Category: Bike stuff

New Year’s freezin’ Eve

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
The Cateye of the Tiger
The Cateye of the Tiger

If ever there was a night not to be a party animal, this is it: 6 degrees with a low of minus-8 in the forecast and wind-chill values around minus-20.

My idea of a rockin’ New Year’s Eve is not sharing icy roads with the lesser primates, courting frostbite, hypothermia and Death by Eejit, to drink among strangers too stupid to stay home where they belong. These pootbutts drive in snow about as well as Baptists dance on Sundays.

As usual, we got just enough snow to introduce natives of warmer climes to the limitations of four-wheel drive and the locations of our local emergency rooms, police stations and body shops.

Nevertheless, it left our neighborhood looking like a bobsled run laid out by a timid German (flat and in a grid pattern), and I went outdoors exactly thrice, to shovel the block and our driveway. It took three trips and two tea breaks because I was freezing my not-inconsiderable ass off.

I clamped my road bike to the Cateye CS-1000 Cyclosimulator last night, but I never used it. Shoveling is fine exercise, or so I told myself as I was uncorking a bottle of 2009 Penelope Sanchez.

Just Thursday I was riding dusty trails in long sleeves and leg warmers and feeling slightly overdressed. I can’t face the trainer. Not yet, please, God. There will be plenty of time for that sort of thing in the new year. I rode more than 4,000 miles outdoors this year and riding indoors will have to wait until 2011.

In the meantime, I raise my glass to you and yours in gratitude for your generosity in popping round from time to time to visit a cantankerous ink-stained wretch, and ask that as the old year closes you give some thought to those who may find little to celebrate this New Year’s Eve.

I’ll be thinking of an old friend and colleague, a brother cyclist, who spent Christmas in the emergency room with his gravely ill wife. She’s back home tonight, which is good news, but not the sort that sends the champagne corks flying. Strength and peace to you both, C and T.

A dirty business

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
The Nobilette meets Palmer Park and the park wins
I'da got off and run the sumbitch but I didn't want to stuff my water bottle into my armpit. Yeah, right.

As hard as it is to believe, we’ve nearly completed another lap around the sun. Didn’t we just do the whole New Year’s Eve thing?

Colleagues are writing up the usual best-of, top-10 and “a look back” pieces, but as a perpetual juvenile and occasional Zen student I remain caught up in the moment.

For example, work is particularly vexing lately for reasons that aren’t worth delving into. “At least you have work,” I remind myself, but it doesn’t help. I have something that pisses me off, is what.

Happily, the biggest upside of my gig — besides the monthly paychecks, that is — is its part-time nature. When I find myself composing a vitriolic NastyGram®, the cursor twitching over the “Send” button, I can put the iMac to sleep, grab a bike and go for a ride.

I’ve been riding the Voodoo Nakisi lately, because I plan to write a review for Adventure Cyclist magazine, but yesterday I thought I’d break out my custom Nobilette, which has been idle for a spell due to a rear-brake issue I didn’t feel like troubleshooting.

Problem solved with a little more daylight between pads and rim, I rolled off toward Palmer Park, my go-to spot for flushing out the headgear. Its 730 acres comprise more than 25 miles of trails, from tame to terrifying, and during a dry winter like this one it’s a great place for staying out of the wind and refuting entropy.

Palmer gets quite a bit of use — hikers, cyclists, joggers, dog-walkers and equestrians — and as a consequence many of its trails have deteriorated alongside Bibleburg’s crumbling finances. I had been sticking to the west side of the park because a main eastern trail had been more or less destroyed, but yesterday I thought I’d do a little recon, see what things looked like over there.

The initial idea was to try to ride some moderately technical, steep single-track, replete with switchbacks and water bars, but my legs exercised their veto power. So I rolled over to the playground at Maizeland and Academy and then looped back around to scope out that eastern trail, which parallels the paved road that winds through the park.

Imagine my surprise: Someone, either the parks department, the Guardians of Palmer Park or benefactors unknown had performed a serious feat of engineering on the worst section of trail, a short, steep ascent that takes you to a bend in the road from which several trails fan out. What had been a rocky, rutted mess had been smoothed out, with new water bars installed and the ruts filled in.

