I'd like to open this post by saying that I won my group in tonight's 3rd Street Southbound Commuter Race. There was one other entrant, but I dropped him like he was hot -- actually, it's probably that I dropped him because he was hot. So was I; I suspect the superior wicking qualities of my stealth kit, coupled with their aerodynamic advantage, may have given me an edge. That or else, he just said, "Meh, why bother?" while I said, "GGGGAAAAAARRRRRR! KILL! KILL!" because I was sleep-deprived, heavily caffeinated, and hyped up from a day at the shop. I did hear him upshift (or possibly downshift) right after I passed him, though.
Unfortunately, based on the rules of Silly Commuter Racing, I don't think either of us would've qualified for any points regardless of outcome, since I was wearing actual bike clothes (stealth kit, not team kit, and I should admit that my legs, while still not tarantulan in scope, are somewhat more unshorn than usual), but he was on a much newer bike with a hot little drivetrain (also, his was a better fit -- probably for me as well as him). Thus, while I might've earned some points based on the comparison of our rides, and he might have based on the comparison of our clothes -- were it not for the mitigating factors. If I had been riding his bike, I probably would've lost points just for taking his passing me at a stoplight as a challenge, based on the allocation of clothing and bike points. Thus, there was no impact whatsoever in either of our standings in the World Silly Commuter Racing Cup.
Next up, I scored a random Trek Livestrong kit from BW at work. I definitely appreciate it. I have been deeply in need of more bike shorts and jerseys (because I pretty much never wear anything else anymore). I'm not too picky to wear sponsored kit if it falls into (or onto) my lap. Moreover, it fits really well. Plus, it's super-ironic, in that my bike isn't a Trek, I don't have any SRAM components, my pedals are not Speedplays, and I have no idea what Clear20 even is, though I deeply fear that it may be some new arm of ClearChannel Radio hoping to profit from the future's ever-increasing water woes.
I do feel like maybe I should at least find some money to donate to the Lance Armstrong Foundation now, though, since I'm riding around in their kit and all.
Likewise, as I was riding home tonight, I mentally catalogued a number of evolutions in my riding style, compared to last year.
First and foremost, I spit a whole lot less than I used to. I still spit sometimes, especially when I inhale bugs, which is either an unavoidable hazard of cycling or a great way to score free protein snacks, depending on your POV (note: very few actual bugs take the latter view).
Next, I stop a whole lot less than I used to. By which I mean, I get stopped at fewer red lights. This may partly owe to an increase in overall speed, but I suspect it mostly has to do with the fact that sometime last year I realized it makes more sense to ride really slowly when approaching a yellow or red light in hopes of taking long enough to get there that it will once again have turned green. I am absolutely sure drivers love this tactic; however, I realize that many of them do exactly the same thing (I think it saves gas) and so I no longer feel intimidated by traffic while doing this.
Thirdly, I actually drink less than I used to. I'm not sure this is actually a good thing. That said, I used to chug water like it was going out of style on my commutes (and even more so on longer rides), and now I just sip from time to time, keepin' it real in terms of hydration without diverting much energy to my digestive tract. I don't think I used to sweat as much as I do now -- maybe that was the result of some or another medication I was taking? -- so I think in the past I was trying to cool myself from the inside by drinking. Wearing cycling clothes also seems to help with the cooling thing; in fact, I have been known to refer to my black 'stealth' jersey as 'my personal air conditioner.'
Meanwhile, there has been a distinct increase in out-of-the-saddle sprints, riding in the drops, and strategizing so if I do get stuck at a stoplight, there's a car in front of me that will A) change the light for me (some on my route don't change for bikes) and B) shelter me from the wind like my very own 4,000-pound leadout man while I'm getting back up to speed.
I also change gears less often than I used to and ride the big ring more often than I used to, if not very much right now since there's something going on with QS's rear derailleur cable that I haven't had a chance to fix yet (which is to say, 'that I haven't gotten my lazy behind motivated to fix yet, for shame: some part of me keeps saying, 'Meh, this is the first summer vacation you've had in like forever, and besides, Hg will have a new BB soon, and then you can mess with QS all you want').
I'm also a lot less good at logging mileage than I used to be, even though I think on average I'm a lot better at racking up the miles (last year at this time of year, I don't think I was riding much, since the heat and air quality were still really big problems for me). Part of me feels I should really get on that, and another part of me offers that whole 'summer vacation' thing as an excuse.
So what that all says about me as a cyclist, I don't know. I'm may be faster and lazier, simply lazier, or lazier except when inspired to make an effort.
I'd try to figure it out, but, you know. Summer vacation. Et cetera.
Showing posts with label QS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label QS. Show all posts
Friday, June 10, 2011
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Harry Potter is a Straight-Up Dude, or, Best. Race. Evar!
