Like the Weather

I have a small amount of momentum going with biking this year, but I also have new rules as far as what type of weather is suitable for riding. By that I mean, I'm 49 years old, I've acclimated to the heat of the south, so I am not riding in weather under 50 degrees. 

The upside of this is that I am back in the routine of asking myself almost every day "is it nice enough to ride?" That is a step in the right direction even though it is tough during the winter when the answer is almost always "no." 

Physically I'll never get back to previous "performance" levels. But mentally I'm beating the excuses that kept me from riding in 2019. I guess I am having "marginal gains" as Team INEOS (formerly team Sky) would put it.

Wednesday of next week I am getting a Heart Catheterization procedure. This is, from what I am told, a fairly routine procedure that allows the doctors to examine more closely what is happening with my heart by inserting a tube through an artery in my arm or leg, and injecting a special dye that will allow them to see blood flow blockages in real time. I have been told that if they detect blockages that are bad enough, they will install stents to open those blockages.

My first question was, "will it give me more energy?"
The answers I've gotten so far say no. These answers were from both the actual doctor that will be performing the work, and from a few people I know who have one or more stents in their heart having been through the same procedure. The way it will work from what I understand, is that my heart may work more efficiently after the procedure, which could extend my lifespan. In other words, with my congestive heart failure, my heart is only moving 60% of the capacity of blood it is supposed to. If I have stents installed, it most likely will still only move that percentage, but will work a little less hard doing it.

I am writing this based only on what I have been told, my next step is a deep dive into information about the procedure and its affects.

In other  news, I retaped my road bike bars with white tape. Stupid tape had no adhesive. Oain in the neck.

Tracer Finn Boosting a One Hander

The caption says one handed 360 degree aerials but I don't think that is what Tracer Finn is doing in this picture. Regardless that photo is great because it shows a unique angle and direction of travel. He is absolutely boosting it for a jump from this particular era. More and more I am liking the classic era of BMX these days when it really was about imitating what was happening in actual Motocross. Sooner or later I'll do a Bob Hannah appreciation post and hopefully find a bunch of pics of BMX riders doing "Hannah's"

Montgomery Ward - Open Road BMX Shaped Object

Just remembering this "Open Road" BMX bike sold by Montgomery Ward. It was a fall day and my dad took me to Golden Ring Mall to see a movie. I'm not 100% sure but I want to say it was "Hangar 18" which was about the government covering up a collision that the Space Shuttle had with an alien spacecraft or something. If I remember correctly later in life I'd get flashbacks of the parallels between Hangar 18 and the Roswell UFO crash tale, in particular the Blue Room, which was supposedly the room where the aliens were kept, and was later memorialized by the sound system called The Orb. All of this is very loose as far a memories go.

Anyway, back to the bike. Before the movie we took a stroll through the MonkeyWards and went to the bike section. Dad knew I was going to ask for a bike for Christmas becayse I -always- asked for a bike, so I guess he figured he would get ahead of the game, and let me pick out the exact one I wanted. This was not the exact one I wanted. This one is:

Unfortunately this was out of our price range. In fact at this point in my life I had never even been to a real bike shop and seen a Redline in real life. But on this particular day it didn't matter, I was stoked that I at least got to pick out the exact bike I wanted from the row of stingray clones and ten speeds. This was the only thing even close to what I needed. Boy was I happy when he walked up to the counter and put it on lay-away!

The next few months were torture, waiting for Christmas day and my new ride. Soon enough the day came and I couldn't wait to take out my new bike and check out the other new bikes that all the neighborhood kids had gotten. Whether mine was nicer or not I was sure I was the only one with this model.

Overall, I had a blast on this bike, thrashing the bejeezus out of it until some point about mid summer when I cracked the rear Lester Allow Mag. This was an interesting failure...the bike would still roll, but it made a noise that said "when this thing finally fails completely, you are gonna end up bloody and hurt. I listened to that message and soon enough traded something or other for some spoked wheels from Crazy Gary, the neighborhood tinkerer and electronic genius.

Ended up getting a bit more lifespan out of it and of course as it grew closer to Christmas I started thinking about what I was going to replace it with, so it soon faded into oblivion like a zillion bikes before and after. Now that I'm, older it is very easy to see that this thing was most likely made in the same factory as the Huffy Pro Thunder series. Open Road, you were not the best bike I the world but I'm fond of the times we had together.

2020 Olympics Tokyo Cycling, BMX & Skateboarding Mascots!

Ladies and gentlemen, here are your 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics Cycling, Mountain Biking, BMX Racing and BMX Freestyle mascots!

BMX RACING

BMX FREESTYLE

ROAD CYCLING

TRACK CYCLING

MOUNTAIN BIKING

SKATEBOARDING

How freakin' awesome are these? I love them. Share this post!

