Things have been a little “Groundhog Day”-ish around here lately. On a loop, dully predictable, like customer-service hold music or the hourly news.
Thinking I might derive some mental-health benefits from taking a little road trip somewhere, I had the Subaru serviced. But then it struck me that I couldn’t think of anyplace a reasonable drive away in a 20-year-old car that would be a step up from where I already was.
Anyway, long stretches of the calendar had already been spoken for. A plumber was to diagnose and treat a leaky toilet. Herself blocked off a five-day visit to Aspen. Labor Day reared its capitalist head.
And finally, in-laws were inbound — Herself’s two sisters, the only survivors of a much larger expedition that, like Your Humble Narrator, just couldn’t seem to get buckled up and backed out of the garage.
Thus, lacking opportunity and inspiration, I’ve been trying to shake some of the dust off my local cycling routine, which over the long, hot summer took a two-wheel drift into a 20-mile rut.
It went like this: Get up early, have coffee, then some more coffee with toast, then a serious breakfast, and finally dash out for a 20-mile romp through the foothills before Tonatiuh started cooking.
This is fine, as far as it goes, which is not very; about 20 miles per sitting, according to my cyclometer(s). But after a while this sort of repetition devolves from joy into work. Exercise. Basically, gym class, which I always hated.
No wonder people get fat. Bor-ing.
So lately, with Tonatiuh having stepped away from the stove for a spell, I’ve been trying to mix it up a bit.
Last Saturday I joined a few other riders for a bit of paceline practice, zooming down Tramway to the North Valley and then drilling it out to Bernalillo and back. All told it was good for about twice my usual mileage.
On Tuesday I cranked out a solo 42-miler, likewise down in the valley, but this time south on the Paseo del Bosque trail to just past Interstate 40 and back. I hadn’t ridden the bosque since March; half a year later the trees are starting to show hints of fall color, so I need to get back down there soon.
Yesterday I grabbed a Steelman Eurocross and did a quick hour on the trails in the Elena Gallegos Open Space. Hadn’t done that since mid-August.
Grunting up a few steepish rocky pitches reminded me that I needed to replace the bike’s chainrings, chain, and cassette. Not just from wear and tear, though there’s plenty of that, but mostly due to the mileage on its 1954 engine. Down with the 48/36T chainrings, up with the 46/34T! And the cassette will get four extra teeth at the fat end. Death to the 36x28T — long live the 34x32T!
Today various crucial segments of Your Humble Narrator were complaining bitterly about working conditions and threatening to go on strike, so I decided to take a lazy jog along our shortest foothills loop as a change of pace.
I’d been neglecting my ground-pounding, and thought I’d top it off with a little light weightlifting, likewise neglected. Must preserve the muscle mass, if only for speed-scrolling past news items like “Scientists use food dye found in Doritos to make see-through mice.”
What? Hit the back button. Doritos? See-through mice? Holy hell.
Is this for real? A lactic-acid flashback? Or maybe the WaPo’s A.I. just filed the serial numbers off an abandoned Monty Python script to make the Limey boss-fella blow his breakfast gin out his snout.
Whatever. I think I just got a great idea for a Halloween costume.
Mad Blog Media 
Same thing here, except I’m kinda embracing it. Just got back from getting my Harris / Walz yard sign from the Dem HQ, and gave them a little extra sumptin for the coffers. Then I stopped at the bike shop on the way to the music shop. Sorry, guitars and bikes were not purchased during these visits, passive voice intentional. On a positive note, Harris signs outnumber dumpster signs on my street six to three. That is surprising to me in an AZ over 55 community. Is hope as hollow as fear?
Good man y’self, Paddy me boyo. We’ve donated to Harris-Walz and a few other candidates, but display no yard signs. There’s kind of an unspoken non-aggression pact in the cul-de-sac. I don’t recall ever seeing a political sign here, and I don’t wanna be the first.
It’s not like we get a ton of traffic through here anyway. We’d just be telling the neighbors what they already know.
