The School of Hard Knocks; Don't Drift on Dented Rims

Impressed by some youtube videos, the other day I set out to teach myself to drift and do doughnuts on my bicycle. Drifting was easy. Doing doughnuts proved impossible for me, at least on the bicycles I had at my disposal: a wal-mart moutain bike-ish hybrid, and my Franklin road bike. I drifted through turns for a few days and without realizing it I wore through the millimeter-or-so of rubber bonded to the case of my tubular that passes for tire tread. There is a defect in my rear rim (earned from the unforgiving edge of a pothole on the outskirts of Querbes Golf Course) that causes my caliper brake to stop it always in the same spot when braking heavily.  Jump ahead a week or so and a friend and I decide to bike to our local (corporate) video store which is seven-or-so miles away; I on my Franklin and he on my yellow Goodwill cruiser. We had covered probably five miles of that distance when we had to stop for a small family of five: mom, dad, and three children to cross the street to a Catholic Church. As I decelerated there was a loud bang and hiss from my rear tire that frightened both my fellow rider and this God fearing family (the children ran for it). Instantly I knew what had happened; I'd had a blow-out at 100 psi.

This was way louder than it looks.

I walked my wounded road bike a block to Broadmoor Library and chained it up. I put my friend on the handlebars of the yellow cruiser and pedaled him the rest of the way to the video store. Riding together we laughed at how funny a picture we must have been striking and bemoaned not having a camera to capture it. I described to him how I am often struck by such humor when realizing I am an unemployed twenty-eight year old loser still living with his parents and riding a bike to his local comic book store. Then he and I marveled that I had ever managed to have a girlfriend at all. At the video store we rented Maximum Overdrive and then went to grocery store next door and bought some 1 liter Tecates so I could drown the dissappointment of my life. When we returned to the library another friend was kind enough to give us and my bicycles a ride back home in her VW van, saving the day ($30 mistake with tubular tire excepted).

The day after this debacle I got the MKS dust caps in for my Campagnolo pedals.

All in all I consider them a very good replacement; and the monicker they bare has proven not to bother me so much. They are quite beautiful for $4.

The New Weird.

I went to River City Cycling on Youree drive today and was able to order the MKS dust caps that I need for the Franklin (they were $1 more than online, but better to give that business to someone local). While there I got to test ride a Cannondale that is $980 worth of bad-ass, the Cannondale Hooligan 3. Cursing my poverty I marveled at its absolutely beautiful and bizare lines; it's built like a folding bike but does not collapse. It has twenty inch wheels but could accommodate someone well larger than my 6' frame. Completely weird and completely my kind of bike except that it's aluminum; though if I had a thousand dollars I could just throw away I'd probably be willing to buy its novelty anyway. Here's a picture from the Cannondale website:

The one at River City was matte black with grey/white reflective lettering and details. I prefer this white, red and black color scheme; it looks like a communist propaganda bike. With an aesthetic like this maybe the Reds could have ideologically defeated capitalism (by turning heads).

Just Another Saturday Morning.

I had joyous reason to wake up and ride again this past Saturday morning, The Highland Blues and Jazz Festival. A group of friends and I took off from Starbucks on Line Avenue and headed for the show at Columbia Park.

Trading bikes for a bit.

I'm ashamed to admit that I did not listen to that much of the music. I mostly just socialized. Had a few beers and kicked around a bit; ate some excellent Caribbean food (which I did not know anyone in Shreveport cooked). There was also reputed to be very good Indian food provided by India's (Youree Drive), though I did not get to try any of that. Then we walked to Columbia Cafe for more beer.

This is Highland's memorial.

Later, one down, we rode for home.

I have to say it was a fun day. Though I think the rides (to and from the festival) were my favorite parts.

On a more somber note, while joking in my last post about my bicycle crank boasting coffee stains I was horrified to realize from the photo that one of my pedals had lost its dust cap. I retraced my route but was unable to locate it and a replacement Campagnolo branded dust cap is nigh $30. To my salvation and to the shame of my Campagnolo pedals, they will now have to bare the brand MKS on their dust caps; as MKS's dust caps are only $3 and Campy compatible.

Good Times!

Woke up this past Saturday morning to an enjoyable event. The Velo Dendro Tour of Shreveport. I was happy to attend and enlisted my dad and friend to ride as well.

Franklin's crank sporting appropriate early morning coffee stains.

My friend brought her father's shaft driven Dekra, which is the first shaft driven bike I've ever seen in person. She let me do some doughnuts on it to try it out before she jumped back on it for the tour.

