I got the shirts on Wednesday, and the patches arrived today!
They look BETTER than expected.
Now’s the moment of reckoning, where goods get matched to orders, and the shipping labels get printed.
I only have about 5 patches to take to the Entmoot itself, and a couple of those are spoken for already. The Patch Hoarders will be able to flip their extras sometime next week…
My old friend, inspiration, and mentor* Sheldon Brown, states that a “Mixte” is a ladies’ style of bike characterized by twin top tubes that extend all the way to the rear dropouts. He further states that there is a variant with a single top tube and the extra set of stays. He says if it don’t have three sets of stays, it ain’t no mixte.
I have always been leery of this interesting pedantic fact, because:
His main point was “don’t use the word mixte to refer to any old ladies’ frame bike,” because it’s a specific style.” I generally skirted** the issue: I tried not to make any embarrassing gaffes, but didn’t correct people on the internet.
Cut to the big mixte news this week on the iBOB list: Greg Reiche posted a link to a C. S. Hiroshi page about creating a ladies bicyle, specifically a “Sport.” One of the pictures showed a publication from FNCRM (Fédération Nationale du Commerce et de la Réparation du Cycle et Motocycle), a French bicycle and motorcycle trade group. Another image was of a page of that publication, showing some of the different styles of step-through frames.
I’ve redrawn the graphic here. Don’t sue me, bro. 
Mixte – Twin tubes from the upper head lug all the way to the rear dropouts. Hot.
Sport – A single top tube, with a third set of stays. Also hot. Rivendell and J.P. Weigle style. Sheldon calls this a kind of Mixte.
Berceau – Bendy twin top tubes, for more standover height. Lots of potential, but I’ve never seen a truly sexy implementation of this style.
Jumele – Twin top tubes, with NO third set of stays. I have never seen this style of bike. Doofy.
Anglais – Second top tube, no extra stays. Angelina’s Steyr was this style. Workmanlike.
Col de Cygne – Swoopy top tube, with supporting struts to the down tube. Nice, but tend to look heavy.
Double Col de Cygne – Swoopy top tube, and down tube, with struts. Trying too hard?
Of bikes that have passed through my house, apparently the Steyr was a “style Anglais,” while the Belleville is a true mixte. The couple Suburbans Angelina had were… variations on the Anglais?
* Internet-style. He may or may not have recognized me on the street. ** See what I did there?
I have the Rivendell jamboree tee shirt design up on Etsy. Three colors of bicycle: Rivish green, blue or orange. So far orange is the front-runner, but the blue is my favorite.
Last year I rode to work all week for Bike To Work day. The high point of the Friday ride was meeting an anti-fixie hipster. Then that next Monday I rode to work and fell over from vertigo that lasted a week, and still affects me a little. Probably some kind of hipster curse. This year I notice that due to the subtleties of page layout, and the lameness of the internet, not only do Pingbacks on the Sonoma County Bike Coalition Bike-to-Work page look like the names of sponsors… most of them are flat-out spam. 
So that’s me – art nerdery and UI/web nerdery spilling into the bike nerddom. I did set 6 Strava PRs on my commute this morning, though!
I thought this up while riding my bike. I think it applies to anything that people might obsess over.
Coffee is pass/fail. “Does it taste like coffee?” Good. Does it taste like great coffee? Great!
for me, sushi is pass/fail.
I bought a bargain-priced titanium-railed Brooks Swift from one of my internet friends. The Swift is a ‘racier,’ ‘sportier,’ ‘spendier’ leather saddle than my B17, and a whole different category of throne altogether than Angelina’s B72. I needed a new saddle for either the Singular Gryphon (more on that later), or the Ross (as it gets the Singular’s gears), and I liked the idea of narrower (for the Gryphon), and lighter (for the Ross).
The price was right, but with one drawback. The leather was ripped at the nose, cutting underneath one of the rivets. The seller said it was “ride-able as is,” but at 240 lbs, I figured it would last me about a week. Simply squeezing the ‘roof’ of the saddle towards the rails made the stretched leather pull away from the nose rivets. My first thought was to glue Tyvek to the back of the leather as a reinforcement. Tough, and free in the form of Fed Ex envelopes, I figured it would at least buy me time. Guess who doesn’t have free Tyvek Fed Ex envelopes anymore?
