The Stuff (Unfulfilled) Dreams are Made of.

This is what a 1966 BSA Lightning shouldn't look like. So beat I got it from a hardcore California biker for just fifty dollars about six years ago. While it has only continued to rot its decadence festers in my soul. It's beauty has tortured me as I am so enamored by its 650cc twin engine. It ranks just third in my engine-aesthetic behind a knuckle-head V-twin and Flathead V8. $3000 worth of new parts and a couple hundred man-hours of work later and maybe it could be a ride-able motorcycle again; with a little more maybe just maybe it could be the cafe racer I've always dreamed of having. The cafe racer I really wanted while throwing clubman bars on the 1978 Honda CB550 I loved dearly but I had to give up too when my life went to shit after college and even with two degrees I couldn't earn enough to keep up the insurance on it.

There's far too much resignation in my life these days...spent biking at night, broke and dispirited, wondering how in the folly of youth and in university I ever let myself dream it could be better than this; losing (slowly) my connection with the people, things and activities that I have loved.

Or my days spent trying to cobble together something useful from the mountains of accumulated trash that actually is my life now. And while I'd like to hope for better, something tells me one of these days I'll be pedaling a busted blue and red bmx bike down a Shreveport street still grumbling about my lot. Even then I probably won't be rid of my foolish dreams. I'll be on the look out for the smile of a pretty girl to melt my heart, solicited by the caricature of a bike rider I'll cut with my six foot frame on a 20" bike.

Mounting the Saddle and Reminiscing.

I got the Brooks installed on my Raleigh and I am absolutely thrilled with the results:

I have also installed some Fyxation brown tread white wall tires and some Wellgo bmx pedals (because I couldn't find any Odyssey's in an appropriate color). Unless it is brutally cold outside I only ever ride my bicycles in flip-flops and wanted a solid platform pedal to make that shoe choice more comfortable. The Wellgo(s) have conformed to that requirement quite well and were thankfully very inexpensive; only $11.

At 100+ miles the Brooks saddle is no where near broken in, but it was comfortable from day one. I did notice that to even begin breaking the leather into an ergonomic shape I had to ride at least 10 miles at a time and literally sweat my ass off on it. Hopefully I'll have several hundred miles on it by the end of summer and the process will be complete.

Though I love bicycling I have begun to long once more for the other means of conveyance from my youth, when all of my failure seemed short term and I could view my future with at least a margin of optimism. I am speaking of horse back riding and sailing. I lived in Del Rio, Texas until I was eight years old and while there I frequently rode horses and when I was six, my dad bought a beat up Vanguard Sunfish from a sailing school for $200 and taught me how to lay fiberglass and sail it on Lake Amistad part of the Rio Grande (his former profession being boat building/ repair in Cocoa Beach, FL). While in Louisiana I bought a 16' Hobie Catamaran for $400 and sailed that until college when I joined LSU's poorly supported Recreational Sports Sailing Team where I raced Vanguard 420s. Though I am a poor sailor I have always dearly loved it and am now, after 4 years off the water, dying to return to it. While in San Francisco a few months ago I fell in love with a seemingly popular local boat design from there, The San Francisco Bay Pelican:

It has a bowsprit and lug-rig that recalls, for me, a boat of much older design than the 1950s and I aspire to and consider myself capable of one day building it. However at this point the expense of it would be prohibitively expensive so I set out to find a more approachable design (I am badly in need of a win). While searching the internet for free boat plans I happened upon a cheap, race-able, home built, one design class boat called The Puddle Duck Racer: 

It may be a little bit ugly, but I am attracted to the egalitarian ethos of it as well as the freedom above the bottom ten inches of the hull and ability to run any rig you want. I could put a bowsprit and lug-rig on it to be an ersatz Pelican until I am in a position in life to build that much more sea-worthy vessel.

The Wages of Underemployment; herramientas nuevas.

Recently, I was lucky enough to finally be able to afford some long desired bicycle tools. I had wanted a cable-puller for sometime but was never able to find one in a bicycle shop. I shopped around online and though I would like to have purchased the Park Tools brand cable puller (it is made in the U.S.A.) it was more than double the price of other options; so I settled on the Pedro's brand probably out of an affinity for its vibrant yellow color.