Disclaimer: I realize that this post officially marks me as a big ol' sap, and I should point out that my 12-year-old self, who is still very much alive and well, is rolling his eyes and going, "OMG PLZZZZZ don't humiliate us, dude!"
Today I learned many things -- or in some (maybe all) cases, was reminded of many important lessons that I've learned along the way and possibly forgotten. I was reminded that 'The Secret,' corny though the book and the movie may be, really works. I was reminded that Harry Potter is a straight-up dude (more on that later). And, perhaps most importantly, I was reminded that winning isn't everything.
I should probably begin by mentioning the fact that I didn't race today, though it seems like Seiler and the other fellow (Jim?) who run the short-track series together probably would've let me, at least for fun (at one point, Seiler -- commenting on the variety of bikes at the race, said as I picked my QS up from his resting place in the grass, "...And there's a guy with a -- we'll call it a drop-bar mountain bike!").
However, I still don't quite have all my ducks in a row, and as such have not acquired my UCI/USAC license for this year (d'oh), on top of which I didn't bring any cash to pay the race fee, because I was figuring that since I didn't have a mountain bike, racing wasn't an option. I basically showed up to pound some stakes, cheer on a couple of races, and ride home.
That, however, doesn't stop me from learning things at this race.
The race, in particular, that struck me as a learning opportunity was the very first one -- the "kids' race" (not to be confused with the Juniors group), which gives kids who aren't ready for prime time a chance to have a go at bike racing and win some prizes.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were all kinds of kids in the kids' race. The youngest were a pair of three-year olds -- so small they were pretty much relegated to their own de facto single-speed division, since their bikes were so small that any associated derailleurs would have dragged the ground (plus, I don't think anyone makes a geared bike in a 12" wheel size). One was a little boy, one was a little girl.
The little girl had fallen over during her warm-up lap, but gamely lined up for the start anyway. About five meters from the finish line, she was ahead of the little boy by a few lengths, duking it out in what Seiler called 'The Battle of the Threes' -- and there, though she was, in essence, winning her (unofficial) group, she stopped.
She put on the brakes (that is, she put her feet on the ground) and simply stopped and stood stock still. She wasn't going anywhere, period, and nobody was going to make her ride so much as one more meter, let alone five. Her dad, who had been patiently trailing along making sure that she didn't topple over (the boy's dad was doing the same), finally kind of shrugged, picked her up, and wheeled her bike off the track.
The lesson?
Winning isn't everything. Even when you're five meters from the line.
Sometimes there are more important things in life. I have no idea what was going on in that little girl's mind, but obviously something was way, way more important to her than continuing her race -- even though she was, in a sense, winning her own group, even if that group wasn't officially recognized.
This was obviously a little girl of strong will and considerable character. I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of her both this season and in years to come.
Second: about 'The Secret' ... it more or less has to do with the whole idea of mind-over-matter. It's something I've really struggled with, the past few months, as I wrestled with an on-again, off-again depression (one that continues to challenge me). I have been trying to overcome the obsessive-compulsive thoughts that roar into my brain -- kind of like badly-timed freight trains -- to tell me how fat* I am, or how hopeless my quest to become a competent (if mediocre) bike racer looks, and how closely I resemble the Michelin Man in my team kit.
Today I managed to convince myself that I look and feel and am awesome on the bike. Thus, I did feel awesome on the bike. I don't know that I was actually awesome, but that doesn't really matter. Likewise, my shadow looked pretty awesome, and that made it possible for me to visualize myself as I hope to look in a few months, when 'cross season gets rolling.
The idea, as The Rocky Horror Picture Show's opening title track puts it, is this: "Don't dream it -- be it." Inside this chunky chrysalis, a svelte bike racer is preparing to hatch.
All this 'feeling awesome' put me in a pretty good mood. I've noticed that when I'm in a pretty good mood, drivers seem to drive better. Whether this is a 'law of attraction' thing, or whether my attention system favors nice drivers over grumpy drivers when I'm in a good mood doesn't really matter. It is what it is.
Thus, as I spun my way home, I happened to notice a nice driver who pulled up behind me at a four-way stop, made no effort to pass me at the stop sign or in the intersection, and waited politely for me to wave him around on the next segment of road. As he passed I shot him a smile and noticed A) that the driver in question sat at the while of a white Galant (appropriate, eh?) and B) the driver in question was Harry Potter.
Okay, so maybe he wasn't really Harry Potter, but he looked at least as much like Harry Potter as I do when my hair is short (which it totally isn't, right now) -- and I look enough like Harry Potter that I will probably never have to buy another Hallowe'en costume as long as I live. I look enough like Harry Potter that I have more than once, while riding through the city in a sweater, white shirt, and tie, been greeted with cries of, "Look! It's Harry Potter!" I look enough like Harry Potter that -- well, I think you see my point, here.