I raided my wife’s sewing supplies, and got a square of mattress ticking material. Tough, cool-looking, and free. Those are like my favorite qualities in a material! I cut it to go around the post of the rivet, removed the cantle from the nose of the saddle, and glued the fabric to the back of the leather.
The backing definitely helped keep the leather rip from spreading under pressure, but it didn’t seem strong enough to do the job on its own. I added some Crazy Glue to the torn edges of the leather and squeezed them together while I moved on to Plan C.
Plan A was actually to buy a new leather top and some rivets and just replace the leather entirely, but apparently I just dreamed that possibility. When I went looking in the usual places, no new Brooks leather tops were to be found! The titanium undercarriage alone costs about as much as a whole new saddle, though.
So my brainwave here was to add some rivets to reinforce the leather at the nose, and spread the stresses. I had some rivets from my last project, in a couple types and sizes. I would have liked to use some real Brooks rivets from Wallbike, but I was seeing a funky server notice on their domain, and was afraid to order from the site.
I went to Orchard Supply Hardware in my town, and asked the lady by the gazebos and chaises longueses where the rivets were. “We have some kits. Like rivet guns? Pop rivets?” “No, I just need some rivets to hammer in by hand. Do you have a section with fasteners and things? Little drawers with different sizes of nuts and bolts?” “No, we don’t have anything like that.” (dumbfounded) “Would you like to see the kits?” (I thought you were a hardware store!) “Uh, no thanks.”
So I pawed through my own little drawers of fasteners, and came up with a handful of different rivets I’d bought as spares. The best bet seemed to be a pair of split steel ones. They were longer than the others, and it seemed like it would be easier to peen them over (Angelina – “‘Peen?’ Is that a word?”) in the awkward space inside the nose of the saddle.
So I needed to drill two holes through the leather and titanium. There’s plenty of extra material behind the existing rivets, and I had a Dremel with an 1/8″ bit. I marked each spot, and drilled neat holes in the leather… and made tiny dents in the titanium. Lots of nasty dentist-drill whining, lots of holding the Dremel exactly perpendicular, and very little progress. After about 10 minutes and a noise complaint from the child, I put the project aside and emailed a cycling work friend who is a mechanical engineer.
He said that with titanium, you want low speed, lots of torque, and probably a drill press. So… the opposite of a Dremel. He probably just Googled it, but it was helpful. I got out the de Walt 12v drill, set it to “1,” and used a different 1/8″ bit to drill the holes, never pushing the trigger more than halfway, keeping it slow. It was work, but at least it made progress. For the second hole, I put a cork inside the nose to protect the bit when it finally popped through.
I used a small hammer with a smooth striking face to drive the rivets into the holes, then popped them out to wallow the hole out a little wider), then tapped them back through. I wanted the rivets snug in the holes but they didn’t go as flush as I would have liked.
I separated the ‘legs’ of each rivet with a sharp steak knife (the least used knife in a vegetarian household), and used a nail set and the hammer to beat them flat against the inside of the nose. I have a large antique monkey wrench I used as a makeshift anvil.
It actually worked! I put the head of the wrench inside the nose, and did the final beating-down of the rivet with the hammer, and then went around and touched up the original rivets that were coming away from the leather a bit.
“Bam bam bam!” Much nicer. “Oh, that was easy.” Next time, I’ll definitely get the official Brooks copper rivets.
I put a little Sharpie on each rivet head (lasted 30 seconds of riding), and also on the ragged edge of the fabric I used as the backing reinforcement (lasted much longer).
So this makes two Brooks saddles I’ve rehabilitated with rivets and the Internet! After three rides, I can say that it’s a very comfortable saddle, maybe more so than my B17.
I’ve gone out a couple times riding in Annadel with friends from work. On Superbowl Sunday, Josh and I went 16 miles or so, in the rain.