 

No longer satisfied with my universal coin shaped spoke wrench I also found a pro set of spoke wrenches (that contact the spoke nipple on all four sides) also made by Pedro's on close-out and got those along with the cable-puller for less than thirty dollars before shipping. I was very impressed with this set that came clustered on a carabiner and included a star shaped wrench for some strange breed of Mavic nipple that I doubt I will ever lay eyes on.

 They each have both the more traditional, less secure nipple opening that contacts just three sides of the spoke nipple as well as the four sided contact opening...

and I got four of them plus a carabiner for less than the price of one Park Tools (four sided) spoke wrench; and while I don't have the satisfaction of supporting American manufacturing jobs I still received a quality tools at an affordable price and I'll just have to make my peace with their foreign origins (and with the fact that none of the four are anywhere near large enough to accommodate the enormous, industrial sized spoke nipples of my Atlas cruiser).

Painful Regression

I've been back from San Francisco nearly a month now and am slowly easing out of the doldrums. The city was fantastic and were I a man of means I probably would never have come back. I hope to write more about my experiences there but have not yet invested the effort.

Back in Shreveport I began working on another vintage Peugeot.

This one is a 1986 Peugeot Corbier and it is in much better shape than the last one I was involved with. I did a very minor tune-up on it and de-cluttered it of its light generator and other superfluous objects.  The only major stumbling block was the rear derailleur which was fouled up to the point that the spring in it would not snap the pulleys back into tension against the chain; if you pedaled it backward the chain would come off. While pulling that apart I notice its brand:

It made me wonder if it were manufactured by the same Sachs that used to manufacture mopeds in Germany (and now again in China).

I also found this front page for an old Peugeot catalog which was for me at least immensely amusing:

I don't know if it's the castle or the hideous bike but something is screaming bad fantasy novel. I found this cover as well as the vintage of this Peugeot here.

Unseasonably Cool New Bike Parts.

After recovering from resent illness and waiting for some latent winter weather to subside I finally got to work putting new parts on my new old stock Raleigh.

Before.

After. 

I ordered the braided steel brake cables/housing at Scooter's Bike Shop on Shreveport-Barksdale Highway. The Freewheel mentioned in an earlier post I bought at Bikes Etc. in Bossier City.  The housing clips and grey cloth bartape I had to order online; I bought both of them from Velo-Orange:

Before.

After. 

I am very pleased with the results. I am tempted to try shellac-ing this cloth tape in the future to water-proof it. However, I am reluctant to do it so far as the tape overlaps the porous wound steel gear cable housing that the shellac might gum up.

I still need to buy a new saddle for it. Currently I am debating between my beloved Selle San Marco Concor Super Corsa in white suede or a Kashimax Five Gold 4p in patent gold. I will also be buying it some new tires colored either brown or blue and some new pedals (most likely MKS Sylvan Touring pedals).

I'm not Always This Sad; But I'm Never This Happy.

I wish I still smiled like that.

Cruising old comic books recently I came across these advertisements for bicycles.

It seems Sears had discovered the streamline school of design about 50 years later than the automotive and motorcycling industries and (appropriately?) applied it the bicycle. "It looks like it's moving even when it's standing still." The kids seem thrilled with it though.

This next one came out of an issue of Barbie's comic book autographed by the cover artist. A friend of mine told me she earned it modeling as a Barbie for F-A-O Swarz in the third grade. I believe there may have been some gender confusion with regards to this ad's placement as it is obviously a boy's bike.

It is my sincere opinion that this particular model, Dr. Shock, may very well qualify for the worst fenders ever put on a bicycle. In this same issue Barbie herself rode down from her ivory tower of class and refinement, displaying all of her equestrian prowess and talent for high-living, to confront a lowly bicyclist and interrogate him about the location of a lost horse.

I think the subtext of class warfare is absolutely overt here, especially in Barbie's accusatory tone. The message is clear Barbie, the baroness of industry, cannot pedal a bicycle like the rest of the rabble so she must die. She must lose all of the symbols of her materialism: like her pink Corvette and Jeep, her Mansion, and that kept house-boy Ken. All of Barbie's writers and artists were obviously communists and I hope there subversive work was exposed in time to save the minds of our darling daughters.

I also found a bit of nostalgia in an Archie comic. One of those old child-labor fund-raising scams where you were supposed to sell crap for cool stuff.

This looks suspiciously like my elementary school bike which makes me think it must have been completely worthless if they were giving it to kids for peddling their trash.

This skateboard looks like a hot ticket though.

