Archive for the 'Bikes' Category

Today’s Commute

Published
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DT
on January 4, 2008
in Bikes and Commuting
. 0 Comments

After seeing the snow covered trail conditions this morning while walking Buster, I decided it would be a nice break this morning to cut through the woods and ride some snow before making my way to work. The packed snow and ice made for some nice riding, but proved to be a little too much when breaking off the main trail to get out of the woods. It was the sort of tenuous crust that could break at any moment and off the beaten path it broke quite often. Often enough that it was easier to just walk it out. A few more hikes on that exit and it’ll be good to go. For now though, if I want to get out on the trails, I’ll need to contain the ride to the main loop around the reservoir and enter/exit from the same spot. No worries, a static snow loop is still better than a strict diet of pavement and slush.

Again, I’m already behind on keeping track of my mileage. The magnet on my wheel got turned around and didn’t keep track until I noticed near the end of the ride. So I’m already back to guesstimating. Oh well, there’s always next year, ha.

Anyway, I think I’ve got a name for the Tricross fixie…she shall now and forever be known as Aretha. Why? Well just like the Queen of Soul, she commands R-E-S-P-E-C-T and is big in all the right places.

Cyclocomputer Configuration

Published
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DT
on January 3, 2008
in Bikes
. 1 Comment

This is more for myself so I don’t lose this information, but who knows, you might find it helpful. I’m reprogramming a Blackburn Delphi 4.0 cyclocomputer, specifically, I’m setting the estimated tire circumference in mm. I’m running a 700×44c WTB Mutanoraptor tire (on the Tricross fixie), which means ISO 44-622. So a little quick math and we have 622 + (44 X 2) = 710, multiplied by pi (3.142) to get the circumference in mm 2230.53078, or you can just go to Sheldon Brown’s website, which gives me 2224 mm. Close enough for me!

If I wanted to be super accurate, the easiest thing to do would be to plop down some ketchup or mustard on the ground, ride through the blob for a full tire rotation, and then measure between two blob spots. That would give me the weighted tire circumference. But since I don’t have a ruler that can measure in mm AND I’m at work, the estimated tire circumference will work just fine.

Hopefully this will spur me to keep better track of mileage this year, something I’ve said I’ll do in the past a few times, only to break the cyclocomputer or ride one of my bikes without a computer.

Wool Jersey

Published
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DT
on January 3, 2008
in Bikes
. 3 Comments

My boy Spearman tipped me off that New Belgium Brewing has another wool jersey up on their website. The last wool jersey they did was a brown medium weight wool with no pockets. The one that is up on their site now looks like they may have gone back to their original style, black heavy wool with 3 back pockets. A little more investigation is needed to make sure it has pockets though. But at the rock bottom price of $59, you can’t do much better for a quality wool jersey. It’s easily as good, if not better than many of the $110+ wool jerseys from other companies.

New Belgium Wool Jersey

I’ve got two of the New Belgium wool jerseys and they have really held up. In fact I’m wearing their last one (brown/no pockets) today for my -15° commute. Stylish enough to wear off the bike (good thing, since I left my work badge at home and couldn’t get inside the gym where my locker is), yet perfectly functional for most riding conditions. I say most, because even the medium weight wool is too hot for summer riding. But this is a damn fine jersey, so what are you waiting for?

Area Trails

Published
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DT
on December 18, 2007
in Bikes and Dirt
. 3 Comments

Quite simply, the bike trails around here rock. I actually haven’t made it to a lot of the hot spots, but when you’ve got 60+ miles of trail outside the door, it gets a lot easier to not even think about jumping in the car to drive to a mountain biking hot spot. Add to that I was on injured reserve with a cracked collar bone for close to 2 months, which has cut into my riding time for sure, and you have a lack of total spots ridden…not that I’m complaining.

