Equipment Corner

… data. I figure that if I am going to continue to do some racing then I need to get a bit more serious, actually do a training regimen, and then I might need some data. And then it gets down to a question of what data and which data collection device. Ugh!

I had been ignoring the issue for a number of reasons.

• Holding off on spending $$$ until the taxman has come and gone (hopefully with no more of our $$$).
• Waiting to get over my loathing of the PowerTap after dealing with The Wife’s early Pro model which has lots of warts.
• Waiting to see how serious I will be at racing.
• I am not big on collecting new toys.

But then last week ‘Uncle REI’ informed me of my yearly rebate, err, dividend which is a bit on the high side due to a number of purchases made for work.  REI does not carry power devices, except the Polar, but they do have the Garmin’s (though they do not quality for the 20% off one item deal).  Hmmmm, says I.  That overcomes the first reason.  OK, need some time to think this over.  It would seem silly to get a Garmin if I were to get a PowerTap soon; no reason to lug both around.   And though the new Garmin 705 works with the SRM it does not work with the PowerTap (PowerTap uses the early ANT protocol, not ANT+), so there is no way to get all the information collected in one device.   And until the SRM comes off patent and inexpensive 3rd party knock-offs come out I will not go down that path.  What to do, what to do?

While musing on it over the weekend I joined up for the Saturday PenVelo ride (thanks folks) and did a bit of an survey.  Funny it was an even split among the participants, 2 for the PowerTap, 2 for the Garmin, the rest (20+) undecided (of course the real zealots were at Merco).   So for now the data I collect will be speed and cadence (average and max) and will continue to wonder what I am missing, other than frustration.

Yesterday as I was preparing to get off CalTrain train 231 at Hillsdale station a bike next to mine caught my attention. It was not some uber-cool high zoot affair, not some hip fixie, it was a standard *Mart type MTB. It was not the bike that caught my eye, it was the price tag, still attached, that showed this bike cost the princely sum of $29.95! The mind boggles at how a geared bike with all the parts and pieces can be built, shipped half-way around the world, and sold for a profit at that price point. I am all for affordable, but there is a lot to be said for making objects with sufficient quality to be able to withstand some use and still function for a number of years. Not so sure you will get that in a sub $30 bike.

The Wife and I did a trip to Portland in late June/early July 2006 for some personal business. Knowing we would be there for a week or so we packed the S&S coupled touring bikes and lugged them northward with us. We found Portland to be quite accommodating and were soon comfortable pedaling around the city and out into the surrounding countryside, often getting around faster on bike than we would in a car. While we were there we heard that one of the city council guys was doing a once a month get-together on the first Thursday of each month to show off one aspect of the community and that the one coming up during our stay was a bicycle show. That Thursday we went east from the city and rode a part of the Columbia River Gorge, returning to town to in time for the event. It was not hard to find the show, we just had to follow all the bicycles! There were so many bicycles parked in front of city hall that there was not room for any more; in some spots bikes were actually stacked on top on other bikes due to the lack of parking space relative to need. We ended up lashing our bikes up a block away, the closest spot we could find that was not already taken. Inside city hall it was a combination handbuilt bicycle show and beerfest, the latter sponsored by Chris King. We got to ogle some lovely work by the likes of Sasha at VanillaBicycles, Natalie at SweetPea, Joseph at Ahearne, Tony at Pereira, and quite a few others. Lots of eye candy for those who love a nice bike. We were left full of bike lust and an enhanced desire for custom rigs, in part to support some of these excellent crafts people.