So, anyway, long story short, Harry Potter is a righteous bro, and stuff. He was nice to me at a point in the ride where I was pretty much cooked. I had been out on the bike more or less since noon, excepting a brief break to walk around pounding stakes into the ground on the hills of Seneca Park and then watch a couple of races -- and I had rather hammered it home, since DD's Aunt C is coming for a brief visit tonight, so the consideration was deeply appreciated.
Notes
*WRT my fatness, or lack thereof: in my purely rational mind, I realize this sentiment is somewhat ridiculous, and probably not really something people who are legitimately obese want to hear -- the thing is, my personal psychosis about my weight is precisely that: a psychological disorder, and it applies only to me. I also recognize that as someone who has, from time to time, struggled with an actual eating disorder, participating in a sport that is occasionally called 'a very expensive eating disorder' might not be the best idea ever. Still, I love bikes, and I love riding bikes, so I don't plan to stop. I just plan to remain vigilant, carefully sorting the sane thoughts about my weight from the totally-out-of-touch-with-reality ones, and to set a reasonable, healthy weight goal -- 145 pounds, instead of 125 pounds (I would be happy, though, with 155). I have seen how I look at 125 pounds. It's not pretty, though at the time I didn't know that.
Today I learned many things -- or in some (maybe all) cases, was reminded of many important lessons that I've learned along the way and possibly forgotten. I was reminded that 'The Secret,' corny though the book and the movie may be, really works. I was reminded that Harry Potter is a straight-up dude (more on that later). And, perhaps most importantly, I was reminded that winning isn't everything.
I should probably begin by mentioning the fact that I didn't race today, though it seems like Seiler and the other fellow (Jim?) who run the short-track series together probably would've let me, at least for fun (at one point, Seiler -- commenting on the variety of bikes at the race, said as I picked my QS up from his resting place in the grass, "...And there's a guy with a -- we'll call it a drop-bar mountain bike!").
However, I still don't quite have all my ducks in a row, and as such have not acquired my UCI/USAC license for this year (d'oh), on top of which I didn't bring any cash to pay the race fee, because I was figuring that since I didn't have a mountain bike, racing wasn't an option. I basically showed up to pound some stakes, cheer on a couple of races, and ride home.
That, however, doesn't stop me from learning things at this race.
The race, in particular, that struck me as a learning opportunity was the very first one -- the "kids' race" (not to be confused with the Juniors group), which gives kids who aren't ready for prime time a chance to have a go at bike racing and win some prizes.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were all kinds of kids in the kids' race. The youngest were a pair of three-year olds -- so small they were pretty much relegated to their own de facto single-speed division, since their bikes were so small that any associated derailleurs would have dragged the ground (plus, I don't think anyone makes a geared bike in a 12" wheel size). One was a little boy, one was a little girl.
The little girl had fallen over during her warm-up lap, but gamely lined up for the start anyway. About five meters from the finish line, she was ahead of the little boy by a few lengths, duking it out in what Seiler called 'The Battle of the Threes' -- and there, though she was, in essence, winning her (unofficial) group, she stopped.
She put on the brakes (that is, she put her feet on the ground) and simply stopped and stood stock still. She wasn't going anywhere, period, and nobody was going to make her ride so much as one more meter, let alone five. Her dad, who had been patiently trailing along making sure that she didn't topple over (the boy's dad was doing the same), finally kind of shrugged, picked her up, and wheeled her bike off the track.
The lesson?
Winning isn't everything. Even when you're five meters from the line.
Sometimes there are more important things in life. I have no idea what was going on in that little girl's mind, but obviously something was way, way more important to her than continuing her race -- even though she was, in a sense, winning her own group, even if that group wasn't officially recognized.
This was obviously a little girl of strong will and considerable character. I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of her both this season and in years to come.
Second: about 'The Secret' ... it more or less has to do with the whole idea of mind-over-matter. It's something I've really struggled with, the past few months, as I wrestled with an on-again, off-again depression (one that continues to challenge me). I have been trying to overcome the obsessive-compulsive thoughts that roar into my brain -- kind of like badly-timed freight trains -- to tell me how fat* I am, or how hopeless my quest to become a competent (if mediocre) bike racer looks, and how closely I resemble the Michelin Man in my team kit.
Today I managed to convince myself that I look and feel and am awesome on the bike. Thus, I did feel awesome on the bike. I don't know that I was actually awesome, but that doesn't really matter. Likewise, my shadow looked pretty awesome, and that made it possible for me to visualize myself as I hope to look in a few months, when 'cross season gets rolling.
The idea, as The Rocky Horror Picture Show's opening title track puts it, is this: "Don't dream it -- be it." Inside this chunky chrysalis, a svelte bike racer is preparing to hatch.
All this 'feeling awesome' put me in a pretty good mood. I've noticed that when I'm in a pretty good mood, drivers seem to drive better. Whether this is a 'law of attraction' thing, or whether my attention system favors nice drivers over grumpy drivers when I'm in a good mood doesn't really matter. It is what it is.