Two blocks from my house is an old reservoir and the area is known as the Valente trails (aka Shawsheen Cemetery trails), which has a nice little main loop around the reservoir and a few little side trails that lead to alternative loops and out to the neighboring streets. After working the Valente trails, you can jump on the street for a couple of blocks and then cut into the Private Reserve (aka PR, Land Locked Quadrant, LLQ, Paint Mine, etc.). This small piece of land is owned by the town of Burlington, but Burlington access to the land was cut off by having a six lane road (Route 3) along one side, with the other sides of the land being bordered by the towns of Lexington and Bedford. At some point people built trails and they did a good job of it as there’s probably 12 miles of trail. It’s a little like Wakefield, except you can’t see the power lines as much and there is probably 1/100th the traffic…hmm, guess it’s more like Lake Accotink if you will, with some of the more technical variety you find at Wakefield. Anyway, it’s a blast riding the PR day or night. I haven’t taken any pictures while riding there, but I found some shots posted on the NEMBA forum here (not sure if you have to register at the NEMBA forums to see those shots).

So those trails are off to one side of the house, but if you go the opposite direction you run into the Minuteman Bikeway, which is basically a shorter version of the W&OD and goes from Boston out to Bedford. I’ve mentioned the Bikeway and the dirt trail continuation of the Bikeway, called the Bay Circuit Trail (BCT) in previous posts…even put up a few photos. The BCT is your average railroad bed trail. It sees more traffic and it’s not super exciting with very little terrain or altitude change, but it’s nice to still be under the cover of trees. As a bonus there are side pockets of trails, usually looped so you can end up back on the BCT and add a couple of miles worth of trail. If you keep going out on the BCT, you finally get to more of the good stuff when you hit Concord. Not that the BCT isn’t good, but at this point it’s more of a way to get from point A (my house) to point B (the tight twisty singletrack). After the BCT, there are a couple of different sets of trails you can ride and the best thing is you can loop them together. I’m not familiar with a lot of the Concord/Acton trails, but hopefully when theres a little less snow, I’ll get a good tour of out there.

Anyway, from the end of the BCT you can loop around right and head over to Estabrook Woods (let me just say, all these names could be completely wrong, I’m new here, remember!). After that you need to jump back on the road for a little bit and then you can hit the Carlisle Town trails, which will get you to Great Brook Farm Park. There are a bunch of looped trails in Great Brook Farm Park. If I remember correctly, I’ve done Acorn loop, Stone Row, Heartbreak Ridge, and Llama trail, which puts us back in Estabrook Woods, which is the path to getting home. If you’re good or you have a guide (check, thanks Hog!), you can make it over to Punkatasset Hill, which is where I cracked my collarbone. I smooth like that.

Anyway, where was I going with this, oh yea, this is all readily available out my door. So you can see why it’s taken me so long to mount up and drive in to the Fells or over to Lynn Woods. Sometimes the hardest part is packing up the car and making the drive to the park, which for the most part I have avoided. Now the toughest part is getting out the door, as the snow is keeping me on the streets for now. I’m going to try and keep biking through the winter, at least keep up the bike commuting even if I can’t get on the trails, but I need to start looking at snowshoeing and xc skiing to see what they are all about. If you’ve got tips on stuff to look for on craigslist, drop me a comment. Also, if you grunted through this entire post, you’re a rock star…

Bay Circuit Trail

Published
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DT
on July 26, 2007
in Bikes, Commuting, Dirt and Road
. 6 Comments

Yesterday was a fun day. Did my normal commute and after work had a little mini photo shoot. The newsletter people at my work were doing an article on alternate commuting and they wanted to get some photos of the bike commuters. I was the only one who showed up, although I know there are several people who ride in. Oh well, my thought was with the shoot at 4:00 PM, I might as well leave work a little early and get some exploring in. It turned out to be a good decision with a little bit of road, a little bit of paved path, and some newly discovered dirt trails. We’ve got a month before we move again, which is just enough time to explore the area and get familiar with it, so when we finally move I’ll know where all the singletrack is hidden.

