Crank it up (or down)

March 1, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

You can quit searching the taverns, flophouses and obits — I’m still very much alive, despite the feddle gummint’s insistence on tinkering with The World’s Best Health Care System®. I just haven’t had much to say. Too busy riding the bike.

I actually managed to log 150 miles last week despite the weather, and I’m finally starting to feel vaguely like a cyclist again. On Wednesday, the DBR went to Old Town for more surgery — this time a Ritchey crankset with 172.5mm arms and 50/34 chainrings — and on Saturday I took it out for three hours and climbed every damn’ hill in town, some of ’em twice.

Weird how the little things can make a difference. I had always ridden 172.5mm cranks until I took up mountain biking. Longer levers were the fashion off road, so I stepped up to 175mm cranks on the MTB and stuck with them when I started racing cyclo-cross. Finally I went to 175s on the road bike, too, thinking, what the hell, I ride ’em on everything else.

But when I got the Jamis Supernova, it showed up sporting a compact crankset with 172.5mm arms. And y’know what? I kinda liked the feel. I’m not grinding along the single-track this time of year — I’m mostly riding the road, or some bike path, and it’s a whole lot easier to spin shorter cranks and smaller rings with bum knees and a big ass.

So chalk up another convert to the Church of the Compact Crank. Now if I could just find a shop that sold legs and lungs. …

Shelter from the storm

February 23, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

No more goose with a sluice thanks to my new Planet Bike fenders.

How the hell did I ever get along without fenders?

I tell you, I’d have skipped more than a couple outdoor rides this year without these nifty little plastic mothers. Unless I’m actually racing cyclo-cross — something I haven’t done since 2004 — I’m just not into the freezing, muddy douche up the old exhaust port any more. Cold is bad enough. Cold and wet just plain sucks, especially if you plan to stay out for a while. And washing your kit and bike daily is as much fun as drinking a bottle of cough syrup and watching a chart-wielding Repuglican on C-SPAN.

The roads were particularly filthy today since the sun finally came out and got after that last snowfall, so I slapped a set of Planet Bike fenders on the DBR mountain bike and rode the Greenway Trail for 90 minutes. The Voodoo has fenders, too, but after hitting the deck and dislocating that finger, I’ve decided I like wider tires and a lower center of gravity for a reconnaissance ride in evil weather.

Anyway, it was nice to be outdoors doing something other than running through lumpy snow. I only saw two other cyclists so I get big manly points too. The weatherman says mid-40s tomorrow. Sheeyit, that’s practically tropical. Maybe I’ll ride in a Speedo.

Speaking of things that should not be seen, a local billboard company has rejected a bus-shelter ad that would have displayed the alluring cleavage of — a puppet. The ad, for the touring Broadway production “Avenue Q,” featured the furry pink hooters of Lucy the Slut, one of the stars of the admittedly adult show. Not on my bus shelter, said Lamar Advertising account executive Jeff Moore, who explained his criteria for determining what’s appropriate for bus ads and billboards: “If I have to explain it to my 4-year-old or my grandmother, we don’t put it up.”

That covers a lot of waterfront, there, Jeff old scout. Better invest in a couple sets of blinders for Junior and Granny if you ever plan to leave the house, what with all the titty bars, massage parlors, adult bookstores, XXX theaters and other ungodly sights in our otherwise immaculate Industrial Christian community.

Hell, they might see Doug Bruce. Any sane community would recognize that loudmouthed tub of lard as an obscenity. Alas, our community’s standards are a little looser. When it comes to man-boobs, anyway.

White ’cross

February 18, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

The Nobilette cyclo-cross bike is ready to roll.

Meet the latest edition to the Mad Dog Media bicycle collection — a custom Reynolds 853 Nobilette cyclo-cross bike.

Like pretty much everything else in the garage, it’s a blend of old and new. The wheelset, taken from my oldest Steelman Eurocross, is a well-used Cirrus pair from Excel Sports — Michelin Jets on Mavic Open Pros laced to Dura-Ace hubs with DT 14/15g and Revolution spokes. Likewise the brakes, a used (and mismatched) set from Paul Components — Neo-Retro up front and Touring in the rear, both with Kool-Stop Thinline pads. Whether that grippy Neo-Retro will overwhelm the fork’s one-inch steerer in a panic stop remains to be seen; back in the day I ran lower-profile Dia-Compe 986 cantis, which were basically speed modulators.

An old Salsa Pro Road handlebar sports new Cane Creek brake levers (the traditional non-aero’ sort plus a top-mounted set). The stem is an Origin8, an outfit I’d never heard of before.

The drivetrain is nearly all new — Race Face Cadence compact cranks (50/36), nine-speed Dura-Ace bar-cons, FSA front derailleur, Ultegra rear, 11-28 cassette. The lone exception is a thousand-year-old pair of Time ATAC pedals.