Thus, as I spun my way home, I happened to notice a nice driver who pulled up behind me at a four-way stop, made no effort to pass me at the stop sign or in the intersection, and waited politely for me to wave him around on the next segment of road. As he passed I shot him a smile and noticed A) that the driver in question sat at the while of a white Galant (appropriate, eh?) and B) the driver in question was Harry Potter.
Okay, so maybe he wasn't really Harry Potter, but he looked at least as much like Harry Potter as I do when my hair is short (which it totally isn't, right now) -- and I look enough like Harry Potter that I will probably never have to buy another Hallowe'en costume as long as I live. I look enough like Harry Potter that I have more than once, while riding through the city in a sweater, white shirt, and tie, been greeted with cries of, "Look! It's Harry Potter!" I look enough like Harry Potter that -- well, I think you see my point, here.
So, anyway, long story short, Harry Potter is a righteous bro, and stuff. He was nice to me at a point in the ride where I was pretty much cooked. I had been out on the bike more or less since noon, excepting a brief break to walk around pounding stakes into the ground on the hills of Seneca Park and then watch a couple of races -- and I had rather hammered it home, since DD's Aunt C is coming for a brief visit tonight, so the consideration was deeply appreciated.
Notes
*WRT my fatness, or lack thereof: in my purely rational mind, I realize this sentiment is somewhat ridiculous, and probably not really something people who are legitimately obese want to hear -- the thing is, my personal psychosis about my weight is precisely that: a psychological disorder, and it applies only to me. I also recognize that as someone who has, from time to time, struggled with an actual eating disorder, participating in a sport that is occasionally called 'a very expensive eating disorder' might not be the best idea ever. Still, I love bikes, and I love riding bikes, so I don't plan to stop. I just plan to remain vigilant, carefully sorting the sane thoughts about my weight from the totally-out-of-touch-with-reality ones, and to set a reasonable, healthy weight goal -- 145 pounds, instead of 125 pounds (I would be happy, though, with 155). I have seen how I look at 125 pounds. It's not pretty, though at the time I didn't know that.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Fits and Starts
My 2-week stint as a courier is done, the Mayor's Hike, Bike, and Paddle is behind us (DD rode with me this year -- very different experience from hammering it out with the fast group!), and summer is unofficially officially here. I guess it won't be officially officially here 'til somewhere around 21 June, but if you live in Louisville, you know it's summer already.
You know that because the streets are only a few degrees cooler than the surface of the sun and the trees and grass look all jungly, because only like one person in your 6,000+-bike group ride is wearing tights, and because you've already seen the first firefly of the year (woot!). Also, you know it's summer because every time you set foot out of your front (or back) door, you are tortured by the delicious scent of BBQ (OMG BBQ!) or smoking meat wafting from somewhere nearby ... a scent that follows you as you roll through the city, eventually forcing you to buy teriyaki beef* jerky in the middle of your semi-epic-ride-of-the-moment in a meager effort to overcome THE CRAVING, which might otherwise cause you to tear open and chug the nearest bottle of BBQ sauce (OMG WTF BBQ!) ... or maybe that's just me.
In other news, the bikes are currently not very happy. Hg is waiting for a new bottom bracket -- which should permanently correct the loose crank issue -- after I attempted to hammer it home ahead of the Doomsday Storm last Monday and managed to exacerbate its existing problems. Fortunately, DD came and rescued me just in the nick of time (I love him for many reasons, among them, the fact that he bears a startling resemblance to a modern day fairy-tale hero, at least in terms of ability to show up just in time and rescue me from whatever danger currently threatens my bodily, psychological, or bike-o-logical well-being).
QS also really needs a BB overhaul as well, but Hg will probably be done first. I haven't yet determined what kind of BB QS needs (OMG, WTF, BBQS?). I think QS will hold out a little longer ... at least, I sincerely hope so, since it's....
Short Track Racing Time Again!
I, of course, will not be racing in the Short Track Series, because I continue to not own a mountain bike ... though I am fighting a mighty temptation to ask a friend of mine if I can borrow his and give it a go. Ahem. I do, however, plan to ride over to help set up and so forth tomorrow night. That should be fun. I am debating whether or not to wear my team kit. I probably won't this week, since I'm absolutely, definitely NOT RACING this week, and also because I am back to thinking I look like good ol' Sta-Puft in said team kit (though I did wear it on Monday for the Hike&Bike, because I left home wearing that and the wind vest, and the wind vest got to be too ridiculously hot). That said, though it should be no surprise at all, two weeks of couriering have done wonders for my fitness level, assuming I haven't blown it all over the weekend pigging out at an amazing BBQ (OMG BBQ!) thrown by our friends K (with whom Swift now resides) and J (her husband, owner of the mountain bike I'm itching to borrow for the short-track series).