“Yeah, she’s a Democratic ward chair and he’s a commie layabout with a metric shit-ton of bicycles.”
I remain hopeful. The geezers I ride with are mostly more conservative than I am, and a solid majority finds the top of their ticket appalling. They might not vote for our candidates, but I’m reasonably sure they won’t pull the lever for Jesus Hitler.
Re-gearing. We all need to do that as we get older, and I don’t just mean a bicycle’s drivetrain.
So now that I know the formula for becoming invisible (my lifelong dream), I will absolutely use it for pure evil. I will re-watch the 1933 movie The Invisible Man carefully to formulate more of my plan. Patrick, thanks for the link!
Truer words, Dave. Mike Ferrentino has a good piece up at NSMB about advancing age, revisiting the “ride harder, get faster” playbook, and other things as well. Here’s a sample:
I ate a lot of Doritos in college. Y’think that’s what made me so transparent to women back then?
1954 engines need a little more TLC than the new stuff. I note that Marc Beyer, my motorcycle mechanic, is extra loving to those old BMW R-60s that show up in the shop. He has also been reconditioning an late 40’s or early ’50’s Ariel Square Four that no one is allowed anywhere near. He sometimes makes an exception, even though a mistake can cost thousands.
I’ve been downsizing the crank chainrings and upsizing the cassettes for several years now as geezerhood takes full control of these old bones.
The Six-Thirteen is limited by what Campy provides so it is running a standard compact crank and 12-30 cassette, which is fine for most stuff up here. But the CAAD-5 is the test mule for “shit, will this work?”. I have three sets of wheels for that old thing so one has a 12-32, one an 11-34 stolen from my old Stumpjumper, and the third sometimes wears a 12-28 and sometimes an 11-32, depending on time of year and what I want to ride. More here:
https://labikes.blogspot.com/2021/03/old-farts-need-bikes-too-or-mass-bike.html
I’m thinking of thinning the herd and just getting another set of hoops for the titanium bike, and set it up for everyday road riding with that 46-30 crank. Makes sense, but it would mean parting with an old bicycle and my better half will tell you how hard it is for me to get rid of an old bicycle that I’ve grown old with. I might have her just bury me with them.
I’ve posted about this before.
One of my favourite books..
Hurben, thanks for the reminder. I wanna find a copy of that. I was a complete and utter eejit in shop class. Also, an elitist. I thought that as an “artist” I’d never need any of the skills various instructors tried to pound into my thick skull. Duh, etc. I bet Grant P. at Rivendell has a copy. Maybe more than one.
Sounds like a must-read, Hurben. Thank you!
Also, it reminded me of parts of Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, which sounds from the excerpt above like it covers some of the same ground. Pirsig is part philosopher of science (his description of the scientific method, using the motorcycle as example, is one of the best I have ever read). He is part advocating for self reliance, contrasting his own ability to fix a bike to his son-in-law’s (I think) frustration and helplessness when things go south with his BMW and he doesn’t know how to fix it. I need to re-read that for a third time, given I am now old rather than a graduate student or mid-career lab geek, as part of the book is “where am I?”
Back to the analogy with The Society of People Who Actually Make Their Own Shit, one reason I retired was I was sick and tired of piloting a desk at work, which I did from 2017-2021. I had left my own laboratory, very unwillingly, when I had yet another bad experience in Chemistry Division. I always had my best fun in a laboratory and thought it amazing that someone would pay me good money for spending all day having fun. Back at the U of Hawaii, I was in the machine shop for a while designing and building chemical separations apparatus and installing it in the clean lab. At a certain Federal lab, you weren’t supposed to do such things, instead deferring to so-called “experts” so at times I had to close the door and have a tech watch out for management. And back in grad school, old mass spectrometers, like old cars, were something you could fix and my Ph.D. advisor’s motto was “you, as the operator, can fix it”. Nowadays, we don’t let students or sometimes even faculty open the proverbial hood.
And we are the worse for it.
