OK, every now and then I feel the urge to post something about cycling on this miserable site, and today is one of those days.
My man Bret W. tweeted about the Belgian national cyclo-cross championships this afternoon and posted a pair of links to video of the race, which was a lulu, even though it apparently included no running at all, which is bullshit.
The first half is here, the second here. Enjoy. And a tip of the Mad Dog liter-sized mug of Stella Artois goes out to Bret for keeping the video links coming via Twitter.
Meanwhile, I was out and about on the ’cross bike today my own bad self. Being my second outdoor ride on drop bars since The Day My Finger Went Sideways in mid-November, it was part of an ongoing experiment to determine what bike I can ride best with the least amount of stress on the damaged digit.
Yesterday it was the red Steelman Eurocross, which has clunky aftermarket Tiagra-level Shimano R500 8-speed brifters; the long throw from small ring to big ring proved irksome. Today I rode the Jamis Supernova; its 10-speed SRAM Rival was a little easier to manipulate, but not much.
When I got home, just for laughs, I aired up the tires on my DBR Prevail TT road bike and rode it up and down the block a few times, shifting from small ring to big and back again and hitting the brakes a few times. And whaddaya know? Its nine-speed Ultegra brifters work smooth like butter, even for Paddy Nine Fingers.
This is extra good news, since it’s the bike I’ll be riding around southern Arizona come March. I was afraid I was gonna have to go to a left-hand bar-end shifter with a top-mounted brake lever for the rear wheel. But given my “performance” today, a compact crankset is starting to look like a must-have item. Robert Byrd could’ve dropped me on the hills.
Mad Blog Media 
Even my stem ain’t that greezerly! And I may have put more miles on it this year than you.
Sheeeeeyit,
If you still own a road bike I’ll bet its stem looks like a boner on a 14-year-old boy.
Ultegra always works, even when it shouldn’t. Another topic, broken spokes. I can’t remember my last broken spoke, but riding the F@#King trainer this afternoon, I heard a weird ticking noise. A spoke on the previously bomb-proof American Classic Victory wheel on the rear of the carbon wonder broke. Nearly 4,000 miles of Clydesdale abuse hadn’t loosened a single one, but some intervals on a stationary trainer did. A WTF moment if there ever was one. Starting college tomorrow, so repair will have to wait a few days. Starting college at age 52, another WTF moment.
Boz, 2 words of advise; College Girls!
Fat Bastard, a 14 year old boy looking at College Girls!
I think the bank still owns part of my road bike!
O’G–thought I’d chime-in since you brought up drivetrains. CX convinced me once and for all that I really don’t need the big ring; in my youth I loved dropping into the “big” and descending into oblivion (too old now & scared nowadays), my hometown terrain is fairly hilly-mountainous-big ring lonely, plus losing the extra weight of the ring, left brifter, derailer, etc. I almost went the route of a compact crank a few years ago, which would’ve meant a possible front derailer upgrade as well, I did spend extra money–on chain keepers by Paul, but other than that, going 1×9 was a great decision, I have gone 1×9 on not only my CX bike, but Mountain and Road as well. Congrats Boz (‘nother college boy sellout)
Thanks for the mention but all I did was forward the crosstube.net links, they do the heavy lifting. Check out cyclingfans.com to find the live streams. I’m sold on the compact crank and have had good luck with FSA’s SLK or whatever they call it. They open up a lot of steep terrain that I wouldn’t tackle otherwise. If I get a notion to road race I can always throw an 11T on.
You think that stem looks bad? My old CAAD-5 Cannonball has one of these Delta Stem Risers:
http://www.nashbar.com/bikes/Product_10053_10052_141838_-1_200325_200276_200460
Its a 50 cm frame, which is a little bit small for me, bought back when I had a lot of lower back flexibility and thought could ride a smaller frame by hunkering down in the drops. In my dotage and after a bad back injury, I just got tired of trying to jack up a 73 deg. stem with a whole stack of spacers, so I trimmed the steerer tube and permanently (at least permanently for me) put on the stem riser and a more conventional looking stem. Don’t laugh, at least I haul my fat ass around town on the damn thing.
Spent the weekend down in Austin, TX (a supposedly “silver” bicycle-friendly community). Drove down to the Whole Paycheck to grab dinner with the bride and saw a ghost bike nearby. A nearby cyclist said “yeah, we have a few of these”. Charming.
Austin is a land of huge, fast arterials, heavy, fast, traffic, and the city center is shoehorned in between two north-south running freeways, the I-35 and MoPac, named for the Missouri-Pacific Railway, on whose right of way it is built. Most of the bike lanes I saw were narrow or in door zones or both. Their green “bike crossings” that guide bicyclists across freeway merge ramps are basically equivalent to a diagonal crosswalk at an oblique angle to motor traffic bearing down in a free-running right turn. I guess if the green color doesn’t stop the car, then at least you will probably never know what hit you. An example is Figure 3 here.
http://www.labreform.org/blunders/b5.html
I think Austin needs to either cut down car traffic and designate more quality space to cyclists, build a separate set of infrastructure, or lower its speed limits drastically. I think slapping some bike paint in an otherwise bad situation really is dangerous as it puts newbies in harm’s way (the bike messenger I saw in Whole Paycheck was a sturdy veteran and said he routinely cycles everywhere in Austin). The sharrows looked best–at least the sharrows were painted in a place where a cyclist ought to be positioned.
Bombtown is great by comparison. Flashy awards from the League or otherwise.
Compact cranks are God’s answer to old age, fat asses (rather than fat downtubes), and steep hills. I can run a 50-34 with up to a 12-28 on back using standard Campy Chorus stuff (the mid-length Chorus derailleur barely clears if I screw down the B screw, or whatever it is, all the way). I’e used FSA, Race Face, Nashbar, and Campy and they all seem to work as well as I can shift. Some are just uglier than others. If I am down in the flatlands, can swap in an 11-23 or 12-25 cassette.
If I want to get really geezerly, one just has to put an off-road rear derailleur on that sort of setup. That’s what my La Cruz commuter bike currently looks like: Compact 46-34 Race Face crank, 11-32 XT in back, and XT derailleurs driven by Ultegra brifters. Its way more bike than I am man these days.