Pet Peeves

Saturday ridin’

I decided to test out riding with the damaged thumb on Saturday but I was not quite ready to tackle the thumb lever of the Campy shifters. So I grabbed the TT bike, with the bar end shifters, and headed to the west. I found it easy to operate the right shifter with a combination of two fingers and the hand. After a nice warmup in the flatlands I made my way into the Los Altos Hills and started some VO2Max intervals, and I was feeling good. I put in a bit over two hours with no problems whatsoever.

Sunday ridin’

If one day of riding is good, two is better. The Wife was heading out to lead a team workout and asked if I wanted to carpool northward to ride in that area. Sure, but what bike? I had torn down the TT bike to clean and prep for Madera this coming weekend and did not have time to get it together. So I threw the Colnago in the Toaster and headed out to Woodside. While The Wife and her teammates did their review of what was ahead I did some loops of the parking lot and found I could use the finger next to the thumb to shift the thumb lever, just not smoothly or quickly. I did a warmup then cruised north on Cañada road for a fast tempo ride. There was heavy drizzle and stiff headwinds, but I did not care. The legs felt great and I rode hard, minimizing gear changes. I got in a big gear and powered up, doing 22-25MPH even on the uphill sections, all the while keeping the cadence above 95 rpms. I was shooting past groups of riders, the only one’s who were matching me were two guys in DBC kits. If I had felt that good, and had that much drive, last Sunday then I think I would have been in the front group all day. Maybe the extra rest did me good, or maybe the somewhat hard workout on Saturday. Need to sort that out, but it was fun and I was feeling it.

Glue and tape

One of my teammates had a tubular tire roll of the rear rim while he was cruising for an almost certain 2nd place at the Rondee von Brisbeen crit a week ago. The race official noted there was very little glue on either the tire or the rim. The teammate says that the tire was mounted by a local bike shop owner, one whom some folks claim tell them that they use too much glue when mounting tubulars. I do not know about that, but that shop owner has told me that I should be able to swap tubulars faster than I can repair a flat clincher. Never been able to, mostly due to the time it takes me to peel the old tire off the rim; maybe if I used less glue I could peel them off faster.

The incident has led to a lot of on-line chatter about gluing techniques, etc. Basically it is a religious war as to whether to glue or tape, if glue which one, etc. With Madera a week away, and The Wife wanting to ride the TT with the high zoot carbon trispokes, with tubulars, I decided to peel and remount the tires just to make sure they were on well. I glued on the front, using the Continental glue. For the rear I tried Tufo tape. When picking up the tape I did a quick check: regular or extreme? Extreme is for ‘extreme’ conditions of low or high temperatures, with the ‘extreme high’ meaning above 74 degrees F! Where is the world is it that 74 degrees F is an extreme high? Antarctica? I know Tufo is a Czech company, but the Czech Republic is not that moderate in their temperature range. Upshot is I went for the ‘Extreme’ stuff. While I was at it, I got a new tubular spare and needed to stretch that. All I can say is that gluing tires and stretching new tires onto rims really calls for having two good thumbs. I got it all done, but it was not easy.

New track wheels

While looking at the website of the manufacturer of the carbon trispokes for gluing recommendations I found that they sell a road to track kit for the wheels. For a couple of bills I can get the parts so I can swap them back and forth between road/TT duty and use at the track. Sweet! A lot more friendly on the budget than a new set of wheels.

The hard drive in The Wife’s PowerBook died late last week. It was her gift to herself as she left the employ of Apple to go elsewhere, and it has become her primary computer and our travel computer. Yesterday we dropped it off to have the hard drive replaced and an attempt made to recover the data off the old drive.

While in the neighborhood we went to a local bike shop to look for a replacement stem for The Wife’s commuter/touring bike.  One of the many changes to her bike’s the past couple of month has been to replace the too wide bars with the nasty (non)anatomical bend with the bars off one of my bikes.  The bars we put on her bike have a flatter ramp, are wide but not too wide, and have no (non)anatomical bends.  One other feature is that the sweep back towards the rider a bit, which brought the hoods most of 2cm closer, the reason we were searching for a new stem.  We walked into the shop and asked someone we knew to look at the stems, in particular a stem for a 1-1/8″ threadless steerer to hold a set of 26.0mm handlebars.   The gasp and the stare said it all, but it was annunciated as well.  26.0mm bars are old, and they order very few stems for something that old.  I tried to hold my tongue, but did mention something to the effect that there are probably at least an order of magnitude, more likely two orders of magnitude, more bikes around that take 25.8-26.0mm bars than there are bikes that take OS (31.8) bars, apparently all the road stems this shop wants to order.  Bet it I looked through their stock I could have found more than a few new bikes with 25.8-26.0mm bars, but I did not want to spend the time.  With that kind of mentality, no wonder we had a hard time find a 1″ threaded headset last spring, and hate to hear what they would say if I asked for a 7sp freewheel.

