July 2007

The Wife has already written on our trip to the Hellyer Velodrome this morning. It was on her training schedule, but I made a last minute decision to join her (though there was a warning that I was not to coach; no fear, coaching my sweetie ranks up with teaching to drive on things that are not good couple activities). We had a good time, and got a decent workout in the process.

The Wife on the track

Mintie Ali leads out teammates Kristin and Amanda

Mintie Amanda gets nipped at the line by Mark

EMC Mike on a leadout

Bella Angela and hunny Doug getting pulled

I was given this Colnago a few months back. It has needed a few upgrades, but another thing it needed was bit of color. I mean, I do not hate black but to own something that is so overwhelmingly dark is depressing. I grew up in the era when bikes were brightly colored, all components were silvers, and even black bar wrap was a rarity. These days most components are black, black is the most common color for bar wrap, and dark colored bikes seem to be all too common. Nothing wrong with some color, bright colors, and this bike needed a serious dose of it.

As I mused on adding some color, the obvious question was which color. Not wanting to offend the goddess of style (The Wife) it had to be a color already present in the bike. Besides the black carbon fiber, the other colors prominent on this frame are pink, yellow, and green. Not a fan of green, so that was off the list, which reduced the choice to pink or yellow. The Wife argued pink. I have nothing against pink; I own a couple of pink shirts and even got married wearing a pink shirt. But, pink was not calling out to me; perhaps it is because The Wife wears pink almost everytime she rides, it is a team color, and having pink on my bike while riding with her might be excessive. So we are down to …. yellow!

I got some yellow cable housing and some yellow bar wrap and went to work last night. Definitely looking a bit cheerier. Now I need to find time to take it out for a spin and see if the jazzier look spurs me to be a bit spunkier on the pedals. It could happen.

Last fall I decided to build up a new fast bike this year and started collecting components. Before I had a chance to buy the frame I was given a used Colnago C40, which shifted the focus from ‘get a new bike’ to ‘get this Colnago working for the purpose’. One aspect of the Colnago that did not work well for me, since I climb a lot of hills and am not a youngster, was the standard double crank with 53/39 rings. Gears were just a bit big for my style of climbing, though I have climbed almost every hill around here on that bike now.

Yesterday I dug into the box of components I had picked up for the theoretical new bike and put the compact double onto the Colnago.  It was not a straight swap; the compact crank has outboard bearings so the bottom bracket needed to go and outboard bearing cups installed.  The regular front derailleur was replaced with a CT design, and the short cage rear derailleur was swapped for a medium cage unit to handle the extra chain wrap.

It all looks nice, but … shifting is a bugger, or more correctly shifting the rear is a bugger.  But that has nothing to do with the new crank.  The Colnago came with Chorus (carbon) shifters of unknown vintage and probably heavy use.   The right shifter has progressively gotten a bit, hmm, mushy should we say.  It shifts, but it is getting difficult to feel the detents and it has become the brifter version of friction shifting; move the lever and see what happens.  I have been thinking of doing a rebuild; just went parts shopping.  Parts to repair that shifter will be about $107!   Ochsner has right hand Chorus carbon 10sp shifters for $141; will it be worth $34 to just get a whole new shifter?  Then what happens when the left shifter goes?  Maybe I will just go back to the components bin and use the 2006 Centaur 10sp shifters I picked up last fall (2006, before Campagnolo cheapened and lessened the functionality of Centaur).

… you are riding with your spouse and you start making commentary on their ride and the route in your best Paul Sherwen voice.

I just ran a mental checklist of what needs to be done to the bikes of The Wife and I, and it looks like there is a full weekend or so of work:

• Convert my old carbon bike into a TT bike for The Wife
  1. Put new integrated aero/bars on bike
  2. Install new BB
  3. Move Chorus double crank from Colnago to this bike
  4. Install new housings and cables
  5. Change seatpost/saddle
  6. Adjust and test ride
  7. Wrap ends of bars
  8. Get replacement for Nimble front wheel, have rear checked
• Retension and true rear wheel on my commuter bike
• Replace saddle on The Wife’s training bike
• Wrap bars on The Wife’s training bike with leather wrap (spiffy!)
• Convert Colnago to Compact Double
  1. Remove standard double crank and move to TT bike
  2. Remove BB, install new outboard bearing cups
  3. Install new CT crank with integrated spindle
  4. Swap front derailleur for CT derailleur
  5. Swap short cage rear derailleur for medium cage
  6. Replace cables
  7. Re-wrap bars
  8. ?? Replace springs, ratchet in right Ergo lever ??
• Move the bars removed from my old bike onto The Wife’s touring bike
• ?? Convert The Wife’s racing bike to a compact double ??

I am getting tired just looking at that list. I think I better go get a six pack and think about this some more.

While The Wife and her teammates were cooling down yesterday a young girl and her mother walked by, the girl all decked out in her purple bike helmet.  A couple minutes later dad passes pushing a spiffy purple bike decked out with streamers.  The scene caused the discussion to turn to first bikes.  The Wife and her teammates and all a bit younger than I, so their ooh and ahhs over the decked out StingRays, with girly colors and flowers on the vinyl saddles,  of their early childhood were just a bit outside my experience.

Most of my childhood was spent in a family struggling financially living in a town built to replace a World War II training camp, which had been scratched out of winter wheat fields.  When I was old enough for a bike my parents got me what was likely the cheapest thing they could find, likely from the Western Auto store, the only store in town that carried bikes or bike parts.  All I can recall of that bike was it was red and had 24″ wheels.  As I grew I got a hand me down, from my mother’s younger brother.  It was a huge tank of a bike, built in early 1946; my uncle had to wait for the end of WWII for his bike since steel was in short supply.  The beast was red and white, had 27″ wheels with wide tires, and a speedometer that used a cable that went to a small star-shaped wheel that was turned by the spokes of the rotating wheel.  State of the art when I was a kid, and I used to race up and down the street trying to keep that speedometer above 25MPH as much as possible.  Given the family finances, that was my bike until high school, and the impetus for me to learn to do all my own maintenance.   A ball peen hammer with a set punch was my chain tool, and I was the neighborhood expert in coaster brake rebuilds.  In high school, I saved enough to buy the latest and greatest bike on the market at the time … the Schwinn StingRay.  Original.  First year production.  No fancy flowered seats, pastel colors, or streamers as The Wife and her friends remember the StingRay.  That was the first bike I owned that was stolen, though later recovered.  I see a near original StingRay on the morning train, a bit of rust here and there, but close to the one I once owned and seeing it always brings backs memories to those days of my youth.