Click the photo below for the gallery of pictures from yesterday’s ride.
Just Riding Along

I did around 30 miles on the day and was able to really see the area. I hit a bunch of side streets near my work, then over to Shawsheen Cemetery where we’ll likely be taking the dog for some walks. After that I headed over to where the Minuteman Bikeway ends and started searching for trails there. You gotta figure that even though the paved Bikeway ends, there’s probably some dirt trails that have popped up on the rest of the abandoned rail bed. About 3 blocks from the end of pavement I hit jackpot, the Bay Circuit Trail. It turned out to be a little of everything, some smooth singletrack, rocky gravelly dirt path, wider doubletrack, and a little service road action, but never paved. There was one section that even had tiny rollercoaster hills, almost like a mini pump track. It’s hard not to smile when you hit something like that!

I’ll definitely be back, as I didn’t finish the trail. There was still some trail up ahead and a ton of side trails to check out…all in due time. But it’s just great to know that there are dirt trails within a 5 minute ride from the house…killer!

Minuteman Bikeway

Published
by
DT
on July 16, 2007
in Bikes and Road
. 2 Comments

Finally, this weekend I made the effort to get out and actually ride part of the Minuteman Bikeway. It’s a rail-trail, much the same as the W&OD back in DC, only not nearly as long. Coming from the W&OD, I sort of expected this thing to be pretty long, but it only clocks in around 10 miles. No worries though, plenty of roads to spin off on when the paved path ends. It should be noted that in the month of living in the Boston area, this is my first “for fun” road ride. All my other riding has been commuting or mountain biking (mostly commuting, ha).

I started around noon from the apartment and headed like I normally commute to work. This way I can pick up the paved path as it crosses through Lexington Center. Hit the path and take a left out towards Bedford. The path is nice and wide, no pot holes and very few root cracks (the cracks that are there have all been spray painted yellow to alert cyclists). A few miles later I found myself at the end of the paved path at the Bedford Depot, where a lone train sits on a set of tracks. Across the street is a bike shop, so I amble into the store to have a look around. The place looks huge on the outside, but very small on the inside. Maybe there was another door that I didn’t see. Back out and jump on the bike and head up one of the random streets that intersects the end of the path. It dumps me out in the center of downtown Bedford. I actually know where I am for the moment and decide to head farther out into the country. I find Route 4/225 and head towards Carlisle. Once I pass over a river and into Carlisle I pull a quick u-turn and head back the way I came. A quick side stop into a conservation area to see where a dirt trail lead, but the ground was a little soft, so I backtracked to the road. Back on the bike again I took a little break at Bedford Farms Ice Cream for a quick sugar fix. Back through Bedford, which eventually brought me within a couple of blocks from Hanscom Air Force Base. At this point I have no clue where I am, but I keep riding and eventually end up right back at the end of the path, only coming in from a different direction on a different road.

Back on the paved path and I’m cruising. It’s fairly easy to push over 20 mph when the path is flat or not giving you the invisible uphill that rail-trails are famous for throwing at you. Before I know it I’ve cruised all the way down into Arlington and the path appears to end. I’m not nearly done riding yet, so I just jump onto Mass Ave. and head towards Boston proper. I head through Harvard Square (I guess it was Harvard Square), then push on past Boston University and into Cambridge near MIT. I’ve ridden about 26 miles so far and not carrying any water I decided to stop in at the Miracle of Science Bar for a thirst quenching pint of Victory Hop Devil. The bar only had a few people there, so service was quick. I grabbed a seat that faced Mass Ave., so I could do some people watching and make sure my bike wasn’t lifted as I didn’t bother to bring a lock.

