bike stand

So a winter of riding on and off and then a spring of neglect left the drive-train of my road bike in less than ideal condition. The chain had very quickly rusted into one unit frozen in its last moments of wending through the dérailleurs. After a can of WD40, a wire brush, a chain breaker with a cheater bar, and lots of elbow grease I freed my bike of its oxidized serpentine restraint and installed a new chain. Now I needed to recalibrate the dérailleurs, because they too did not take the winter riding very well. This is hard to do if one doesn't own a bike stand.

Inspiration came from an idea introduced to me by a former roommate about a stand consisting of a 2x4 bisected by a front quick-release skewer and mounted and an old office chair. For about 45 minutes I hacked and drilled some lumber that was laying around the garage. Voila! I refitted my makeshift workbench into a makeshift workbench with a makeshift bike stand. Now for the hard part, tuning the front and rear dérailleurs......

spring

not much time at all for exercise; been maintaining a minimal level of fitness. mostly running and taking the eleven flights of stairs several time a day to and from where I work. after these two giant research papers are due next week I'll start training for cx. Not even going to bother trying to jump into the late road season as I have kidded myself in previous years.got my transitions down. so major focus on sprints, intervals, plyo, and not getting so exhausted I stop focusing on proper lines for turns, might be racing for these fools http://scumcityracing.blogspot.com/ we'll see should be fun, whatever shakes out

its been fun watching the spring classics, none of my predictions are going well. making predictions for bike races is slightly less accurate than a march madness bracket...almost a total craps shoot...still...Thor for roubaix... whoops, and a Schleck for Leige.. not quite enough juice there boys, they were seriously asleep at the wheel. Phillipe Gilbert is slammin', good for him. shoulda seen the back to back Amstel golds coming.

old bikes

coupla pics,
my daily commuter and main squeeze is a scarce image of what it used to be




and then somewhere in a galaxy far far away my cyclocross bike looks like this




coincidently I bought both bikes without the knowledge that they were from 1984.. same year as myself

maybe I'll take the camera to the garage and get some pics for comparison.. probably not

elite cx 2011

Jeremy Powers recently announced his move to the rapha-focus team for the upcoming season. I think this is a good move for the sport as the cannondale-cyclocrossworld had a bit too much of the concentration of the high end talent. They were the Yankees of professional US cyclocross. I don't mean to say that this move will completely democratize the talent pool or shake up the elite standings for the upcoming season; I'm sure well see the same four names trading places on the podium.

J-Pow's move, along with Ryan Trebon's departure from Kona are good examples of the solidification of a professional cyclocross sport in the US. I think we want to see athletics leave teams, the more mobility the more legitimacy, at least in infantile stages like this. This mobility can increase sponsor competition all the while demonstrating to new sponsors and elite hopefuls that there is room in the cx market for their entry and profit. This argument does have diminishing returns, certainly no one wants a cyclists lockout or some b.s. like in other professional sports. Grass roots movements aside, the dominance and amicability of the cannondale-cyclocrossworld team was a large contributor to the growth of professional cyclocross last season. With any luck their success will demonstrate to others that such commitments will yield great benefits for themselves, the rides and the sport in whole.

goals

spring: cleveland half marathon
summer: mountain bike more than twice. road bike focus on speed instead of longass rides
fall: get dirty and win something in cx

lanez

Not that there is too much of a heated debate here in the CLE. The bike lane on the new I-90 bridge topic notwithstanding. Here is an interesting take concerning the economic efficiency of bike lanes. http://olafstorbeck.com/2011/03/11/the-economics-of-bike-lanes-%E2%80%93-how-can-john-cassidy-get-it-so-wrong/
bike lanes: non-rival, non-excluding

repair

I somehow managed a tear in my snowboarding pants the last time I was out riding. Since technical gear is expensive, and I don't want / can't afford to replace these pants any time soon repairing them became the only viable option. I ventured to the local jo-jo fab to search out some way to repair the rip-stop nylon kind of material they seem to be made out of. I found this inexpensive patch kit. I'm a little wary that these seem to work like band-aids and require no extra gluing or ironing. We'll see

using the patch was pretty self explanatory and I'm pretty bored so I documented the process ....

1) Cleaned the area
much like patching a bicycle tube I cleaned the tear and scuffed it a little
2) Cut three little strips of patch material
Upon reflection I should have cut four strips because the tear went through the pant and the interior powder cuff. That way I could treat them as two different tears and sandwich each with strips.
3) Rolled out bubbles and compressed
4) Tested... hasn't happened yet




**update, this patches survived the season and being washed, pretty awesome and much cheaper than a new pair of pants