The goal, of course, is to not look like Sta-Puft by September. The problem being that I have become rather a decent cook, and am generally rather surrounded by tasty food, since I like to feed said tasty food to DD and our housemate, LT. I hope that an almost-totally-blank summer schedule, which provides ridiculous amounts of time for doing nothing but Riding The Bike, will ameliorate the effect of said tasty food on my figure. Because, really, that's pretty much what it's about for me: I am decently fast when I want or need to make an effort, and not expecting to get a whole lot faster by 'cross season, but I'd really, really like to look better in my team kit.
Sad? Perhaps.
This concludes today's rambling and hyperactive update :)
Notes
*or soy, or turkey, or whatever
You know that because the streets are only a few degrees cooler than the surface of the sun and the trees and grass look all jungly, because only like one person in your 6,000+-bike group ride is wearing tights, and because you've already seen the first firefly of the year (woot!). Also, you know it's summer because every time you set foot out of your front (or back) door, you are tortured by the delicious scent of BBQ (OMG BBQ!) or smoking meat wafting from somewhere nearby ... a scent that follows you as you roll through the city, eventually forcing you to buy teriyaki beef* jerky in the middle of your semi-epic-ride-of-the-moment in a meager effort to overcome THE CRAVING, which might otherwise cause you to tear open and chug the nearest bottle of BBQ sauce (OMG WTF BBQ!) ... or maybe that's just me.
In other news, the bikes are currently not very happy. Hg is waiting for a new bottom bracket -- which should permanently correct the loose crank issue -- after I attempted to hammer it home ahead of the Doomsday Storm last Monday and managed to exacerbate its existing problems. Fortunately, DD came and rescued me just in the nick of time (I love him for many reasons, among them, the fact that he bears a startling resemblance to a modern day fairy-tale hero, at least in terms of ability to show up just in time and rescue me from whatever danger currently threatens my bodily, psychological, or bike-o-logical well-being).
QS also really needs a BB overhaul as well, but Hg will probably be done first. I haven't yet determined what kind of BB QS needs (OMG, WTF, BBQS?). I think QS will hold out a little longer ... at least, I sincerely hope so, since it's....
Short Track Racing Time Again!
I, of course, will not be racing in the Short Track Series, because I continue to not own a mountain bike ... though I am fighting a mighty temptation to ask a friend of mine if I can borrow his and give it a go. Ahem. I do, however, plan to ride over to help set up and so forth tomorrow night. That should be fun. I am debating whether or not to wear my team kit. I probably won't this week, since I'm absolutely, definitely NOT RACING this week, and also because I am back to thinking I look like good ol' Sta-Puft in said team kit (though I did wear it on Monday for the Hike&Bike, because I left home wearing that and the wind vest, and the wind vest got to be too ridiculously hot). That said, though it should be no surprise at all, two weeks of couriering have done wonders for my fitness level, assuming I haven't blown it all over the weekend pigging out at an amazing BBQ (OMG BBQ!) thrown by our friends K (with whom Swift now resides) and J (her husband, owner of the mountain bike I'm itching to borrow for the short-track series).
The goal, of course, is to not look like Sta-Puft by September. The problem being that I have become rather a decent cook, and am generally rather surrounded by tasty food, since I like to feed said tasty food to DD and our housemate, LT. I hope that an almost-totally-blank summer schedule, which provides ridiculous amounts of time for doing nothing but Riding The Bike, will ameliorate the effect of said tasty food on my figure. Because, really, that's pretty much what it's about for me: I am decently fast when I want or need to make an effort, and not expecting to get a whole lot faster by 'cross season, but I'd really, really like to look better in my team kit.
Sad? Perhaps.
This concludes today's rambling and hyperactive update :)
Notes
*or soy, or turkey, or whatever
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
When All Else Fails, Run Away, and Live to Fight Another Day
Today, I diagnosed what I will guess was half of my FD problem: the little screw that holds the shifter cable in place was partly stripped, giving it just enough purchase to shift once or twice in the workstand, but nothing more. I showed it to Jon, who agreed that was probably at least a good part of the problem, and we replaced it with a new one, complete with proper threads.
I popped the new screw on, tensioned the cable (first in the wrong ring, which was silly), and screwed it down tight. Then I fiddled with my limit screws for a moment, lubed my chain (again), and tried shifting: voila! Back and forth it went, from small ring to big ring and big ring to small ring, a dozen times and change.
Excellent! I thought. Then I did a little jig, and proudly (if stupidly) announced that I'd fixed my front derailleur.
Well ... as they say, pride goeth before getting stuck in a big gear again.
Off I went to play at Eva Bandman Park, which is quite near work. Halfway there, I was feeling a little frisky and caught sight of a bunny -- err, another guy on a shiny road bike -- so I popped into the big ring and gave chase. I was gaining ground when he turned around in the driveway to Eva Bandman. Since I had reached my destination, I called off the hunt, swung into the drive, hit my left shifter and ......
Nothing.
Hm.
