Don't Stop Pedaling

So here are some photos of the finished Bianchi project, a.k.a. "Big Red." As the title hints, it's a fixed gear. Aesthetically, I was shooting for a 1890s or early 1900s look, something that would evoke the early days of bicycling when all bicycles were fixed. I very consciously did not want to build either a trick bike or a track bike, but I did want to tune into the "pure" ethic of the fixed gear, and bringing in the historical element made a lot of sense.

I've been riding it for about a week, and since this is the first time I've ridden fixed, of course it's taking some getting used to. At first, it was fairly intimidating to feel the push back when I tried to stop pedaling or slow down with just my legs, and I was using the front brake a lot. As I've gotten used to riding it, I have started to get a feel for the intuitive response that devoted fixed gear riders talk about and I haven't been using the brake much at all. Think slower, go slower, almost like choosing to walk at a different pace.

Just as riding a bike makes me more aware of how I'm traveling through my environment than driving a car, riding fixed is certainly making me more aware of how I bicycle through my environment. Of course, the lack of gears is a big factor, but I'm also much more aware of my speed, other traffic, road surface, and topography. I'm still not comfortable building up much speed because I'm not yet entirely confident in my ability to bring the bike to a quick stop if I need to, but that's more psychological than anything, and between the front brake and my improving ability to regulate speed with my legs, I'm doing fine. Also, the gearing is fairly low (52-20) to accommodate our San Diego hills and the fact that I'm riding in an urban environment and not a velodrome.

Track stands and tricky dismounts and all that kind of thing are still a long ways off, if ever, but who knows, I might try some of that stuff as I build up confidence.

Geeky details:

Handlebars: Nitto Promenade B-617

Fixed/free hub and 20t cog: Soma

Saddle: Brooks B-66

Handbrake: Dia-Compe from my old parts bin

Tires: 27" Panaracer Pasela

The rest is what came with the bike, including the rear rim, which I used to build up the new rear wheel around the fixed hub. My LBS ordered all the new bits and consulted on gearing, etc., for which I'm grateful. I didn't want to throw a HUGE amount of money into the project on the off chance that I absolutely hated riding it, but that turned out not to be the case.

Biking, Hiking, Underbiking

After several weeks of not riding much, and generally not going out much, I took a couple of hours this morning to ride around and explore some places in the city I haven't been. One thing San Diego really has going for it is the canyons. This time of year is especially nice, since the natural areas around here are starting to green up again after the summer. Most of the canyons in the urban area are public spaces with trails that are easily accessible as long as you know where the secret staircases and trailheads are. Part of the fun of an exploratory ride is that you get to stumble across them and have little adventures. The photo is from a canyon in Hillcrest, just north of Balboa Park, and these trails are actually part of the Balboa Park trail system.

Parts of the various trails I "discovered" today required hiking with the bike over my shoulder, others I had to walk the bike, but several of the trails allowed me to do a little underbiking*, which is the closest thing I've done to mountain biking since I was a teenager. Granted, it's not very close at all to mountain biking, but it was still fun to ride a little dirt.

*Underbike, ride a traditional road bicycle on surfaces that typically warrant the use of knobbie tires, flat bars, and sometimes suspension.

Hello

The Bianchi project inches towards completion.

Building a Bicycle Wheel

I took advantage of a rare rainy Saturday (dark and stormy, even) to build a new rear wheel for the Bianchi project. I've built a few bicycle wheels over the last several years, but I'm amazed every time I do it. It's one of those things that I never thought much about, and then when I did think about it, assumed it was way out of my league. But using Sheldon Brown's instructions, it's not really that difficult. I would even say that it's fun.

Once you have the instructions, the majority of the task is essentially just putting pieces together. If you can assemble IKEA furniture, you can build a bicycle wheel. This is not to say that tensioning and truing and dishing (the last of which I've never done because I've never build a rear wheel with external gears) don't require skill, but they are skills that you can acquire with patience and attention to detail. Hell, I made it through grad school, so I have those in spades.

I took my time, enjoyed the physicality of building something, read the instructions carefully, had a cup of tea, and the whole very civilized process took a couple of hours, with another hour or so the next evening to work on the truing, which I did by mounting the wheel in the frame and using a ruler as a gauge. I probably could have done it faster if I had needed or wanted to, but there was no reason to hurry. 

Building bicycle wheels is one of those empowering tasks that you never thought you could do, but if you're willing to take a little leap and just jump in (keeping in mind that failure is always an option), it turns out to be a pretty rewarding experience. Of course, having said this, my wheel will probably explode the first time I ride it. Jinx.

It's the Middle of October?

Yeesh. Where does the time go? I've been thinking that it hasn't been that long since my last post, but it has been a few weeks. I've been alternating between working hard and hardly working. It's a weird time of year for me. Being a Northwesterner living in Southern California, I expect fall weather, but really we just get hot and dry. Add to that my 20 + years of conditioning that fall is "back to school" time, yet I am not back to school, and the months of September through November just end up being a muddle of contradictions.