Later that day after giving me these comic books my friend, the Barbie doll model, accompanied me to a tool store. Wandering through the store she informed me that a childhood friend of hers had died at 13 inflating a bicycle tire when a air compressor tank blew up. She is apparently full of strange stories.

I purchased a new grease gun to re-pack hubs with:

On the left next to the cone wrench.

It was $5 and it works great so long as you hold it upside down.

Old Lives and New (Old Stock) Beginnings.

I drove down to Baton Rouge this past weekend hoping to get to ride in Critical Mass but it was rained out; such is my luck. While I was there I did get to have dinner with friends from my old life that I am gradually being disintegrated from by distance and time; a depressing reminder of how much I cared for South Louisiana which has only ever broken my heart for loving it so much. On the upside I did buy a new bike there. It is a NOS Raleigh Super Grand Prix from the 70's.

I found its soft blue quite beautiful and can now rely on the ease and in-expense of its clincher rims the next time the Franklin blows a tubular. The Raleigh actually only cost the equivalent of 6.6 tubular tires ($200). I have only test rode it so far. I will be doing some serious work to it before I take it out on the road. The wheel bearings are grinding like a couple of dry-humping teenagers so I will be overhauling both hubs. It came geared for Alpine inclinations not the humble hills of Highland so I purchased a smaller 5-speed freewheel.

New 14-28 on the left stock 14-38 on the right.

I had intended to buy a small IRD freewheel geared 13-24 but none of the shops in town carried or could order one so I settled for the SunRace pictured above. I am also no fan of exposed brake cables so I ordered some new Jagwire braded steel casing to run like a backbone down the top-tube to the rear brake with the help of these beauties:

Campagnolo brake housing clips.

I found these and the braided steel casing at Scooter's bike shop on Shreveport-Barksdale highway. I'll also be changing the bar-tape to a lighter color and eventually ordering a new saddle when I can afford it. It should be a wonderful bike.

Antiques Road(bike)show; Old Beat-Up Saddle Edition.

At an estate sale a week ago in the Spring Lake neighborhood of Shreveport I happened upon a bike saddle who's brand, Vetta, I was previously unfamiliar with. It had a pretty good shape and seemed reasonably cushioned so I decided to part with the two dollars listed on its price tag just in case I needed it for a later bike project.

The model is Carrera I've done no research as to its pedigree online, but I tried it out today and I was impressed. It is remarkably similar to the expensive ($100, but worth it) Selle San Marco Concor Super Corsa that I normally ride and adore.

I wish I could have seen the bike that it came off but there were no bikes at the sale; I may have gotten there too late. Now all I need is another road bike to put it on. On a side note, I haven't been lax; I am still hard at work on my bicycle helmet:

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being, Why I Can't Leave (a) Well-Enough (helmet) Alone.

As an individual I thrive on motion (which may very well be why I ride bikes). I cannot sleep in silence, dislike swimming in still water, and I cannot read/study without the boisterous activity and noise of a coffee shop around me. I think that it is these attributes that have left me with an aversion to monochromatic color schemes as well. Throughout the years whenever I obtain something new, if it has a solid uni-color surface on it, I have stenciled it: motorcycle helmets, cell-phones, a decorative wheelchair, skateboards, etc. Recently, as a gift, I received a bicycle helmet. I do not normally ride with a bicycle helmet, but many charity rides require that one wear them for insurance purposes and I've never seen fit to spend what little money I have on a helmet. So, for the sake of my inclusion in these rides it was a good gift but far too plain for my taste. It was all white and I set out almost instantly searching for stencils to my taste that I could deface it with. Almost immediately, while google searching for a Virgin de Guadalupe stencil, I somehow found this treasure:

Leatherface of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame. Though, I had been looking for a classic icon of The Virgin, I knew immediately that there was to be no better stencil for the back of my helmet than Leatherface's intimidating visage. I got to work.

And here was the end result:

I have been well pleased with the outcome. The painter's tape bled here and there a little but the overall effect was perfect. I do also have two other rather large areas to cover on the helmet (the temple areas of the head round about) before it is completely street ready. I spent over an hour trying to make a stencil of my own out of a photograph of the face of the Predator, but failed miserably. I also recommend Stencilry.org as a good resource for stencils of famous faces, various animals, and movies, etc as well as providing excellent how-to tutorials.

Ringing in the New Year in Glorious Monaural Sound.

