Monthly Archive for February, 2006

Busted Chain

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on February 26, 2006
in Bikes and Road
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So on TNS 02.21.06, I busted my chain. Not just busted it, but destoyed it. I was having chainline issues, coupled with a not so tight chain and this spelled disaster. Although I’m going to go out on a limb and say for the record that the SRAM PC-1 Nickely plated BMX chain sucks ass! I could bend this thing with ease. So it was no surprise after dropping my chain that a few links were busted and kinked. Changed out the bad links before this ride. I was holding on strong for the entire ride, but I hadn’t fixed my chainline or tension yet. Cruising down the trail it happened. It popped off, only this time it got caught between the rear cog and the hub, locking the rear wheel up into a nice full on skid. I wasn’t freaked and there weren’t any issues stopping, so that was a plus. On the other hand, about 3/4 of the chain was destroyed, not to mention it was so pinned, the only way to get the chain release was to take the cog off. Since I only had 7 links on me, my night was over. I had to call Kristin to drive out and pick me up.

So yea, no big deal. I wasn’t hurt, the bike came through pretty unscathed, more of a pain the ass than anything. But hey, these are the chances you take when you operate on a maintenance schedule like I do. This was just kharma telling me to watch out, that I’ve been teetering on that positive/negative line and I need to refill the bank. So over the next week I picked up my go to chain, the KMC Rustbuster, it’s butter and MSRP is only $14. Never had an issue with this chain and like the name implies, it doesn’t rust. After fixing up the rear wheel, cutting the dropouts, and cleaning things up, I added the new chain. All systems are a go!

DT

Sickness

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on February 25, 2006
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I got bit by the sickness. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten really good and sick, but it finally happened. I was sick for 3 days, then while starting to recover I had to fly to New Orleans. No disaster recovery here, although it would have been nice, this was strictly a bachelor party mission. We never really left the French Quarter for 3 days and nights. It was my first time visiting and it was pretty eye opening. Needless to say, the trip didn’t help me being sick and I returned with a lost voice. Being home and able to rest up helped a lot. After almost 2 weeks of feeling some sort of sickness, I was finally on the mend.

I’m feeling better now, able to talk again, and finally back on the bike. Feels good to be hydrated and get the legs spinning.

DT

New Tools

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on February 24, 2006
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Finally got around to picking up some new tools. Headed up to Home Depot a little while back and grabbed a cheapo soldering gun, not the cold heat kind, but the real deal Holyfield that actually looks like a gun. I was going to try and resolder one of the legs on our coffee table, but turns out it’s too big of a job to solder. Oh well, guess that just means I need to learn how to weld, haha. I figure Kristin can use the soldering gun also for her jewelry making.

Next up was getting a Dremel. Surprisingly, there isn’t a lot of hand held rotary tools out there. The Dremel brand has a solid lock on what seems to be 95% of the market. I went ahead and purchased the new updated Dremel 400 that came with a few attachments. Once I got it home and held it in my hand, I knew this wasn’t the Dremel for me. The old ones, think over 10 years ago, used to be metal, but evidently those are really hard to ground properly. Thus they moved to a super hard molded plastic. This is what Gary has. Now the newest model is part hard molded plastic and part flexible rubber. They say the rubber gives a better grip when using the Dremel with sweaty hands, maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. In your hand the unit feels cheap and the rotary engine vents push the hot air out right at your fingers. After reading a few reviews of these units burning out, I decided to take it back. I’ll be purchasing the lower and older model online at Amazon, since it’s still made from just the hard molded plastic.

Here’s the Dremel 400 I originally bought and here’s the Dremel 3956 I plan on getting instead.

Since I just took the Dremel back, I picked up a drill bit made for cutting soft metal, which I was hoping the steel dropouts on the Fuji would be. The dropouts are stainless steel though, so it was a little tougher than I initially thought, but the drill bit did it’s job over time. Things I did right - did the job outside, wore the safety glasses Gary let me borrow (along with his dremel), took my time making the cuts. If I did it all over again, things I would change - wear crappy clothes, wear gloves, and get a stronger drill bit. The biggest thing was the tiny tiny metal shards that go everywhere. Since I wasn’t wearing gloves, I now have a few of these in my hands from when I smartly brushed the shards off my jacket…oh well, live and learn.

