Execution of Stay(s)

My French baby don't tolerate...

So…things with FauxFix were going just Jim-dandy until the panic-stop I had to make two weeks ago on Seventh Avenue after a driver, motoring in the opposite direction, drops a Bruce Willis-style U-turn not 20 feet in front of me (notice how so many motorists now regard making still-illegal-on-the-books U-turns as a birthright, way up there with jaywalking?). Faux, now equipped with its new, two-speed coaster hub, came to a semi-smoking halt just feet from the legend-in-his-own-hindquarters crossover-vehicle pilot, who subsequently pleaded that he didn’t see me (props to Tony at 9th Street Cycles for providing me with a wigged-out comeback for the next such incident-and-excuse). I shrugged it all off with my usual dirty look and went on my way.

A week later, while heading out of the house to run a few errands, I casually glance at FF on the hallway rack on my way downstairs, and do a double-take: what’s up with my left chainstay? Yes, I managed to bend the damned thing, and I know it happened during that quick-service stop. The S-A hub’s torque arm really “torqued” that chainstay.

Yes, I know:

- It’s an old (70s) road frame

- It’s fairly light Vitus steel for the time

- It wasn’t designed for a coaster-brake hub, y’idiot!

Nonetheless, I’m a bit bummed out. This frame has been compromised in a few ways before it ever entered my hands, but this doesn’t help matters. It still rides sweet. But something new, frame-wise, looms closer on the horizon as a result. Something, hopefully, that can better deal with the forces a hub like the S2C can bring to bear.

I’ll tell you what it means… (product review/rant-to-rave)

Several days ago, riding home on FauxFix after a late-night tech gig, I noticed something interesting about the way the bike felt: in spite of the relatively-biting cold, the bike somehow felt good. I mean really good, like I could go on for a number of miles and still feel in a nice riding groove.

What was going on? There’s been a certain amount of chatter on one or two lists I hang around on regarding frame design/material/mojo and this thing called planing, which I won’t even begin to try and accurately describe, save to say that the term attempts to describe, from my POV, a gestalt between frame stiffness and a sort of “pliability” that to a certain extent returns the energy a cyclist exerts into/onto the bike’s frame while pedaling. When the “formula” is just right (highly dependent on said cyclist’s weight/height/build, just for starters), the bike can feel almost “energized”, making climbs feel just a bit less arduous, rough pavement seem less punishing, out-of-the-saddle sprints just a bit more sprightly. I’ll call it the PF Flyer Effect.

Anyway, I was getting a bit of this vibe that night, and I pondered what the hell was going on. I hadn’t made any radical changes to the bike since the big drivetrain upgrade a few months back. Tires? I’d changed those (to 28c Panaracer Pasela TourGuards) shortly before the aforementioned upgrade. Yes, I did change the handlebar tape (to much nicer stuff, more about anon), but that hardly explained things.

Then, it hit me: tire pressure. Somewhere on the Internets, I read about someone speculating about a tire-pressure “sweet spot” for the specific skins on his main ride, and, more intriguing, how this specific pressure didn’t at all jibe with the tire manufacturer’s recommended pressure. Things started to make sense right away: I wanted…no, needed to know the tire pressure I was rolling on right now.

And, this brought me smack-up against a product I’ve long held in disdain: dedicated tire-pressure gauges.

Why the disdain? The first-ever bicycle floor pump I ever bought (a black Silca Pista, which I still own and use, some 25-odd years later) came equipped with what seemed to be a damned good pressure gauge of its own. Whenever I felt the need to pump my tires up, I had the means to visually measure PSI. And, since it seemed Silca had an unassailable rep for pumps and stuff, it had to be reasonably accurate, right? (I also possess a Zefal-branded, but SKS-made, Husky floor pump, almost as old as the Silca, which I felt compelled to buy because a bike I had come into possession of – a 1966 Moulton Speedsix – was Schraeder-valve-only, and the Silca was strictly Presta-only, while the Husky handled both…any excuse for another piece of shop hardware, right?)

With pumps like this, dedicated pressure gauges seemed, to me, about as relevant as some of those alternative bicycle saddles that rear their ugly heads every decade or so. You could make a case for the things in the automotive world, where most people fill their tires from gas-station hoses which usually offer no means of checking pressure, but just about all bicycle-specific floor pumps give you a gauge, and more than a few frame-mount pumps offer gauges as well (albeit a bit harder to read, especially given the conditions/circumstances in which one would be compelled to use such a pump.).

