Nothing too exciting. I’m still working on a simple and direct route to Seward. Of course, by the time I get settled into this route, they will almost be ready to move to their new location.
I did get to give the ‘death look’ to some driver that tried to run a 4-way stop & kill me. That was fun.
Ride totals: 5.1 miles in … ? I have no idea.
July 18th, 2008 / Tags: bike, ride journal / TrackbackToday I wanted to go for a longer ride. I also wanted to finally get this bike onto the Greenway, Minneapolis’ premier bike path. Eight miles seemed like a good amount — farther than I’d gone so far, but not so far that I’d use more than my allotted hour.
Another nice thing about this route is that I got to try two more inclines, the ascents on the Martin Olav Sabo Bridge — both of which are more challenging than the hills I tried yesterday.
The ride out was smooth. Getting over the bridge was a cinch and once I hit the clear path west of Hiawatha, I really got the bike moving. If I can keep up a really quick pedaling cadence, I can get the bike to sail. Unfortunately, I can’t keep up that cadence for long. I completed the first four miles in a little under twenty minutes (roughly. I didn’t keep very close track), which would mean an average speed of about 12 miles an hour.
And on the way back I found out exactly why the first leg of the ride was so nice, I had been pushed by a strong tail wind. And now I had to pedal back home into that wind making the ride a misery. I hate headwinds. Hate. Hate them more than anything else. By the time I hit the Sabo bridge I was already exhausted. I just barely made the top of the bridge, where I had to stop and gather my breath before riding down.
I think tomorrow may be a rest day!
Ride totals: 8.2 miles in about 44 minutes (11 mph average)
July 16th, 2008 / Tags: bike, ride journal / TrackbackI had 2 goals for today’s ride. The first was see how fast I could go on my new bike, which meant that I had to find a relatively stop-sign-free stretch of road. The second goal was to see how my single-speed bike worked on a hill. This route provided everything I needed.
The stretch of road alongside the river parkway has very few stop signs and almost no traffic, excellent location for a speed test. Before I exhausted myself in the heat, I was probably going 15-20 miles an hour, which is perfect for my needs. And I’d guess that I wasn’t close to the bike’s top speed. With some practice, and a cooler day, I can certainly go faster.
The hill I wanted to try is from the river road up to about 40th avenue along 33rd street. It’s no monster climb, but it served as a good first test of my bike’s abilities. I intentionally geared the bike a bit low in order to make hills slightly easier, and it seems to have worked. The climb proved no trouble at all. I didn’t even have to leave the saddle.
Length: 3.6 miles
Time: ~20 minutes (I don’t keep very close track of the time)
Even though I finished my new bike a couple of weeks ago, I really haven’t had a chance to take it out for a ride of any length. My first two test rides wrenched my back and butt muscles something fierce, to the point where my doctor prescribed both muscle relaxants and 8 Advil a day. As my muscles recovered, I went out of town for a week. So yesterday afternoon was my first ride longer than 2 blocks.
Now that I have the bike fitted more appropriately, my muscles haven’t been complaining…much. I rode about 3 miles yesterday and 5 miles today, and I’m still able to walk. So at least things are going much better than my first rides.
I’m slowly learning how to ride this bike. So much is different from my last few rides. One gear instead of 27, drop handlebars, peddle straps, larger-but-thinner wheels, etc. The biggest change has to be the peddle straps. I’ve never ridden with any sort of foot restraint system; so I find myself paying a lot of attention to my feet, giving myself a lot of time to detach a foot from the pedals when I come to a stop.
Learning about the pedals ties in strongly with the other skill I’m working on: starting and stopping correctly. Other than the time I nearly got myself run over (totally my fault), I’ve gotten much better at this skill.
Ride One:
Just a quick tour of the neighborhood and a visit to The Hub and my library. At The Hub I decided to invest in a rear rack and pannier. A lot of my bike rides will be to do chores around town, so I needed a place to store crap. And I’ve found that my messenger bag isn’t all that comfortable on this bike. Also, wearing a backpack while biking in the summer? Sweaty.
Of course, the new rack did not agree with my older frame. But with a bit of ingenuity, an adaptor kit and $2 of bolts from Ace Hardware, it was good to go. So nice!