The goal was met. My dropouts are a tad longer making my chain tighter. They could be drilled more, but it’s good for now. This along with moving the chainring to the inside to make the chainline better, solved my dropping chain issue. So now, Vanessa the Fuji Scorcher will ride again!

DT

Killer Storm 2006!

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on February 13, 2006
in Bikes, Dirt and Life
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So at the beginning of last week, the weather people said we would be having some a snow flurry filled day on Saturday.  By Wednesday evening there was talk of a possible 4″.  By Thursday this estimate was at 4″-6″.  On Friday it was deemed possible we might get 6″-8″ and the date had changed from Saturday to late Saturday night into early Sunday morning.  Well guess what, looks like they finally got something close!  We ended up with somewhere around 8″-12″ of the white stuff.

Most people see that as a day to stay inside or better yet, finally a rare moment in the DC metro area that one can go snowshoeing or XC skiing.  Me…I see it as an excellent time to go rip some trails…all be it in a much slower fashion, not so much ripping unless your describing the sound of my lungs or the burn in my legs.  I was joined by Gary and Steve and we met up at Wakefield.

Steve and I spent a good amount of time just making it over to Wakefield.  We managed to get in just behind the plowing of I-495 where they plow every lane at the same time moving the snow from the far left to the far right.  It made a 10 minute drive into more like a 30 minute drive.  But once there it proved to be a perfect day.  Lot’s of snow, nobody on the trails, good friends, and my dog Buster get some much needed trail time.

I was just happy to be outside, but between the snow starting to get wet, really making going slow,  and whatever is wrong with my mountain bike (either the bottom bracket or the rear hub is mucked up and needs a good cleaning) making it twice as hard to pedal (spin the crank by hand, take hand away and crank immediately stops) and my fitness (or lacking there of) made for a shorter trail ride.  We did manage to get in all of the creek trail, the salamander trail, a bit of the fireroad, and a piece of trail I still don’t know the name of yet.

Afterwards, Steve dropped me and the Busterman off at the house and he headed back out to do some snowshoeing with his girl, and Gary headed out to do some sledding with his girl.  Me, I was tired and ended up playing cribbage with Kristin and the inlaws.  Definitely a good wrap-up to a relaxing weekend.  Looking forward to checking out the pics Steve got while we were out.  Should have some good ones as it was such a nice day and he was so far ahead of Gary and I he had plenty of time to setup his shots, ha.
Guess it’s time to break down the IF and give her the once over, then drop the rear wheel off at City Bikes to get it checked out.
DT

TNS - 02.07.2006

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on February 13, 2006
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Last Tuesday we had our biggest TNS to date.  A couple of past riders joined up for the night, as well as having a couple of new riders, which made us 7 strong.  I rode out from my house as usual and met up with Gary, Steve, and Stoner.  We rode from Falls Church where we pick up the W&OD to Georgetown via the Key Bridge.  Once on M St. it was only a couple of blocks to Pizza Paradiso, which had a newly opened basement bar with a bunch of exceptional beers on tap.  Steve did a really good write up on the night and beers tasted, so I’ll let you surf on over to his blog and check out his post on our TNS ride, complete with pics.  The only pic I have of the night is one Stoner sent out to the group, but it’s a pretty good pic of the bike pyramid we had going on outside the bar.  Good enough that the bartender sent one of the waitress staff out to take pictures of it to supposedly put it on their wall, ha.