Check out the nifty integrated cable hanger.

And finally, the seat post is a new Ritchey WCS, but it holds a used Selle Italia Flite saddle that I got for a six-pack of beer. Assembly by Chris and Randin at Old Town Bike Shop. Thanks, guys.

I asked Mark to add eyelets for fenders and a rear rack in case I want to do a little light touring. If this were a road bike, I’d have sprung for a pump peg, too, but ain’t no pump peg in the world gonna secure a frame pump on a ’cross bike. Not the way I ride it, anyway.

Weather permitting, the Nobilette will undergo its maiden voyage this morning. The weatherman’s calling for snow, but hey — that’s cyclo-cross weather, right?

Winter Games

February 15, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

A bit of pink tinges Pikes Peak just past sunup.

Another blisteringly cold day. Yesterday neither Herself nor I left the house. But today she bundled up and toddled off to work. I spent the morning processing pixels, then slipped out for a short run around noon after things warmed up a bit.

I probably should’ve ridden — after all, I’m not going to be running around southern Arizona next month — but I like to run, and besides it can’t hurt to mix things up a bit. Yesterday my legs felt like giant sausages full of botulism after three consecutive days of riding hills in the cold, and spending all Sunday sitting at the iMac, posting copy and photos to VeloNews.com, didn’t exactly meet my admittedly loose definition of “active rest.”

Speaking of high technology, we’ve finally debugged our Rube Goldberg TV hookup (streaming video via laptop, Blu-ray player, rabbit ears) and have been watching bits of the Winter Olympics. My God, how does anyone get through an evening of American television without the skull exploding like a Pfalzgraff piggy bank zotzed by a .40-caliber hollow-point? The drug ads provide some amusing irony, and there’s no denying the improved sports coverage possible with digital video, but still, damn.

It’s not enough that an athlete kicks ass. No, he or she has to have a touching backstory: grew up living in the trunk of a Chevy Caprice in the Appalachian hills; has a one-eyed half-brother with the yaws and 13 toes: plays the uilleann pipes professionally when not doing something insane involving ice and/or snow.

Speaking of which, it’s gonna be cold again tomorrow. Tonight’s low should bottom out around 11, and NOAA says we’re looking at a high in the mid-30s tomorrow. But a man must ride, and so I’ll be out there, me and my three long-sleeved jerseys, the neoprene leg warmers and pretty much everything else in the kit kloset.

And maybe — just maybe — with my just-completed Nobilette cyclo-cross bike, too. Stand by for fresh bike porn.

Head for the hills

February 12, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

Your roving reporter captures a shot of a socialist deer dining for free upon a taxpayer's shrubbery.

It hasn’t exactly been cycling weather around Bibleburg of late — nevertheless, I sucked it up yesterday, pulled on about half the clothes in my closet and got out for two and a half hours of hills.

This is not as easy as it sounds. Despite sitting in the shadow of Pikes Peak, the road riding around Bibleburg is less than stellar, and the one long, sustained paved climb into the high country — Highway 24 west — is just plain dangerous, going up and coming down.

So a guy has to improvise. Though I was going to be mostly on pavement, I broke out my red Steelman Eurocross (fatter rubber, lower gearing) and rode west through a moderately gooey Monument Valley Park to Mesa Road, then started climbing.

Mesa is a nice warmup, a steady-state ascent that dumps you out on North 30th Street by the Garden of the Gods. From there I hung a right on Garden of the Gods Road and descended to Centennial Boulevard for another short climb to Fillmore Street, then hung a right and returned to Mesa.

I was thinking about doing laps of this short circuit to minimize my exposure to a nasty south wind, then said screw it and headed north on 30th to Flying W Ranch Road (hey, if you have a tailwind, why not take advantage of it?). Flying W is a steeper climb than Mesa, and a short 40-mph descent dumps you out at Centennial and Vindicator Drive for the pièce de résistance, the ascent of Centennial Boulevard/West Woodmen Road.

Centennial-Woodmen is steeper than any of its predecessors and something of a challenge for the average fat bastard. It’s one of those pain-in-the-ass climbs that flattens out every now and then, even throws in a couple of short descents, just to fuck with your head. It’s why I rode the Steelman with its low gear of 34×28.

Anyway, I made it up without throwing a rod or blowing a seal, and on the way down the other side I saw this pretty little buck with a couple of his cousins, so I stopped to take a snap with the iPhone. It reminded me of living outside Weirdcliffe, where we always had a few mule deer camping out under our deck. We used to say that they were so dumb you could hunt them with a Twinkie and a ball-peen hammer.

But we never saw one stupid enough to be riding a ’cross bike on the roads in the dead of winter.