Tanned Hides and The Cold Shoulder.

I spent Memorial Day in New Orleans celebrating our servicemen by almost going to the D-Day Museum only turned away literally mere feet away when an NPR report came on about how busy the place was with a "record-breaking crowd."  Instead I indulged in some pure old fashioned American consumerism which is probably just as good an homage to our brave heroes and the American way of life.

I started it off on Oak St., now a beautiful example of post Katrina resurgence. In my pre-hurricane memories it was a sparsely business-ed street book-ended by the great Rue De La Course built in the marble husk of a bank on the corner of Carrollton and a (word of mouth) popular Asian restaurant, Ninja on the levee end. I would spend beautiful Saturday mornings there with an easily bored LSU med-student girlfriend that, in spite of everything, I still cherish today. A good Saturday morning, a cheap one held in the afterglow filled with (beignets which are not offered at  Rue De La Course and) good coffee is a far sweeter and more romantic thing than any expensive hotel or exotic vacation. The street is better paved now, it's roughness gone the way of the high water mark lost to reconstruction; new drywall and hot asphalt. It feels like there are more businesses there now: a comic book shop, another cool new coffee shop (Zotz), a dollar store, a bicycle shop, etc. There are even new condos; and many of these things could pre-date the storm they just aren't in my memory of it. The street is now in possession of  its very own Brooks Saddle dealer, Wallingford Bicycle Parts.

I had never been to the store in my past wanderings on this street, but had tried before on two previous trips. It is a small unassuming white storefront with an oval sign you have to be on the look out for. I was reluctantly received and shown B17 specials in Honey, Racing Green and Black. I adored both the Honey and Racing Green colors but thought the green ill suited to the light blue of my Raleigh. If I owned a Surly Pacer however there would have been no question of my preference. I looked at some Swifts and Swallows too but found them prohibitively expensive. While I was there I could not help but feel I had inconvenienced them by walking in; it is obvious by the minuscule counter front customer space that most of their business is done online and the sole associate I had interaction with seemed pressed for time. I bought a B17 special in Honey to support them anyway. It must be said of the Brooks Saddle that it does come stylishly packaged.

Supplied with its own spanner

and a rain cover.

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.

Injured Vanity and Chapped Lips.

I have been in San Francisco this week.

Using Bikes and the City as an informal guide I have found my way to several coffee venues and a group ride, The Butter Lap.

college roommate

 

The group was small enough and reasonably friendly; reassuring me that the ride would be "relaxed" and "casual." After a twenty minute wait we were off.

We began to fall back very early on.

the last we saw of the group

This is what happens, you come out West trying to help your friend mend a broken heart and end up getting dropped like an old lady a mile in on the first hill at Fort Mason. 

My friend was struggling more, but he's no cyclist. My second excuse would be to try and blame the hybrid bikes we had rented  (hybrids are the bane of my aesthetic existence within bicycling). Maybe my eyes were so sore from looking at the ugly things that I just couldn't pedal fast enough. It was simply a pathetic display on our part. We embarrassed ourselves and our community and in the end all I could do was take these (tourist-y) dusk photos: 

and roll over to Safeway for some Chapstick to balm my heart now broken by these latest failures...or at least my lips anyway.

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.