K, I got ruined by the IRD Defiant crankset with its 46/30T chainring combo. I have that on two bikes now, and though I get spun out straight away on a fast descent I sure love that setup when the ground tilts back upward.
I can still horse my old cyclocross setup around the trails here if I have to — 46/34T and 11-28T isn’t nearly as tough as the 48/38T/12-26T combo I started with Back in the Day® — but if I don’t actually have to, why should I?
I considered buying another IRD or maybe a set of Soma’s New Albion cranks for the Steelman, but I really like the old RaceFace it’s been wearing since forever, so I’m just downsizing its rings. Likewise the old Ultegra derailleur is still tip-top, so instead of going to a Deore long-cage item I’m just adding a SunRace extender link so I can get that 32T low end.
And I hear you about parting with old bikes. It’s like saying adios to an old friend. “Adiós, muchachos, compañeros de mi vida. …”
I’m thinking of ordering a 48-32 crankset as long as it retrofits to old 9 speed drivetrains. Seems everyone has gone 10-11-12 and I wish I knew if the design of these newfangled whatchamacallits are backward compatible. That Praxis Alba looks really nice.
https://praxiscycles.com/product/alba/
Speaking of apparently incompatible components: Dick Cheney is voting for Kamala Harris?
Not surprised. I imagine like daughter, like son. I’ll give old CheneyDick a little credit.
Hmm….whatsyagot against triples folks? They can be found for most excellent prices if’n you look around. But they are no friend to short chainstays on some bikes. With the triple, when you need to pull out some stumps bygod you can simply call on the little guy to do so.
Ol’ Herb, I ain’t got nuttin’ agin no triples. I have seven bikes so equipped in The Fleet. The one on the Soma Double Cross yields a low end of 24x34T (19.2 gear inches), which is lower than Darth Vader’s voice. Spin for 20 minutes and cover 20 feet. But I do appreciate the simplicity of a double, or even a single.
My road bikes are set up for doubles, so less hassle changing the shifting gizmos around. And as you say, triples are a pain in the saddle to short wheelbase bikes and this crank (I just ordered the Alba) is for an old CAAD-5 with stays that are shorter than my temper is lately.
I probably shoulda gone for a 46-30 but the way I have the CAAAD5 set up I can put an 11-34 on it and that’s low enough….for now. I have a spare 46-30 on the Salsa LaCruz I can steal if I wish.
Speaking of triples on a road bike, I have a triple that I will never part with on a bike I’ll die with. It is a Sugino I bought from Sheldon Brown when he was spinning the ethereal wheels at Harris Cyclery, so it has a lot of sentimental value for me. It is on my Long Haul Trucker.
Whew! Well POG I”ll sleep better knowing you have those triples in escrow, if not actually in Ride Ready! position. On my rides I shift down to Sweet Baby James ( the 24 toother) on every climb of the various hills back to the ranch since I’m in the “cool down” phase of returning to whence I came. Oh hell….that’s not entirely true. I shift down cause after 16 -25 miles I NEED the granny gear and my home is at the top of a hill no matter which road home I choose. I”ll be goddamned if I resort to ever walking them.
The Voodoo Nakisi has an old XT subcompact triple that goes 42/32/22T, so I get by with an 11-28T cassette on that one. Alas, its fork is showing signs of age and as a consequence I rarely ride that rascal anymore. Finding a replacement fork is proving difficult and I may wind up stripping the rig for parts.
If I go that route, you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be holding onto that triple.
How are the chainrings on that XT triple? Sorry about no replacement fork. Is it a rim brakes vs disc brake mount issue with the fork?
I replaced the chainrings fairly recently, and the bike has some other nice bits on it, like Paul’s brakes and a burly set of Velocity Cliffhanger wheels with LX hubs. So I hate to abandon it entirely.
But the fork is a real weirdo, with 50mm of rake plus disc tabs and canti bosses. I might be able to get a New Albion Privateer fork to work, but I need to take some measurements, consult the oracle, etc.