Boston has a lot of cyclists! There was a ton of classic bikes, a few fixies, and a surprising amount of singlespeed bikes. The majority of cyclists seem to be riding errands, which is a big difference from the DC area where the majority of cyclists I used to see were recreational riders. Pretty cool is you ask me. I guess it helps that there are so many schools/universities in the area…

After my quick pint I decided to head back and pick up the path again, back up Mass Ave. and into Arlington. All was going well and I felt surprisingly fresh and snappy. That all changed at about mile 36ish. I hit one of those invisible hills and immediately saw a drop in speed. It was tough just to sit and spin at 13 mph. No worries, it’s the weekend, just sit back and relax, spin it out and enjoy a beautiful 90 degree day. Finally back at Lexington Center I decided to stop by Dunkin Donuts for a cold coffee, man did that hit the spot! It gave me that extra little boost I needed before riding back to the apartment and climbing the hill to the top.

All in all I covered Waltham, Lexington, Bedford, Carlisle, Arlington, and Cambridge. So 45 miles in about 4 hours including all my stops, so probably about 3 hours of actual riding time. Next time I’m going to try and find the other two rail-trails that connect to the Minuteman Bikeway, as seen here. Looks like theres actually a few miles off dirt stuff that would be perfect on a 35c tired fixie, haha. I’ll even try and remember to take the camera or GPS next time, although they were on vacation in NY this weekend.

Parts in the Pile

Published
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DT
on July 3, 2007
in Bikes and Dirt
. 3 Comments

So add Chris King to the growing number of parts I’ve been able to break with my sheer Optimus Prime leg power. Yesterday I took off part of the day and decided to do the long loop at Leominster State Park, a 10-15 mile loop depending on how you put it together. I took the time to put the track files into the GPS so I’d be able to see what options were available when I’m out there. The plan was to get in a nice 2-3 hours of riding and explore the far side of the park that I haven’t been to yet.

Now this park takes about an hour to get to from my place, which isn’t so bad, because my boy Mike lives so close to it. So I make the drive, get the bike off the rack, get all dolled up, and head out on some familiar trails out the parking lot to get warmed up. Not far from the lot I notice a lot of rear tire rub. A quick glance back and yea, my tire is all wobbly and hitting one of the chainstays. Damn, I must have really thrown it out of true the last time I rode and not noticed it. No worries, I’ve got a spoke tool in the car, I’ll just ride back and fix it up. Get back to the car and go to tighten a spoke and it visibly moves in my hand…WTF? Look down at the hub and wouldn’t you know, there’s two spots where spokes are pulling out of the hub, cracked like a mofo.

I am Jack's failed hub

Normally this wouldn’t be a big issue. Drop the wheel off at City Bikes and let them deal with Chris King to get it all squared away. Load up another wheel from the shed…oh wait…I can no longer just stop by City Bikes and any and all extra bike parts I have are in storage in some warehouse in Jersey. Damn! Looks like I’m going to have to get friendly with a new bike shop and quick. So at the very least I’m out of the dirt game until I get a new hub and can rebuild the wheel, which crap, all my wheelbuilding tools (stand) is also in storage. Guess a shop is going to have to build it. Ugg, this is going to be a pain in the ass…

Lucky?

Published
by
DT
on July 3, 2007
in Bikes and Commuting
. 0 Comments

Spearman has often described me as lucky or maybe it was damn lucky, ha. Me, I just think it’s more about keeping one’s head in a not so ideal situation. Panic only causes you to make a quick decision with no idea of the outcome and cooler heads will prevail.

My commuting has been going well, but I’ve had a few mechanical issues that have popped up along the way. First it was my ghettotastic zip ties breaking and letting my rack fall backwards…my own fault really. The real clamps that are supposed to be used came in the mail last week and I got everything reinstalled. The latest incident was having my cog come off the hub. The hub is a LeVel hub I won a few years ago for being the only one to ride the ECNASSCU fixed. The cool thing about the hub is the cog slides on and sits on what they call “knuckles”, which take all the pressure. Then 3 bolts simply hold the cog onto the hub. It works great and I’ve never had an issue with the hub since I built it up. That was until last week when somehow a couple of the bolts must have worked their way out and the third bolt sheered right off. With nothing left to hold the cog in place it quickly pulled off the hub, leaving me with no brakes on the steepest decline of my commute.