Thing is, using a gauge-equipped pump merely to take a quick pressure-check is akin to using a water cannon to keep squirrels away from the bird feeder in your back yard: unwieldy and not terribly effective or efficient. And, possibly due to the hose length, pump gauges don’t give terribly accurate readings unless you’re using the pump to put more air in the tire.   Just popping the chuck over the valve stem tells you next to nothing with any accuracy.

So, yesterday afternoon, I ate humble pie, and shelled out for one of these:

SKS Airchecker, with pouch

Between several shops in the Park Slope area, only one shop had any dedicated pressure gauges to speak of, and this was it. Luckily, I happen to hold SKS’ products in very high esteem, so I bought this with little hesitation.

For starters, the unit is self-explanatory: Presta and Schraeder valves on opposite ends of a rotating head, meaning no hardware to screw around with (literally) if you happen to own bikes with tires/tubes of both valve persuasions. The head has a pressure-relief button to aid bringing down pressure a notch or two if necessary, and, since the head itself revolves, you can adjust the unit so as to be able to read the digital display right-side-up, regardless of angle.

And, regarding that display: SKS went the extra mile, not only allowing one the option of having the display read out in PSI or Bar, but also offer an effective, amber  backlight as well (and a quick-reset function).

All this allowed me to draw a quick bead on what tire pressure I might be running in any of my bikes’ tires, and quickly figure out the ideal pressure for me and my ride, without expending much of any pressure already in said tires. Color Me Sold. And chastened.

Addendum: Since I now had what supposedly was an excruciatingly-accurate pressure gauge, I realized i could finally size up the relative accuracy of the built-in gauges on both my old Silca and Zefal/SKS floor pumps. Much to my surprise, both pumps’ gauges were within roughly 2PSI of my Airchecker; surprised, because I’ve heard of others complaining about the inaccuracy of other, highly-regarded floor pumps’ gauges.  Simply dumb luck on my part?

The Surly I Couldn’t Ignore

Brooklyn has its share of Surlys parked here and there, often spec’d decently, but not particularly eye-opening (to me, anyway). However, 9th Street Cycles has an LHT in their window that’s hard not to be sweet on:

Surly Long Haul Trucker w/SRAM Apex group

FauxFix and The New Two (Sturmey-Archer S2C 2-Speed Coaster)

After what seemed like the better part of forever (well, at least as far back as May) my local bike shop got hold of an example of Sturmey-Archer/Sunrace’s rather long-awaited S2C two-speed coaster-brake rear hub about a month back, and  a complete rear wheel was built around it a few days ago:

S-A had said, via press release, the a the S2C (and the non-coaster-brake-equipped S2 variant) would be available in 28-32-36-hole variants, but the only one I could get my mitts on in a timely fashion was 36H, so that’s what I went with, meaning a new rim as well (a Sun M13 II).

My first ride with the new wheel was brief, but informative: the ride was quite smooth. As S-A has mentioned in their blog, the hubs ship rather “tight”, bearing-wise, loosening up appropriately within a given number of miles. Shifting was predictable, with a not-unexpected twist from my old and failing Sachs Torpedo automatic: when I would come to a stop using the coaster brake on the old Sachs hub, the hub would always drop to low gear, regardless of what gear I was in before coming to a stop. The new S2c, being a shift-on-demand system, works differently: if I come to a stop while in high gear, the hub will drop into low gear; but if I stop while in low gear, the hub switches to high gear. This would be a bit of an annoyance when starting off from a stoplight, but my simple work-around is to double back-pedal when I know I’m about to stop. This, at any rate, is far preferable to what I had to put up with riding on the Sachs hub, whose automatic-shifting “convenience” wasn’t quite so convenient when, for example, I found myself sprinting uphill, only to have the hub upshift partway through my ascent. my knees did not appreciate this “feature.” The S-A, by comparison, is a dream.

It will take some miles until the hub is truly broken-in, so I still consider this a work-in-progress. There was a bit of coaster-brake chatter while riding to a tech gig in Bensonhurst tonight (roughly a five-mile run from  Park Slope), but it seemed to go away after a while. For $90, I’d call this hub the proverbial no-brainer for an urbane urban ride.

A Picture’s Worth: 06/24/10

Go-fast bike No. 2 outside the Brooklyn Farmacy late last week

Girls Just Want to Have…

Well, it brings new meaning to the phrase “it’s better on a bike.” (“Put Some Excitement Between Your Legs!” came from motorcycle culture, but never mind…)

Happy Birthday, Dr. Alex Moulton!

