Monthly Archives: June 2012

Road Trip

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This is clearly going to be my future — squinting into the reflections on the scree while dribbling free wifi through a glacially slow connection.  Still, this is the essence of the road trip!  I’m still trying to figure out the tablet and the android system, but I’m having a blast playing with the various photo apps I put on the machine while I was home.

Here are some HDR treatments from the drive out of New York.  Wifey, bikes through the sun roof, and the lower level of the GW.  Bethany Beach, here we come!

It’s still too bright to see the screen clearly, but it’s begun to rain!  Time to publish and find my wife.  Cheerio.

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training ride

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New York City:  urban environment. Paved trail.  Flat as a pancake.  Drive in / Drive out.

Great Continental Divide Mountain Bike Route:  remote, rural setting.  Dirt track.  Rocky mountains.

No comparison, but our first bicycling adventure, nonetheless!

We rode down to Battery Park from the 96th street parking lot, getting in a few adjustments and enjoying the sights.  We stopped by the Intrepid on the way back to take a peek at the shuttle perched high atop the water, before putting on some speed to finish the ride.

Andrea took these photos of the trailer bouncing high up the back as I charged up the stairs to the car (stairlets, really).

Naturally, she had to try riding down them — and then up.  Down worked great and she arrived at the bottom grinning from ear to ear.  Going back is going to take more practice! 
She wanted a very particular picture — the spray of water under the front tire.  We never quite got it, but we really like how some of them came out.  The one below is from the first glimpse of sun all day!

We’re heading to Delaware for a reunion — flat as a pancake again, but it should be fun to try to ride from Bethany to Rehoboth.  Posts next week will answer the question, “Can I keep this blog up using an android tablet?”  We’ll see soon enough!

 

Swap outs

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before the change

The 'awesome' bag

Big day of changes.  I took off those ‘faux drops’ for mountain bars.  I can’t get low enough to use them comfortably the normal way and there’s no good way to turn them so that they’re comfortable where I had them.  Live and learn.  It was a sunny day for the first time in forever and I had my super-duper ‘awesome’ bag from Bob down at Velo Cycles.  ‘Awesome’ is an upgrade from ‘goodie’ bag, which is what I thought I was getting.  This bag had a barely used set of avid calipers, dura-ace shifters, avid levers, and enough cables, housing, and caps to transform the Dawg from mountain bike parks and shop rebuilds into an independent adventure machine.

hydraulics off...

Step 1:  Remove the hydraulic brakes, complete, from caliper to lever.  Since my setup has the shifters and levers in one little pod, the shifters come off with the brakes. Off comes the bell and those drop bar ends, as well.

avid calipers

Rear calipers in.

Step 2:  Drop in the newish Avid calipers, lining them up nicely with the XT rotors, since I haven’t any adapters to allow use of the new(ish) ones in the awesome bag.  No worries; they’ll get used somewhere, on something! calipers in.

Step 3: Put stuff back on the bar.  I search high and low for a missing bar end before raiding the one-speed for a clean matching set.  These go inside and pointing up so that I can change up the hand postion.  Then the bell.  Love that bell.  This is clear to everyone, since I keep flicking the striker.  Luckily, I’m alone, so I don’t have to worry about how it looks.  The cat looked over at me once, then drifted off to chase butterflies.

 

Ready for new cables.

Step 4:  I’m slowly getting sunburned, but I’m having too much fun to stop.

Step 5: Figure out housing.  This ends up being one long continuous run for the brake lines, since the frame is set up for hydraulic lines.  I cut the shifter housing carefully to make sure that the handlebars can flop to either side without pinching.  String in cables, rubbing them with a bit of Tri-Flow to make sure that everything moves smoothly.  It took several tries before I got the cap situation set up the way I wanted it.

all the new bits in.

Step 6:  Strangely, everything works reasonably well.  I seem to have recovered use of all nine gears on the cluster and the front moves solidly between the two chainrings I’ve got.  A little tweaking here and there and everything shifts dreamily.  This is so surprising that I resolve not to remove the bashguard and put in the big ring for a few more days.  Why risk imperfection!

Step 7:  Go for a little spin.  It was the work of a moment to pull the bike of the stand and head out the driveway.  Always wear your helmet!  But I took the bike for a spin shirtless, shoeless, helmet-less, and glove-less.  What an exhilarating ten minutes of testing out the new brakes and running the gearing up and down.  It reminds me of how much stuff we put between the trail and our soft squishy selves.

Done.  I’m much happier with a fully mechanical setup.  It’s easy enough to pack an extra cable set; no one wants to bleed a brakeset on the trail, much less bring the stuff!  Hurray.  More rain coming tomorrow, but it’s been an utterly tranquil day of sun today.  (update:  long nap on the sofa.  this is the best saturday ever!).