Ride Two:
Now that I had a pannier, I had to put it to use. I needed some brown sugar in order to make cookies, so I biked up to Seward and back, making a quick stop at Clicquot for some refreshing lemonade.
Over this ride’s five miles I averaged about ten miles an hour, which I think will be pretty close to my average on residential roads. Too many stop signs make it hard to go much faster. I’m not a biker that’s dead-set on obeying all the same traffic rules as cars, but I am dead-set against being run over. So I tend to at least slow down at every stop sign.
July 14th, 2008 / Tags: bike, ride journal / TrackbackWhen I last wrote, I had nearly every part necessary to build the bike, except for that pesky rear rim. Thankfully the rim arrived in time for the wheelbuilding class I was taking at Sibley Bike Depot. I trucked on down to One on One to buy the rim, spokes, tubes and tires. This took ages longer than it should have, thanks largely to really bad service from One on One. I couldn’t keep any workers’ attention for more than 5 seconds; every time the owner would start to help me, he’d get distracted by some minor thing and wander off.
Since I’m new to pretty much every aspect of building a bike, I wanted to be very sure that I was buying the right tubes and tires. So I asked the owner, and he let me down yet again by giving me the wrong information. I probably should have bought different tubes to go with the tires that I bought. Not a huge deal, but the owner could have easily steered me in the right direction, had he been paying attention.
The wheelbuilding class was probably as good as a wheelbuilding class can be. It’s not the sort of topic that is well suited to talking; you really just have to hop in and start working and make your beginner’s mistakes. And after two nights, spread out over two weeks, I’d made most of my mistakes and had myself a wheel.
Sadly, the wheel was pretty much completely wrong for my bike. It had the dish of a geared rear wheel, but I only intended to put a single gear on it. The result is that I needed a bike chain that bent at totally unnatural angles. Those chains don’t exist. So instead I had to fix my wheel.
A rear wheel hub has a combination of spacers that help align the rear chain rings with the front chain rings. So by rearranging the spacers, I was able to fix my chain problem. While adjusting the spacers, I also repacked all the bearings, partly because it seemed like a good idea, partly because they all fell out of the hub while I was messing with the axle.
With the spacers fixed I had to re-dish my wheel. Dishing a wheel ensures that your wheel is centered behind the frame of the bike. Because of the afore mentioned spacers, the hub is not centered on the axle. So you have to use a tool, called a Dish Stick, to make sure that your wheel is where it is supposed to be. Changing a wheel’s dish involves tightening the spokes on one side while maybe also loosening the spokes on the other side. And you have to ensure that your wheel stays in ‘true’, meaning that it’s properly balanced and round. It’s a very twitchy job. And I ended up truing that damn wheel at least three times. But, hey, at least I got plenty of experience.
Finally the rear wheel was ready to go. The rest of the bike was pretty simple to assemble. Throw on a saddle, attach the chain, adjust the breaks and voila! It’s a bike!
I took it for a few short test rides yesterday afternoon, just trying to get everything properly fitted. I put the handlebars on there way too low, so I flipped the stem around, raising the handlebars. They may actually still be too low. If so, I’ll have to buy a new stem that allows me to move the handlebars higher.
Other than that, it rides great. It’s so ridiculously fast and light compared to my old bike. I haven’t tried any real hills yet, so I don’t know how the gearing I choose will work on inclines. As I get more comfortable on the bike, I’ll try some more challenging terrain.
And now, the finished product:
Now, how much did it cost? That really depends on how you calculate it, I guess. I spent around $700 on the parts, $140 on the decoration of the bike (i.e. what I needed to sand and paint the frame, along with the cost of the decals), and about $40 on tools. If you total that all up, you get $880. Did I get my $880 worth? In other words, if I bought a new bike for $900, would it be better than the bike I built? I have no idea. I do know that I could never buy a bike built around an Achewood joke.
And I also know that simply buying a bike wouldn’t have been nearly as fun, or taught me as much. And I never would have met the awesome people at the Hub and Sibley Bike Depot that helped me so very much. That red brake cable housing? That’s there because one of the Sibley workers gave it to me, knowing that it would be a perfect color match. The rear wheel? That only works because Jason taught me how to build a wheel, space an axle and pack bearings. Without them, and so many others, I wouldn’t have a new bike.
The Total Totals
Days: 60
Cost: 880