See the original on YouTube.
Carbon fiber has a far better reputation than it did when I was building the titanium Yellow Maserati, but I still avoid it (link goes to the site at Busted Carbon, although I doubt any carbon-fiber fans will click on it). It turns out that Francis Cade, who's far from a retrogrouch like me, posted a video with expert opinion on parts that should not be carbon fiber.
I'm stickin' to my opinion: I don't ride no plastic bikes.
On a recent ride, several of the Insane Bike Posse were discussing how many bikes we had. The range was pretty wide: one rider has, I think, nine (Edit: I've been informed the number is five). I was the low end; I have two: the Krakow Monster, my gravel/monstercross bike, with two-inch-wide tires, built on a heavy steel Surly Cross Check frame; and the Yellow Maserati, my titanium road bike.
Knowing about my love for mechanic work, and for the beautiful lugged-steel frames, my co-riders found this hard to believe, but it’s true: I don’t have any other bikes. (We’re not counting the road bike and the hybrid that my wife has; I don’t ride those.) So the next question was about my parts collection.
I thought I had about seven wheels that were not attached to bikes (I just checked; there are actually nine, and two rims that haven't been built up into wheels yet), along with:
None of this includes the tubes, cable, and housing that I keep for my mechanic business.
The sense of the meeting was that these do not count as an additional bike, because there’s no frame to hang them on. But it did provide a way to start this post, which has been percolating for a long time (as you'll be able to tell by its inordinate length).
I’m friends with a rider who has a collection of bikes, mostly steel-framed, all Italian, all beautiful. They are lovely machines. I could probably afford a bike like that, but, given the limited space I have, I’m going to forgo owning one.
Other riders maintain their bikes, or collections, to have the lightest bikes, or the latest-and-greatest components (these are not always the same as the lightest!), or what the winningest pros ride. Or to have bikes for every different kind of riding they do, or ever might consider doing.
Those aren’t my interests. My bikes, and the parts I’ve collected, are really about bikes that are affordable – about a balance between cost and performance.
The titanium frame I got is a brand you’ve probably never heard of (the decals were ugly and started to wear off, so I removed ‘em). My first road bike was an aluminum Giant with a carbon-fiber fork. The fork got a scratch, and, in those days, carbon fiber had a reputation for “catastrophic failure”: breaking suddenly (often without warning), possibly causing injury to the rider. (The website at "busted carbon" hasn't been updated in more than a decade, but it was scary at the time...)
I replaced the fork with a steel fork…
...and then decided I could build up a bike myself, starting with the components from the aluminum bike, and swapping out the parts bit by bit until I had the bike I wanted. I found the titanium frame for less than $1000, with geometry and measurements I could deal with (I knew a lot less about bike frame geometry than I do now; I was lucky that the frame worked out for me as well as it did) (and the frame is still available for about $1400; some of the older model are still at the original price).
The groupset I used was a SRAM Rival set, on which I got a great price. After a few years, the shifting started getting dodgy, and I replaced it with the Gevenalle set I have now, which places modified downtube-lever shifters outside the brake levers. They’re light and inexpensive, and they also change to friction-shifting mode, which I’ve been using for a few years (and they have a few other advantages, about which I’ll happily bend your ear if you give me the slightest provocation).
I’ve also tried the Sensah Empire 2x11 groupset, a mechanical groupset from a Chinese manufacturer, which I’ll put on my wife’s bike the next time her shifters need adjusting.
All of these groupsets are reasonably-priced, and they all work well. Now I see that even lower-end components for the big groupset manufacturers are going to electronic shifting. I think this will raise the entry price for bicycling… and I hate that.
All those parts I listed above? They’re mostly things I’ve tried (like the Sensah Empire set), or things I have in stock in case replacement parts for the bikes I currently have become unavailable. (My favorite saddle was a Specialized Body Geometry that the stopped making. I wore out two of ‘em, and only replaced the last one when I fell in love with the Selle Anatomica’s that I have on both bikes now. And since manufacturers either go out of business, or change models, I have a spare Selle Anatomica saddle in the box. I hate it that bike stuff just disappears.)
I’ve got no interest in upgrading to disk brakes, or electronic shifting, because I don’t want to have to buy the new frame to hang them on, and I don’t think they’ll make me a better rider. To me, they are additional expense, without improvement for the kind of riding I do.