I was a few minutes late, and caught up with Josh on the long climb up Warren Richardson, and we did South Burma – Buick Meadow – Marsh Trail down to Lake Ilsanjo. At Buick Meadow, I went up Quarry a bit, until I saw Josh come out of the trees from Burma, and stopped to turn around. I almost get rear-ended by a guy who had ninja’d up behind me. “JESUS!” I say (it wasn’t Him), “I had no idea you were back there!” He says, “Sorry, I thought you were pulling aside to let me by.” I’m like, “Nope. I thought I was alone out here.”
Josh comes up, and he’s like, “I hate tools who don’t announce themselves like that. It’s rude and dangerous.” I told him I used to do that, just figuring people would hear me coming, and saying something would be intrusive, until I rode with my friend Scott and his daughter on the Springwater Corridor in Portland. Hundreds of bikers, dozens of them overtaking us. Every time someone would slide by silently on the left, Scott would say loudly, “On your right!” Josh was like, “Oh, man, that’s great. ‘On your right!’” I was like, “it took me about five times to get it.”
On the last bit before the lake, I popped a couple little mini-jumps off some rocks about the size of 7 speed freewheels. Just as Josh says, “I’m so tired I’m not even hitting any of those ‘features,’” I landed sort of crooked, and cut right into the back third of Josh’s bike, forcing both of us off the trail, “What? What what what?” onto our sides in the dirt and grass. We looked like mountain biker cutouts that had blown over in a high wind. Josh was like, “WHAT? What was THAT?” as I’m laying on my side laughing. Worst mountain biker ever.
We got up, admired the giant rough boulders we had NOT hit, and rode around the lake, planning to climb to the top of Warren Richardson to bomb back the steep downhill to the cars (you can ride offroad almost 40 minutes longer if you drive to the trail – who knew??). After resting and talking for a few minutes, I got ready to go, and he said, “I ain’t moving.” Okay, that’s funny. I ride halfway up the hill, around the corner and out of sight. No Josh. I wait a minute. Nothing. I ride back down. He’s straddling the bike, staring off into the same point of nothing that he’d been staring at two minutes before.
So we rode back to the lake and down Canyon, around part of Spring Lake and back to the car. All in all, total success.
The Gravel Roadster has given up many of its parts (wheels, bars, brakes and seat) to the Singular Gryphon frameset I’ve been riding for a month or so. I’ll review that bike later, but I want to get some real 29er tires for it. The Gryphon is a mountain bike, and the Gravel Roadster was a road bike. “29er Road Bike” – Can I trademark that?
This is a 43cm Fisher Utopia frame (very light aluminum hybrid) with a Kona P2 fork, single ring and 7 or 9 speed cassette. I’m 6’2″. If I were to build this from blank paper (or an actual budget), it would be exactly the same, but in a larger size. This one frame fits a huge range of rider sizes, and if I can get a longer seatpost and another wheelset I’ll probably resurrect it.
Right now the frame, fork, headset, stem, crankset and seatpost are wrapped up in that Niner box. Any takers? Cheap.
My friends in the Rivendell Owners Group (Bunch? I don’t know) are putting on a shindig in July. Rivendell Bicycle Works is 20 years old this year, which is pretty cool. I remember when “Ever Since 1994” was funny, because it was like… 3 years or something.
I volunteered to make a poster, because I don’t enjoy calling and planning and pestering in order to make an event actually happen. I’m not even sure if I volunteered… I kind of just did it.
The next step, apparently, is to turn the art into some form of permanent commodity: poster, tee shirt, bandanna, etc.
So: which style, and what should we make?
The first pen outline has its proponents on Flickr.
The watercolor version is about 5% more chromatically amped up than it is in person. I enjoyed filling in the color, especially the red/green at the bottom. Two layers of scumbled color. Definitely the most work in this one, but if it isn’t as satisfying… oh well. 
The black block print one is the au courant style I was imagining from the get-go. I like it as a graphic. Also easiest to print.
I sent an email around to the cyclists at work, alerting them to the Bruce Gordon Retail Space Grand Opening, with the caveat that “he has a reputation as a curmudgeon, but he’s always been nice to me.”