Any young lad or their parents watching this morning’s news will know which sport the lad should choose. The sport where one can ‘juice’ on steroids, amphetamines, and whatever, lie to a grand jury, let their ‘friends’ sit in prison to hide their perjury, and then get a day named in their honor by The City. And their efforts will be lauded by the same sportscasters who opine that cycling has no credibility because drug testing catches a few cyclists who cheat, testing that is all but non-existent in the sport the lad should choose.

I admit I am biased. I was trained in science, and as such my brain was molded, formed, and adjusted to the metric way. The Wife and I spent a couple of weeks in Canada last month, and all measures were metric: litres of gasoline, speeds were kph, distances were km’s, weights were grams and kilos. All perfectly sensible, and units divisible into units based on a base 10 system. Then we returned home and had to deal with the nonsensical Imperial system of measurements, where the basic blocks of measurement units are all over the map. Why is a foot divided into 12 units, a gallon into 4, a pound into 16, etc.? Now we are watching Le Tour each morning, and things are right with the world as the distances are in km … until the announcers feel the need to try to convert for the feeble American minds.

When we ride in Europe it is easy to figure out average grade. If the road climbs 50m over the next 2km then the average grade is 2.5% ((50/2000) * 100). Simple. In the US calculating average grade from the basic stats is headache inducing. If the road climbs 300ft over the next 2mi then the average grade is 2.84% ((300/(2 * 5280)) * 100). The calculator cells in my noggin start zapping and frying when The Wife starts getting into discussions of grade here in the US, but when we are out of the country things are much simpler on my old, greying head. The only thing worse was when we were staying in London and the scales were showing stones: “if the scale says I way 10 and a half stones, how much is that in pounds?” Zip, bzzt, zing, zap, …..

When will the U.S. decide to join the world and adopt the metric system?

Wednesday night I felt something tickling my leg as we watched From Russia with Love (The Wife is getting her James Bond education, courtesy of the gift she gave me of the [almost] entire Bond collection). My first thought was ant, since we had a mini-invasion of ants last month. So when I bent down to flick the little bugger off I was surprised to find .. a flea! “Where in the f#@$ did that come from” I asked rhetorically. No pets, so a bit of surprise. In the ensuing 60 or so hours I have garnered a couple hundred flea bites, killed by hand at least 30 or so of the buggers, and am still trying to assess how we could go from none to full invasion in less than 3 days. Current best bet is that they were entrenched in the overgrowth on the side yard, the same side yard inhabited by the feral cats the past couple of months, the same side yard I cleared of vegetation on Wednesday afternoon. My bet is that the little buggers were taking a breather from the cats and were all too happy to join in a feast on me as I destroyed their little home away from home.

So the battle has started. We are washing everything in which a respectable flea can lay their little flea eggs. The house has been drenched in methoprene to prevent any eggs that might survive and hatch from maturing into full adults. I have been losing the battle the past 48 hours, but I intend to win the war … without resorting to the nuclir option (full scale bombing with Dursban or Malathion).

I just finished the local ‘Foothill Century’, a fundraiser ride for the South Peninsula Hebrew Day School. It is advertised as the “The Only Kosher Ride in the West”, a pretty big claim.  But even the processed peanut snack in the bags given to all riders is kosher.   Interestingly they were serving Starbucks coffee at one of the rest stops, and I have not seen Starbucks advertising their coffee as kosher, though Peets has had signs in the all the local stores for the past couple of months with their rabbinical certification.  As my friend Josh said when we were discussing this ride, ‘no pork cracklings at the rest stops’.    It was amusing that many of the riders assumed I was Jewish and had children attending the school.

I rode the ride alone.  The Wife had some lame excuse about needing to pre-ride the Mt. Hamilton Road Race course for next weekends race.  My friend Josh did not want to miss the Bay to Breakers, which he has run for something like 15 straight years;  seems rather predictable behavior to me!   And Erika thought that riding in Provence was more important than riding with me on this ride.  Lame.

