http://nihonmaru.blogspot.com/2010/03/tire-clearance.html

now, if only wheels and tires weren’t so expensive, I’d go through and replace all my old ones!

I think about the serious attention I give to bikes these days, and yet I certainly don’t ride as much as I did back in college.  But as I was looking at the map of Goettingen I saw an entire forested area that i had never known was there (Naturpark Hann Muenden).  If I were doing the same thing now, I can guarantee you that my bike would be nicer, but also that I would have explored that area by now.  I would have ridden all over that crazy country.  A host family that I visited once a month lived a mere 14km away and yet i never rode that.  That seems so odd to me now.  I also think about all the wonderful hills around the East Bay in California (where i went to college) and how I never took rides around there.  Just hiking trips.

I guess the point of this post is to recognize that I have changed and while I gladly go on a 50 mile bike around the Boston area, I also realized the missed opportunity of exploring these areas.  Luckily, it’s not like I was sitting on my ass: instead of riding in a saddle, I was dancing through the night, acting in theater, meeting tons of people, hiking in Big Sur, exploring life in a different way.  no regrets!

The bike sat in my basement as winter arrived and I tried to decide what to do with it.  I had originally wanted a beater bike, but this baby was clearly too nice for that, so I opted to clean it and build it back up as another road bike.  I added indestructible Schwalbe Marathon tires (27″), one of my Brooks saddles and then wrapped up the moustache bars I had lying around to make this a pretty stylin’ ride.  Adding the fenders was the most difficult, as the tires are very big.  They don’t rub, but it’s fairly tight in there, and if it became a problem, i would need to either get narrower tires (which subsequently means less overall diameter), 700c wheels or skip the fenders.

I realized that this could be a new longer distance road bike and was curious how it handled with weight in the front — something my other bikes haven’t handled that well.  I took the front low riders off of Karen’s bike, grabbed some panniers and set them up.  I needed some weight, so I grabbed two half-full paint cans and threw them in.  The Fuji handled fantastically and I didn’t even notice the extra weight!  I even did some light off roading as I cut through a golf course, and the steering and comfort was great!

I’ll probabaly upgrade to a better front rack, but I needed the proof of concept first.  I was hoping to use Jan Heine’s BQ method of measuring trail and angle and getting all the protractors out and stuff, but this ended up being easier and more empirical.

The only thing I’m not sure I like is the cockpit:

I love the bar end shifters, and have them on my xtracycle, but i find i keep my hands on the ends where there are no brakes.  With the brakes located in a more forward position, I find myself not really ready to brake quickly if I needed to.  I think I’ll keep it like this for a while (partly because i shellacked the hell out of the bar tape, and it’d be a pain in the ass to redo that), but also because I might just replace it with a Nitto Noodle someday.

The other thing to note is that this is the bike that I’ll be using for the trail bike, so I am sort of required to have a wider grip.  Once spring hits, we’ll see how it works with the kids…

Some new talking points:

• it got cold!  It got dark!  Unfortunately the latter of the two forced me to stop riding.  My commute is too far to deal with night time traffic, and adding in the cold just didn’t make it worth it.  I’ve still been taking the kids on Saturday morning to german school by bike, no matter the weather.  This makes the outing a bit more of an adventure, and last week, we hit the playground for the first time in a long time.  And with Monday’s rain washing away and melting all the snow, yesterday was a perfect day to ride.
• I got some Bar Mitts off of eBay, and have to say they worked very well.  The main issue is not my hands getting cold, but them getting too hot, THEn too cold.  With these, I had on thin xc gloves, and if they started feeling a little warm, i slipped them out of the covers and they regulated.  The only problem with them is really the lack of hand locations: it was cold enough that i wanted to keep my hands in there, but i couldn’t get 100% comfortable.  that said, it’s a tradeoff, until it gets back above freezing.
• I finally “finished” my Fuji rebuild.  I had originally chosen some nice big 27″ 1 1/4 Schwalbe tires, and once installed realized they might be too big to still use fenders.  If i want to make this the wonderful riding bike I know it wants to be, I think might need to change the handlebar form moustache to drop and from 27″ to 700c to fit in some fenders.  i also need a rack.  but these all cost money, and since it rides and i have other bikes, there’s no rush.

I hope to put up some pictures soon, since i’m very happy with how the fuji’s turning out…

Planet Bike Borealis

I got some Planet Bike borealis gloves, and am not sure what i think of them. They have fleece inside and that just makes my hands sweat like crazy. I figured 37 was cold enough for winter gloves, but by the time i got to work (1.5 hours later), the gloves were wet on the outside from soaking through. I think I’m going to look out for some wool/nylon based gloves.

Pearl Izumi shoe covers

I also wore some of the XXL pearl Izumi shoe covers over my very summer weight Shimano SPD shoes.  And my feet were still a little cold.  Fortunately I just won a used pair of SIDI Dominators on eBay and hope that they fit as well as I want them to, especially with one or two nice thick pair of wool socks.  We’ll see if these shoe covers even fit over those.

Walz wool cap

I also just ordered one of these and hopefully it’ll be a little more comfortable and a LOT more stylish than the Pearl Izumi headband/ear-cover I have.

Over the summer, I went to the Larz Anderson Bike Swap Meet and got a bunch of little things that i thought would work great with the trail-a-bike to pimp it out, including some old english three speed bars and some pink pedals and most importantly, for me a brooks b-17 for $50.  I ended up being wrong on some of the measurements, but a trip to the LBS, and I got new seatposts, new shiny silver chains, and pink grips!  About a month ago, I decided to pull down the frame, finish taking everything off, clean and repack the bottom brackets and put it back together.  I destroyed my crank puller (the cranks are equally hard steel and the threads were stripped), but again the LBS helped out.  Finally, after procuring a replacement seat-post-connector, we were ready to ride.  The girls were unsure at first and I had to lower everything down to the lowest setting, but here you go: a little test ride around the neighborhood.

I have given them a Dahon 20″ rear rack and a cute Dutch saddle bag I got off ebay for them to store their backpacks on the way home from school.  Also on the rack is a blinky light.  More pix soon.

Right before I had built this up, i also decided to try putting the stoker bar onto my xtracycle, and the girls seem to love that too, but the current configuration (and my confidence in them) only allows one kid.  I might have to fix that as it’s easier than the trail-a-bike.

This was just a pose -- we didn't actually ride with both yet

Zipping along!

See, both girls got a chance. This was me going to pick up the gear for the trail-a-bike

Well, I did my commute yesterday for the first time since the surgery and I had really been missing it.  Here’s how it goes:  I get up at 5:30, rush to get dressed and ready, eat a little bit of food, then hop on the bike by 5:55am.  I ride the gorgeous green path down to the Charles River.  It’s pretty dark that early in the morning, but I just got some Sigma Karma lights (more on those later) super powered bike lights, so I can see anything and everything now.  Riding along the river, I used to be able to see the sunset, but now that fall is here, it’s just the smoldering glow of the pre-dawn.  Seven miles from home, I arrive at North Station, where I hop on a train that will take me north through the worst part of the commute, while conveniently shaving 12 miles off the commute.

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(this is only an approximation, since Google Maps doesn’t show shortcuts!)

I arrive and start riding through the suburban industrial center which slowly changes to true backroads suburbia.  It’s not the greatest biking, but it works, and I’ve gotten used to it.  There aren’t that many cars, and that early, they seem to still be courteous.  That’s about another 12 miles or so to work.

View Larger Map

I was able to take it pretty easy, go slowly up the hills, and arrive in a very comfortable state.  Man, it’s good to be out again! Next week, I’ll take a bunch of pictures. This time it was way too cloudy.