This being Earth Day, I thought I’d ride on some. Poked a sharp stick at a few colleagues confined to their respective cages and rolled away. The legs, as Chris Horner might say, were not good, so I thought I’d take a little light exercise in Palmer Park. So, apparently, did everyone else.
Oddly, it was a pleasant outing, despite the crowds. Without exception, everyone I encountered was just happy to be there — a pair of women cyclists battling a balky derailleur, a lone horseman, various dog-walkers, a couple of strolling teens, a mountain biker taking a wrong line into oncoming traffic (me).
I was on a mountain bike, too, and enjoyed something not unlike zazen on two wheels until the drivetrain started acting up after about 90 minutes. My right-hand Sachs twist-shifter had finally gone to its reward after 15 or so years, so I manhandled it into a cog I could live with and rolled it on home.
After a snack I chucked the bike in the back of the White Tornado (another of the various beaters infesting the DogHaus) and headed for Old Town Bike Shop, where a crowd of mechanics gathered around the ailing two-wheeler like surgeons in an operating theater. As they marveled at the geezer-mobile, discussing repairs, workarounds and replacements, I was reminded of a scene from “The Milagro Beanfield War” by John Nichols:
But finally, at 76, there loomed on Amarante’s horizon a Waterloo. Doc Gómez in the clinic at Doña Luz sent him to a doctor at the Chamisaville Holy Cross Hospital who did a physical, took X-rays, shook his head, and sent the old man to St. Claire’s in the capital where a stomach specialist, after doing a number of tests and barium X-rays and so forth, came to the conclusion that just about everything below Amarante’s neck had to go, and the various family members were notified.
I had been thinking in terms of a similarly radical intervention, perhaps a pair of Shimano bar-cons mated to Paul’s Thumbies, or (gasp) an upgrade to nine-speed. Happily, like Amarante, the old DBR Axis TT has defied the Grim Reaper and rolls on, thanks to a quick and inexpensive Grip Shift transplant. Chapeau to the OTBS folks.
Mad Blog Media 
Our front yard looks like “chamisaville”, much to the detriment of my sinuses. And of course, the real name for the hospital in the capital (Santa Fe) is St. Victims, aka, St. Vincents. Otherwise, quite interesting.
In my case, everything from the neck up has to go.
Grip Shift….the best invention since the round wheel, double butted tube, Chris King and “90 days same as cash” transaction.
Nice brass bell.
I sent Lennard Zinn a quick email thanking him for recognizing the value of sturdy parts that don’t have that annual throw-away quality that I see from the major manufacturers these days (for example, the cogset wars). My commuter is still humming along with 8 speed parts purchased in 2004. Only thing replaced so far is the chain, albeit the two cogsets are getting a little long in the tooth. When the bar-cons or cassettes die, I’ll upgrade to 9 cogs.
Would be nice to have an extra gear in there, but most of the standard 9 spds. don’t really do anything for me as commuting equipment. I have little use for an 11 tooth on typical MTB cassettes (short of replacing the front chainrings) and and little use for a 27t top gear (again, short of changing chainrings) if I am tired and lugging home a bunch of crap, in addition to my increasingly ample girth, over hill and dale. Combined with my trusty and cheap Nashbar 50-34 compact crank that has withstood 5 years of salt spray in the winter, the closer spacing of a 13-30 is ideal and a 13-32 works well in winter if I get caught in snow with the fat ‘cross tires on. I cobbled both of these servicable cogsets together out of several cheap Nashbar cassettes. Excellent 9 speed versions are still available from Harris Cyclery, even though Sheldon Brown is now riding the Pearly Gates Century Tour.
Earth Day shouldn’t be about picking up trash or riding a bike to work as a one-shot deal. Spare me empty symbolism.
In the shop we’ve recently seen a couple of Tandems and one Quad (you know 4 people…) that has been built with 10-speed components. Now if you believe that 10-speed wears fast on a road bike try it on a Quad. Also shifting on the bigger bikes is also always kind of fun… Let’s move these bikes to 10-speed and make it even more entertaining. My wife is our lead mechanic and if you want to hear some muttering and cursing try tuning up a tandem with an IRD 11-32 or 11-34 10-spd cassette. Add an XTR rear derrailleur (which IRD says not to do, but one of the large Tandem manufactures does anyway) and then try to explain how this $5000+ tandem will never shift correctly set-up this way.
Life in this industry can definetly be entertaining…
Rush
CS West Bikes
Khal, you can still buy 8-speed cassettes from Rivendell (http://www.rivbike.com). They’re rarely short of weirdo bits to keep your Frankensteinian amalgamations humming along.
Me, I ride cyclo-cross gearing on just about everything — in no small measure because pretty much everything I ride is a cyclo-cross bike. 48/38 or 46/34 cranks, 13-28 cogsets, that sort of thing. And I’ll keep replacing 8-speed STI levers with bar-cons until I run out of the damn’ things, then buy more bar-cons from Rivendell.
Meanwhile, Grip Shift also rules. Herself is riding original Grip Shift from waaaaaay back in the day. As to bells, I like ’em, but I really want to find an aaaoooogah horn, one of them daffy-lookin’ boys with the big rubber bulb. I’ve tried blowing my nose as I come up on the iPlodders, but can’t quite get enough of a honk, even in allergy season.
Ah, Patrick. So well put. The writing’s wonderful, I want to ride with you some day, is this impossible?
One problem with blogs is you feel very close, but one is MILES away.
I KNOW! How about coming to the SSWC09 in drug-gango? Sometime in mid Sept, I think. I am hoping to talk tomes into it, and all the ladies like Ruthe, Cindy Whitehead, Susan Demo.. just crash the thing, since the thing is ‘sold out’ already. There is always a latecomer/procrastinator’s work around: come, and do a quick jig, or a jog around the campground, and you’re in..
PLeeze? You can borrow a singlespeed, anyone would be thrilld to have yu.
I’m off topic, arnt eye?
Jeez, O’G, looks like at least one person thinks you oughta show up at Single Speed Worlds in Durango this year. I’ll just go ahead and make it two people, because I’m going to be there, it will be tons of fun, and your addition can only make it better, right? We can turn your Diamondback Axis Ti into a single, at least for that one race.
“Sold out” doesn’t begin to cover it. Their original limit was 500 riders, plus any and every woman that wanted to sign up. As of my last peek at the page, there were 945 registered, limits be damned (and by the organizers, none the less).
Sure, I suppose this is off-topic. So what? I had a peek at the new SRAM XX stuff today (I’m in Offenburg, Germany, at the World Cup), as a SRAM guy was taping off all the logos, and to be honest, it’s nothing that exciting. It’s just a bunch of bike parts. I don’t care how many gears are in the rear, or how much carbon there is, or how many grams they shaved off the XO gruppo. I’d be excited if someone invented a reasonably light, reliable internally geared hub for mountain biking. At least make it less expensive than the $1K+ Rohloff. Then I can have my single-speed drivetrain cake and eat the multiple-ratio frosting too! Of course I wouldn’t be allowed in at Durango, I guess…
Joey,
I know of someone (actually a riding buddy) who sports the Rohloff 14 on his cross bike which, while attending Barnett’s in Co Springs last May, took to riding on the MDM approved Palmer Park trails. He claims that he took it pretty much (“about 98%”) of the places that kids on dual bangers went. The only thing that I think he ‘dislikes’ about it is that it is not that simple. Single ‘gear’ but about 4 million little parts to get the thing moving. Still he loves it!
And he has it set up on drop bars with the twist shifter. Kinda Frankenbike…except it’s on a Seven so more like a fine wine. Cultured but still grape juice when you look at it.