Another longish ride...

So I went on a pretty long ride today with my friend Albert, his wife and their son. It was tons of fun! Not nearly as much pain this time which was nice. I started to feel the pain about half way (20 miles or so) and decided to give myself a little knee massage while riding. What's weird is a minute or two later my left knee popped and I had no more pain for the rest of the ride! I wish my right knee had popped too...

I decided I wanted to ride a different bike so I pulled out my Nashbar Alpha Road 5000 to get it ready.

(Sorry...I haven't quite got the picture thing down on this site...)

I had previously taken the bars off of it to swap them onto my girlfriends Cannondale Black Lightning (Sorry...No pic yet). Albert was nice enough to give me another Nitto as a replacement but when I went digging for bars I realized that I had sold or given away the ones slated for this bike to someone and didn't have a decent replacement that would fit my new stem. Bummer deal!
So at this point I hauled the GF's bike off the hook to adjust it, air it up and swap the saddle for a nice Rolls I had laying around. It was then that I remembered that I had on a previous ride skidded the rear tire enough to go through the rubber...Doh! A tire change was in order but I didn't have a spare tubular so I started digging for a different wheel. It needed to be a 700c with a 7 speed freewheel. Well the only one I had laying around wasn't optimal 'cause the rim is a Fiamme Speedy with an angled sidewall and there was no freewheel. I just happened to have used freewheel in the stash so I cleaned it up, installed it and slapped the wheel in the dropouts. I messed with the limit screws a bit and adjusted the brakes to get them acceptable and took off to the rendezvous point to begin our ride. That's when I noticed the freewheel skipped in one gear. Just one!
Anyways...Other than the one skipping gear which I carefully avoided I had no other problems. There were tons of people out on the MUP which was both nice and frustrating at the same time. I was actually pretty stoked to see so many people out riding bikes and going for walks. I just wish they would pay more attention to their surroundings and be a bit more considerate to others.

All said...Today was a good day!

Oh ya! I also counted all the rear derailleurs in my collection this evening...
I'm up to 31! And there is only one Japanese one. A Shimano 600.

Cheers!

I'm soooo excited!

As I stated previously I absolutely LOVE bike parts...

A couple of days ago some very special skewers popped up in my saved searches on eBay. I decided I had to have them but couldn't justify the cost so I started selling off bike parts that I hope I may be able to live without. Mostly consumables and parts that I can find easily. I made a fair bit of coinage to offset the cost and decided I'd hit the BIN button before someone else did...

Long story short...I am now the proud owner of two truly elusive and utterly fantastic Pino Moroni skewers!

I'll write more about them and post pics when they show up. I can't hardly wait!

Cheers!

I'm a hurtin' unit....

I went for my first longish ride in quite awhile today. A measly 32 miles of virtually flat paved trail. I went with my friend Albert who was pulling his son in his kiddie trailer and we kept a kinda slow pace 'cause we were BS'in and enjoying the scenery. It was fantastic.....Until my knees blew up about 12 miles into the ride.
I just don't know what to think of it. I'm a youngish 30 something guy with a physical job and I think I'm in pretty darn good shape. Maybe it was the bike...It was my first long ride on it so maybe I don't have the fit dialed in. I've been riding it almost daily around town for 2 months but I've never ridden it more than 2 miles at a time.
This really sucks. I'm gonna do some research and try to figure it out. Maybe I'll revise my fit based on what I find out or maybe I'll just build up my mileage a bit before my next ride...I was braking in my new VeloOrange saddle too which was interesting to say the least. It's more like it was breaking me in. Ouch! The knees eclipsed the seat pain so it wasn't bad after a while.

So hear is the bike that I rode...The pic is from the mock up stage. It looks a bit different now.
My Peugeot 650b conversion:

Some peolpe suck...Big time!

Just a bit of a rant about how much some people suck.

I was passed in a school zone today on my way to work. Not only that...But the herkin' SUV driver decided to cross a double yellow line to do it. That's just slightly illegal in these here parts. Did I mention that the speed limit is 20 mph between 7 am and 4 pm? Oh ya! And I was going 23 mph...At 8:45 am. I know this because I looked down at the speedo just after it happened trying to understand WTF was going on. Amazing!