I laughed out loud when Bruce came through passing out tiny buttons that said “Bruce Gordon Was Nice To Me!!” He had bags of them, and a pin press for making them.
Someone told me that earlier in the day, Ross Shafer had taken one, looked at it and handed it back. “I can’t take this, Bruce, you’ve NEVER been nice to me!” Apparently they were an answer to pins he’d made years ago, saying “Bruce Gordon Was Rude To Me.” My friend Mark showed me one later, along with a BG Cycles pocket protector.
I’ve met Bruce at a couple bike shows, but introduced myself as a friend of some of his old Dempsey’s friends (see above). After hearing some good Bruce stories (“You can’t afford one of my bikes – CLICK”) around the (Dempsey’s Red Rooster and PSA) beer kegs, it seems that a beer connection might start things off on a much better footing than a bike connection.
The bikes are great. I saw them at a NAHBS, and bought a CD of excellent photos of them (“I paid five dollars for a HEINEKEN on the train – I think I can buy a $5 CD of bike pictures.”) It was very cool to see them in a smaller venue (if you will).
The retail space is extremely small, with Two Fish, White Industries, Bruce Gordon and Honjo items for sale. Nice stuff. MOAR!
After looking at all the bikes twice, once for the overall effect of 37 years of bikes, one bike a year, all in Bruce’s size, and then again to see the details, I drifted around the shop space, then hung out by the keg as the head of the Sonoma County Bike Coalition held court.
Integrated seat mast?
Bruce Gordon, 1977.
Road-going fixed gear? Single brake, bell, light, rack?
Bruce Gordon, 1980
Green tigerstripe mountain bike with a fastback seat cluster?
Bruce Gordon, 1983
Flintstones bike?
Bruce Gordon, 1,000,000 BC
In addition to bikes, I like shops.
There was some cool engine-fancy happening. My first car was an MGB, my dad had (has) a Triumph motorcycle, Angelina has a Vespa, and we were married in a hearse, so I had some things to talk about on that front, too.
Around the kegs, we chatted about hiding new bicycles in friends’ garages, Cadillac engines vs flathead Fords, and how long people keep riding the same bicycle. Gary (king of the tap) said, “My wife is still riding the bike I made for her when I owned Merlin.”
“What?”
“Oh.”
I chatted with Maurice Tierney (he lives around here now), and he encouraged me to contact the new Dirt Rag art director, and maybe do some more illustrations for them. I said I would, but I haven’t.
Yet.
The dog and I went for a ride on Mt Burdell again today, putting in two hours on the last day of the year, and seeing down the sun on 2013. Again, great dogs, great cyclists, great hikers. A shibe mix, an old dog named Duke, and someone thought Chick was, “Two? Three?” She’ll be 8 next month.
We spooked a murder of turkey vultures from their roosts on a cattle trough. This is them, wheeling around until we were gone.
That’s what I look like. I never smile.
Here’s the trail, carved 18″ through the topsoil. Mountain bikes are pretty low-impact, compared to a D8 Cat.
I got out yesterday on the Quickbeam for a long (for me) ride, up to Healdsburg from Santa Rosa, and then out Westside Road to Forestville, and home.
The ride out was nice; I felt strong, but went all the way out Fulton and by the airport and through Windsor, instead of cutting over to Eastside Road. I caught the same guy at two different stoplights, once on Fulton Road, and once on Old Redwood Hwy north of Windsor. I’m pretty sure he went a faster, nicer way. Next time.
I saw lots of cyclists coming South of of Healdsburg as I rolled in about 2:00. I cut through the hobo tracks by the old train station and got some pictures. I sat in the park, ate a Luna bar, drank half my water, and then walked around Healdsburg for a bit. It’s been upscaled a bit since I was there last, but I know there are still freaks out in the hills.
I tried to pick up Eastside Road to get out of town, but what I thought was Eastside looked like a freeway onramp, so I walked the bike* a block North and got on Westside. Which is fine; I love that road.
