump sorts that whole thing out so I can stick a tiny plastic piece of America in my ear hole and crank up the Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Anyway, given my poor performance on the Citi Bike last night I figured I'd better do some training this morning.  Fortunately, my privileged position as a semi-professional bike blogger means I can semi-work wherever I want, and I've engineered a "commute" for myself that conveniently takes me through a park with mountain bike trails in it.  So I threw some stuff in a backpack and went to grab the Marin Pine Mountain 1, only to find that one of the tires was flat:

I had the appropriate inner tube but I didn't have even a moment to spare, and so I said "Screw it" and grabbed my Engin instead:

After a week of riding a bike with big fat plush tires and a wide range of gears I thought that maybe a singlespeed with comparatively narrow rubber would seem difficult to ride in comparison, but this was not the casem and in fact it felt awesome.  (When it comes to handling it's tough to beat a rigid non-suspension-corrected bicycle.)

Sure, an artisanal singlespeed is a bit pretentious, and I'd never tell anyone they need a custom bicycle, but I congratulate myself for buying that bike every time I ride it.

Speaking of wheel sizes, further to yesterday's post a commenter expressed confusion and frustration over bicycle wheel nomenclature, specifically with regard to the Marin Pine Mountain 1, which employs a size they're now calling "27.5+."  It's really not complicated.  27.5 is just what people are calling 650b now, and the "+" just means the rims and tires are extra wide.

As for the tubes (assuming you still use tubes), they're readily available, and in fact I picked up an extra at a well-known outdoor store on my way to the mountain bike trail this morning:

See that?  It's clearly labeled with both terms:

Sure, it's not technically "+"-sized, but that shouldn't matter too much owing to the expansification properties of the tube once you shove it full of air with an inflatoratory device.

So don't worry, addled commentator, nobody's trying to put one over on you.

Anyway, there are few things better than some snow-dusted singletrack on a cold winter's morning:

Especially when your bladder has been duly voided of its contents:

And here we are.

Also further to yesterday's post, you may recall I made mention of Rapha:

(NYTimes)

Well, I must have my hand wrist-deep in the Zeitgeist because check this out:

(Via @cyclingreporter)

I love headlines with obvious answers, and in this case the answer to the above question is clearly this:

Really, it's not complicated.  Rapha make some very nice stuff, but it can be expensive, and their marketing can be insufferable.  It's really no different than, say, BMW, who also make some very nice stuff, but it can be expensive, and their marketing can be insufferable.  And I don't mean that as an insult to Rapha, who are very good at what they do.  It's just that it's impossible to sell high performance to men without making it expensive and surrounding it with a culture of douchebaggery.  That's just physics.

Even so, I read the article, and was amused to learn about something called the "Shadow collection:"

Earlier this month, Rapha unveiled its new Shadow collection and even the staunchest supporters of the brand were taken aback by the £480 price tag for the jersey and shorts. Critics came out in force on social media ridiculing the price, pointing out that the jersey cost twice the price of its obvious rival. “Two hundred and sixty pounds for a pair of shorts is a grotesque amount of money!,”said one. “For £260 I could buy 32 and a half pairs of Decathlon’s finest!,” screamed another.

So when they say "obvious rival" do they mean the "Kuku Penthouse?"

(Assos's Kuku Penthouse, a.k.a. the Dong Hammock)

I don't know, but one Henrie Westlake objects to Rapha on the basis that they're now the official uniform of Fred 2.0:

Henrie Westlake is 42 and has been road cycling all his adult life, but would never contemplate wearing Rapha’s clothing. His choice is not down to the cost, nor the quality. “It has become the uniform of a certain sector of ‘new’ cyclists,” he contends, “and by that I refer to the stereotypical cliché of ‘all the gear, no idea’.

I'd agree with Mr. Westlake that Rapha has become the uniform of the 'new' cyclist.  Head out to Route 9W on warm weekend and you'll see legions of wobbly Freds and Fredericas on new crabon bicycles, all with matching Rapha gear complete with that ubiquitous and vaguely fascistic white armband:

(Admit it: they look kinda like Nazis.)