The start point was only 5 miles away, and they were sending out e-mail noting the lack of parking; good reasons for me to just ride over.   About 2/3 of the way to the school for the start I hear some huffing and puffing behind me so I turn around to see Ravi, an Indian guy who lives across the freeway from us who has become an avid cyclist over the past 3 years or so.  He was on his old Schwinn converted to fixie and was holding a floor pump layed across the handlebars.  Turned out he was heading to the Century as a volunteer so we rode together to the school and chatted a bit.  I noted he had not been very vocal lately, out of character for him as he has been an active advocate.  His excuse is a ‘personal matter’ has been cosuming his time.  Given his age and background I think I detect a wedding in the making.

Since I was riding solo I used this as an excuse to do some hard tempo riding.  Head down, cadence steady, pounding away the miles.  I did stop at all stop signs and lights, which a couple of riders used as an opening to pass me over and over just to have me blow by them a couple of minutes later.  Would not have been so annoying if not for the instance where they had me pinned to the inside of the lane after the stop sign and did not seem interested in letting me pass them.  I never saw them after mile 60 or so; do not know if they were too ragged to keep bombing past me on the hills or if they just decided to do a shortcut.  Good riddance either way.  Had a good leapfrog game going with a couple from Fairfield riding a tandem.  They would pass on the downhills, I would pass on the uphills, and we would chat briefly on each pass.  Did not see them after a point either.  Their plan was to ride the event then go over and ride up Sierra Road to see what it was like.  That would be quite a task on a tandem!

The only problem I had on the ride was some cramping, first in the right gastrocnemius then the hip flexors on both sides, near the end.  I had been stretching and taking in electrolytes, so do not know what that was about, but I worked through it and was one of the first finishers among the long route riders.  A quick burger, with folks asking about my Jewish background (none) then the quick ride home.   Now to important matters: finalizing reservations for a vacation!

This morning there was a comment to my last blog entry waiting for moderation.  A bit surprised, since so far the comments have come from friends and family.  This comment annoyed me; it was spam content, pimping a particular type of saddle.  I am avowed spam hater: I work diligently to squash it, to punish the senders, to rid the earth of this nuisance.  This message on one level is less obnoxious than some: it had some relationship, albeit very stretched, the to content of my entry.  But it really annoys me more because it is more targeted.  The sender, manually or via some robot (I think the latter) did realize there was saddle related content.  But the ‘recommendation’ ignores a lot of public information about me and my needs, some in that blog entry some in other blog entries, and ignores the context of the problem I discussed.   Some of the facts ignored  include:

• I am not a noob that cycles occasionally, slowly or short distances.   I rode just under 9K miles last year, 8.3K the year before, etc.  I ride fast, many of my rides are in the 40-100+ mile category.  The ‘recommended’ saddle type does not work under any of those circumstances; it is a geometry made for those who ride short, slow rides.
• Since I ride many thousands of mile a year, year after year, I must have a saddle type that works.
• The saddle I regularly ride, brand named in my previous post, is relatively heavy.  The alternative I am trying out is much lighter.  The ‘recommended’ saddles are much heavier.  They missed the subtle direction of the change, which when coupled with the phrase ‘racing bike’ should have been a key indicator that the ‘recommendation’ was inappropriate.
• The ‘recommendation’ assumes the issue is with the nose of the saddle; I noted the problem was in the ‘posterior’/'derriere’, which contraindicates the ‘recommendation.’

I refused to accept the comment since it was obviously commercial and so poorly targeted.  Not allowing it grated on my ‘free speech’ ethics, but I think spam abuses free speech.  Spam me not!!!

I have been riding the Colnago a bit and it is a very nice bike, extemely stable and light. The only problem is that the crankset is a standard road set, 53 and 39 tooth rings, which is a bit big for a more mature rider, like myself, with bad knees. So I have been contemplating a change to a ‘compact crankset’ with 50 and 34 tooth rings to give me some lower gears for climbing. Since the drivetrain is fully Campagnolo, to keep it pure I have been looking at Campy compact cranks. Specifically I would like a 2006 Centaur silver crankset. Silver, because cranksets should be silver; I cannot see why there has been this recent trend towards black cranks and rings. The year designation is because of ridiculous, in my opinions, features of the 2005 and 2007 cranksets.

In 2005 Campagnolo launched their modern ‘compact cranks’. Everyone else in the world making ‘compact cranks’ at the time was just using the old standard 110mm Bolt Circle Diameter (BCD) standard. Campy used the 110mm BCD pattern, too, but for only 4 of the 5 bolts. They used a slightly larger BCD for the 5th bolt, saying that the non-standard alignment of that bolt was necessary to ensure proper alignment of the rings. Of course no one believed that, preferring to believe that the move was to ensure that users could not use third part rings on their Campy cranksets.