Now some people will go with the standard “well you’re an ass anyway for not at least having an emergency brake up front”, but hey, then I wouldn’t have any fun stories to tell. Now normally in this situation you can just stick your foot around to the back wheel and wedge it between the frame and tire, slowing you down. You could also do that same trick between the front wheel and the fork. Then there’s always the grabbing the wheel with a gloved hand trick (make sure you know what you’re doing on this one, otherwise you’ll end up with a hand stuck between the frame and tire). Finally, you can take your chances and ride it out until there’s a place to stop. I took the final option, hoping my chain wouldn’t fly into the wheel and cause me to pull a nice long skid. So the cog and chain go freewheeling and I’m doing about 20 mph and gaining. Over a speedbump and around the left side of the car going over said speedbump into a right turn with another speed bump, avoid the oncoming traffic coming up the hill (boy were they surprised)…down low and up front on the top tube, left foot stretched out next to the front wheel to navigate (Sidi’s hard plastic bottom not the best for stopping traction), eventually grinding to a halt at the nearest flat section. Thankfully I was able to stop before the next downward pitch which ends at a stop light with a mandatory left/right turn.

The worst part was having to hike the bike back up the hill to the apt. It’s steep enough that it’s hard to walk uphill in those Sidi shoes, ah, but I do like the shoes. So no harm, no foul. The bike is back up and running with a few water bottle bolts…that’s what I’m talking about! At some point here I’ll get all tech savvy and figure out how to copy the elevation profile to post here so you can see that the hill is actually steep.

Leominster State Forest

Published
by
DT
on June 26, 2007
in Bikes and Dirt
. 2 Comments

So here’s the most recent mountain biking ride in Leominster State Forest. I gotta work on the formatting to get the map implemented into the page better, so this is more of a test run, but it’s pretty fun to play with, considering you can also change it to topo maps.

DT

Craptacular!

Published
by
DT
on June 26, 2007
in Bikes, Commuting and Life
. 2 Comments

Worst episode ever! Damn, I had my first WTF was I thinking commute yesterday. First off it was a long weekend of seeing friends. We finally made it into Boston to do dinner and drinks with some friends and played some Wii late into the night…seriously addictive and my shoulder still hurts from playing bowling/tennis/baseball until 1:30 AM. Then Sunday we were up early for a trip to IKEA, since some of the things furnished in the apt. were crap. When we moved in there was one frying pan and it was aluminum and super thin so it basically burned everything. Oh, and we couldn’t eat ice cream without breaking the silverware. $40 later and we’ll be able to make it 2 months, ha. Ended up needing to throw some of M&M’s furniture purchases into the Subaru and we dropped it off after dinner. Gave us a chance to go for a dusk ride at Leominster State Park, a quick 4.5 mile jaunt on some nice rocky singletrack. Ended up back home after midnight, setting me up for a late morning.

Up late, putting my stuff together and then off to work on the bike. Get into work and realize I left my work badge at home. Go get a temporary pass and down to the gym to shower off. Oh wait, I also left my towel at home and my gym locker key. Great… So shower up, air dry with a pop into the sauna and luckily the locker room has a general use hair dryer. So work work work and then cut out to head home. Get back on the bike and push towards my big downhill, 32 mph and pop! The zip ties that I’ve been using to hold my rack to the bike had enough and gave way bringing me to a screeching halt. Break out the zip ties and everything is good. Until another mile or two goes by and I can see the zip ties stretching out about to pop. Pull over add some more. Keep going, happens again, so pull the zip ties off and redo everything, situate the load to be more balanced, etc. This setup makes it until I get home, which is all I needed. Thankfully the clamps for the rack came in the mail (accidentally were sent to my old address) and I was able to remedy the situation for good.

Ah, but it was a beautiful day!

DT