high points bergen, morris, passaic ride

Some events are proofs of Murphy's law, or its many corollaries.

Tom H has been leading rides this season to hit the highest points in every county in NJ. The ride this weekend was to those in Morris, Passaic, and Bergen (the order in which we did them). Tom was honest in saying that this ride might "suck" (his term) because he hadn't been on these roads before, and didn't know their condition; he was going off the reports from Dustin Farnum's NJ Bike Map site. He said he hoped they wouldn't be too busy. He warned us that it would be a hilly ride; not many steep hills (more later), but there was very little flat.

The start was at Pompton Lakes Middles School, an hour away (or more) by car for those of us on the ride. We split into car pools; I rode up with Snakehead and his coworker John. John is a runner, but hasn't been on a ride this long since his teens, decades ago. (I was predicting dire things for John in my head, but he defied my dire predictions and did well.) When we got to the school, the parkiing lot had traffic cones, so we street-parked. Unpacking and setting up:

Above, John; below, Snakehead.

Jack came alone. Laura and Marco came together.

Below, Tom, the founder of the feast.

There was a sharp hill right at the start, and, on it, I had a recurrence of my brake bind from the previous day; I stopped to adjust the brake, but couldn't get started on the bike again and had to walk up the steep part of the hill. It wouldn't be the last time on this ride.

We continued; there was another steep spot... this time I had a brake bind on the other side. I opened the brake and decided to fix it at the stop. And walked up the steep part of the hill. (Hrmph.)

Roads had more traffic on them than we expected; they also largely did NOT have shoulders. The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I had been to visit a friend south of Philadelphia the day, and the traffic was heavy and anxiety-inducing both ways; I felt the anxiety return every time I looked in my mirrors and saw a parade of cars lining up behind us. (The mechanical problems with the bike didn't help.)

Off we went. We had to cross Rte 23, and to do so, we had to ride along it for a short way and cross at a jughandle. I did my usual Salve Regina chant, and we got across without incident. (I'm not claiming a cause-and-effect relationship, but there is, so far, a 100% correlation.)

We got to the high point of Morris, which was partway up a road to a higher crest (the road crosses the border between the counties). This road also had a steep part. I wound up dropping chains both outside and inside the cranks... and walked the bike up the steep part. I did a quick tighten of the limit screws, which has solved the problem, but I'm glad there wasn't any Xanax at the roadside, I would have been chomping them like M&M's.

(OK; I can see the chain drops on the outside after the recent rebuild; I changed the large ring. But why was the chain dropping to the inside? It's a mystery to me.)

Tom got his pictures of us, and I got my picture of Tom getting his picture of us.

We went back down and stopped at a deli, where Snakehead and I shared a sandwich, and I did some mechanical adjustments, and got some pics of the folks and the foliage.

Stopping for more pictures:

The Passaic high point is along another busy, no-shoulder road, at a bar-and-deli. Below, my pics:

We didn't stop there for a break; Tom said there was a bagel place further on that would make a better stop... but miles went by and we didn't see it. Instead, we stopped at a bar-and-deli (interesting combination!) we saw along the way.

I loved the juxtaposition of the two sets of bikes: the bar patrons' motorcycles, and ours, pedal-powered.

And about a half-mile later, there was the bagel place.

Then up to the Bergen high point. We climbed and climbed, traffic backing up behind us and passing when it could, with varying amounts of clearance space. At one point, Tom said there would be about 200 more feet of climb; it turned out to be more like 400 feet, and some of our number were shot; I got caught behind someone, and twice I was going so slowly that the GPS stopped registering forward motion. Only one pic at the top; the others didn't come out, perhaps because I was shaking so hard!

Tom said from there, it was all downhill, and it very nearly was: of the six miles remaining to the start, probably five miles was descent. At the bottom, some of us got more foliage pics.