My research trip to Louisville went well, and I've got a lot of information to sort through, plus more research to do as I get started on the article/chapter that will be the result. I really enjoyed my time in Louisville, which from what little I saw of it, seems like a great city. The Root Cellar was on my walk from the hotel to the archives, so I stopped a couple of times to buy some fresh local produce and chat with the owner, who was an extraordinarily nice man. Also, I think I saw more bricks in Louisville in a week than I've seen in Southern California in four years. It was nice, I like brick buildings. 

Here's the current status of the Bianchi project, which I'm still going to keep quiet about until it's finished. Yes, that's an IKEA flowerpot it's sitting on. The cranks and chainring are original, as is the front brake. The Brooks B66 came off another bike, the brake lever is from my parts bin, and the handlebars are Nitto Promenade B617.

In other news: I saw the largest spider I have ever seen "in the wild" and I ate my first pineapple guava. I would like to repeat the second, but not the first.

1970s Bianchi Project

Just picked this up last night. Not exactly sure of the year or the model because most of the frame graphics are gone and a lot of the components have been upgraded over the years. Based on the Carnielli stem, (so cool), I'm guessing early or mid-1970s, according to what the Internet says. I have fun plans for this one, but I'm not going to share them yet, since pre-sharing on the Internet seems to lead to failure in many cases.

Nice Socks

via Nationaal Archief on Flickr's The Commons

Bad Ass

Mr. R.J. Tate, Museum of Hartlepool on Flickr's The Commons

Terrible, Yet Appealing

Phillips Loop Frame Before Paint

Headset and bottom bracket bearing cups and head badge will be popped off before sandblasting and painting.

I'm finally getting around to working on this project. It's a Phillips loop-frame roadster, probably from the early 1950s. When I bought it two years ago, it was missing the proper wheels, about half of the rear rod brake mechanism, and had a plastic saddle on it. Everything else, including the cool Phillips-branded pedals, chain guard, lamp bracket with a "P" cutout, and Phillips-branded one-piece handlebar/stem, seems to be original. Obviously in bad need of paint work, I'm having this one sandblasted and powder coated in classic black. Some loaner 26" wheels and fenders from another bike will suffice until I can find a cheap Flying Pigeon to salvage for 28" Westwood wheels and rod brake parts. It will have to be a single-speed for a while, but the long term plan is a three-speed. The goal for this one will be a city/errand bike that both my wife and I can ride.

This is how it looked the day after I brought it home.

Chicken Raising Pays

Advertisement from Overland Monthly, December 1895

Danger

Pilllpat's Flickr Photostream

Better Together

From The Royal Library, Denmark on Flickr's "The Commons"

This photo tells me that to be a true success at a tweed ride, I'm going to need higher trousers.

Seems Normal

Old Normal School Building in University Heights

General Putnam's Ride

General Putnam's Ride

General Putnam, hearty and stout,

Certainly tired the enemy out,

Boulders and ditches he took with glee,

And from all harm escaped scot-free,

'Twas easily done for Old Glory's sake,

A-riding his Corbin Coaster Brake.

Happy Summer, One Day Late

I forget where I found this.

The Difference a Year Makes

Neither of these are ideal photos, but they show the changes I've made to the Peugeot. The photo on the left was taken last May after I bought the bike (a steal at $70), and the photo on the right was taken last weekend. The major changes are a Brooks B-17 saddle, Velo-Orange Belleville handlebars, Tektro inverse brake levers, Velo-Orange hammered 45mm fenders, 28mm Panaracer Pasela tires, and a ViVa saddle bag support and Zimbale 11-liter saddle bag.

And of course, the incidentals: water bottle cage, lights, a bell, and a bit of leftover bar tape and twine on the top tube to protect against the brake levers banging it if the front wheel swings around. I also took the large chainring and front derailleur off, since there are a lot of hills in San Diego and I don't have any need or inclination to ride fast or hard. I may yet change out the pedals for something better suited to urban riding, but these are serving me well enough for now.

I am so, so, so happy with this bike. It gives me good versatility for the diverse San Diego topography, while still being suitable as a town bike. When I'm all the way forward on the bars, I'm in a good position for climbing, and when I'm all the way back, I'm upright and comfortable (that's why I have the bars wrapped well forward, as you can see here). The saddle bag holds a surprising amount, including odd-sized items, so it works very well for running errands. The ride is smooth and steady, not at all twitchy or squirrelly. In fact, this is the first bike I've owned that I can ride comfortably with no hands and not feel like the front wheel is going to wobble out from under me.

In my thinking about what I wanted this bike to be, I had two things in mind: aesthetics and functionality, in balance. I'm a firm believer that a person should love to look at their bike as much as they love to ride it. I was also guided strongly by what I wanted to be able to do on a bike. My old three-speed bikes were excellent for riding as town bikes, but they weren't well suited to San Diego's steeper hills (or perhaps I wasn't). I felt geographically limited by their weight and limited gearing options. I wanted a bike that could take me anywhere I wanted to go around town and beyond, and I just didn't feel like the three-speeds were doing it for me.

As much as I love this bike, both for its aesthetics and its functionality, if I lived somewhere else, or if I had a different set of requirements, I probably would have built up a different bike. The idea that a bike is created in dialogue with both the rider and the geography (both human and non-human) in which (s)he/it functions seems to make abundant sense, but it wasn't really something I considered in any overt way until after the bike was finished.

Anyway, words, words, words. I like this bike. That is all.

Walks Like A