The tour began at Columbia Cafe on Kings and Creswell. It staggered through a few tree related stops to downtown, then the river front, back into Highland for a SWEPCO demonstration, a look at a massive old live oak and the return to Columbia Cafe.

A church carnival.

A local broadcast journalist (in black)  for channel six rode.

Awesome riding vest!

The Slattery Live Oak (it's famous). 

All in all it was a pretty fun ride once it really got going. Some cool bikes showed up too.

Old school Huffy street cred. Respect!

A vintage univega.

A Peugeot mixte.

A Schwinn tandem.

It was inspiring. About 60 or 70 people showed up which gives me hope that someday a successful Critical Mass might be organized here.

Fail by Rail

I tried to catch an Amtrak train into Dallas, TX in hopes of being able to write about the experience and its bicycle compatibilities (I do dream of one day owning a Brompton, Dahon or Moulton AR). However, upon my arrival at the station an hour away from home I found out that the train was delayed five hours away due to a freight derailment. So, I canceled the ticket and drove back home. I'll have to save that piece of reportage for a later date.

In the meantime, I've been marveling at all the wonderful pictures here, at a blog about broken carbon fiber. I have never planned on owning a carbon fiber frame as I don't race, value utility greatly and expect a relatively long usable life from the products I grudging spend what little money i have on; so chromoly steel is probably the most exotic frame material I'll ever consider. This blog and its pictures/horror stories did not enhance my opinion of the use of carbon in the bicycling industry (I live in Louisiana and need my bike to be able to withstand the rigorous trial of road kill), but they have been exceptionally entertaining. Here's to the need of others to own the latest and greatest and to suffer also fantastically new, never before seen catastrophes. May the wealthy always be so unwise with there money, we poor people need something to laugh at.

Divine Intervention.

It's been a bit rainy here in Shreveport. Rainy enough to loosen the roots of two 100 year old red oak trees and down them into our and the neighbor's yards/house totaling two cars, damaging structure and taking electricity and cable with them in their downfall.

On top of all that madness, the rear wheel of my Franklin was severally dented in one of the obscenely large pot-holes that Louisiana roads are notorious for. On a seventeen mile ride through various neighborhoods and downtown Shreveport I did not see the gaping hole in the darkness until I was upon it. I knew immediately there was a problem as I could both feel and hear the back-wheel rubbing the pads on its caliper brake. I was able to true it back up but as of yet am unable to correct the dent that has it out of round.

It's a little hard to see, but the dent is directly above the middle spoke hole.

Looks small but it has a pronounced feel while riding.

I am still riding it while I plan on how to attack this. I was just planning on removing that individual spoke and hitting it with a hammer, but I believe that even a brass hammer is probably to much for the aluminum rim which means I would have to buy a plastic one.

To true the wheel I used a coin shaped universal spoke wrench which I have seen much maligned elsewhere on the internet. 

It was my first time using it and I thought it performed quite well. It might not be up to the standards of someone accostomed to expensive precision tools, but I am used to making due with less.

The Ravages of Neglect and Poverty; beggars can't be choosers.

I have a beautiful Franklin road bike. This bike is so beautiful that I would never have been able to afford it (I can barely afford to keep it on the road). The luck of my ownership of it I owe entirely to the laziness of a former roomate. In college I had a short lived roomate of about three months. He brought with him to my apartment his stepfather's old Franklin equipped with exotic, intimidating names like Cinelli and Campagnolo. It sat in our living room completely unused on flat tubular tires because he would always rather ride the racing Haro BMX bicycle he bought when we were in grade school. At the end of his tenure as my roomate (he dropped out of school) he moved to Dallas TX and told me I could have it because he didn't feel like moving it back with him. I let it go further neglected fearing it's exotic nature (it's components all bore the above mentioned brand names of refined Italian breeding), choosing instead the cheap safety of my yellow Goodwill cruiser.

Upon my depressing return to Shreveport Louisiana I found myself struggling to get around it's hilly neighborhoods on this same extremely heavy cruiser. I realized I needed something lighter in weight, something with gears for my coffee shop trips and I had this Franklin just laying around that was the lightest bike I had ever handled so I took to it and have only rarely, on flat roads, looked back to to my cruiser.

It's lightness and gears have liberated me here but I have found new struggles with it in trying to afford to keep it on the road. For all the neglect it has suffered it has paid me back in need of parts and maintenance. I am well aware of the debate between the impassioned riders of both clinchers and tubular tires but their arguments have rarely included price. The Franklin has had three flats since I brought it here and each has cost my sorry unemployed self thirty dollars apiece. All concern for ride quality or rolling resistance have gone out the window with the bitter knowledge that if I'd had clinchers these flats would only have cost me three dollars for new inner tubes.