I’ve been on more than one ride on which electronic shifting has failed due to batteries not being charged. I enjoy complaining about that, but that’s not a real reason to avoid electronic shifting. After all, I’ve also been on rides where mechanical shifters have had problems – for example, when cables have parted. My real objection to electronic shifting is the additional cost, without (as far as I can see) substantial additional benefit.
And I really have no interest in a carbon-fiber frame. I’ve been in discussion with someone who crashed on one, and who is considering having it sent for x-ray to see if there’s unseen damage that may cause one of those catastrophic failures to which I alluded earlier. I had a pretty bad crash in 2015 on the titanium bike. There’s a dimple in one side of the top tube that’s the only remnant of that mishap; I expect that the only reason I’ll have to get rid of this bike is when I’m physically unable to get a leg over it. I’ve worked on a number of other carbon-fiber frames: two of them have wear at the chainstays as if the tire had worn off the paint layer and was cutting into the plastic that holds the carbon fibers in place. Tapping with a coin does not show weakness on those frames, but I’ve not seen anything similar on metal frames. And I’ve seen what appears to be clearcoat and paint flaking off an older carbon frame. On a metal frame, this is just cosmetic damage. Are we sure that’s the case with carbon fiber?
When I bought my titanium frame, the seller said my grandchildren would ride it. He was unaware of my childless condition, but the case is still made.
It helps, too, that I like doing the bike mechanics. I don’t do that just to keep the bikes affordable (not with the amount of money I have invested in bike tools, truing stand, bike stand, various and sundry chemicals…), but it does mean I can do things for myself in order not to have to buy new much of the time.
I wrote a post some time ago about continuing to ride a bike you love. If you have beautiful bikes, and love to ride them… I hope you ride them forever and are very happy with them. If you love the latest-and-greatest gadgetry, or the stuff that the most successful pro’s use, and you have the financial wherewithal to support those habits (and let’s face it: among the people with whom I ride, many do!), then enjoy them.
But I think cycling should be available and enjoyable to people who are not wealthy (as I am not wealthy). My bikes and equipment will be affordable, based on my interest, abilities, and cashflow.
I hope there continues to be a place for them.
Edit 1/1/23: I just found (again) a post I wrote eleven years ago on more-or-less the same topic; at the time I called it "bicycle cheapskate".
For the past several years (except for a break for the COVID-19 debacle), The Princeton Public Library and the McCarter Theater have co-sponsored an event where readers join to read the entire text of Dickens' A Christmas Carol aloud (link to the 2022 event). The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I have done it several times. I was honored to be chosen as the first reader this year; I got to declaim, "Marley was dead, to begin with," and to drive home the 19th-century jokes with which Dickens peppered his manuscript. (The entire event is a time commitment of about three hours, but the story really is a great one to have read to you. While we could not this year due to other commitments, TEW and I have stayed for the whole thing in the past, and the variety in quality of the readers is part of the experience - yes, there are some halting and inexperienced readers, but there are great ones, and wonderful accents from many of the voices that make up Central Jersey. But you're also welcome to drop in and leave whenever you'd like.)
And one of my own personal traditions is to read the whole of A Christmas Carol for myself every December, and it reminds me that it's time to start.
The person who read after me was TEW, and the woman after her had this wonderful Indian accent (Hindu? Gujarati?). I have not heard Dickens played on that orchestra before, and it was novel and delightful... but THAT reminded me of one of my pet peeves: actors being credited with the lines they deliver. Judy Garland delivered the line, "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore*," but it was said by character Dorothy Gale, and it was written by the screenwriters (Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf**, or at least one of them).
Some actors are marvellously smart and verbal, and able to improvise (Devid Ogden Stiers apparently came up with the "...promises you don't intend to keep" line in the Disney Beauty and the Beast), and many others are clearly not. Those great quotes that you've been taking from movies are mostly written by uncredited writers, not the glamorous actors to whom you've been accrediting them.
I'll go back to Christmas Carol now. Cratchit, after all, needs to slide on the ice a few dozen times, and then run off to Camden Town to play Blind Man's Buff.
*NOT "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." Sheesh.
**How could a person with a name like that be anything OTHER than a writer?
Tom H invited a number of us on a pickup ride today, and I'm just not coming up with a blog post about it. The route was fine (it included a piece of the Trenton Trolley Trail, and I may steal a piece of it for a basic-level ride. Friend Laura OLPH said something about liking it better than my rides, I think because she didn't feel like she was dragging the group back (she worries about that on my rides, despite my trying to offer reassurance) (and I may have completely taken the wrong end of the stick on this; she'll let me know if I have). I hit a pothole hard on the Griggstown Causeway, and lost I light (that I was able to go back and recover) and had back pain from it for MILES.