On the other hand, Rapha deserve credit for making novice cyclists look about a thousand times better than they did ten or twenty years ago.  For example, I can very clearly remember wearing this jersey:

Not only was it like two sizes too big, but I also didn't even own a bike with a Headshok and I wore it while riding a road bike.  For the life of me I have no idea why I thought this was something I could wear in public.  I can only assume I deemed it slightly better than other Fredly alternatives of the time, such as the Primal Wear collection:

Had I had access to Rapha in those days then perhaps I'd have avoided this sartorial Sophie's choice.

Then again, it's worth asking: is the tasteful monochromatic conformity of today's comparatively stylish Freds in fact preferable to the gaudy, clashing, and occasionally seizure-inducing fashon palette of the Freds of yesteryear?  Perhaps not.  In fact perhaps in sparing new cyclists the indignity of wearing truly embarrassing jerseys we're also sheltering them from the hazing and attrition that will make them better cyclists and, ultimately--dare I say it--Rapha-worthy.  Indeed, in this sense, it would seem that Rapha may have effectively undermined themselves by creating sort of a Fredly fashion inversion.

Fuck it, I'm leasing a BMW.

What's Old Is Old Again

As the Transport Workers Union so rightly points out, when it comes to the safety of New York City's streets, pedestrians are a "menace:"

(Click here for some city-sanctioned victim-blaming.)

Oh, sorry, did I type "pedestrians?"  Because I meant drivers, like this homicidal moron who crashed into the Go Anus Anal after doing his best to rub out a mother and her baby:

Well yeah, technically it's the "Gowanus Canal," but only tourists call it that.  If you want to sound like a real local, be sure to call it the "Go Anus Anal," especially when asking for directions:

Anyway, so this guy hits a woman as she's loading her baby into her Toyota Camry:

Murphy allegedly struck a 41-year-old woman at Degraw and Court Street as she was putting her 1-year-old baby into her Toyota Camry, police sources said.

Then he flees at high speed, at which point he drives his Audi right into the drink:

Murphy then fled three blocks down Degraw but ran out of room on the icy, dead-end street. The car plummeted into the water around 11:15 a.m., sources said.

“What caught my attention was the speed of the car. It was going around 70, 80 mph,” said Maurice Deas, 36, who works on the set for the TV show “The Americans.”

And is ultimately rescued by a couple of bystanders:

Murphy was able to open the door – even as the car started to sink – and managed to escape, with Deas and another man helping him out of the freezing water.

Deas said Murphy, who was wet up to the ankles, was visibly shaken up.

“He was a little out of it. He kept saying he was an Iraqi war veteran,” said Deas. “He was a little delirious. He kept saying the ice made him slip. He was trying to stop.”

Wow, there's no way I would have helped that guy.  "Thank you for your service," I've had said while saluting as I watched the icy, gonorrhea-ridden "waters" (to the extent you can call that water) of the Go Anus claim him.

A captain should always go down with his Audi.

The smuggies claim bike lanes help make streets safer, but it's becoming increasingly clear that the most effective solution is probably more streets that dead-end at canals.  Consider Amsterdam, for example.  Notice anything?

(Hint: canals.)

I'll gladly trade all New York City's bike infrastructure for a vast series of canals with no guardrails or warning signs.  See, bike lanes are mostly just more police parking, whereas unexpected canals would probably weed out the city's reckless drivers through natural selection within a couple months.

Moving on to more bikey-type stuff, I still have the Marin Pine Mountain 1:

And after spending most of my precious recreational riding time on it this past week I'm officially adding Marin to my "blocked callers" list because I don't want to give it back.

Here is why I am an unabashed fan of this bike:

--It's metal
--It has no bouncy parts to futz with, nor does it need them
--It has quick release axles, "standard" spacing, and a threaded bottom bracket
--It's only about $1,000, you don't need to change anything to make it better, and you can ride anywhere with it.

Regarding that last point, the bike's versatility is due to the "27.5+" wheel and tire size.  Basically you get all the obvious benefits of tires with more volume (lots of traction, the ability to smoothly roll over small animals and children), yet they're not so fat that they feel sluggish or are onerous on smooth terrain if you find yourself riding to the trails as I often do.  (I mean, no more onerous than a "regular" mountain bike anyway.)  And who needs suspension when you can accomplish the same thing with your tires?

And by all means, go ahead call me a sellout, because I'm pretty comfortable with praising a "cheap" bike that's extremely fun to ride.  I am a bike blogger, you know.  Selling out would be if I said, "Fuck it, I'm getting a real estate broker's license" and started hawking condos.