I figured perhaps I'd just hosed up the shift. Maybe, I reasoned, I'm out of practice. Never mind that downtube shifters are about as uncomplicated as it gets, cycling-wise, and that I was able to shift from small ring to big ring and back with no problem from the moment I bought QS. You know how it is. Reality is blasted inconvenient sometimes.
So I clicked my shifter back into place, circled in the parking lot, and rolled back up the drive to the starting-lane entrance. There, I did a bunch of laps while fiddling with my shifter. I'm sure that some of the folks hanging out in the parking lot were wondering what, exactly, I was doing up there, riding back and forth like a madman. I was embarassed and pretended I was scoping out the course (which was somewhat true, but I wasn't feeling quite up to attacking the 2013 World Cup course with 53x23 as my easiest gear). And, of course, I did a few bike-handling drills (bunny hops, serpentines, little sprints) just to make it look good. They probably just assumed I was drunk. Or crazy. Maybe both.
I realized, as I was riding around and around that narrow strip of pavement, that the FD was moving some -- it's just that there wasn't quite enough tension on the cable to get it back to the small ring from the big one, once I'd shifted over. I suspect I may simply not have tightened it down far enough, or perhaps it came out of its surprisingly-complex little track, or something along those lines. For all that, it may just be that the limit stops are all wrong, and I just need to fiddle with the screws a bit more. Preferably this will involve acquiring new screws somehow, as mine are looking rough -- the winter has not been good to them.
I returned to the shop in good spirits, having had a nice, quick little ride in the broad sunshine, and decided not to fiddle any further with the derailleur for the day. I decided to file it under 'Lost the Battle, but Will Win the War.' After all, FDs can be replaced, if all else fails.
Having decided to forego the FD for the time being, I spent half an hour wrestling my seatpost (next step? ammonia, per Sheldon Brown). I suspect the mechanic may be as much of a problem as the seatpost and/or the seat tube -- I still lack full use of my right shoulder, in particular such uses as lifting and twisting, both of which are generally involved in removing a difficult seatpost. Likewise, even under normal circumstances, I possess all the massive, staggering upper-body strength of an anemic 8-year old boy (8-year-old girls are often stronger than 8-year-old boys, since girls mature faster -- that or else my horseback-riding friends when I was a kid were simply shirking their destinies as future female caber-tossers).
At any rate, I'm consulting the immortal Saint Sheldon on front derailleurs. On Friday, when I'm back in the shop, I'll give fixing it another crack (tomorrow I plan to clean the house a bit more, tool around on the bike, and maybe go to one of these budge meeting thingies that they're talking about on the LBC listserv). I got a bit closer today. If, between the seatpost and the derailleur, I can get QS entirely humming by end of day Friday, I do hope to play on the 'cross course a little this week ... though maybe, instead, I'll just finish putting Swift back together (It turns out we have Travel Agents, which are the one bit I plan to add to make the road-style brake levers work with Swift's v-brakes) and give him a cruise around the course instead. I'd like to finish Swift anyway, in hopes of coaxing DD out for a ride with the LBC on Saturday morning (one I can do even if I can't get out of my big ring, and which it wouldn't hurt me to do in the big ring).
The neat part, of course, is that I've come just a bit closer to being able to maintain my classic Shimano 600 FD. Note, of course, that I did not say 'FDs' in general -- before working on mine, I looked at every single bike in the repair bay and realized that not one of their FDs even resembled the 600 -- and few of them resembled each-other.
Considering that, even a few months ago, I was mortally afraid of more than glancing at my derailleurs (I had this notion that they were something like ghosts and might vanish in a cloud of vapor if you looked at them too directly), I can at least consider today's efforts to be a partial triumph.
The silver lining, I suppose, in this slightly-annoying cloud, is that it won't kill me to ride bigger gears for a while. The body adapts, and the great part is this: if you get used to spinning a fairly big gear while riding on the flat and climbing, once you have smaller gears again, you can ride those that much more easily (as I learned this weekend). The trick is to avoid mashing whenever possible, since it's ineffective, bad for your knees, and looks silly (and I feel justified in saying this, as a former all-mashing-all-the-time cyclist who is very grateful to still have very good knees).
So that's it for now.
In the Battle of the Wrench, QS is winning right now, but I'm confident that -- in time -- I will come out ahead.
I popped the new screw on, tensioned the cable (first in the wrong ring, which was silly), and screwed it down tight. Then I fiddled with my limit screws for a moment, lubed my chain (again), and tried shifting: voila! Back and forth it went, from small ring to big ring and big ring to small ring, a dozen times and change.
Excellent! I thought. Then I did a little jig, and proudly (if stupidly) announced that I'd fixed my front derailleur.
Well ... as they say, pride goeth before getting stuck in a big gear again.