Beer Bottle Opener Project - Monty the Rat

There is a bracket on my beach cruiser rat bike which originally held a reflector. Said reflector was removed within minutes of rescuing the bike, but the bracket has just sat there ever since. So I decided to try putting it to good use by hacking a regular old bottle/can opener combo.

First I bought the opener.

Sawed off the parts I didn't need. Notice the twist at the bottom. I used a vice to squash the twist out

Next I used the vice and a hammer to bend it to the shape I needed. 

Here is a view of the bracket on which the opener would be mounted

Next I drilled out the hole for the nut and bolt. This was probably the most tricky part. We have a drill press, but there wasn't a good way to clamp the opener that would allow proper hole placement. So the first hole was a bit of a compromise, and ended up not working at all. I gave it a second try, which included unbending part of the L shape for the drill chuck to have better vertical access. I didn't take the time to grab a pic of the drill press and clamp mechanism, but I assure you, this was the sketchiest part of the whole job. The drill press itself is fine, but my clamp mechanism was not pretty. IN the end it worked. Filed down the flash left over from the drill operation then headed to Home Depot and grabbed the bolt, flat washer, lock washer and nut I needed. Below is a pic of the finished result.

Next I tested it using a glass bottled Coke. Unfortunately it did not work as well as I would like. I had to work the bottle at an angle which made me end up spilling a bit out of the top once the cap came off. I also don't like that this particular opener ended up looking just like a reflector bracket! So, I am considering this opener version 1.0, and will continue working to refine both the look and functionality. All in all it was still a fun way to spend an hour or two and I literally spent less than $6.00 on the whole rig. Just want to get a version dialed in enough to work well for Southern Surf Stomp 2018.

Vintage BMX Nutbuster Pad Action

Installed a California Lite Perry Kramer Signature single stem pad on Monty the cruiser. I think I'm going to get a top tube pad also. Before and After pics below.

Monty the RatCruiser Updates - Tires, Seat Clamp, Rim Strip

Got some new tires for Monty, my beach cruiser rat rod build. He is starting to look pretty sharp now.

Two days after throwing the new tires on the rear was flat. I was pretty sure the issue was the old, crunchy rim strip. Once I got the tube out I was able to confirm that there is a single spoke that is poking out the bottom of the spoke nipple just enough to be an issue if the rim strip didn't do its job, which it did not. There is a lot of rust inside the rim, so before I put the new, wider cloth rim tape on, I took some time to remove all of the rust I could and gave it a decent cleaning to remove any residual particles. Hopefully that will do the trick.

Bpnus Level! My new Dia-Compe 2 piece seat clamp arrived today, so I was able to throw that on as well. Pork Chop threw in a rad hot wheels logo mash up sticker too. Clamp installed in about 2 minutes. The old school bmx parts continue to add personality to this build. I think so any way. 

Here you can see the clamp installed. But what I really want you to look at is the flat bracket behind the clamp with a home in it. Believe it or not, when I found the bike, this bracket did nothing but hold another bracket which held a reflector, which I removed during the decluttering process. The new plan for this bracket is to use it to mount a beer bottle opener, wich I'm in the process of sourcing. Once I get the actual opener, I plan to do some minor fabrication work to install it the way I want. Stay tuned rock stars!

Getting Microscopic with Curb Dog Maurice Meyer

Let's examine this classic Bob Osborn photo. You know Bob. He ran a magazine called Bicycle Motocross Action. We can talk about that later.

For now though, let's get microscopic this 1984 photo of Maurice Meyer of Curb Dogs fame, going full on back to basics style with a straight up front endo, most likely at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. That is the end of the obvious stuff.

The first oddity you may see are the brake levers. They look all motocross-ey, like they came off a dirt bike. Let me decode them for you. He is running Dia-Compe Tech 3's, but he has added a few mods. First off is the red plastic tubes that are squeezed onto the lever portion. I had these things on a bunch of bikes. They basically beef up the overall diameter of the actual lever, which makes for a bit more comfortable and thus tighter pull. Next he is running some kind of rubber dust/dirt guard over the top most portion of the lever and the clamp. These accesories probably did come from motocross. Never ever ever seen this exact model marketed to bike riders. Terrycable had something similar, a flexible plastic guard that just sort of flapped over the middle of the lever and clamp.

Working downward we have the CW bars and number plate. I've seen racing number plates used for freestyle by putting your actual name on the front, but this is the first and only time I've seen one used to promote a "crew". Yeah man, SF guys always future forward.

He is riding a Kuwahara racing frame (1984 was just before every company in the world came out with a dedicated freestyle model) and running a Hutch tall headset lock. Maurice gave it a personal touch with the MM initials under the head tube sticker.

