Before the deluge

August 4, 2013August 5, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

The Thunder God’s mojo must be on the fritz. Once again I got home from a ride just as the rain started to fall.

I snapped a quick pic of today’s steed for your amusement — it’s the Soma Double Cross, tricked out as half a tourist, with a rear rack and silver SKS fenders.

The Double Cross has a Tange Prestige main triangle and Tange Infinity fork; an eight-speed drivetrain (bar-end shifters, XT triple crankset, Ultegra front derailleur, XT rear); Shimano R550 cantilevers, an ancient set of Shimano 600 brake levers and a newish set of Empella Froggleg top-mounted levers; Mavic Open Pro rims, Dura-Ace hubs and a pair of 700×38 Schwalbe Little Big Ben tires; a Giant stem, Deda bars and some truly ancient Off the Front cyclo-cross tape; Time ATAC pedals; a Tubus Logo rack with a Busch & Muller 4D taillight; and an Easton seatpost topped with (of course) a Selle Italia Flite saddle.

This may be the least expensive bike in the garage, though my Voodoo Nakisi will certainly give it a run for the money. Oddly enough, those are the two bikes I ride the most.

Bikes, bikes and more bikes

April 4, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 34 Comments

Jeff Jones bikes — The Jones Steel Diamond in its road and off-road configurations. Photo courtesy Jeff Jones

Lately I’ve been enjoying an interlude between bike reviews, which has been nice, as it gave me a chance to get reacquainted with my own fleet of two-wheelers.

In the past week I’ve ridden my trusty Voodoo Nakisi drop-bar 29er, one of my two venerable Steelman Eurocrosses, and the only truly custom bike in the Mad Dog garage, a nifty Nobilette that’s something of an all-rounder, a cyclo-cross-slash-touring bike that’ll take a rear rack and fenders.

This weekend, all that ends with an invasion from Oregon.

Review bikes are en route from Co-Motion (a Divide Rohloff), Jeff Jones Bicycles (Steel Diamond) and Bike Friday (Silk Road Alfine).

I’ve ridden a Bike Friday before — you can read my review of the New World Tourist Select in the archives at Adventure Cyclist — but the Silk Road Alfine is something of a step up, with Shimano’s Alfine hub, Gates belt drive and Avid BB7 disc brakes. Should be a giggle.

The Co-Motion is likewise a belt-drive bike, but with big wheels and the Rohloff hub, which I’ve ridden before on the Van Nicholas Amazon Rohloff (yes, I reviewed that one too). I’ll get to spend a bit more time with the Co-Motion than I did with the Van Nicholas, and I’m very much looking forward to it, as the Co-Motion seems (on the Innertubes, anyway) more or less ideal for the sort of riding I do around Bibleburg.

The Jeff Jones bike, meanwhile, looks like the sort of machinery we all could use come the Apocalypse. That’s it up there at the top of the post, the red bike next to the otherworldly black beast with the tractor tires. I’ll confess to a mild yearning for a fatbike — as in, if somebody gave me one, I’d ride it — but until some product manager loses his or her mind, the Jones bike looks to be about as close as I’m gonna get to that little fantasy.

Glory road

March 29, 2013March 29, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

I didn’t get to ride my age this year. Not in miles, kilometers or even minutes.

In fact, the whole first quarter of 2013 has been a little sketchy, ride-wise, thanks to bugs, chores, the natural Irish predilection toward sloth blended with storytelling — say, did I ever tell you the one about the Mighty Dugan?

No, let’s not get started down that particular path. There be dragons.

But today, after wrapping up a bit of video for the folks at Adventure Cyclist, I straddled the Voodoo Nakisi and hit the trails in Palmer Park. It was a casual ride that lasted nearly two hours, which for me these days is something of an expedition.

The afternoon was 60-something and sunny, if a bit breezy, and I must have been just tired enough to not give a shit if I fell over, because I was easily cleaning obstacles that ordinarily confound me.

I stopped at one intersection to pull off the knee-warmers and up rolled a couple of young gents on double-boingers who likewise were having a fine day on two wheels. They professed to be astounded that a gentleman of my years would be riding a cyclo-cross bike on Palmer Park single-track, and I confessed that while it appeared to be your standard unsuspended steel drop-bar bike, it was in fact a stealth 29er with a triple ring and 700×43 tires and thus not so much of a much.

Did the wheels stand the strain? they asked. To be sure, I replied. Built by Brian Gravestock himself they were, using Mavic Open Pros from this millennium and Hügi mountain bike hubs from another. Brian says steel bikes are making a comeback, they confided. I agreed, and with that we went our separate ways.

Back at Chez Dog a neighbor’s landscaper said he’d seen me on the bike and that I looked “like a young man.” He was trying to sell me some yardwork — successfully, as luck would have it — and I forgave him the Good Friday falsehood.

Off the rails

March 18, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments

Roads are for the weak.

What a fella wants after too many days spent indoors with runny snoot pressed to grindstone is not the sissified hiss of skinny tires on asphalt but the crunch of gravel under roughly shod wheels.

So Thursday and Friday I broke out one of my own bikes for a change — Old Reliable, the Voodoo Nakisi, with 700×43 Bruce Gordon Rock n’ Road tires — and rode around in Palmer Park, Bear Creek East and pretty much wherever else the cars weren’t.

On my way back to the ranch on Friday I took a side trip along a stretch of lightly used railroad tracks that not long ago bisected a small city of homeless camps. The “No Trespassing” signs are up now, in part to keep the street folks away and in part to save the unwary from getting carpet-bombed by road workers rebuilding a bridge overhead.

Naturally, being the sort who views “No” as encouragement, I pressed on regardless. I survived.

Words to live by

May 19, 2012May 19, 2012 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

The Garden of the Gods makes a fine backdrop to any kind of bike ride.

I took five from chores yesterday to drag the Voodoo Nakisi around the west side of town.

The route I chose is one reason why a cyclo-cross bike — or better yet, a MonsterCrosser® like the Nakisi — is the ideal Bibleburg bicycle. I headed south on the creekside bike path and then west under I-25 to Bear Creek Regional Park, where I picked up a short bit of single-track before settling down to a nice, steady, pulverized-granite climb to Gold Camp Road.

At Gold Camp you can hang a left and ride all the way to Victor, if that’s your idea of a good time. But I haven’t got the legs for that, and anyway there was a stiff wind out of the south, so I took advantage of it and rolled down 26th Street to Colorado Avenue to pick up 31st Street and another steady wind-assisted climb through the Garden of the Gods.

Herself, Buddy and the iPad — Herself and Buddy, a.k.a. Mister Boo, video-chat via iPad with the kinfolks in Maryland.

After the Garden I hit the Sinton Trail and headed for the Goose Gossage Youth Sports Complex, where I briefly contemplated continuing on to Palmer Park for a little more single-track. But then my tummy alarm went off, and I recalled a bit of leftover steak and potatoes in the ’fridge at home, so off I went.

Herself was having a spot of fun with technology, video-chatting with her mom and a sister in Maryland via FaceTime on the iPad, occasionally taking a break to play Words With Friends with one or the other. I won’t play until someone comes up with a dirty version.

As it turns out I probably should have gone for the extra miles. Today is about 30 degrees cooler than yesterday, and windy, too, with a spot of rain from time to time. And the chores have returned, too, goddamnit (good for 476,209 points in Scrabble).

So that’ll teach me, right? Probably not.