In just over a week from now, on Feb. 8th, the North American Handmade Bicycle Show opens its doors in Portland, moving north after running the first three years in San Jose. I wished I had an excuse to run up to Portland for a day or two; the convention center is a quick ride on the Tri-Met light rail from the airport. I’d love to ogle all the eye candy, do some interviews of builders, and get a sense of who is doing what. It is not just academic any longer. Sure it is nice to look, touch, and dream. But, The Wife has already gone on record as stating she would like a nice custom racing bike in the not so distant future so at some point we will need to talk to some of these builders. The Colnago I ride, which is a wonderful bike, is a tad too tall for me and at some point I will want to get a racing bike that is more my size. All the better to have it made by hand by someone with whom you can talk, convey your wishes, and, if the planets align, go riding with on an occasion or two. Anyone have some work to be done in Portland somewhere around the 9th of February? Give me a plane ticket, or two, and I will be there.

Back to cycling related topic. Yeah!!!

The Wife bought a second-hand PowerTap Pro this fall and has been using it to record and tune her workouts. When I first mounted it on her bike it did not work, but that was easy to resolve: it just needed new batteries in the hub. This past Sunday, at the Early Birds, she came up to me after her clinic to complain that she was not getting a power reading from the hub. I jumped on her bike (not an easy feat; we are the same height, but she has much longer legs … and uses a different type of pedal) and did a couple of quick loops. I was able to get an occasional read from the hub, but it was erratic at best. I assumed the batteries were dead, again. Sunday afternoon I replaced the hub batteries, and still no signal to the head. Hmmm. I put the head into test mode and ran the receiver test (test #2 for those who have read the manual); no indication that it was receiving any data from the hub. I cleaned the contacts on the head and the mount, changed the battery in the head, and did a visual inspection of the wiring, and still could not find out what was wrong. If all else fails, try looking at the manual. So I did. The only thing in the manual troubleshooting section that I had not considered was water in the hub. I saw no sign of moisture, but on the off-chance there is some I have the wheel hanging up in our garage with the hub open for now.

The amusing part of the exercise was looking at the manual. Take a close look at the bullet points I indicate; three of the potential problems are duplicated. Are these twice as likely to be issues as the other possible causes? Or maybe Saris/CycleOps thinks that PowerTap users need some points pounded into our skulls.

As an aside, my thought at the moment is that the problem is in the receiver/mount system. A system that costs $65-70 to replace (ouch!). The mount was broken and glued back together at some point in the past, and that glue failed last month. I used an epoxy to put the mount back together, but who knows what internal wiring damage might have occurred inside the mount either time it broke. I need to check the hub and head with another harness to see of that is the issue, but first we will see what drying everything out good for a few days does for us.

… for rain and all the ‘benefits’ of riding in the rain. The first real series of storms for this winter started last Thursday. After riding to work in the rain on that Thursday I had a flat on the rear. Friday it rained harder. Made it to work and home without problems, but then on Saturday I found that the front tire on my commuter was flat. Rode that bike again on Monday, in the rain. As I as pulling into the office park I could feel that ever so subtle softness in the handling of the rear as I came around the corner, sure sign of another flat on the rear wheel. Three days of bike commuting over that 5 day stretch of rain, three flat tires. Not a pattern I want to continue.

This morning was my first day of commuting since that stretch; I have worked from home, due to a cold, for the past two days. As we loaded onto CalTrain at Mt View one of the cyclists, a young woman, was a bit frantic. She had a flat, her second in two days and she was caught without a set of tire irons. I loaned her mine and offered to help, but she refused the assistance. A while later she came and asked me for an opinion; she showed me a 3cm gash in the sidewall of the tire and asked it I thought it was the reason she was getting the flats. Since one could stick a finger through the gash I was fairly confident there was a relationship. She did not seem to know about ‘booting’, so I dug in my bag for a piece of Tyvek (FedEx envelope) and ‘booted’ her tire sufficiently for her to get from the train to shop for a replacement.

It is the season to be prepared. Flats are going to happen, especially with the wet roads. Best to be prepared and carry all the tools and materials needed to keep yourself on the road.