Another recent potential financial burden came in the form of its brake hoods. The original gum hoods on its Campagnolo Record non-aero brake levers were UV damaged, dry rotted, and falling apart (as gum hoods are so apparently prone to do). The only thing I was keeping them on with was yellow electrical tape.

I searched for new replacement brake hoods. They were available by order at my LBS, in black rubber only, for nearly sixty dollars. Completely ignoring the expense I was unwilling to accept, I did not think black was a fitting color to compliment its navy frame and canary yellow tape and housing. I searched and found some NOS brown gum hoods but they were equally expensive. I was assured by the website that these NOS hoods were "show quality," but my bike is going to be ridden not be on display. These were unacceptably expensive solutions so instead I bought some cheap brown Cane Creek brake hoods:

They are obviously not a perfect fit, but they work. They are ridable and more aesthetically pleasing than the rot covered in electrical tape that they replaced. Plus, I saved fifty four dollars over the new or NOS alternatives. Now I only hope that its fantastic Benotto Cellotape holds up because I can accept no substitutions for it.

Apparently My Skills Still Need Work.

Round two of NPR's 3 minut fiction contest is over. I entered but didn't place. Here's my entry:

The nurse left work at five o'clock. She stepped out into rain steaming up from the hot asphalt that reminded her of home. The last time she had been there was just like this, walking down Oak street trying to decide between its two coffee shops. The street had been alive with bicycles and prettier girls in light summer dresses waiting for the next trolley to stop down on Carrollton Avenue. As she had walked a conversation drifted over the wall of a private courtyard attached to some expensive new condos. She couldn't quite make it out, but they sounded happy. That was the comfortable existence she had hoped to have, carelessly drinking ice-cold beer with the neighbors on Saturday in the soft humidity of southern shade where you sweat and sweat and feel so healthy. Sundays she would have walked to Audubon Park with some handsome boyfriend and picnicked in the grass on a cheap thrift store bed sheet illustrated with cartoon characters. They'd have laughed together, listened to the radio, and kissed very sentimentally. She'd have cooked for him always and they'd have been in an effortless lazy kind of love.

That life she had wanted now felt thousands of miles away and hundreds of thousands of dollars beyond her reach. Where had it all gone? After college she had tried so desperately to find work there, until there was nothing left. Until, after so many rejections, all her feelings of home and loyalty were worn away by bitterness and disappointment. It certainly didn't feel the same anymore. The realization had been sadly humorous, that she wouldn't be the New Orleans yuppie she'd hoped to end up. Like all of her friends became so easily. She had started to hate them a little. She was still polite, still chatted and joked with them, but she had started to resent them and the complacency that had slowly taken over all of their lives. Their lives became so stable and middle-class. She was the odd one out still struggling to find her place. She wondered if it could ever be the same. If she got a job there now would it all come back? Would all the pain and anger in her heart roll back and give her the feeling of safety she once had? Or would her job security be too fragile, a thin veneer over the certainty that it would all just fall apart again? She sighed. She was sure she couldn't go back home.

Now she was here, stuck in the town she hated most of all. Where she had grown up so miserable. Where she had run out on her parents so defiantly to go to school hours away down south. And where she had returned, having no other choice, back to her parent's house which she loathed even more now for being her last resort. Thinking about her parent's house made her walk slower. She wanted somewhere else to go. Maybe she could go out to dinner to put off going back there. She wanted to walk to some other life, but there was nothing else and there wouldn't be for many more years.

Life isn't always about bicycles.

Sometimes it's about getting your 30 year old motorcycle running again so you can gun-it and pray for death.

corroded old point.

new points.

lubricant.

After all that they just had to be re-gapped and it ran like a champ. Honda engines from the 70's are incredibly long lived. This one has been kicking ass since '78. I got it for free after it had rotted in neglect under a pecan tree for two years losing all its paint (hence the spray painted gas tank). I love it though it burdens me with perpetual need of  maintenance and fear of its decaying old carburetor boots and air box. I worry that soon one of the boots' many cracks will open up wide enough to let air flood in and run it lean to the point of scorching the rings of a cylinder; and it will die in my arms at interstate speed, screaming out in blue oil smoke pain before losing all power in a rapid deceleration death rattle.

 
Maybe I'll get lucky (for once) and that will be a few years off yet.