Bike Pyramid

DT

MORE Trail Boss

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on February 11, 2006
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I’ve taken on a new position within the M.O.R.E. organization. I am now the new Trail Boss. What is a Trail Boss you may ask? I’m in charge of the 25 or so trail liaisons that keep the communication lines open with our local parks. Some of my duties include setting up the trail maintenance schedule, helping to coordinate large trail building projects, and keeping all the liaisons aprised of anything having to do with their park. While it may not sound like very much, it’s a lot more hours than I had initially thought. After all, I’m still a trail liaison and that takes probably less than 20 hours a year. In my first month on the job I have well surpassed that mark and I’m still going. Getting this many people to agree on something or meet at the same time is pretty tricky, as I’ve found out. Communication is key!

Once we get a finalized trail maintenance schedule, I’ll post it up here. If your local to the DC metro area and want to give some sweet sweet loving back to the trails that have given you so much, come on out one weekend or take a day off work for one of the big trail building days. A lot of people in 40 hour a week jobs might not realize some of their benefits. Not everyone has this, but my company does it, so who knows, worth a shot…take Civic time. It’s essentially 40 hours you can take off work at any time over the course of a year specifically for volunteer and community events. I’ve used this in the past to help out on the trail building sessions with Rich Edwards of IMBA that take place on weekdays. I’ve also used the days to help run the IMBA Trail Care Crew (TCC) visit.

What I’m really looking forward to this year is learning to build trail with mechanized tools. Rich Edwards is a master at the ditchwitch and in the right area, can make building miles of trail fast and efficient!  I’m also looking forward to taking a more active role in planning, designing, and building of new trail.  This will give me a chance to combine my work in computers, my passion for biking, and my interest in GIS.  I’m hoping that as Trail Boss I can help add value for the rest of M.O.R.E.’s members.  It’s time to take it up a notch!

DT

Fuji Scorcher

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on February 10, 2006
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Well I finally finished the Fuji Scorcher. Did a few short rides around the block to test her out and everything was good. A lot harder to make this bike skid. I can do it, but not very far and certainly not enough to warrant not having a front brake. The front brake that’s on there seems to be incompatible with the newer brake levers I have and the newer brake I have seems to be incompatible with older fork. So what is one to do. Spearman hooked me with a DiaCompe brake lever in exchange for a beer. Hopefully it will be able to provide the pull needed for the older brake. Without further banter, here it is:

Fuji Scorcher

Now for a little about the bike. It’s an old ass Fuji Absolute. I’ve been unable to find any information on this bike on the interweb thingy. I found one link to someone’s pic of the same bike on the FGG. It seems to be an early 80’s lugged road bike. This bike was my first fixed gear. I originally ran it just like it was set up for road, only I took the gears off, put on a fixed 27″ rear wheel, and ran a punishing 52×16 gearing. Living on a giant hill I learned quickly what to (not) do when riding this bike. Fast forward a ways into the future and the bike is in the shed after having been hit by a car, sending the frame out of wack a little and giving me some cash to drop on an already built up Bianchi Pista. Well with all the greatness that is that Pista…I decided to pull the parts and bring back the Fuji. This bike has soul, not to mention more toe room and space for bigger tires.

She (Vanessa) is setup as so:

  • Fuji Absolute frame/fork
  • Salsa Delgado rims
  • Phil Wood front mountain disc hub
  • LeVel fixed gear hub (with spacers to fit 135 or 120) with LeVel proprietary 16 tooth cog
  • SRAM PC-1 bmx chain (soon to be replaced as I’ve already mangled 5 links)
  • Sugino 600XD crankset with 46 tooth chainring (one of three things I actually bought to specifically build up this bike)
  • MKS Touring pedals with SOMA toe clips (another thing I bought for this bike…already off as the toe clips continually came loose from the pedals) - replaced with Candy clipless pedals.
  • Tange 1″ threaded headset
  • Profile H2O 1″ quill stem with “removable face plate” (that’s the reason I bought this stem)
  • On One Mungo handlebars
  • Stock seatpost
  • Selle Italia Gel saddle
  • New Belgium Brewing front reflector/bottle opener (finally! - an old roommate of mine got this for me)

So that there is Vanessa. She’s one tough mother… She takes on singletrack, gravel, dirt roads, cars, and more importantly - my big ass. And she does all this with zero complaints.

Fuji Scorcher

DT