Category: Projects

Every bike in the concours.

5: Brifters! My first ever brake lever shifting bike. Maybe my second ever even riding one. I thought they were genius when they came out, I was just too poor and riding fixed all the time.

4: 1×12 drivetrain. Ratio upgrade kit for 10sp SRAM shifters is pretty cool. I needed the shop to make the internal swap.

3: Left lever controlling the dropper post. Awesome. 1000% awesome. 200mm OneUp silver dropper is pretty and pretty similar in feel to 190 and 175.

2: 180mm cranks. I usually ride 175s, but I got these beautiful XTR square tapers at the museum swap meet, along with some other cool stuff like the XTR skewers (from Jeremy Sycip’s booth). If everyone is cutting down to 165s, that’s my cue to go the other way. Maaaybe there’s a little more pedal strike stacking up the smaller tires (48s) with the longer cranks and the 80mm BB drop.

1: This killer new Fitz Porcorosso!

This is a fancier modernized version of the 2019 Fitz Supermoto (seriously thought that bike would be on the blog here oops). That bike was pushing the limits of downtube length, and fork offset with the straight blade forks, Tubing makers have stepped up and made butted tubes longer for modern geometries, and I relaxed into letting John do curved blades.

I also relented on internal dropper routing. I think it’s stupid (longer cables, heavier housing, holes in your bike), but external dropper choices are limited to one PNW 31.6 175mm. Once you (I) relent on the internal routing for the dropper, you’re sending a cable down the downtube. Once you can’t run everything under the top tube like a proper Bontrager setup, then you’re open to running MOST cables down the down tube. And running full housing, and treating it like a decorative border instead of hiding it. Another difference from the Supermoto.

Geometry is longer, less “front load low trail” and more “bikepackery.” When John built the Supermoto, I was like “I don’t want zits all over my bike, I don’t do that bikepacking stuff.” So then I immediately started doing bikepacking stuff with it. This bike has All The Zits, including frame bag mounts. There’s like $500 worth of extra mounting points. So far no dedicated frame bag.

And… fancy!! The Supermoto was purposely purposeful, but the Porcorosso might need to replace my Frances as the prettiest bike imaginable without being overwrought. Curved top tube, polished stay eyes, stainless Fitz gusset, stainless dropouts, fancy Illusion Cherry sparkly paint. Curved fork. People like those.

PS: I like those Ortlieb snap-on bags, too. REI had a big sale, and they worked out.

Sayonara 2025.

Fun couple hours riding up out of Fairfax and down into Sleepy Hollow. Gorgeous day, and I didn’t injure myself!

I always love the Gestalt Haus jackalope sausage, but the M&G burger was really calling me. Next time.

Nicassshhio Reservoir was beautiful, and The Mighty Kia is always fun over D Street into Petaluma.

Oh yeah, I started my day taking a cat to the vet. Here he is interested in the toy, but not fooled by the toy.

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.

One day (and 6 hours) update: I can read my phone AND see across the street. This morning, 24 hours after surgery I thought “Maybe they put in the wrong lens??” Close vision wasn’t there, and I wasn’t getting the halos around everything I was promised. Now the close focus is pretty good. Left eye sees small type clearly three inches closer to my face than the right eye with the new lens, but won’t work for things at arms length.

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)

Curved top tube lots of custom details. Illusion Cherry powdercoat. Fitz Cyclez

My kid and I stopped into a military surplus place in Cotati, and I picked up a little medical kit. It’s a green nylon pouch with a green plastic box inside. The box closes, and the pouch has nice snap-through hardware. On the back of the pouch are two metal clips that lock.

It turns out these two clips are EXACTLY the height of two Wald basket wires, top to bottom on the medium.

The clips snap down and lock, and there are two grommets at the bottom of the pouch that you can zip tie to the bottom wires of the basket.

I put some first aid stuff in the pouch (since it’s a medical kit), and big gauze pad fits behind the box.

My wallet fits in front.

Inside is a tube, tire levers, some allen keys taped together, and an inhaler.

The box is easily removed for use.

And overall it complements a green Quickbeam quite well.