We stopped at Thomas Sweet, about 3/4 the way through the ride (the late stop is a common practice on my rides, so I'm glad I'm not alone).
I got nothin'. Ride Page.
In China Miéville's The City and The City, there are two cities that occupy the same space (sort of; they are at least deeply intertwined with each other), but the citizens of one have nothing to do with the citizens of the other - it's a criminal offense to have dealings with the other city, and each group of citizens have developed ways of not seeing the other. (Go check out the Wikipedia article.)
(I've not read widely of the work of Mr Miéville, and all of the works I've read have problems, but no matter - go read Miéville; even with the flaws, the stuff is terrific.)
This ride was kind of like the cities in that novel. Twelve came out: seven were among Tom's Insane Bike Posse regulars, and five were faster folks who decided this was the best club ride on offer today. And the five faster folks went off the front (waiting at most of the turns for the rest of us), while the Insane Bike Posse regulars rode at our own pace, chatting, complaining, and cracking wise as we usually do.
Tom's 40-ish mile route (see the ride page) took us from Allentown down towards Fort Dix, and then to New Egypt where we stopped at the Charleston Coffee (forgive the lack of pics; it was cold, and I forgot). As with most of the rest of the ride, the faster folks had gotten there first and were getting coffee or whatever by the time we arrived.
(At one point, it was pointed out to me that I was ahead of the faster folks, which I was, but on the way back we were fighting a headwind, and when the fast riders got tired of the parade pace at which I was riding into the wind, they pulled around and showed me what they could do. Ahem.)
So by the end of the ride, a few of us in the back traded pulls into the headwind and made sure we all got back to the start.
Y'know, if some faster riders wanted to lead rides at their own pace, youse wouldn't have to shiver at those intersections while you're waiting for us to show up. Just sayin'...
I'm doing my best to be welcoming of LGBT&c. folks, transgender folks, nonbinary, and the like. I understand that gender and sex are different. I get that the world is just more complicated than some of us would like to think it is. (I won't say I'm good at, or comfortable with, this acceptance, but I'm doing the best I can.)
But my language hasn't caught up. I generally refer to associates, acquaintances, and friends, with the usage "honorific + last name": Mr White, Ms Black; when possible (and when I'm aware) Dr Blue, Professor Green, sometimes Counselor Brown, and so on.
But I don't know a non-gendered honorific, with widespread acceptance and comprehension, for a person who doesn't have a designation. I can refer to that person by first name (and am usually directed to do so), but first, it's unseemly (to me) to use first names in the occasional address of some people, and second, when I usually use the (to me) more formal "honorific + last name" construction, to call an individual by first name seems to imply a familiarity I do not want to project.
Sometimes I have tried the construction "Friend Grey", which also implies familiarity (I stole that from the Quakers, the Religious Society of Friends; some of their more staid members refer to everyone as "Friend Grey", in the belief that the single designation removes the hierarchy that the more formal titles convey [some Friends are deeply moved to treat all people as equals]). It's not ideal.
I could, of course, revert to calling people by first name. In modern America, it's the default. But I like the little distancing implied by the construction I use. I'm both socially inept, and somewhat snobbish and anachronistic (somewhat??!), so "honorific + last name" suits my desires.
It is, of course, likely of no importance to anyone but me. And I have more important things to which to attend (like actually treating people with acceptance and respect, including myself; I've got a huge portion of pretty privilege to manage, and one of the ways that works out is how my own aging - lines on the face, grey hair, my changing body - makes me uncomfortable allowing myself actions and attitudes that others appear to take for granted).
I need to think about this. (Or maybe, as one of my acquaintances has pointed out on other, similar issues, I'm already overthinking it.)
So after exhausting myself on a demanding ride yesterday*, I was not looking forward to the 38-mile "Annoying Hills" ride I'd scheduled for today (I gotta plan this stuff better), but there it was on the schedule, so I ran it.
*Note that I'm glad I did the ride yesterday; it was fun, I like the people I was out with, and the gathering afterwards was a delight. But I'm still tired from it.
The pics are from the start, and the stop at Thomas Sweet:
Ride page. Don't let the average speed fool you; I started out strong, but flagged, and the last bit was at an ambassadorial pace. On the subsequent ride home (which you don't get to see), I was getting passed by turtles, snails, and roadkill.