Lacking compaction by rain or snow, though, the soft dirt used for the trail’s new surface grabbed my 700×30 Maxxis tires like a troll reaching up from underneath a bridge, and off I came. Bugger. Pushed the bike to the top like a big sissy and took a picture while catching my breath.

Maybe I’ll go back over there today aboard the Voodoo, with its 700×45 tractor tires and 22-tooth granny. Teach that trail a lesson.

I could send it a NastyGram®, but some issues are better raised face to face.

The brown bird of happiness

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Longtailed cat meets rocker
"Oh, God," says Miss Mia Sopaipilla, "please tell me that fat bastard isn't gonna cop a squat in this old rocker, because if he does, my new name is Flatty the Catty."

Mmm, leftovers. If there’s anything better than a turkey dinner, it’s a turkey breakfast, followed by a turkey lunch, followed by (wait for it) another turkey dinner.

Turkey sandwiches, turkey enchiladas, turkey quesadillas, turkey tacos, turkey soup — the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately, my belt is not, and so today between bouts of gluttony I slipped out for a leisurely bird-burning ride with Dr. Mickey von Schenkenstein.

I was supposed to be working, if the word can be used to describe the transferring of pixels from point A (let’s call this Belgium) to point B (your computer). But hey, everyone was either traveling (or trying to), riding their own bikes, battling connectivity issues or suffering tryptophan poisoning, so I said piss on it and took 90 minutes off for a ride in the middle of the workday, just like the real cycling journalists.

We didn’t exactly tear up the trails — neither of us had been on a bike for several days, for one reason or another — but it was good to be outdoors, sweating gravy and solving the world’s problems.

I got back to the office just in time to catch some incoming from Belgium plus a smallish plate of leftovers for energy. Hey, a guy’s got to refuel. …

The Voodoo that I do

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
My Voodoo Nakisi, before its maiden voyage
It's my third Voodoo, and perhaps the oddest one yet.

It goes without saying that I need another bike the way America needs a fresh horde of Republican dipshits in the Senate. So, naturally I got one anyway. The bike, not the horde of dipshits. The bike is mine. The dipshits we share.

The bike is a Voodoo Nakisi and like me, it is a real weirdo. Steel frameset, tabs for discs plus bosses for cantis, horizonal dropouts suitable for single-speeding or a geared drivetrain, and room for some rather serious rubber, as in 29×2.3. Yes, it’s a 29er — but it’s intended to be used with drop bars. Plus it has eyelets aplenty for racks and fenders front and rear.

Like I said, a real weirdo.

Voodoo Nakisi - front view
Did I mention it takes big rubber ... as in even bigger than 700x45?

Mine is built cyclo-cross style — Ultegra rear derailleur and XT front, nine-speed bar-cons, 11-26 SRAM cassette and chain, XT cranks (including the little ring for a change, a 22-toother), Cane Creek cantis and top-mounted brake levers, Salsa bars, some no-name stem, Shimano 600 aero brake levers, Crank Brothers Candy pedals, Thomson seat post and a Selle San Marco Ponza Island saddle that I hate (but it was unattached to a bike and thus could be had free of charge).

In fact, most of the parts came from the official Mad Dog Media Service Course Garage, Tool Shed & Covered Vespa Parking Facility, with the biggest (and priciest) exception being a handbuilt set of wheels — Mavic Open Pros laced with Revolution spokes to an old set of Hügi MTB hubs by my friend Brian Gravestock of Old Town Bike Shop. The wheels wear a pair of 700×45 Panaracer Fire Crosses. Yes, I said 700×45. They look like something you might see at a motocross race.

I didn’t put it on the scale because frankly, I didn’t want to know. This thing is a tank, like a two-wheeled tractor.  I took it over to Palmer Park for its maiden voyage and the Nakisi rolled over its rocks like the Panzers did Poland.

I have a soft spot for Voodoo. One of my favorite bikes was a ti’ Loa ’cross bike that had a one-off, drilled-for-weight Marzocchi suspension fork, a Ritchey 110BCD crank and an XT rear derailleur that let me run a low gear of 34×32. It could take 700×40 tires. Another tank, but man, was it ever fun to ride on the Crusty County BLM roads.