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A few years back I started a super small bike ride to help keep people riding and socializing during the winter. One of my great customers holds a bike ride in August that is quite possibly the most well organized and evolving ride ever known to the personal riding scene. I decided it needed a counter part on the opposite end of the scale.
His ride is in August, mine is February. His is 100 miles, mine is kept to 10 miles or less. His is meticulously organized, mine comes together out of nowhere, sometimes in the nick of time, and has essentially no organizing sans the start date, time and place. His has two sag vehicles (3 last year), food, mechanical help, GPS, route launching parties, etc. Mine... well, none of that. His has 4 stages, with 3 rest stops. Mine, actually has the same. Some ideas are too good to mess with.
Tonight was the planning session to decide where the ride is to start. I already decided on a date and time, so choosing a starting point was just a matter of picking from the napkins. The first planning meeting we had was when we decided to draw from the messenger bag for a starting location. No one had paper, so we used napkins. 5 years later, minus the ones that have been drawn for the previous 4 starts, those napkins still go into the drawing.
I am looking forward to another 10 mile killer. This is really some of the hardest miles I ride during the year.
I am not much of a fan of riding in the snow. I don't mind it, but I certainly am not going to go out of my way to ride in it, and certainly not going to RACE through it. I have to admit that I am a little intrigued by fat tyre bikes, but they are just too expensive for me to have in the stable and not ride much at all.
For this reason, I don't follow much that is happening with the fat bike scene. I received an email a while back that a racer from out of state wanted to send their bike to our shop to build up for the upcoming Arrowhead 135. We worked out the logistics and I agreed to assemble it and set it up for him to pick it up this weekend. I wasn't really thinking about what type of bike I would be and ooooh was I surprised when the box showed up.
I knew that the complete bike wasn't in the first box that showed up (arrived over two days), but it turned out that everything was there except the front wheel. This is amazingly light for the tyres it carries.
That's a ti Fatback (hard to see but wicked twisted downtube!), full carbon fork (not a fan but it IS light), Fatback hubs and crankset, UMA rims, Hope brakes, XTR gorillas, Ritchey WCS carbon seatpost and bars. Fatback claims getting bikes down to 22 pounds and I believe they can do it. I didn't put it on the scale, but I am sure my Pake C'
mute weighs more than this machine. It was fun to work on something so different. I wish the rider well on his trip across the north.
A friend of mine saved a motorized scooter from the trash heap last week and is in the process of fixing it up for her sister. I love that there are other people out there that are willing to at least take a chance to keep things running rather than throwing them away. Especially when there are things such as batteries and at least if it can't be fixed, recycle the stuff instead of chucking it in the garbage. People are just lazy.
I don't normally mess with motorized stuff, but for a friend, why not. There were a couple of broken spokes and a flat tyre, not a huge deal to fix. The biggest problem being that I don't have access to a spoke cutter, something I would like to own, but do not have the extra $3000 to throw at it. I was trying to have this completed today, which meant finding spokes on Sunday. It felt a little strange calling a local shop and them telling me that there was no mechanic there that could cut a spoke. That's something that would never happen in my business plan for a shop. But I digress. It was also a bit strange that when I did find someone who could cut spokes for me that day, it took them well over 15 minutes to do so. I know it doesn't take that long to cut and roll spokes, so I can't help but wonder if there was a little sham going on there in order to force me to look around a bit longer. Hard to say.
None the less, the wheel turned out great. I daresay it is one of the truest 12" wheels in the area. It makes me feel good to do such a small repair, that will hopefully bring some big fun for years to come.
I have used panniers for a number of years. I was a messenger bag person for several years and thought that panniers had their place for touring or tons of stuff transport. But do I really want to haul around those bags every day on my bike? Turns out yes, yes I do. I have taken a lot of grief when people would pick up my bicycle and complain how much it weighed (I still don't understand why they would complain about such things). I carry a lot of stuff with me. The nice thing is that I almost always have what I need (and a bunch extra) when I am... wherever. Extra shirt, socks, hat (hats?), phone charger, tools, tubes, various spare bike tid-bits, lock (at least 4' cable for locking extra bikes for those that have forgotten theirs), you get the idea.
But come winter, I sometimes lose the rear rack (panniers are bolted on for extra quietness and security) and opt for a backpack. I like the backpack vs. messenger bag so as to keep the weight more centered on my body for squirrely snowy conditions. I wasn't so sure how much difference it makes, but I just removed the rack/bag from my bike this morning and immediately noticed how much easier my bike handles when the snow deepens. The only drawback being that with the stupid bag on my back, there is no breathing back there. Not the worst thing in the winter. Well worth the extra confidence I have when cornering and it makes the ride more fun. I need all I can get to keep going in the snow and cold. So the backpack stays loaded up until most of the snow is gone. That will maybe keep the fun factor a little higher during the next couple fortnights.
It continues to snow here in the twin cities. I am not sure how close we are going to come to a record for snowfall for this winter season, but it is definitely more than we have had for several years. So far every broomball game I have played has been with at lease 1/2" of snow on the ice.
With all the snow we have received, it has made riding a real joy. The streets are getting narrower and narrower and today riding home was the ever fun slipping and sliding with all the ice underneath the fresh snow. Of course it could have been worse if there was more moisture in the snow. Winter just isn't my favorite time for riding. I do enjoy being out in the snow and if I can be on a trail away from automobiles, where I don't have to fight the divots made by people walking, biking is great. The snow deadens all the noise of the city and it can be incredibly peaceful. But those trail conditions are very rare. I guess the way to get around that is to go for a ride at 3AM.
I am already starting to plan out my biking season. I have a little interest in trying a brevet series. We have a number of them in the area, and with Trans Iowa almost kicking off the actual biking season, I should be in pretty good shape to participate. It would mean joining TCBC which I have never done. Having worked in a bike shop here in the cities over 10 years, I should spread the love around. It's good to keep trying different things.
I saw these a while ago and finally took the time to build one into a wheel. I have wanted to have a winter dynamo wheel for some time and I bit the bullet with this very inexpensive hub. Right out of the box it feels smoother than a Shimano but not as smooth as a Schmidt. I can tell you that if you use the correct spokes for a Shimano hub, the Sanyo will fit with the spokes being just a touch short. Not unreasonable at all.
A slightly annoying feature to the Sanyo is the connector for the light. The Shimano hub has a casing that protects the wires after attaching them to the connector. Sanyo builds this casing into the hub, which means that if you unplug the headlight, there is a greater chance for the wires to pull out. Not a huge thing, but I am glad I am using it for winter riding when I don't have to deal with many flat tyres.
We will see how the long term, violent conditions wear at the hub. I don't put tons of miles on during the snowiest time of the year, but my bike sure sees some awful conditions. As far as I can tell the Sanyo should be great for dealing with this. I have run a Surly sealed bearing hub for my rear wheel for 3 years now and I have yet to replace bearings (not that they couldn't use it, it just isn't totally necessary yet). I am hoping that this dynamo will be just as nice. I will purchase a replacement set of bearings this summer and put them right next to the Surly's to hang out until I need them, several years down the road.