The dual color Dia-Compe MX 1000 brakes are an interesting detail that may have snuck past you though. This was a common mid eighties mod where you got a front and rear brake, each two different colors, and took them apart, then reassembled them half one color, half the other. Easy Peasy! If you took the time to do that you probably also took the time to put lubrication between the brake arm contact points, and all of the associated washers and spacers. This made the already strong classic brake set work even better. After a while I started using 900's instead of 1000's. The only difference was the tire clearance, the 900's were smaller. Ah, the good old days before V-Brakes. I hate V-brakes.

Did you notice that he is running a Cycle Pro Snakebelly tire on the front? Ha...he has it mounted backwards.

The whole rig is "pre-potts mod" which means he can only turn the handlebars a certain amount before the front brake arm rams into the frame. Potts, which allowed the front brake cable to route through a hollow stem bolt, and allowed turning the bars 360 degrees, hadn't been invented yet and we were quite a way from rotors/gyros at this time. Don't let that stop you, Maurice didn't.

That's pretty much all there is except I'm wondering if the guy on the PK Ripper behind and to the right of him is Brian Scura. I'm not trying to hate on Brian Scura but he is a guy who was able to make an already "safe" sport so sanitized that...well I don't even know how to explain it. Actually I can explain it but I'll make that an individual post, because this one is already long enough.

V-Brakes Suck. There I said it.

Bicycle V-brakes are such garbage.

Any bike system where one of the components is called a "noodle" shouldn't exists simply because of said noodle.

I've been trying to look up who the actual inventor of the first set was but so far no luck. Anyway, brake designs previous to v-brakes were already working very well, so long as you knew how to properly set up and adjust them. Then at a certain point about like 10 or so years ago, seemingly out of nowhere the v-brake was on everything. I want to know why.

Why would something with such a crappy, bad, ridiculous, ugly design, with no sigificant leap in performance, and a huge PITA factor for regular, non-bike mechanic people to adjust, suddenly become an industry standard?

Oh let's put out a brake system that anyone who has ever worked on a spring tensioned system could look at from a mile away and see that you're never going to get the adjusted properly while having them actually look centered. Pick one or the other. The offset on where the noodle ends creates a situation where in order to be adjusted properly the spring tension has to be uneven on either side. Dumb. Since you can't begin asymetrically adjusting the spring tension until the actual cable is tightened, once you get them centered, one arm is always in a different position than the other. Always.

Some of you tough guys might want to get on here and talk about how you can get them centered perfectly, but you're not going to convince me. Even if you think you're the v-brake master and -claim- to be able to get the centered and symmetrically aligned (which you'll never get me to believe), it still doesn't take away that it is a badly designed system that makes you work three times as hard to get results that were easily achievable with previous designs.

Anyway, I have been out of the bike industry since 1995, so obvs I don't know what the heck went on between then and now, but I do know that someone somewhere had to do a helluva job selling v-brake technology as the "new big thing". Maybe it started with some custom manufacturer making really nice ones, and the big manufacturers all copycatted it. Maybe vice-versa. If you know, please tell me. It smacks of someone trying be -different- by fixing something that wasn't broken.

Yes I know that disc brakes have replaced v-brakes on down to all but the lowest end bikes. That still doesn't excuse the years of embarassing industry wide adoption of a failure of a system. So Mote It Be.

Beach Cruiser Klunker / Rat Rod Project pt.2 - Seat & Chain

It was pretty funny to find that I did not have a seat rail clamp amongst all the parts I have laying around. Well, not really I guess....during the BMX days they were always around because they came with the seat, so if you didn't toss your old seat you would always have a clamp. I think we had an entire drawer of them at the bike shop that we removed as people would replace their seats. I DID have a seat though. Here is some before and after action.

I hit up Pork Chop BMX for a sweet inexpensive gold chain. I was pretty concerned that it was not going to fit the 53/20 gearing, since it was only 112 links, but it actually fit! I had to remove 2 links. Also I was pretty stoked that I was able to set it up without a master link. Who needs master links? Here is a before (with chain guard), before (without chain guard), and after + after close up.

The gold chain is the first component I think is giving it sort of some visual rat rod realism, as it is obvs a brand new component on an otherwise heavily patina-ed drivetrain. Now that the chain is installed the bike is actually rideable, so I took it for a quick spin up and down the driveway. My coaster brake repair if working GREAT and will probably get even more dialed in over time. Believe it or not, the cranks are running fine, so I have not yet overhauled the inners. One other cool thing that is happening is the bike is starting to solid up...meaning that when you lift it up a few inches and drop it, there are a LOT less rattles.

More to come!