Off I went to play at Eva Bandman Park, which is quite near work. Halfway there, I was feeling a little frisky and caught sight of a bunny -- err, another guy on a shiny road bike -- so I popped into the big ring and gave chase. I was gaining ground when he turned around in the driveway to Eva Bandman. Since I had reached my destination, I called off the hunt, swung into the drive, hit my left shifter and ......
Nothing.
Hm.
I figured perhaps I'd just hosed up the shift. Maybe, I reasoned, I'm out of practice. Never mind that downtube shifters are about as uncomplicated as it gets, cycling-wise, and that I was able to shift from small ring to big ring and back with no problem from the moment I bought QS. You know how it is. Reality is blasted inconvenient sometimes.
So I clicked my shifter back into place, circled in the parking lot, and rolled back up the drive to the starting-lane entrance. There, I did a bunch of laps while fiddling with my shifter. I'm sure that some of the folks hanging out in the parking lot were wondering what, exactly, I was doing up there, riding back and forth like a madman. I was embarassed and pretended I was scoping out the course (which was somewhat true, but I wasn't feeling quite up to attacking the 2013 World Cup course with 53x23 as my easiest gear). And, of course, I did a few bike-handling drills (bunny hops, serpentines, little sprints) just to make it look good. They probably just assumed I was drunk. Or crazy. Maybe both.
I realized, as I was riding around and around that narrow strip of pavement, that the FD was moving some -- it's just that there wasn't quite enough tension on the cable to get it back to the small ring from the big one, once I'd shifted over. I suspect I may simply not have tightened it down far enough, or perhaps it came out of its surprisingly-complex little track, or something along those lines. For all that, it may just be that the limit stops are all wrong, and I just need to fiddle with the screws a bit more. Preferably this will involve acquiring new screws somehow, as mine are looking rough -- the winter has not been good to them.
I returned to the shop in good spirits, having had a nice, quick little ride in the broad sunshine, and decided not to fiddle any further with the derailleur for the day. I decided to file it under 'Lost the Battle, but Will Win the War.' After all, FDs can be replaced, if all else fails.
Having decided to forego the FD for the time being, I spent half an hour wrestling my seatpost (next step? ammonia, per Sheldon Brown). I suspect the mechanic may be as much of a problem as the seatpost and/or the seat tube -- I still lack full use of my right shoulder, in particular such uses as lifting and twisting, both of which are generally involved in removing a difficult seatpost. Likewise, even under normal circumstances, I possess all the massive, staggering upper-body strength of an anemic 8-year old boy (8-year-old girls are often stronger than 8-year-old boys, since girls mature faster -- that or else my horseback-riding friends when I was a kid were simply shirking their destinies as future female caber-tossers).
At any rate, I'm consulting the immortal Saint Sheldon on front derailleurs. On Friday, when I'm back in the shop, I'll give fixing it another crack (tomorrow I plan to clean the house a bit more, tool around on the bike, and maybe go to one of these budge meeting thingies that they're talking about on the LBC listserv). I got a bit closer today. If, between the seatpost and the derailleur, I can get QS entirely humming by end of day Friday, I do hope to play on the 'cross course a little this week ... though maybe, instead, I'll just finish putting Swift back together (It turns out we have Travel Agents, which are the one bit I plan to add to make the road-style brake levers work with Swift's v-brakes) and give him a cruise around the course instead. I'd like to finish Swift anyway, in hopes of coaxing DD out for a ride with the LBC on Saturday morning (one I can do even if I can't get out of my big ring, and which it wouldn't hurt me to do in the big ring).
The neat part, of course, is that I've come just a bit closer to being able to maintain my classic Shimano 600 FD. Note, of course, that I did not say 'FDs' in general -- before working on mine, I looked at every single bike in the repair bay and realized that not one of their FDs even resembled the 600 -- and few of them resembled each-other.
Considering that, even a few months ago, I was mortally afraid of more than glancing at my derailleurs (I had this notion that they were something like ghosts and might vanish in a cloud of vapor if you looked at them too directly), I can at least consider today's efforts to be a partial triumph.
The silver lining, I suppose, in this slightly-annoying cloud, is that it won't kill me to ride bigger gears for a while. The body adapts, and the great part is this: if you get used to spinning a fairly big gear while riding on the flat and climbing, once you have smaller gears again, you can ride those that much more easily (as I learned this weekend). The trick is to avoid mashing whenever possible, since it's ineffective, bad for your knees, and looks silly (and I feel justified in saying this, as a former all-mashing-all-the-time cyclist who is very grateful to still have very good knees).
So that's it for now.
In the Battle of the Wrench, QS is winning right now, but I'm confident that -- in time -- I will come out ahead.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Trust The Bike
...This has long been my #1 Rule of Cycling. It evolved out of an entry in someone's racing blog -- I think it was probably SDC's -- wherein he lovingly described the way roadies emerge from their roller-filled basements in the spring, take to the road, and learn once again to trust their bikes through the turns. It was more eloquent than that, but I think you get the gist.