It was a beautiful day for a ride, but it was difficult and anxiety-producing for me. I'm glad I went... but I'm glad I don't have to do it again.

too many pictures of ride from kim's oct 10

I have a commitment later, so I couldn't do an all-day ride today.  Snakehead has his new custom bike (pics below), which he wanted to show off. But his friend Rick also had an early commitment, so we kind of decided to do the early ride from Kim's today; they leave at 8 and usually get back by about 10 (and more so now that riders from the Rutgers club join us... they're speedy kids).

I've gotta leave by about 7 to get to the start on time; I met Rick there.

Soon others started coming.

Ed appeared, with his new custom from LoveBaum Cycles. Fillet-brazed, with a lovely custom seat-tube lug and custom paint... and, since it's Snakehead's, many of the latest gewgaws: electronic shifting, disk brakes, carbon wheels:

His initials worked into the seat-tube lug.

Scales in the paint detail. Nice, Snakehead.

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Yes, a rear rack (Tubus, of course), and yes, hammered fenders. I was sure they were Honjo, but the fenders are from the excellent Velo Orange.

But other folks are coming to join the ride.

(It was cold this morning, and it made me colder looking at that young man in his short-sleeve jersey and shorts!)

Above, the excellent Francisco. He's recovering from the flu.

Dave Kim showed up in civilian clothes and stepped into the shop, emerging a minute or two later with this:

Check out the huge downtube and the rear hub. It's an electric bike! He'll have no problem on the hills with that!

Off we headed (twenty of us!) to do the usual route. Along the way, we picked up a few more. We made the turn onto River Road, which I sometimes use to commute to work... I did it much faster on the bike than I usually do in the car!

Well, for part of the way, anyway. We do about 6-7 miles on River Road, and about four miles in, I started to slow down, I got chest pain, and I couldn't get up above about 15mph, and then started slowing more than that. I wondered if I'd "hit the wall", and if I'd be able to finish this ride, or ever ride a long ride again.

But when I could, I got off and checked. The rear brake was binding. It took two adjustments to fix, but when I did, I was back to speeding along again. Whew!

Those of us at the back caught up to the others after Colonial Park, and went at a vigorous pace to Blackwells Mills, where we stopped for the usual rest-and-gab:

Then up to the top of Coppermine. I was near the head of the group when we made the turn, and then about a dozen of those younger, faster folks whizzed past me as I was deciding whether to breathe or fall down. Shortly thereafter, Francisco passed me. I can safely say that I'm just a little slower than Francisco when he has the flu.

I got some pics of the folks gathering at the top of Copermine.

Then back, by the usual route, straight up 27. At How Lane, we had to wait for a funeral to cross. One of the riders, I think unfamiliar with the custom that funerals go through traffic lights, crossed the procession; there was nearly a collision (don't do that). But "nearly" isn't a crisis, and off we went to end the ride at Kim's.

Edit: D'OH! Forgot to include a link to the ride page!

fat guy across america

The Excellent Wife (TEW) forwarded to me this article from the New York Times about Eric Hites, a man who got up to almost 600 lbs. before he decided to do something about his life (according to the linked article, he'd lost his wife and was unemployable). He got a $17 bike and started going across the country.

His wife has joined him. The both still smoke, and they only go a few miles per day. But he's lost 70 lbs.

No, I don't want to ride with him (and he wouldn't want to ride with me). But he has my admiration.

He's got a blog he rarely updates.

Good on him.

new cassette

So after spending an hour yesterday cleaning the cassette (maybe it was forty minutes), I would up with a chain slip and had to put on a new one anyway.  Grump, grump, grump. Good thing I keep parts like that in stock.