Yes, Dr. Moulton, creator of the serious small-wheeled, fully-suspended bicycle, turned 90 on April 9th. He’s still designing, and still riding (around 8-9 miles a day, he says), and appears more limber in body than too many men half his age.

As the one or two followers of this blog know, I’ve owned a few Moultons, including my now 25-year-old AM14S, which is my most-loved bike of all time, and likely the one personal possession I’d come just short of fighting to the death for. Bicycles, in my hardly-humble opinion, don’t get any better than this.

And just what the %µ©# is a Truffle, anyway?

On my way home from a tech gig near Coney Island Avenue, I had to traverse Park Circle before reaching Prospect Park. This oddball traffic circle runs second only to Grand Army Plaza (pre-DOT modification) as the most treacherous stretch of pavement for the cyclist in greater Brooklyn. GAP has become rather more cyclist-friendly in the last year, and now the city DOT has set its sights on Park Circle, with green lanes for bicycles, traffic islands for more-orderly motor-traffic flow (one hopes)…and some strange hieroglyphics spray-painted on the pavement:

The trouble with truffles...?

I’ll have to collar some unsuspecting DOT official to get an answer here, but I’m intrigued by what appears to be rather amusing insider-department-speak, sort of like when someone uses some seriously vernacular-heavy description for something to a startled audience, then, in a bit of humorous recovery, winks and quips, “That’s a technical term.”

I guess I should be happy the DOT is on our side for a change. Mostly.

The Big Light (review)

Planet Bike Blaze 2Watt Headlight, on Goldenrod

Well the big light came to my window

And it opened up my eyelids

And it snapped them up like rollerblinds

And told me things that I did

- Elvis Costello, The Big Light

Just when I was getting  a bit sick of reading about the deep-three-figure Headlight of the Month, and once again wishing someone would just bust the rules of physics wide open and make a damn headlight that didn’t need its own tethered power station strapped to backside of the bike frame, Planet Bike surprises me by pulling it off. Rather than repeat myself, I’ll just steer you to my Amazon review of the light. The short version: You Should Buy One. New Slogan: Safety in Candlepower!

Be Seen and Green: L-R, Blaze 2Watt, Sanyo Eneloop set, Beamer 5

One not-so-small penalty of all this extra candlepower, from just two AA batteries, is that those batteries will last only so long, particularly at maximum output. You’ll go through a pair of typical alkaline batteries in about four hours on the High setting. But, really, alkaline batteries are so 20th-century. What you want is a reliable rechargeable battery, which can offer somewhat longer life as well as the money- and planet-saving ability to recharge them lots of times. (See? Saving a buck and being kinder to the ecosphere aren’t always mutually exclusive goals.) One of the last remaining objections, to me, of rechargeables was their discharge rate over time: unlike alkalines, which you can keep loaded in a flashlight for up to one or even two years and still rely on if you suffer a power failure, conventional rechargeable batteries can lose over half their charge in anywhere from several weeks to a few months.

We’re not dealing with ordinary batteries here. Sanyo has developed a rechargeable battery which can retain 85% of its full charge for up to a year, putting their relatively new Eneloop batteries in the “charge it and forget it” category. For those high-drainage items like certain digital cameras, flash units, and other frequently-used electronics that use AA batteries, this can be a major cost-savings in fairly short order. For mission-critical items like head/tail-lights for cyclists, it’s an even bigger deal: no more discovering your installed batteries are dead, and that you forgot your own memo to pick up another 20-pack from RadioShack (have you noticed how their battery multi-packs have gotten bigger and bigger–20- and 40-packs, oh, my!–just as rechargeable-battery technology is really hitting its stride?). If you buy an Eneloop charging kit (four AA batteries and charger), plus perhaps an extra Eneloop four-pack, you just charge  them all, put a pair in your headlight, a pair in your taillight (if applicable; many taillights use either AAA or, worse, those annoying N-cells), and you’re set. Run down one pair? Swap ‘em for a fresh pair, snap the exhausted pair in the charger. Rinse, repeat.

Safe, green, and saving green in the process. Damn, and it’s not even Christmas yet.