I have not confessed this here before but I am a dedicated NPR listener. And somewhere buried deep amongst my life goals is the desire to one day have a story on This American Life; which is my favorite radio show (though I do also greatly enjoy Car Talk). I had been enjoying this pastime either listening in my truck or on a small digital Sony radio I had originally bought for the gym (it was also my sole means of news gathering in the days following hurricane Katrina which was a unique experience to share another day). Like all newer digital pocket radios it used the headphone wire as its antenna. Which for the TV FM-transmitters at the gym was just fine. For indoor talk radio listening, however, it was often too staticky and needed to be set at an unbearable volume to make any channel's speech intelligible. In search of better reception I spent an entire day researching antiquated radio technology and learned: that dipole antennas have the best FM reception but are apparently unavailable for pocket radios; that monaural radios are much better at reproducing speech than stereophonic ones; and also that I needed to invest either in a very expensive Sangean digital pocket radio or get a pocket radio with a better antenna (which in hind-site seems rather elementary). Then, I went shopping and found this amazing monoaural analog pocket radio still being made by Sony.

It was only $10 and with it's excellent reception, built in speaker and throwback style I have become quite enamored of it. I have not even bothered to listening to it by earphone yet as the built in speaker works so incredibly well. I just throw it in my shirt pocket and get on with my business. I have to also admit that even for music stations the monaural sound is wonderful, and for me a bit nostalgic. It reminds me of the radio in my first car a 1964 Mercury Comet, that was all mid-range. I do know that in many audiophile circles, where people still bother to listen to music on vinyl, monaural musical recordings are sworn by and I think now I know why. I was so taken with this radio that I wanted to protect it like the great consumers of old in our country. So I sought to make a carrying case for it like I had seen on transistor radios from many decades ago when they were so expensive they were expected to and needed to last. I bought some heavy vinyl fabric, made a template, and got down to it. Here is the end result:

I am not too ashamed of it as it is only my first try. I hope to improve upon it by switching to fabric snaps to fasten it rather than stitching it together and fastening it with a sewn on button as in this prototype. I also hope to fabricate more than one so that I may have some color/style to choose from. I will post any further accomplishment.

The Slow Boat to China; the long decline of the American small business.

This once proud edifice,

this eviscerated facade is but the latest casualty in America's century old psychomachia; the struggle between old wealth and small business ownership.

It was implied in the struggle of World War I. Most anyone fighting or losing a family in that struggle believing we only entered into it for economic reasons; to secure the return on loans that wealthy New York bankers (the House of Morgan) had made in Western Europe. It was on the lips of nearly everyone Jon Dos Passos interviewed on the home front during World War II for State of the Nation. Everyone at home in factories amping-up war production knew that the government, in its legislation of the day, was colluding to kill private business ownership. It was built into the very design of the interstate system; to bypass small towns and dry them up, to restrict gasoline sales to adjacent large corporate-owned  fuel stations, to concentrate wealth and main-line it back to a well established hierarchy (the 1% of our population who are obscenely rich). It is the contradictory truth to the deceit of Reaganonomics; that rather than the rich paying it back down when they get richer they merely consolidate it into larger estates and pass it on in trust funds to their descendants. It is the enormous unstopped drain known as Wal Mart preying on our rural communities and sending all their money in a flood back to Arkansas. It is within the bull-shit we're sold everyday on the news when we're shown the Wall Street indexes as the best indicator of the nation's economic health, rather than median income and employment rates. And within the self denial that let all of the middle class believe this past decade that since Wall Street was making a killing their standard of living must be going up in parallel (when in reality their income remained the same and they had only fictitiously increased their standard of living with credit). Our nation is (probably) irrevocably stratified economically and it is a structure only reinforced by our laws and government.

I have been friends for a long time with the family that owned Nanking. Their story is not completely tragic, as both of the family's daughters are grown and embarked on careers of their own and the parents have been ready to retire for a while. It had been managed by two generations already, but the daughters were not encouraged to carry it on. Which I believe is strongly indicative of the state of private business ownership in this country. I'm sure had it seemed like a healthy financial future one of the daughters would have ended up running the restaurant for several more decades. Still I can't help looking at the remnants of that building (which is supposed to be gone entirely by next week) and know that one more of our last, great hold outs against fast food chains and Big Business has died and I'll never have its delicious home-made bread again. And with that thought our community grows a little colder, a little more corporate.

The monster eating.

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.