In 2007 Campagnolo changed their cranksets to use what they call ‘Ultra-Torque’, an two part spindle integrated into the crank arms and spinning on outboard bearings held in cups threaded into the standard bottom bracket threads. Shimano introduced a similar system a couple of years ago, but Campy held firm at that time staying with the tried and true square taper spindles. Shimano had moved away from the square taper a number of years ago, moving to a splined bottom bracket. I see no real reasons to move away from the square taper; the only real problems have been with folks who have not torqued the cranks onto the tapers tightly enough and thus have ruined perfectly good cranks. The splined BB spindles, both the Shimano Octalink versions 1 and 2 and the ISIS, have not really resolved the issues of poor mechanics. Enough folks have misaligned the splines and ruined either the BB, the cranks, or both to show that the splines were not a good fix for that problem. The only other reason cited for splined BB’s was that it allowed a larger, more robust spindle without adding weight though no one showed that the old square taper spindles were not sufficiently robust.

It looks like I am doomed to adopt the outboard bearings of the ‘Ultra-Torque’ system if I want a Campy ‘compact crankset’. Campagnolo cites the following reasons for moving to this system: lightness, rigidity, ergonomics, and maintenance, which I will touch on in reverse order. The maintenance advantage is that standard hexagonal ‘Allen’ key wrenches are used to tighten the bolts of the system. While ‘Allen’ keys may be standard, the large 10mm key used to tighten the bolt has limited use on bikes, and most square taper system use 8mm ‘Allen’ keys. You still need proprietary BB tools for both systems. The only extra tool needed in the square taper world is a crank extractor; big deal. The argument for ergonomics is even more ridiculous. The marketing hype states that riders no longer have to shift cleats for ankle clearance, presumably because the spindle end of the cranks are further outboard. But pedal/cleat placement is a factor related to the other end of the cranks, and since ‘Q factor’, the distance between the ends of the two cranks has not changed, the placement of pedals and cleats is unaffected by having the spindle end further out. Rigidity has not been shown to be a problem in the older designs, so what is the advantage? And finally to the argument for ‘lightness’. A 2006 Centaur ‘Compact Crankset’ weighs 646g; add 233g for the Centaur BB with 111mm spindle and the system weight is 879g. The 2007 Centaur ‘Compact Crankset with Ultra-Torque’ weighs 828g; add 49g for the outboard cups and bearings and the system weight comes in at 877g, a whole 2g or 0.2% savings. Whoopy! So I am left to ponder: why is the world moving to the outboard bearing systems?

I stop at stop lights and stop signs.  That does not mean a foot down stop, rather a ‘no forward momentum stop’ which often means a track stand.  I try to be courteous to all others which includes following the standards for right-of-way.   It annoys me when drivers, out of courtesy, fear, or whatever, wave for me to go out of turn at an intersection.  I have no idea what other vehicles will do, and I try to impart the message that cyclists are part of the traffic flow and can follow the predictable, and legal, rules of the road.  Last night there was a guy, at 2nd Ave and Fremont in San Mateo, who would not take his turn through the intersection.   There was a car stopped on 2nd, I was northbound on Fremont waiting to turn left, this guy was southbound waiting to go straight.  He had the right-of-way, and was insistent that I make my turn.  The guy on 2nd was waiting, I was waiting, I was signalling him to take his turn, telling him to take his turn, doing everything to get him to end the standoff and do the legally correct thing.  Yet he kept sitting there, holding up traffic and trying to wave me through.   Sheesh.  I finally went straight through the intersection and took a different route, telling him to follow the legal rules for right-of-way from now on as I passed.

I think a train is a great way to transport oneself some distance from home for a ride. I am all for it. But I think those who do so need to be sensitive to those who use the train as a way to get to and from work. This morning I got on a train, just after 8:30AM and the bike car was almost full … and this was one of the first stops. Six of the 32 bike slots were taken up by gentlemen riding north to do a social ride. A couple  stops after I boarded the bike car was past capacity and it was standing room only. Fortunately the conductor was lax; they can refuse to allow more bikes to board if the bike car is at stated capacity. If the conductor had clamped down I would hope that the six recreational riders would have given up their spaces, deboarded, and waited for a later train, but that is just a wish. I think groups need to be aware that folks need the facilities to get to work and would schedule their rides accordingly.