And, as the living Elvis says:

Well, it’s fine to go out and have a big night
But sooner or later you’re gonna face the big light

Back to Monotasking (2), Slightly Modified

In my last post/missive/tirade, I went on about how people in general, and cyclists in particular, seem to feel this almost sexual need to perform more than one task while in the process of performing another task, however critical that primary task is. One of the most popular “secondary” tasks, of course, has involved the cellular phone, and not just for the requisite yakking, but also for texting, Facebook updating, tweeting et al. At this point, it seems fruitless to shout, in my best/worst Ren & Stimpy outrageousness, You eeeediots!!!, because, at best, people won’t listen, and at worst, they’ll just shout back the usual assorted obscenities.

When I got my first cell phone (I was a late-adopter in this instance, which is rare for me, but let’s just say 9/11 nudged me into “adopting”), my first impression was this: “Point One: the Good News is that people can be within reach of you. almost wherever you are, all waking hours of the day.” Point Two: the Bad News? See Point One.”  The wide dissemination of cellular technology has forced a serious reassessment of social etiquette around the world. and, for many, prompted a serious discussion about personal boundaries mediated by technology. These arguments can, and likely will, go on for a long time. For the moment, I’ll talk a bit about cell phone use and cycling, and a new product that might help from a safety standpoint when combining the two.

I’ve long been a strong advocate of hands-free phone use, both while driving and cycling. There are arguments in some circles that question whether even hands-free phone use while in charge of a moving vehicle is truly safe, but I’ll argue that anything that allows one to keep both hands on the wheel, or handlebars, is a plus in terms of safety. People are going to talk on the phone while driving, even when, and where, it’s illegal to do so. (Here, in New York City, I’d be a reasonably well-off guy if I had a buck for every driver I’ve spotted with a phone clapped to one ear, even though there are quota-happy cops just waiting to nail someone.) Bluetooth headsets have been available for several years now; there’s little excuse not to use them.

Of course, the technology isn’t perfect. One of the major issues has been the headsets’ susceptibility to external noise, including wind. For cyclists, this is a particular bugaboo, since we’re almost always dealing with wind in the face, to a greater or lesser extreme. It’s a pain to receive a call, while riding at a particular pace, an having to slow way down because the person on the other end of the line can’t hear a damn thing you’re saying on account of (a) the wind hitting the microphone of the headset as you are pedaling, (b) the sound of horns, loud truck/motorcycle/pseudo-muscle-car pipes near you, or (c) All Of The Above. I’ve long wished for someone to figure out a reasonable answer to this issue, even though I’ve felt, as a cyclist, I was part of a tiny, niche audience desiring this, which added up to “fat chance” that the matter would be addressed.

Tentatively speaking, my request might well have been answered.

Just last night, I managed to get hold of Motorola’s new Endeavor HX-1 Bluetooth headset. This release has been something of a big deal, as the technology behind it has been used by the military for a while: bone conduction, where vibrations from the jawbone are translated into intelligible speech. The benefit is obvious: extraneous noise is banished, since transmission of vocal information bypasses the traditional microphone. Motorola claims that one can be conversing while dealing with a 40mph headwind, and still sound intelligible to the other party.

Pretty much what I’ve been waiting for .

Motorola Endeavor HX-1: The cast-aluminum package is a *bit* much...

Motorola know how to get attention for rolling out their high-end merchandise, but the cast-aluminum packaging might be a first in terms of over-the-top presentation, particularly given Moto’s efforts in courting some degree of “green” cred. Yes, aluminum is recyclable, but if you knew what goes into mining aluminum (or, for those on the other side of the Atlantic, aluminium, which WordPress’ spell-check doesn’t even recognize on this end), you’d take a dim view of this bit of marketing grandstanding, too.

So far, I’ve gotten as far as setting up the headset for proper fit in my right ear (very good and secure fit within five minutes of fiddling with all the extra stuff Moto packs in to aid in getting a decent fit). It’s the best-fitting Bluetooth headset I’ve encountered, by far: tilting my head in all sorts of positions, then shaking violently, doesn’t faze this ‘set at all. And, it’s comfortable, which is more than I can say for the last two headsets I’ve dealt with (also by Moto).

The true test, of course, will be on the bike, headwinds and all. I will say that the CrystalTalk mic worked quite well, and received voices were clear as a bell. I also appreciate the ability of the headset to “pair” with two Bluetooth devices at once. (In my case, both my Motorola e815 phone and my PowerBook G4; I’ll see if this combo plays nice with Skype on the PowerBook.)

I’ll be following up on the more stealth-y aspects of the headset over the next dew days. If this thing lives up to the early reviews on the likes of CNET and Endgadget, this will likely be the go-to headset for cyclists who, for better or worse, feel the need to take (and make) their calls in the saddle.