No wonder my girlfriend and I decide to walk to work 75% of the time. People like this kill people. WTF is soooo important that they needed to stop and sit at a stoplight literally 10 seconds after they passed me?

In a school zone, crossing the double yellow while I was exceeding the speed limit.

Some people suck...Big time!

Dusting off the cobwebs...My Coppi

Howdy!

I recently went through my Bike room and dug everything out, organized it, labeled and boxed up spares and pulled out some of the bikes for a wipe down and shake down. Sitting way back in the corner was my lovely Coppi. It's a bit to big for me but it's so damn pretty I just can't bring myself to part with it. Every once in a while I like to dust it off, air up the tubulars and hit the local MUP just 'cause you gotta ride these things...

I received this bike from a friend of mine just as it sits but with a longer stem. I swapped the 120mm Cinelli for one of the same flavor in 100mm, wrapped the bars and called it good. It still needs a bit of tinkering but since I rarely ride it I just seem to pass it over.

Enough blabbin'! The parts list:
)Galli cranks with SR Royal drilled rings.
)Campagnolo NR bottom bracket.
)Galli front derailleur.
)Campagnolo "drillium" NR shifters and NR rear derailleur.
)Campagnolo hubs laced to Campagnolo Victory Strada tubular rims.
)Campagnolo alloy headset (SR?).
)Campagnolo Record pedals w/Christophe Special toes clips.
)Cinelli bars and stem.
)Modolo Race brakeset
)Gippieme seatpost with a Ti rail Brooks Swift perched on top (I call it the "ass hatchet")
)And a Silca frame pump with a Campy head to polish it off.

I think that's just about all of it. I've got the parts to make it all Campagnolo NR but those cranks are sooooo lovely I see no real reason to remove them. I think they are much nicer then NR. I also recently scored a Galli rear derailleur to match the front but I think I'll stick it in my collection because it's kinda on the rare side and I don't mind the NR derailleur on there now. I need to replace the straps and get the rust off of the clips before I put it away so it will stay out in my view for awhile.

So ya! Here it is!







I hope you like it! Cheers!

More Hi-E goodness

Well I finally scored some Hi-E rims. They are extremely light at about 220 grams. They were advertised as 240 grams but my scale says otherwise...What is interesting to me about these rims is the way they are made. They are made from a single sheet of aluminum that has been run through a machine to fold them over and create the shape. They are then riveted at the seam. The spoke eyelets are pretty chunky and I wonder how they were made and attached to the rim.
I'm debating about actually building them up and riding them because they feel extremely flimsy. If I do build them up I'll have to find some more Hi-E hubs with 36 holes. I've got two of them but they don't match and one is already laced into a rim.
Either way....I'm excited to have them! I leave y'all with some pics.

Cheers!



Oh! I almost forgot about another folding bike I got recently. I'm really excited about it and as I gather up more info it will get a post of it's own....I'd call it the Hi-E of folding bikes because it is very light in comparison to every folder I've had the pleasure to handle. It's made of aluminum and does not seem to have a single weld on it....Enough blabbing. I give you....

The Bickerton

Hi-E

I absolutely love Hi-E hubs...For the most part because they were very light and innovative for their time and also because they were made in the good ol' US of A. Pictured below is my collection (so far) of hubs (minus one which is laced into a Fiamme tubular rim). I've got a bit of research to do so that I can figure out which models are which but that's half the fun. I found this page with some catalog scans so I'll do some digging there. And there is also a bit of discussion about Hi-E in general in the bikelist archives. Velobase has a few entries on Hi-E as well. If you havent' been to that site it's great and I use it almost daily!
Aside from hubs Hi-E also made rims (which I will have very soon), spokes, spoke nipples, bottle cages, pedals and a roadbike frame (and probably more stuff I haven't varified).


If anyone has any info on Hi-E I'd love to hear it.....If you have any parts gathering dust I'd like those too ;)....Or at least a pic and a story about the part!
The company is still listed in the yellow pages so I wonder if it is still around? I've read that Mr. Meyers tried to sell the biz in the late 80's/early 90's and I have not found any indication that Hi-E components are still being produced.
I certainly admire his work and would love to have a chat with him.....