Time to get a new one. If I can think of enough things to make an online order, I'll get it from Jenson; if not, I'll drop in at Kim's. (I should probably just get it at Kim's. They're probably starting to slow down for the season...)

annual breakdown & rebuild

Every fall, I take the Yellow Maserati, my titanium bike, down to parts and rebuild it, partly because the titanium can seize the other parts (although this is mostly a problem with titanium-on-titanium), partly to see if any problems are developing (more later), but mostly because I like to do it. This weekend is predicted cool and rainy, and the Ciclovia for tomorrow has been cancelled, so today was the day. Here's the bike on the rack with the wheels off:

One of the first things I do (because it's a thankless, dirty job) is take off the cassette and clean it. Here's the rear wheel with the cassette on, and the chain whip and wrench:

Beneath the wheel, you'll see a political poster; this one is corrugated plastic and it makes a great drop and parts-and-floor-protector. (It might be the best thing those two particular politicos are good for. Hrmph.)

After some heavy scrubbing and the judicious application of some toxic hydrocarbons, behold a cleaner cassette:

On to the cranks. I took them off to clean 'em up (and to have access to the bottom bracket). As I started to clean the large ring, I noticed the teeth were uneven and worn; I'm not sure you can see it in the picture below:

I had a large ring from another crank that was in better shape and I put that in.

Now to the bottom bracket. It's a sealed Mega-Exo, so it doesn't take much maintenance (I put some black car grease where the crank axle goes across), but I take it out every year to make sure it doesn't seize in place. When I put it back, I use an anti-seize goop called Ti-Prep in the threads; it's got copper in it that does something that makes the titanium play nicely with other metals (and with other titanium parts); you can see the coppery goop in the pic below, before I've re-installed the bottom bracket. (The drive side is reverse-threaded; both sides of the bracket loosen towards the front of the bike.)

After the cranks are back in, I disassemble the fork and drop it out. This steel fork develops some rust on the inside of the steering tube every year; not enough to affect its integrity, but enough that I don't like it, so I use steel wool to get the worst of it off. When I put the stem back on, I put a little white grease between the parts (and around the threads of the bolts) so they'll come apart nicely when I need them to do so. Here's the white grease on the top of the steering tube (I put a bit of black grease around the crown race, where the bottom bearing of the steering assembly is, and at the top bearing).

My aluminum saddle post doesn't need much maintenance, but I take it out to put in a new dab of copper Ti-Prep. You can see the remains of last year's application in the pic below:

My brake pads are still in good shape, so I didn't have to replace them.

Time to cable. The SRAM shifters I use give me a difficult time running the shifter cables, and it was worse this year after the crash. There's  bit of damage I didn't see that I'll have to keep an eye on, although I don't have to replace them right away. Still, the end of the shifter cable was a bit bent up after forcing it through the shifter on one side (it looks like a scratch on a negative, but that bent line is the end of the shifter cable after I was done manhandling it):

The handlebars, after the new cables are on, but before they are taped down:

I found some inexpensive tape in a dollar store. Some of the colors are decent, but that not-quite-Bianchi-celeste does nothing for me... so it's a good color for UNDER the bars:

And for my 60th birthday, Snakehead got me some good SRAM tape in yellow (well, it IS the Yellow Maserati, even though it's usualy decked out in black and grey). Here's the bar in her finery.

(One of the things I'm not good at is wrapping and taping bars. I had to do this twice before I liked the result, and a fussy rider would probably do it yet again.)

The bike's still on the rack; in the morning, I'll readjust the cables to deal with the "cable stretch" (those cables are stainless steel; they don't stretch; it's the housing that shrinks... but I'm getting too pedantic here). I hope to take it out for a shakedown 20-miler tomorrow.

Edit: Blogger won't let me respond to the comment below; so I'll do it here: today, it took between three and four hours.

'Nother Edit: I did NOT replace the chain, which I did about 100 miles ago. I DID take off the bottle cages and clean 'em up.

rainy weekend coming

It threatens to be a rainy weekend, so I may start the annual break-the-Yellow-Maserati-down-to-parts-and-rebuild process. I'll post pics.

Sunday is supposed to be the New Brunswick Ciclovia from 11-4, and I'm supposed to wrench, but the weather isn't looking good...