Category: Adventure Cyclist

Strange beverage

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
The sky is crying.
The sky is crying.

Oh, ’tis a fine soft day in Charlotte, North Carolina. Ninety-three percent humidity is good for the skin after a long day spent drinking watery green beer with a few thousand of your closest friends followed by a nap in a shamrock-colored puddle of pee under the old F-350.

I managed to skirt the no-fly list once again and am squatting in the Charlotte airport awaiting the next pressurized aluminum tube full of viruses bound for Chicago, where I understand the climate is likewise good for preservation, especially of things like wooly mammoths, Ben and Jerry’s, and other frozen goods. Just as well, as I’ll be chilling there for at least a couple of hours before catching a Ford Tri-Motor for Bibleburg and Chez Dog.

Skipped the final day of the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, as two days gave us a pretty good look-see at all the touring bikes that weren’t there and I like to rassle my travel arrangements early, especially when I have so little say in how they get made and turn out. If some TSA dude is gonna beat on my kidneys with a mop handle I want to get it over with early, is what.

Meanwhile, Mr. Deme is in Detroit, where he reports he is sipping a Miller Fortune.

“All I can say is we really needed High Life in another package with a bit of Malt Liquor Bull added to it,” he adds.

I recommended a chaser of Listerine, or perhaps some Park Tool chain cleaner.

“That’s next,” he said.

Happy St. Shiv In the Ribs Day

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Kevin Harvey's blue wheeler.
Kevin Harvey’s blue wheeler.

Charlotte is busy getting its St. Patrick’s Day drunk on. Never mind that March 15 is the fabled Ides of March, of which Caesar was famously advised to beware.

Maybe it’s a two-fer: Get horribly sideways on green beer and pennywhistle dirges, and then run about stabbing people, shouting the Gaelic for “Sic semper tyrannis,” which as I recall is “Fook the lot of yis!”

Lights, camera, action!
Lights, camera, action!

But we were talking about the North American Handmade Bicycle Show before we wandered off on this Irish-Roman tangent. And yes, it is a show, in which North American handmade bicycles play a leading role, and nobody was stabbed in the making thereof.

The bike I heard mentioned more than once was Kevin Harvey’s baby.  Dude has a day job — machinist for Andretti Racing — but he’s a lifelong cyclist and likes to work his metallurgical magic with two-wheelers in his spare time under the Harvey Cycle Works label.

Check out the Baja-bug lighting system he added to this one. He was deep in the weeds during this little project, fabricating the cap and screen to keep rocks from turning out his lights and crafting bits of this, that and the other to route the cable through the fork and make the whole system easily removable. The lights also can be raised and lowered and toed in or out.

After eyeballing a few more bikes, Adventure Cyclist editor Mike Deme, CycleItalia honcho Larry Theobald and I braved the wild streets of Charlotte, shouldering our way through about 18,000 tosspots in green T-shirts to dine at The Capital Grille. The wait staff seemed happy that the annual pub crawl didn’t include them, and the cop we saw outside the joint looked like she was having about as much fun as the average root-canal patient.

One unsteady reveler at curbside was either preparing to topple into the street, barf on his cellphone or both. Erin go blaaaaugh!

Chain of fools

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 30 Comments
Hobo crossing
Riding the Rock Island Trail east, I found this sign, and the temptation proved overwhelming.

New bicycles are like strange dogs. Most are friendly, but occasionally you meet one that wants to bite you in the ass. Or worse.

While planning a minor expedition to inspect the flood-damaged southern end of the Pikes Peak Greenway, as a prelude to logging what the Adventure Cycling Association folks call a “bike overnight” before the snow flies, I put the Bootleg Hobo into the workstand for a quick chain-lube yesterday morning.

Imagine my surprise when I found a link ready to pop. I could’ve broken the chain right there in the stand using the ol’ opposable thumbs and a finger or two, no chain tool required.

I thought I’d heard an occasional clicking sound while riding the Hobo the day before, when I snapped this photo. But the thing was a demo bike that arrived with shifting issues, and I’d been dicking around with the barrel adjuster in hopes of shutting it the fuck up, so I figured it was probably a tight link somewhere. Thus the workstand, and the chain lube.

Washout
One of the washouts left over from the summer’s flooding.

So, yeah, duh. Good thing I didn’t pop that bad boy while standing to climb a hill, as I had been doing. I rarely carry a chain tool on rides, and almost never pack an extra set of testicles.

Long story short, back in the garage went the Hobo and out came the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff, which doesn’t have a chain to break. And the ride was swell, though the trail was in pretty poor repair in spots, as you can see in the other photo.

But my nuts are just fine. Thanks for asking.

Hallelujah, I’m a bum

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
The Cinelli Bootleg Hobo comes ready to ride, with racks, fenders and pedals.
The Cinelli Bootleg Hobo comes ready to ride, with racks, fenders and pedals.

The first review bike of the new year landed at Chez Dog on Friday.

It’s a Cinelli Bootleg Hobo, and the little bugger sorta snuck up on us as Adventure Cyclist editor Mike Deme and I prowled Interbike earlier this fall.

This Colombus Cromor bike is a nifty bit of marketing. The color is dubbed “Railway” and the Hobo motif is extended throughout, including bar tape that sports some of the coded symbols the ’bos used to communicate with each other back in the day. And the spec’ is strictly hit-the-road basic — nine-speed Shimano triple with Microshift bar-ends, Tektro cantilevers, Alex rims, and 700×35 Vittoria Randonneur Trail clinchers.

There are some nifty extras, though. The Hobo comes with bosses for three bottle cages, Tubus racks and fenders, and a pair of Wellgo pedals. When was the last time you bought an $1,850 touring bike that came with all those goodies? You could ride the sonofabitch home from the shop, is what. Check that — you could ride it away from home, which is even better.

I anticipate a steep drop in unauthorized rail traffic as soon as the hobos find out what a steal this thing is.

Interbike 2013: FaceTime

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 44 Comments

LAS VEGAS, Nev. (MDM) — Before FaceTime, there was face time, and now that I no longer help cover Interbike for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, that’s generally what I spend my first day of the show collecting.

Tuesday evening was the traditional pre-show meal with the BRAIN trust; on Wednesday, I was doing some light trolling for toys with editor Mike Deme of Adventure Cyclist and his trusty sidekicks Josh Tack and Rick Bruner. Tech editor John Schubert joined us later for dinner and drinks.

Mike and I also appeared briefly on Diane Lees’ Outspoken Cyclist radio show, to be aired later this month. You’l be pleased to hear that I successfully avoided the accidental deployment of my favorite monosyllabic Anglo-Saxonisms.

The change in venue from the Sands to Mandalay Bay proved something of a shock to everyone’s navigational systems, and so we spent an inordinate amount of time playing Where The Hell Are We Going And Where The Fuck Are We Now? As a consequence, I didn’t take any pix, an oversight I’ll correct today.

But be on the lookout for some new do-it-all steel bikes, among them the Klatch from Co-Motion (someone decided they wanted to do a gravel race and needed a bike) and the Straggler from Surly (don’t call it a gravel bike or they’ll hurt you).

More later from the show floor, or slightly above it.