I stopped at a pretty roadside rock feature by a vineyard. It looked like a mini park. I needed to pee a little, but thought it would be gauche to wizz on the rocks and oaks.
Another stop at the Wohler Bridge took care of that.
When I hit River Road, I decided to pop into Forestville and say ‘hi’ to my brother. I stole a liter of apple juice, pet the dogs, and changed gears from the 80″ 44×15 gear to the 71″ 44×17. The Tire Savers need to be repositioned when you move the wheel, and the front one’s sexy ‘under-the-crown’ mount puts the whole thing too close to the tire, not just the business end.
As tired as I was, I should have run back out to River Road, which is pretty flat. Instead, I headed home on 116, tackling the steep pitches between Forestville and Guerneville Road I always forget about. That was pretty treacherous, because the entire shoulder was broken up with six foot steel construction plates every fifteen feet. I guess for “technical road riding,” I should have brought my new “29er road bike.” The C-Lines handled it pretty well, though. It’s not like I was going very fast.
So four and a half hours out, all told. More than half the daylight hours I was awake were spent out on the bike!
*I won’t ride the wrong way, or on the sidewalk, if I can help it.
Richard Sachs explains “why he left the recording industry.” I like that kind of recorded minutiae, and I think it’s art in its own right. It’s definitely the marks of a thinking mind.
I think e-Richie could nail all these ledgers to a board, and frame them under glass. “ATMO.”
In a much less organized way, I have a giant piece of watercolor paper under my laptop, and I’ve been keeping notes and marginalia on it. I have all the drawings and measurements for laying out Angelina’s book on it. If I still like it in a couple of weeks, I may cut out the most interesting rectangle and frame it.
Paul Thumbies holding Shimano shifters, coupled with Soma reverso levers on Albatross bars. Super-cool. Humblecyclist says after 4+ years of this setup, the only weird part is the reverse shift direction (down for larger on the rear).
“It only takes a few minutes of riding to become comfortable with this “backwards” shifting – after that it just seems normal. It is all worth the setup and configuration necessary to get the full access of the Albatross bars.”
My version would be a single front brake on the left, and a single “normal” bar-end shifter on the right. Dangerous, bad, and wrong.
First day of Winter… 58 degrees tonight sitting on my porch in California. It’s been a while since I documented my bikes; the Quickbeam has C-Lines and thornflickers, but it’s about the same. Except no fenders or lighting, since it never rains here and never gets dark. So… pretty much totally different. The weight of the bike as shown is 25.5 lbs.
I went for a little spin around downtown, the JC, and the MacDonald neighborhoods. There are Snoopys all over town, since Charles Schultz lived here.
The Quickbeam currently has a 44t ugly Rocket Ring, a 15t D/A cog and a 17/21 Surly Dingle cog. With 37mm Soma C-Lines, it’s geared with 80″, 71″, and 57″. I think the 44t ring is going to move to the Gryphon to replace the 48t ring, which means the Ross will probably give up a ring or two, or I’ll just put the stock 40/32 back on the Quickbeam. This Arabesque 600 crank belongs on the Ross anyway.
I still love the WTB dirt drops on the Quickbeam. The tape faded, and the shellac turned it white in the rain. The Salsa stem might need a respray with the Plasti-kote “Shamrock,” if I can get another can.
The Soma C-Lines are very nice tires. I didn’t like the Tektro 720s when I first got them, but they improved greatly with Koolstop pads. I put the original low-profile brakes back on the rear, though, since these hit my heels. I think every Quickbeam should have a Nitto M12 rack. It connects to the canti posts for a clean look, and it’s very strong. I use a basket, attached with hose clamps. Other people use zip ties, but I don’t trust ’em.
Stock Tiagra brake levers on the WTB dirt drops. The gray plastic bit on the right lever broke and disappeared a couple years ago. I was going to replace it, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
Front view. Quickbeam badge, Wilderness Trail dirt drops’ sexy swoop, green Brooks Special saddle in the background.
Side view. The bike-holder-uppers were sourced from Rivendell. This is the first time I’ve used two on one bike.
