Did you know...

...that your new hip looks like a kickstand!

Clever Fender

I put a new rear half-fender on my Bianchi. I thought it was pretty clever as there’s no clearence at the breaks to put on a proper fender. I have a half-assed fender there before, one of those that covers the top of the wheel. That is much better than nothing, as it stops water from going up on your back, but it’s not good enough, as it doesn’t stop water from hitting your legs and feet from the rear wheel.

The half-assed fender I had is kind of cleverly hooked-up to the drop-tube though:




I bought the new fender on a whim last time in Amsterdam. It turns out it doesn’t fit anything I have, despite my hopes. But I was able to saw and cut it to fit between the rear breaks and the bottom bracket. It attaches with zip-ties. It works very well. Together, the two half-fenders are as good as one real fender! Rain be damned!







bottom bracket:


top zip-tie:


You can see the very top of the new fender (right by my right ankle) and all of the old fender in the first picture below in the post below this one.

Handlebar Height

I hate when I don’t practice what I preach. It’s even worse when I finally do, but then discover that I've been preaching to a false idol.

I’ve been preaching about high handlebars for a long time. They’re many reasons you should raise your handlebars, but I won’t go into them here because I’m not sure about them any more. I will say this. Don’t settle for low handlebars just because your bike comes with them. It’s rare that you raise your handlebars and you don’t end up more comfortable. As a rule of thumb, I’d say, be suspicious when your handlebars are below your seat.

But it’s not easy to simply raise handlebars. Odds are your handlebar stem is already at its maximum. So you have to get a new stem. But the real pain is removing your bars from the stem. Some stems have 2 bolts and plate. This makes sense. You unscrew it and take your handlebars off. But most stems have one bolt and to take the bars off you have to take everything off one side of your handlebars: tape, brakes, handlebar grip, bells and whistles. And then, odds are, you have to resize your brakes and shifter cables. It’s a real pain in the ass just to sit up an extra inch or two.

But I finally did this to my bianchi. The picture below (and this will tell you where the story is going) is both the before and after picture. I put the high stem on the bianchi and the low stem on the Screamin’ Salmon. Strangely, both bikes were less comfortable. On both bikes I suddenly had a lot more weight on my hands and arms. I’m still not certain how this could be for the bike I raised the handlebars.




It’s good to have your weight balanced somewhat on your bike (nobody can be against balance, right?). But you should also be able to let go of your handlebars without changing position. If you have to hold on tight at all times, it’s not good for your hands or your arms or your shoulders.

After riding enough to convince myself the new position was not simply a matter of getting used to, I switched everything back again. What a pain. It’s not a complete loss, however, as I did end up turning the moustache handlebars on the screaming salmon upside-down (I think--now the bars raise coming from the stem. This both raises the handlebars some and puts the brake in a better position, rotation-wise).

Look how low the bars on my bianchi are. This goes against everything I thought I stood for. But it’s so much more comfortable than 4 inches higher. Riding the new/old lower handlebars, I think the answer to the comfort question may be that the lower handlebars make me put more weight on my feet. When the handlebars go up, I sit harder in the seat. This makes me grip the handlebars for to keep my upper-body balanced. With lower handlebars, I’m more often just resting on my seat, using my legs much more for both support and shock absorbers (which, unlike your arms, your legs are designed for).

The reason drop handlebars can be very comfortable isn’t their height (or lack thereof). It’s that your hands rest on the brake hoods at a very natural and comfortable position. It’s somewhat close to putting your hand out as if to shake somebody’s hand. As a result, you can grip drop handlebars extremely gentle, or not at all, when going over bumps.

The position of hands on drop-handle bars, ironically, is similar to the position of hands on the handlebars of a old-fashioned granny bike (Omafiets, in Dutch). This allows your arm to be straight from your elbow to your fingers and not be twisted sideways. Your wrists can relax and your arms can absorb some shock quite well.

The worst handlebars, I would say, are those straight-rod mountain-bike handlebars where are arms are taut. It’s hard to grip these gently. Every bump is like a hammer blow into the base of your hand. It goes right through your arms and into your body, causing pain the whole way.