I need to take some time for wrenching instead of riding.
This post has been percolating for a while.
Twice over the past few weeks, I’ve talked to people who had bikes they loved to ride… but weren’t riding. In one case, the rider didn’t like the downtube shifters on his older bike, but love the way the bike rode and the way it fit him. He didn’t know that a new groupset could be fitted to this older bike.
In the other case, the rider had a big-name custom steel-frame bike hanging in the garage, that he said he loved to ride… but he’d gotten a lighter, carbon-fiber bike, and now rode that most of the time. He didn’t like it as much, and was thinking of updating the groupset on the custom steel-frame bike so he could ride it more.
This second rider, especially, makes me stop to think. I wonder how many have bikes we love, that we don’t ride, because we’ve bought a new bike with the latest-and-greatest. Sometimes, I think, riders feel they “have” to ride the new bike to justify the cash outlay.
There are people who have the financial situation and the space to have a stable of bikes. That’s great, for those who can do it. But many of us only have two or three bikes, and if that’s the case, then I think we should make sure the ones we love most are the ones we ride most.
Bicycles are modular. Parts and groupsets can be swapped out, and parts are available to make newer standards work on older bikes. If you’ve got an older bike you love, and would like to ride it more, talk to someone who knows something about the mechanicals; it’s likely that it’s possible to upgrade the bike with newer parts to improve (and modernize) your riding experience.
I have two bikes: a road bike with a titanium frame, and a monstercross bike with a steel frame. I like the steel frame bike well enough… but I love the titanium bike; I ride it twenty times for every time I take out the other bike. I’ve been thinking about why I like the titanium bike so much, and a few things come to mind:
It fits me really well. I’ve been riding it for more than a decade, and I’ve fooled around with saddle height, saddle setback, bar height, stem length, crank length, and anything else I can think of; when I go on my solo rides, I have the wrenches with me to make adjustments, and I do (well, not often anymore, because it mostly dialed-in). It’s not the lightest bike (especially since I usually carry six pounds of water and seatbag gear), but I can ride for hours because of the fit. I’m not the fastest rider you’ve ever seen, but I can go up a hill pretty well.
It’s a neutral color. The frame is unpainted titanium; the other appointments are black and silver. Do I want to try some bar wrap in a screaming green? Can I get a good deal on a reddish-purplish saddle? Do I want to hang colored bandannas from the saddle? There’s no color on the bike to clash. (It helps, of course, that I have a lousy color sense; a more sensitive rider might be horrified!)
I change something on it fairly regularly, so it often feels like a new bike. I’m currently experimenting with the Sensah Empire 11-speed indexed groupset (at 400-or-so miles, it’s behaving very well indeed). That’s the fourth shifter setup I’ve had on it, and I expect in another 100 miles or so, I’ll go back to my Gevenalle 10-speed group, because I can set that up with friction shifting, which I like better than indexed shifting*. I recently changed the handlebar to an 80’s-era Cinelli Campione del Mondo (its third set of bars), after the no-longer-available Velo-Orange bar I had kept slipping in the stem. I’ve changed wheels, cranks, pedals, saddles.
(*Don't conflate friction shifting with downtube shifters. Friction shifters can also be on the bar ends, or, as on y Gevenalle set, on the brake levers.)
I can understand the folks who have a classic bike, and want to keep it all-original. But I can’t understand the people who have a bike they love… and ride something else most of the time.
Andrew A is back from Ithaca!
Rick W picked us up in Kingston.
My intention was to do a route down to Kingston, then back up to Millstone for a stop at the Sunrise Deli, then up to Schoolhouse Road, before heading straight back to Claremont School. The toilet at the Sunrise has always been a bit iffy, so we made a point of offering potty stops (Dave refers to it as "looking for his golf ball") at a number of places along the route.
It's a good thing we did; the Sunrise Deli is now closed on Sundays.
We stopped there anyway, and a couple of our number headed around to a local gas-station-with-convenience-store for some quick food. I didn't, and I felt it at the end; I was DFL heading into the parking lot.
But all the riders seemed to have enjoyed the ride, and we brought it in at the low-B pace that I've been aiming for. (It didn't hurt that many of the faster riders have found another, faster ride).
Since I've been home, though, I've been eating everything except the cabinet hinges. I've got to make a better plan.
