Tag: New Albion Privateer

I was framed (and forked)!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
Soma Fabrications has a sale going on.

My friends at Soma Fabrications are knocking 20 percent off their already reasonably priced frames and forks, which makes them a deal and a half for anyone in the market for a new rig.

Click the link to get the deets. And you’ll wanna move fast, because this sale ends tomorrow.

Me, I’ve finally gotten my paws on a Soma Pescadero, the frameset I originally wanted to review for Adventure Cyclist back in 2021.

The Pescadero was out of stock back then, and what I wound up with instead was a New Albion Privateer, which proved to be an excellent bike, so much so that I bought it after writing the review. And it remains the bike I ride most often.

But I’m really looking forward to throwing a leg over the top tube of this Pescadero.

I’m a few parts short of a party at the moment — the Racer centerpulls I ordered from Paul Components are taking the scenic route to El Rancho Pendejo, and I’m trying to decide whether to perform a complicated three-way transplant to put wheels on the Pescadero or just buy a brand-new wheelset from the good folks at Velocity USA.

I used an old pair of wheels on the Privateer — Mavic Open Pro rims and Shimano 600 hubs — and I could go that route again, robbing a similar wheelset from a Steelman Eurocross or the Soma Double Cross. But I like those bikes as they are.

And that three-way swap I mentioned would involve moving the Double Cross’s wheels to the Pescadero; shifting a Soma Saga’s wheels to the DC; and giving an unused Velocity Cliffhanger/LX wheelset to the Saga. Some redishing seems likely; brake adjustments are a certainty. What we shade-tree mechanics like to call “too much like work.”

So … yeah. We’ll see. No rush on wheels if a feller ain’t got no brakes. But all y’all will want to get busy if you want a good price on a new whip. Tell ’em The Dog sent you.

Go fish

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
The latest iteration of the Pescadero from Soma Fabrications.

Ho ho ho, etc. The Santas at Soma Fabrications have a fresh catch of Pescadero road framesets for all you good girls and boys this Christmas.

The Pescadero is a “road-sport” steed, designed with 35mm rubber in mind but good to 38mm, my personal tire width of choice. And did I mention that it takes rim brakes? Your choice of centerpulls or dual pivots.

This was the frameset I wanted to review Back in the Day® for Adventure Cyclist, but it was out of stock. So I went instead for a first cousin from the Merry Sales family, the New Albion Privateer, which has become one of my favorite bikes for the mean streets of The Duck! City. (You’ll see mine, black with silver rack, in the photo carousel.)

Hm. Decisions, decisions. I need a new MacBook Pro to carry on The Work, but another resident of the San Francisco area has annoyed me by leaping clear across the country to kiss the Pestilence-Erect’s ring (hope you packed plenty mouthwash, Timmy me lad).

Maybe I need to redirect my holiday spending. Some might say I have too many two-wheelers already, but I have plenty of Macs, too. And as we all know, the proper number of bikes for a man is n+1.

Mind the ruts

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
Is it all downhill from here? Yes and no. …

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.

Northbound on the bosque trail.

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.

Muchas gracias, El Niño

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Hot plate, señor. No, not the one on the table; the one in your head.

Hotter, drier, and windier — that’s the prediction as regards monsoon season from the National Weather Service Forecast Office here in The Duck! City.

A heat advisory is in our immediate future, as in tomorrow, the actual Fourth of July, which this year seemed to start sometime around last Thursday and will end … well, who knows? Not me, Skeezix.

There are a few fires going, prescribed and otherwise, the largest being the Pass Fire in the Gila National Forest. Nothing like what’s been going on in Canada; not yet, anyway.

Yesterday I rolled out for a little 30-miler with 1,200 feet of vertical gain — the lion’s share of it coming in the final grind from I-25 to The County Line barbecue joint — and it got a little toasty there toward the end. The brain was not quite at a rolling boil but even a brisk simmer gets your attention a couple hours into what should be a two-bottle ride.

Today it seemed wise to skip the Monday spin with the ould fellahs and instead go for a half-hour trail jog with Herself. Early. Before Tōnatiuh fired up His comal.

Tonight brings the cul-de-sac’s Fourth fiesta, featuring non-explosive, ground-based “fireworks” of the type that would have caused my younger self to use descriptive language that would get the 69-year-old me canceled in a heartbeat if anyone paid any attention at all to what I thought, said, or wrote. Which mostly they don’t, lucky for me.

Neighbors to the east have two kids, neighbors to the west have three grandkids, and the couple on the northeast corner have a toddler, so there will be sprouts of various sizes gamboling around and about, shrieking at the pips, pops, and poots as the Buck supermoon rises.

If we’re lucky the skeeters will take the night off. It’s too bloody hot to don the Levi’s body armor, and I don’t have a sword small enough to behead the little bastards.

Black and white

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

White Nobilette, black Privateer.

I was compelled to go to the Dark Side today.

The plan was to roll down toward the Rio and climb back up again, but I got no further than Tramway and Montgomery when the rear tire on the Nobilette went pssssshhhhhhht.

No biggie. In fact, it was my first flat since January. So briskly I relocated from the highway shoulder to the nearby bike path and effected repairs.

But this left me with just one spare tube for a 25-mile loop through goat-head country on a sunny July day in The Duck! City.

Well. Shit. Back to the ranch. Not to stay, mind you, but to grab another bike.

The New Albion Privateer was off its hook and leaning against the Subaru in the garage. Bingo. There were two tubes and tools in the saddlebag and a frame pump slung under the top tube. Moved the headlight and taillight over and off we went.

It’s not so bad, the Dark Side. Just a horse of a different color. Who’s your daddy, Luke?