Meanwhile, the lower handlebars on the fixed gear were much less comfortable. This, I believe is because they’re not drop handlebars. Lowering the handlebars made me put more weight on them, and it was tough for me to relax my hands and arms.

So what’s the moral of this story? I don’t know. I guess I learned something about handlebar height, but didn’t learn anything I can generalize. All I’m left with is saying that small changes in handlebar height make a huge difference. But it’s a pain to adjust the height, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be moving them in the right direction.

You’re welcome for nothing.

Relacing the wheels

I still feel very stupid for building 4 (count ’em, four) wheels incorrectly. Especially when I built wheels just fine before then. Anyway, I got to work on the Bluebird. While I had the rear wheel off, I put on a new rear cog with one fewer teeth. This will hopefully make 5th gear a better cruising gear. There was a little problem as the ideal cruising great seemed to be right between 5th and 6th gear, with 5th being too easy and 6th being to hard.

But the weather is great, so I could work on the porch, which is a minor plus.



Here you can see the incorrect spokes. Notice how bent the spokes are as they curve on the wrong side of the 2nd spokes they cross (the first crossing spoke is right at the hub). So following the path of a spoke on relation to the crossing spokes, I went over-under-over (and also under-over-under) when I should have gone over-over-under (and under-under-over). I also should have figured this out earlier, simply by looking at one of my other wheels when I was building these.



Here is the after picture, with the spokes all straight.



And another picture of the properly laced wheel.



I got faster as I went on. But it’s still time consuming, you have to strip the wheel and remove half the spokes. I realized after doing one side of the first wheel, that there is actually a system, which involves removing every fourth spoke (every other spoke on one side) and then lacing them correctly. And then you do the same on the other side. The time saving part is that you only have to remove the nipples from half the spokes and not all of them. But the whole project took about 6 hours. Luckily for Zora this is all covered under warrantee.

The $70 pothole?

So much bike work, not enough biking. So around midnight I decided to enjoy my new moustache handlebars and bike around Central Park (one of the nice things about living in New York City, at least when the main loop road isn’t open to cars).

Coming off the bridge, on 60th Street right around Madison Avenue, I hit a pothole. A bad one. I saw it, it was small but deep, but I was too close to swerve. I probably could have jumped it, but for some reason I froze and didn’t. I hit it, hard. A half block later, as soon as used my front brake, I realized that the impact dented my front rim. Not horribly, but noticably. The wheel is still round, but on the left side of the rim there is a little indent It will bother me every time I use the front brakes. Beyond that the rim isn't damaged. It went ever-so-slightly out of true, but nothing I couldn't fix. And the other side of the rim is fine.

I don’t know anything about hammering out rims. And, as I just found out on-line, this is a $70 rim.

I didn’t built this wheel. It has radial spoking (and every fourth nipple is brass, just for the hell of it). I wonder if the rim would be OK if it were triple-crossed? My guess is no. But I still wish the spokes weren’t radial.

Then when I got home I swamped handle bar stems on all my bikes. The new handlebars made the handlebars too high on the Screamin' Salmon. That and I decided to turn the bars around, so that the they angled up. This way the brake is better positioned, more towards the bottom. And Katie's bike really needed a higher stem. So I took the high handlebar stem off the Screamin' Salmon and put it on the Del Ray. I took the Del Ray stem and put it on the Bianchi. I took the low Bianchi stem and put it on the Salmon. I like the low Bianchi stem for one reason: it was two screws and you can take the bars off without taking everything off the bars. But I couldn't put the new handlebars on without taking everything off. Maybe it's for the better as the old handlebars had duct tape, and I really need an excuse to redo them with proper handlebar tape on them. The handlebar stem shall be the excuse.

But then I learned that Bianchi handlebars (and most Italian road bikes) are 26mm and regular handlebars are 25.6mm. Small difference, but it matters. So I had to order a shim for the Salmon and a new stem ($40) for the Bianchi. Jeezelouise! The old stem from the Del Ray went into the closet, where it will sit for years before being thrown out.