Author: philip

Laser eye surgery! My eyes (cataract growth) got dramatically worse over the last 6 months and I had one eye laser-surged this morning.

Three eye drops 4 times a day is a lot.

Walking around all day without glasses seems super normal, even after wearing them since the 5th grade.

I have been shooting cameras and guns with my left eye for years since my right eye was so trash, but the nurse assured me I’m right-eye dominant. I practiced using my right eye with my cameras and no glasses, and it seems pretty game changing and maybe I’ll be a good shot again, too.

Getting my anemia fixed.

I broke my wrist right before New Year and spent some time in the hospital for surgery intake, and they did a bunch of blood tests. The results show up in your phone app in about 20 minutes!

Turns out my iron levels and hematocrit were abysmal. Like “no wonder I suck at bicycles” bad.

Kaiser had said, “oh your iron is a little low we might look at that in a year or two” United said, “dood you’re anemic here’s what we will do.” And then they did it.

1. Check me for internal bleeding. “Bloods gotta be going somewhere.” Ick. This is an involved, unpleasant process. Double ick. Turns out I have Barrett’s Syndrome.
2. Take a pill every morning, and come back in three years to get scoped again.
3. Take iron, but not too much, since it can “irritate the stomach.” I’m pretty sure this means “make you bleed internally which defeats the whole point.” I won’t go into why I think this is the case.

So if you feel weak and asthmatic riding bikes and your poops are often almost black… talk to a doctor about anemia!

Quad Lock phone mounts for bike and car.

I have a terrible sense of direction and it takes me repeated visits to understand the spatial relations of a place. So I tend to go places I already know. Having a phone/map mount where I can see it and follow the map is a huge help for me to get around and try new routes.

I use it more in the car than on the bike, but I hope to change that in 2026.

Overall, Quad Lock is good, it needs a dedicated case, and I like the ring back thing because it aids in holding the phone easily and securely.

The only downside is that it smooths out the movement of the phone on the bike so I don’t get “steps” in my activity app.

Paying retail money for new and stylish clothes

Ornot hooded trail shirts. And other Ornot shirts.

I think the purple and stone Ornots look good on me, and they dry fast after riding. The striped Gaultier look is nice but I reach for it least.

Kuhl riding shirts (but don’t ride in it because you’ll look all sweaty after), and Kuhl pants (every pair has a slightly different fabric).

These things are all spendy at about $100 shipped and I’m told you can feed a hungry family for a week for that money, but I’ve spent most of my life thrifting clothes so I now amortize new clothes over the rest of my life.

Also, fancy jackets this year, but I got them on deep clearance. Old habits die hard.

Upright bars. I’ve been riding flared dirt drops for decades, but swapped in Velo Orange Tourist bars to recover from my broken wrist.

I like them! I like that silver Ritchey Force stem, too.

I also tried-and-liked the Grant Petersen DIY wool grips. they feel great, look great, and wear well. They’re finished with used Velox tape for when I get up on the lever mount for climbing.

I got this pretty SimWorks rack from Analog Cycles, but the TravelAgent conflicts with the mounting rod.

I’d need to switch to a cantilever brake in the back to make this work. Or… just move a pad washer to get the brake off the rack strut… hm.

Cleaning the rim seemed to help the crazy squeal, so I put the shiny brake and new pads (sanded of course) on the Fitz for tomorrow’s road run out to Forestville.

UPDATE: better braking and no shrieking!

UPDATE (full story below): this is a Gripshift Bassworm invented to add more “spring” to Gripshift shifters to work with updated Shimano derailleurs.

This looks like a special way to keep the gunk out of a derailleur cable. The rubber tube has a metal connector at one end that holds the cable with a grub screw. There is a strange swinging stop that attaches to the frame stop, and looks like they work together in such a way that I couldn’t steal the swinging stop for another bike.

A friend returned a bike I put together for them, and included an old Cannondale! Yay! But… 1.25” headtube, blown Judy fork, bent derailleur.

Kind of made me mad, since I’d just got a new bike (the Fitz), and sold a bike (the Swobo), and I was looking to downsize not metastasize. Which is why there isn’t any kind of documentation to this weirdo bike.

It was also a bad sign that my friend “CannonDave” who will drive four hours to buy a $50 Cannondale frame wouldn’t take the whole bike off my hands for free.

Sam, a reader and iBOB writes:

Hi Philip

I saw your post about the weird vintage detail on the Cannondale frame you received. I totally see how it would also keep gunk out, but the set screw that clamps the cable is a clue to its true purpose. That is a Gripshift Bassworm. It came out in the mid 90s as a shifting “upgrade”. As Gripshift gained market share and replaced Shimano rapid fire shifters both in the oem and aftermarket, Shimano lightened its return springs in the rear derailleur. The Gripshift have a coil of cable in the shifter adding just enough friction to make their performance quite poor with the light action return springs while leaving rapid fire shifters unaffected. Coincidence or aggressive competition tactics by Shimano? We’ll probably never know. But Gripshift put these out to increase the return springs pull and make up for the extra friction in a Gripshifter. The rubber tube is the “spring” and you were supposed to install it with a bit of stretch while in the smallest cog. As you shifted through the rear cassette, the rubber tube would stretch and then when you shifted through back down to the small cog it would yank that cable back through the housing, effectively increasing the return spring.  Gripshift didn’t want to advertise that there was a problem with its shifters and Shimano derailleurs, so it marketed these as an upgrade for everyone (and it worked the same on any bike so it was universal I guess), but it truly was a way to bridge a cunningly engineered compatibility gap. Soon after Gripshift became SRAM and started making its own ESP derailleurs and the rest is history. Anyway, thanks for ringing a bell in this old mechanic’s memory, and sorry to bend your ear with an unsolicited tale of bike industry intrigue from the mid 90s. I do enjoy your blog, so chapeau bas!

Thanks,

Sam in Brooklyn (ibob member)