My buddy Sid and I rode out to Forestville for this conclave of heads, and had a great time!
I think this is the third one? FOURTH! Volo coffee was there with a popup coffee shop as well.
It was coooold on the ride, and dark by the time we got back into Santa Rosa.
Lots of friendly faces, both new and known, lots of cool bikes.
I thought I took pics of the refurbished 1939 Schwinn Paramount track bike with a 1953 AW 3 speed hub but I sure don’t see them on my phone.
Out to Forestville for pizza (Sonoma Pizza Co) with some friends and back, almost all on the trails. Made a wish at 11:11 on 11/11. The usual: “some peace, somewhere, for a little while.”
The veganized pizza with added mushroom was delicious! Brian’s shop was closed (Tuesday/Holiday).
Two friends and I rode out from Santa Rosa to a bike community campout at the foot of Willow Creek Road (famous local dirt climb).
We took the Creek Trail to Occidental Road, Occidental, Monte Rio, and out to Hwy 1.
Lots of great people, maybe 20 campers, vegan food and fire-roasted meat, lots of amazing food.
I stepped off the trail in the night into a 4 foot hole and broke a rib which was not great. Rode back to Monte Rio in the morning and took a week off work.
An online acquaintance mentioned that he was leading a 31.4 mile Pi Day ride, and I had to steal the idea.
It’s a nerd’s nerd thing, Pi Day, and today’s is special. Today’s date is 3/14/15, which is the first five digits of Pi, 3.1415. Further, at 9:26:53 this morning, we were good to 10 digits of Pi!
Bike nerd? Check. All-’round Nerd? Check and double-check. I started my ride at 9:26:53 (Strava should have a time counter into the hundreds of seconds for starting rides like this. You know, the ones that happen every hundred years)… or so.
I was kind of surprised I started on time, but I woke up naturally (the reason we have Saturdays), thought, “I’m not sure if that dream was troubling or comforting,” and started putting on bike clothes. Full Riv regalia: sneakers, wool socks, Riv knickers, Wooly Warm jersey, Devold underwear. The jersey was green, which didn’t match all the blue everything else, but my baby blue jersey is looking kind of green itself after all these years.
In addition to the ONCE IN A LIFETIME MAGICAL NUMBER THING, I also wanted to get some miles in before the Strada Rossa, and assess how enjoyable the 50k is going to be after a “winter” of sloth. Turns out, that’s a good length to feel like I accomplished something, but still enjoy the whole thing.
So, I rolled out, bought a double Americano (very nice, $2.07 (that’s a stupid price – not egregiously high, just a dumb number. I was going to pay cash, but switched to a card because I didn’t want 93 cents in change rattling around my pocket, so it cost them whatever the card companies charge)), and headed to the Prince’s Greenway.
Holy Grounds coffee shop
My plan was to run the loop of Sonoma bike paths I’d mapped on Google Maps that added up to 31.4 miles.
Oh yeah – this is me, before the ride.
Mostly I did that, with a couple wrong turns side quests. I have to say, that the trails are pretty awesome, but the signage is designed to please the people standing back admiring their handiwork, not the people navigating intersections while focusing on moving automobiles.
I took the Greenway/Creek Trail to Willowside road, shelling grandpas and kids on trikes like a Cat 6 monster, then took Hall Road into Sebastopol, where I finished my coffee in front of the Whole Foods.
Heading North on 116, I stopped at Andy’s Market (legit produce) for another Americano. This one was marginally cheaper, at $1.75, and tasted smokier than the Holy Grounds espresso. I very much enjoyed it, and it would appeal to people who like Portland espresso. Frankly, it had all of the good and none of the bad (“What? This is no longer a fluid. It’s a solid. You just steamed the grounds.”) aspects of Portland espresso.
So this happened. Twice.
My new (to me) Phil Kiss-Off wheelset, WTB Dual Duty rims, and new (actually new) Vee Rubber “Mission” tires don’t seem to work together. I don’t know if the fault is with the rim, the tire, or if they’re each slightly out of spec.
I rolled the tire in the neighborhood after installation, reinstalled it, it blew off, then I put the tube in another tire on another rim. Twenty minutes after installation, the tube exploded like the Death Star. This Stan’s-filled tube off another wheel stayed on fine for two days and 1.25 rides.
Riding up a steep short climb, traversing to work with my 36×17 gear, I suddenly was rolling on the rim! My first thought was “I am SO HAPPY this didn’t happen going DOWN this road!”
I rode home super slowly, after my riding friends bailed me out with CO2 (I bought a box of cartridges online as soon as I got back to my desk).
My plan is to replace the WTB Dual Duty with a Velocity Blunt 35 (same ERD), and throw the tire in the trash. I’m scared of both of them, now!
I cut an empty plastic bottle down, threaded on the Stan’s injector cap, and then snipped the end of the cap to match the outer diameter of the valve stem. I removed the valve core, and used the outside of the stem to cut threads in the inside of the funnel.
Match it up, measure Stan’s Sealant into the funnel part, and you’re done. Easy.
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?
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’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.
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.