Okay, maybe #3, right after #1, Ride What You Love (or just Ride What You've Got), and #2, HTFU, which is Rule 5 according to the Velominati ;)
However, I have been somewhat deficient in this area of late.
Though I joke about QS being a persnickety prima donna, in fact, the bike is nearly twenty years old, and, as Billy at the shop once pointed out, I 'ride the hell out of it.' It's not that QS isn't a trustworthy machine -- it's just that, given his Elder Statesman status, he may warrant a little more maintenance, perhaps, than his younger brethren.
Eventual failure of mechanical parts is a given, if you use the machine to which they're affixed. There's no way around it. Should I be terribly surprised, after all of last year's and January's miles, plus a good thirty miles in February, riding hard, often sprinting and climbing in the drops, on the big ring -- hot on the heels of two non-riding weeks induced by a wreck which threw the whole stem out of alignment -- that I needed to tighten the stem clamp? (Is that, in fact, what the thingy-that-keeps-your-bars-from-falling-off is called? I'm so lost when it comes to old-skool stems.)
No.
This is one of the reasons I'm glad -- okay, terrified, but also glad -- that it appears I'm going to be wrenching as well as riding at work.
There was a time not that long ago when I didn't really want to learn how to do all the finicky stuff: I was happy being able to change tires and adjust the pull of a pair of v-brakes. I wanted nothing to do with derailleur maintenance, for example: I was afraid I would break something that I couldn't afford to replace!
Over the past week or so, though, I've found myself fiddling with QS's FD a lot. I've been thinking about fiddling with the RD. And, of course, I've developed a habit of checking the little bolt that holds the stem clamp (if that is its real name) shut, because frankly that bar-rotation stuff was just terrifying -- and, honestly, there's nothing wrong with that, because when I'm on the road, I want to know I can trust my bike...
...And barring catastrophic tube failures, which are both rare and hard to predict, if you maintain your bike, you can trust your bike. Period.
So I've decided that part of my campaign to rebuild total trust in my machine will be learning to maintain it more effectively.
Meanwhile, does anyone have a solid solution for a stuck seatpost? Because my new one just arrived, and my old one is stuckstuckstuck. :::sigh:::
Edit: I slightly tweaked the angle of my bars, and now I'm feeling much better on the bike.
Apparently, I've grown rather used to my aggressive-roadie position, and I just don't feel right in a slightly-more-relaxed, tour-y position. (I also feel okay in a more upright, mountain-bikey position on Swift.)
Okay, maybe #3, right after #1, Ride What You Love (or just Ride What You've Got), and #2, HTFU, which is Rule 5 according to the Velominati ;)
However, I have been somewhat deficient in this area of late.
Though I joke about QS being a persnickety prima donna, in fact, the bike is nearly twenty years old, and, as Billy at the shop once pointed out, I 'ride the hell out of it.' It's not that QS isn't a trustworthy machine -- it's just that, given his Elder Statesman status, he may warrant a little more maintenance, perhaps, than his younger brethren.
Eventual failure of mechanical parts is a given, if you use the machine to which they're affixed. There's no way around it. Should I be terribly surprised, after all of last year's and January's miles, plus a good thirty miles in February, riding hard, often sprinting and climbing in the drops, on the big ring -- hot on the heels of two non-riding weeks induced by a wreck which threw the whole stem out of alignment -- that I needed to tighten the stem clamp? (Is that, in fact, what the thingy-that-keeps-your-bars-from-falling-off is called? I'm so lost when it comes to old-skool stems.)
No.
This is one of the reasons I'm glad -- okay, terrified, but also glad -- that it appears I'm going to be wrenching as well as riding at work.
There was a time not that long ago when I didn't really want to learn how to do all the finicky stuff: I was happy being able to change tires and adjust the pull of a pair of v-brakes. I wanted nothing to do with derailleur maintenance, for example: I was afraid I would break something that I couldn't afford to replace!
Over the past week or so, though, I've found myself fiddling with QS's FD a lot. I've been thinking about fiddling with the RD. And, of course, I've developed a habit of checking the little bolt that holds the stem clamp (if that is its real name) shut, because frankly that bar-rotation stuff was just terrifying -- and, honestly, there's nothing wrong with that, because when I'm on the road, I want to know I can trust my bike...
...And barring catastrophic tube failures, which are both rare and hard to predict, if you maintain your bike, you can trust your bike. Period.
So I've decided that part of my campaign to rebuild total trust in my machine will be learning to maintain it more effectively.
Meanwhile, does anyone have a solid solution for a stuck seatpost? Because my new one just arrived, and my old one is stuckstuckstuck. :::sigh:::
Edit: I slightly tweaked the angle of my bars, and now I'm feeling much better on the bike.
Apparently, I've grown rather used to my aggressive-roadie position, and I just don't feel right in a slightly-more-relaxed, tour-y position. (I also feel okay in a more upright, mountain-bikey position on Swift.)
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