Gadzooks, what a mess the weather dealt the past few days. On Thursday I endured the moderate rain on the commute to work, and hit a dry patch for the homeward bound trip. But Friday was another story; the commute from home to the Mountain View CalTrain was directly into the wind, probably constant 15-20MPH with stronger gusts, driving the rain through every exposed opening in the raingear. At one point I had to stand and push as hard as possible, for about a mile, to keep upright and moving. Not many other folks braved the rain, either. Few people were on the train, with or without bikes. On the trip home the rain was not as hard but the winds were still strong. The major task on that leg was maneuvering around obstacles. The southern end of Delaware in San Mateo was partly flooded as the water was coming up out of the storm drains onto the road. Trees and branches were down, lots of debris, a regular obstacle course.

With round 3 hitting on Saturday I decided to do the garage workout session rather than hitting the open (and wet) road. I started with 30 minutes on the rollers for a warmup, then moved to the trainer for another hour and three quarters. Talk about brain dead; the mind went numb within the first 15 minutes on the trainer! And within an hour other body parts were threatening to go numb, parts I would rather never lost sensation, so I worked hard to keep the blood flowing. Now I remember why I avoid the trainer sessions except when necessary.   Riding into 25MPH winds with driving rain is nothing compared to an hour plus on the trainer!  Unless the weather cooperates I expect I will be spending more time in the garage this winter so I need to find something to keep the old neurons between ears firing and the blood flowing into ALL the extremities.

Race season is less than 72 hours away, and I just got some new wheels to try, the Williams ‘System 30′. Great deal, seem to be solid and true, and light enough. Normally I would just buy some good hoops, a quality hub, some spokes, and lace the wheels myself. But these were such a good deal I took the leap and bought pre-built. Think I will put the cassette I just bought for the wife, a SRAM 11-28, on for the San Bruno Mtn. Hill Climb on Tuesday then swap back to my regular cassette for the rest of the season.

I started my current job on 13 December 2006, 53 weeks ago. On 14 December 2006 the co-founder of the company, and the man with the money, distributed 80Gb Video iPods to all employees as a holiday gift. Everyone joked that I had the starting day timed to perfection.

A new employee started on Monday, and today was the distribution of the yearly holiday gift. The man with the $$$ is a techno junkie, and the picture shows what we were all just handed for this year. Nice, almost certainly a better GPS unit than my aging Garmin eTrex Vista (original version with monochrome screen 24Mb of memory, and no expansion slots). But the Vista is small and light enough to mount well on my handlebars, and it has been a great tool while touring. Wonder what the Nüvi would garner in trade-in for an Edge 705?

I had been talking about it, and threatening to do it for a couple of years. Yesterday I did it. I got fixed. Or rather, I ‘fixed’ my commute bike, a late 80’s Trek 400. The bike has had an issue with chain suck this past year, leading to several broken spokes. I was getting tired of the problems, and wanted to spend more time on a fixie to smooth out the pedaling a bit.

The transformation while not complicated was not without its issues. First issue was the track hub; it was spaced for a 120mm OLN rear end, the Trek was 126mm. A couple of 3mm spacers solved that easily enough. The bigger issue was the crankset. I had planned to use the RPM crank that came on my Fuji track bike. I had replaced it on the Fuji when I was having issues with snapping the chain which seemed to be caused by an eccentric chainring, a problem I wrote about earlier. I put a new, nice TA chainring, but when I mounted the crankset on the Trek there was still significant eccentricity; apparently the problem was not the chainring but rather the crankset itself. Shyte! So I went back to the old Sakae crankset that came on the Trek and mounted the TA ring on that. All seems to be fine now. Tomorrow it gets its maiden commute run; I may shorten the chain 1 link, or I might go to a smaller rear cog and shorten the chain a bit more. But all those minor details that can be worked out over time. For now it is time to put some miles on the bike.

Each Thursday I get an e-mail of the latest issue of Road Bike Rider, a weekly e-zine. While going through this week’s issue I found that I have been riding without proper equipment at times. In the cold weather I need to have PPP, ‘Personal Parts Protection’, so I do not suffer frostbite on my, ahem, member. Guess I will be digging into the drawer for an extra wool sock on those nippy mornings!