(Which I haven't ruled out, mind you.)

Speaking of selling, a reader informed me that this vintage Rapha garment can now be yours for only £300 (which is like US$25,000):

The Original Rapha Stowaway Rain Jacket size medium, pre Sky and big time days, original and unique.
Made from 2.5 ply Polyamide material which is tough yet remarkably waterproof multi-layer fabric, it's thin and nicely soft to the touch.
I bought this from Rapha in 2007 but have never worn it.
Please ask if you have any questions.

Ah yes, who can forget the humble days before Rapha hit the big time?

And let the record show I was a sellout as far back as 2009:

Rapha has managed to impress even the toughest of bike-world critics, including the anonymous blogger Bike Snob NYC, whose pointed critiques of cycling style have drawn a wide audience in the riding community (Mr. Armstrong was photographed not long ago wearing a Bike Snob “Seal of Disapproval” T-shirt.)

In an e-mail message, Bike Snob NYC said he was impressed with a “Fixed Jacket” that Rapha sent him to try. “It’s excellent,” he wrote. “It’s durable, the fit is good, and the pockets are in the right places.” The blogger added, “They’ve done a great job of not only evoking cycling history but also capturing a ‘soulful’ aesthetic that appeals to certain riders.” Still, he admitted: “As a cyclist, I understand it, but personally I sometimes find it off-putting. It’s a little rarefied for me ... I don’t want to feel like I need to be worthy of my clothes.”

By the way, here's the "Fixed Jacket:" 

That is emphatically not me, and is in fact from the 2008 series "30 Days of Rapha," which was the Bike Internet at its very best and most unintentionally hilarious:

Today's commute promised a cloudy cool trip to the office and rain on the way home. Scott from Australia, who blogs about his training and racing at SEVere Motivation was asking in yesterday's comments about jacket choices. Was I more concerned about temperature or precipitation when figuring out which to go with?

Well, today I chose the Rapha Stowaway over the Classic Softshell for two reasons. First with temps in the low 60s the heavier Classic would definitely have been too hot for the ride in. I calculated that even if the afternoon forecast for blowing rain materialized, the 50 minute trip home wouldn't soak me through and I'd be warm enough with base layer and cross jersey underneath. I paired the Stowaway with the Black Fixed Shorts giving the latter a racier edge.

If you think commuting by bike San Francisco Bay Area is so hard that it requires a walk-in wardrobe full of Rapha, then the people of Copenhagen would like to have a word with you:

And yes, if you're wondering, I still have the jacket:

I'm also working on my eBay description:

The Original Rapha Fixed Jacket size medium, pre Sky and big time days, original and unique.
Made from something.
Worn by a world-famous semi-professional bike blogger who got it for free and then mentioned it in the New York Times.  
Please ask if you have any questions.

Bidding starts at £1,000.

Lastly, speaking of the heady days of the urban cycling trend, remember bike polo?  Well now's your chance to fund a documentary about it:


In case you're unfamiliar with bike polo, first it was a "culture:"

Then it was an "identity:"

Nice tattoo by the way.  He must forget how to disassemble his hub.  What's on his other calf, a grocery shopping list?

Someone should really do a documentary about cyclists and their bike-themed calf tattoos:

interestingly tattooed calves on london bike messenger. pic.twitter.com/PXHSdTW6IV

— Marcel Theroux (@Therouvian) August 21, 2013

When you tattoo "Fuck Taxis" on your calves you pretty much tempt fate and guarantee that one day you'll need to seek work as a taxi driver--though if he does at least he can easily alter the tattoo:

Now that's a sentiment you never outgrow.

Anyway, as for bike polo, it went from "game" to "sport:"

And then from "sport" to "cliché:"

Though obviously it was already a "sport" back in 1902:

And here's the filmmaker:

Now to break it down to the nitty-gritty, in the last couple years I've seen, I've seen blood, I've seen broken teeth, I've seen friends fight with friends, I've seen friendships come to an end, I've seen people pick up and throw thousand-dollar bikes across the court when their team loses, I've seen people pick up and throw their bike across the court when their team wins.  I've seen something that I want to call the fire and the passion of competitive sport.

So basically road racing with less Rapha.

Bros will be bros.