This came up in one of my feeds:
...The field that grew out of this posture argued that there was nothing simple or straightforward about the way we consume a text. It’s always a negotiation, always more complicated than anyone on the outside might assume.
The problem, then, is that some people don’t want things to be complicated. They don’t want to hear people talk about why they like things, because if they listen long enough, it will challenge neat understanding of things that are “good” and “bad” — especially when it comes to children, or teens, or women. Those groups of people aren’t often trusted to know themselves well enough to articulate why something matters. Or, when they do, we simply don’t believe them.
I'm resisting the urge here to be sarcastic about the need to listen to children, teens, and women, because, as a male white Anglo-Saxon (used to be) Protestant, people too often take me seriously when I sarcastically downplay the rights of anybody who's not white, Anglo-Saxon, and male. (I'm an out-of-the-closet atheist, so people generally know when I'm getting ironic about religious idiots [not all religious people are idiots]).
I have family members who want to get back to what they consider the good old days, when there were only two sexes, and when everybody knew their place. Well, I'm sorry the world is more complicated than you think it is. I'm sorry that what you thought was promised to you because of accidents of birth is not materializing. I'm sorry that people who once hid in the shadows, who once ate only your parents' castoffs, are now demanding rights.
The world has changed. Catch up, or be lost. If you try to hold on to the corpse of the dead past, you will be defiled.
I don't know the original citation of the quote; I got it here.
A few of my riders are partisans of this Italian Bakery in Raritan, called "The Italian Bakery." Laura OLPH told me about it; I think a coworke206, r of hers used to ride there and told her. She and I traded possible routes for a bike ride until I came up with the one I used today. It's never gonna be anybody's favorite route: you have to ride for a bit on Route 206; then there's a mile or so of milled road (not because of upcoming construction, but to manage traction for when the area floods; and after the stop, there's several miles along Main Street in Somerville and Bound Brook.
But the partisans like to go, so I scheduled the ride for today. In the description, I mentioned the busy roads and the milled sections. I still got ten registrants (one had to cancel at the last minute).
I'm glad they all came, but could it be we need some better B-ride options on Sundays?
At the start, Tony G had another of his lovely bikes.
Above: I wasn't the only one smitten with Tony's bike.
Below: Eric saw the Muppet figurines that Laura carries on each of her (Muppet-eponymous) bikes, and thought it was a good idea to emulate when he saw this Superman in the Lego store.
Below (and at top), here we are after cutting through the Duke estate, just before getting to the bakery.
At the bakery:
Many thanks also to Tony G, who brought me an excellent groupset to build up into something. I didn't have my car, so I sent it home with Rickety, who promised to bring it when I see him again at the Bike Exchange on Thursday. I'm sure I can trust Rickety.
I hope.
(Yeah, that's pretty much the whole Cranbury B ride today, leavin' me in the dust.)
Laura OLPH's Hill Slugs, and Tom H's Insane Bike Posse (consisting of largely the same folks) usually have an email conversation going on late in the week about weekend riding (and other) plans. I didn't get an email this week... and figured I had been left out, because I'm active with a number of other club members and activities now, so the Slugs/Posse folks must have decided to go on without me.
So I registered for Dave H's Cranbury B ride, and then saw that Jack H and Bob N, both Slug/Posse members in good standing, would be on the ride. At the start, I went to visit them at their cars. I don't remember which of us said it first (it wasn't me), but one of 'em said, "I thought I was left off the email chain...". Bob thought it was because he'd been away so long, and Jack hadn't come up with a reason. So we laughed when we figured out we'd all had the same thought.
(I've been in touch with both Laura and Tom since. Tom bumped into a group of JSTS riders who plied him with a promise of ice cream [and who among us could resist such wily persuasions?], and Laura was Dealing.With.Family, an affliction to which I am particularly tender. We weren't left off the email chain, because the email chain was never started. It's a good thing I'm so good-lookin', because I'm none too bright.)
It was a great sunny day for a ride, though. At the start:
We did this route. Dave regularly allows the group to break into a fast group (which Dom C leads), and a slow group, of which I was part. I made a virtue of my slow pace by sweeping. (Yeah. I intended to do that all along. Honest. I did.)
We stopped at the Wawa.
On a hot day, with a fast ride like this. I gotta remember to eat and drink more, I was uncomfortable at the end. But we all got in, in good order. Dave gave me a sweep credit, which I will take, but I'm not sure I deserve!
Tomorrow, I'm leading a C+ ride, shorter and slower. I'll need it!
